The Case of Charles Dexter Ward - Ep 12 of 25 - H. P. Lovecraft

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward By H. P. Lovecraft Part 3 A  Search and an Evocation Chapter  4. It was toward May when Dr. Willett, at the  request of the senior Ward, and fortified with all the Curwen data which the family had  gleaned from Charles in his non-secretive days, talked with the young man. The interview  was of little value or conclusiveness, for Willett felt at every moment that Charles  was thoroughly master of himself and in touch with matters of real importance; but it at least

  forced the secretive youth to offer some rational explanation of his recent demeanour. Of a pallid,  impassive type not easily shewing embarrassment, Ward seemed quite ready to discuss his pursuits,  though not to reveal their object. He stated that the papers of his ancestor had contained some  remarkable secrets of early scientific knowledge, for the most part in cipher, of an apparent scope  comparable only to the discoveries of Friar Bacon and perhaps surpassing even those. They were,  how

ever, meaningless except when correlated with a body of learning now wholly obsolete; so that  their immediate presentation to a world equipped only with modern science would rob them of all  impressiveness and dramatic significance. To take their vivid place in the history of human thought  they must first be correlated by one familiar with the background out of which they evolved, and to  this task of correlation Ward was now devoting himself. He was seeking to acquire as fast as  possible tho

se neglected arts of old which a true interpreter of the Curwen data must possess,  and hoped in time to make a full announcement and presentation of the utmost interest to  mankind and to the world of thought. Not even Einstein, he declared, could more profoundly  revolutionise the current conception of things. As to his graveyard search, whose object he freely  admitted, but the details of whose progress he did not relate, he said he had reason to think that  Joseph Curwen’s mutilated headston

e bore certain mystic symbols—carved from directions in his will  and ignorantly spared by those who had effaced the name—which were absolutely essential to the  final solution of his cryptic system. Curwen, he believed, had wished to guard his secret with  care; and had consequently distributed the data in an exceedingly curious fashion. When Dr. Willett  asked to see the mystic documents, Ward displayed much reluctance and tried to put him off with such  things as photostatic copies of the Hut

chinson cipher and Orne formulae and diagrams; but finally  shewed him the exteriors of some of the real Curwen finds—the “Journall and Notes”, the cipher  (title in cipher also), and the formula-filled message “To Him Who Shal Come After”—and let him  glance inside such as were in obscure characters. He also opened the diary at a page carefully  selected for its innocuousness and gave Willett a glimpse of Curwen’s connected handwriting  in English. The doctor noted very closely the crabbed and

complicated letters, and the  general aura of the seventeenth century which clung round both penmanship and style despite the  writer’s survival into the eighteenth century, and became quickly certain that the document  was genuine. The text itself was relatively trivial, and Willett recalled only a fragment: “Wedn. 16 Octr. 1754. My Sloope the Wakeful this Day putt in from London with XX newe Men pick’d up  in ye Indies, Spaniards from Martineco and 2 Dutch Men from Surinam. Ye Dutch Men are li

ke to Desert  from have’g hearde Somewhat ill of these Ventures, but I will see to ye Inducing of them to Staye.  ffor Mr. Knight Dexter of ye Boy and Book 120 Pieces Camblets, 100 Pieces Assrtd. Cambleteens,  20 Pieces blue Duffles, 100 Pieces Shalloons, 50 Pieces Calamancoes, 300 Pieces each,  Shendsoy and Humhums. ffor Mr. Green at ye Elephant 50 Gallon Cyttles, 20 Warm’g Pannes,  15 Bake Cyttles, 10 pr. Smoke’g Tonges. ffor Mr. Perrigo 1 Sett of Awles, ffor Mr. Nightingale 50  Reames prime F

oolscap. Say’d ye SABAOTH thrice last Nighte but None appear’d. I must heare  more from Mr. H. in Transylvania, tho’ it is Harde reach’g him and exceeding strange he can  not give me the Use of what he hath so well us’d these hundred yeares. Simon hath not Writ these  V. Weekes, but I expecte soon hear’g from him.” When upon reaching this point Dr. Willett turned  the leaf he was quickly checked by Ward, who almost snatched the book from his grasp. All that  the doctor had a chance to see on the

newly opened page was a brief pair of sentences; but these,  strangely enough, lingered tenaciously in his memory. They ran: “Ye Verse from Liber-Damnatus  be’g spoke V Roodmasses and IV Hallows-Eves, I am Hopeful ye Thing is breed’g Outside ye  Spheres. It will drawe One who is to Come, if I can make sure he shal bee, and he shall think  on Past thinges and look back thro’ all ye yeares, against ye which I must have ready  ye Saltes or That to make ’em with.” Willett saw no more, but somehow t

his small  glimpse gave a new and vague terror to the painted features of Joseph Curwen which stared  blandly down from the overmantel. Ever after that he entertained the odd fancy—which his medical  skill of course assured him was only a fancy—that the eyes of the portrait had a sort of wish, if  not an actual tendency, to follow young Charles Ward as he moved about the room. He stopped  before leaving to study the picture closely, marvelling at its resemblance to Charles and  memorising every

minute detail of the cryptical, colourless face, even down to a slight scar or  pit in the smooth brow above the right eye. Cosmo Alexander, he decided, was a painter worthy of  the Scotland that produced Raeburn, and a teacher worthy of his illustrious pupil Gilbert Stuart. Assured by the doctor that Charles’s mental health was in no danger, but that on the other hand  he was engaged in researches which might prove of real importance, the Wards were more lenient  than they might otherwise have

