The Taylor-Trotwood Magazine, Vol. IV, No. 6, March 1907Various
History
The Taylor-Trotwood Magazine, Vol. IV, No. 6, March 1907
Various
American literature -- 20th century -- Periodicals; Southern States -- Periodicals
The visitor smiles as he reads until he hears of the prowess of the youth
who won fame and honor and glory in the city by the sea and meditates
upon how great his after life must have been to have merited so pleasant
a comparison. The story is still easy to hear in Dunvegan, where his
name is often coupled with Dr. Allerton’s, but not to the curious and
gossiping. One must first have left the parlor and have become a boon
companion of the living-room—and one must be a lover of Dunvegan. Then if
the night be dark, so dark that Tawiskara may seem to have come back to
Attacoa, the story is his, the story of Ervin McArthur, out of whom the
Daemon was cast.
They say in Dunvegan that somewhere in the heart of every man there
dwells Tawiskara, the Daemon of Darkness. According to his own way and
in his own time, he manifests his power. To one he suggests, to another
he promises, and the third he compels—and he must needs go whom the
Daemon drives. At the wrong moment, the psychological moment of weakness,
he takes hold of a man and a deed is done, a tiny indiscretion or a
horrible crime, as the Daemon wills.
They believe in Dunvegan that McArthur was but a type of all men,
that the evil heritage of the Shadow of the Attacoa came upon him in
exaggerated form because it was needful that the works of God might be
manifested in him. They still speak with such pious quaintness in the
dreamy village. And they tell their child who shows the evil heart of
how Ervin McArthur fought in his awful death-struggle on Attacoa with
Tawiskara, the Dark One, and endured unto blood, striving against his
sin; of how he, as all men may do, in the strength of Ioskeha, cast the
Daemon out.
It is thus that they apologize for the horror with which his life-story
was laden, it being in their eyes like the black, ill-odored ink of
the press which is yet needful to make the page of each story perfect.
They shudder in the telling of it, as the reader must have shuddered in
hearing—these are they who hear the mutterings of Tawiskara in their
own hearts. And there must be those who dwell in Dunvegan who call the
story precious because that through it they have been delivered from much
tribulation and anguish of spirit which comes to all those who would
perfect the light of their souls by exorcising the Daemons that infest
it. These consider that in the horror of the story lies its true meaning
and value, and they discountenance the softer versions which have sprung
up with the newer generation in the village. If their souls have known
deeper night than that of Ervin McArthur, let them love the parable of
how they were delivered.
So there are pilgrims who sometimes visit the little graveyard where
the shadows are dense at noonday, and where Ervin McArthur lies. They
tread lightly upon the blue periwinkle, and there are those who loose
reverently the sandals from their feet for fear that God may be near in
some wayside bush.
THE END.
HISTORY OF THE HALS
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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