been when during the following June the youth made positive his  refusal to attend college. He had, he declared, studies of much more vital importance to pursue;  and intimated a wish to go abroad the following year in order to avail himself of certain sources  of data not existing in America. The senior Ward, while denying this latter wish as absurd for  a boy of only eighteen, acquiesced regarding the university; so that after a none too  brilliant graduation from the Moses Brown School there

ensued for Charles a three-year  period of intensive occult study and graveyard searching. He became recognised as an eccentric,  and dropped even more completely from the sight of his family’s friends than he had been before;  keeping close to his work and only occasionally making trips to other cities to consult obscure  records. Once he went south to talk with a strange old mixed race who dwelt in a swamp and about  whom a newspaper had printed a curious article. Again he sought a small villa

ge in the Adirondacks  whence reports of certain odd ceremonial practices had come. But still his parents forbade him  the trip to the Old World which he desired. Coming of age in April, 1923, and having  previously inherited a small competence from his maternal grandfather, Ward determined at last to  take the European trip hitherto denied him. Of his proposed itinerary he would say nothing save that  the needs of his studies would carry him to many places, but he promised to write his parents

fully  and faithfully. When they saw he could not be dissuaded, they ceased all opposition and helped  as best they could; so that in June the young man sailed for Liverpool with the farewell blessings  of his father and mother, who accompanied him to Boston and waved him out of sight from the  White Star pier in Charlestown. Letters soon told of his safe arrival, and of his securing  good quarters in Great Russell Street, London; where he proposed to stay, shunning all family  friends, till he

had exhausted the resources of the British Museum in a certain direction. Of  his daily life he wrote but little, for there was little to write. Study and experiment consumed all  his time, and he mentioned a laboratory which he had established in one of his rooms. That he said  nothing of antiquarian rambles in the glamorous old city with its luring skyline of ancient  domes and steeples and its tangles of roads and alleys whose mystic convolutions and sudden  vistas alternately beckon and surp

rise, was taken by his parents as a good index of the degree to  which his new interests had engrossed his mind. In June, 1924, a brief note told of his departure  for Paris, to which he had before made one or two flying trips for material in the Bibliothèque  Nationale. For three months thereafter he sent only postal cards, giving an address in the  Rue St. Jacques and referring to a special search among rare manuscripts in the library  of an unnamed private collector. He avoided acquaintances,

and no tourists brought back  reports of having seen him. Then came a silence, and in October the Wards received a picture card  from Prague, Czecho-Slovakia, stating that Charles was in that ancient town for the purpose of  conferring with a certain very aged man supposed to be the last living possessor of some very  curious mediaeval information. He gave an address in the Neustadt, and announced no move till the  following January; when he dropped several cards from Vienna telling of his pass

age through  that city on the way toward a more easterly region whither one of his correspondents and  fellow-delvers into the occult had invited him. The next card was from Klausenburg  in Transylvania, and told of Ward’s progress toward his destination. He was going to  visit a Baron Ferenczy, whose estate lay in the mountains east of Rakus; and was to be addressed  at Rakus in the care of that nobleman. Another card from Rakus a week later, saying that his  host’s carriage had met him and tha

t he was leaving the village for the mountains, was his  last message for a considerable time; indeed, he did not reply to his parents’ frequent letters  until May, when he wrote to discourage the plan of his mother for a meeting in London, Paris, or  Rome during the summer, when the elder Wards were planning to travel in Europe. His researches,  he said, were such that he could not leave his present quarters; while the situation of Baron  Ferenczy’s castle did not favour visits. It was on a cra

g in the dark wooded mountains, and  the region was so shunned by the country folk that normal people could not help feeling ill  at ease. Moreover, the Baron was not a person likely to appeal to correct and conservative  New England gentlefolk. His aspect and manners had idiosyncrasies, and his age was so great as to  be disquieting. It would be better, Charles said, if his parents would wait for his return to  Providence; which could scarcely be far distant. That return did not, however, take

place until  May, 1926, when after a few heralding cards the young wanderer quietly slipped into New York  on the Homeric and traversed the long miles to Providence by motor-coach, eagerly drinking  in the green rolling hills, the fragrant, blossoming orchards, and the white steepled towns  of vernal Connecticut; his first taste of ancient New England in nearly four years. When the coach  crossed the Pawcatuck and entered Rhode Island amidst the faery goldenness of a late spring  afternoon his h

eart beat with quickened force, and the entry to Providence along Reservoir and  Elmwood avenues was a breathless and wonderful thing despite the depths of forbidden lore to  which he had delved. At the high square where Broad, Weybosset, and Empire Streets join,  he saw before and below him in the fire of sunset the pleasant, remembered houses  and domes and steeples of the old town; and his head swam curiously as the vehicle  rolled down to the terminal behind the Biltmore, bringing into view

the great dome and soft,  roof-pierced greenery of the ancient hill across the river, and the tall colonial  spire of the First Baptist Church limned pink in the magic evening light against the fresh  springtime verdure of its precipitous background. Old Providence! It was this place and the  mysterious forces of its long, continuous history which had brought him into being, and  which had drawn him back toward marvels and secrets whose boundaries no prophet might fix.  Here lay the arcana, wond

rous or dreadful as the case might be, for which all his years of travel  and application had been preparing him. A taxicab whirled him through Post Office Square with  its glimpse of the river, the old Market House, and the head of the bay, and up the steep  curved slope of Waterman Street to Prospect, where the vast gleaming dome and sunset-flushed  Ionic columns of the Christian Science Church beckoned northward. Then eight squares past the  fine old estates his childish eyes had known, and t

he quaint brick sidewalks so often trodden  by his youthful feet. And at last the little white overtaken farmhouse on the right, on the left  the classic Adam porch and stately bayed facade of the great brick house where he was born. It was  twilight, and Charles Dexter Ward had come home.