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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76112 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+                          Vallisneria Madness
+
+                         By RALPH MILNE FARLEY
+
+              _A strange and curious little story, about
+                   the moonlight mating of flowers_
+
+           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
+                         Weird Tales May 1937.
+         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+Seated comfortably on the broad terrace of Professor Gordon’s palatial
+mansion, Tom Spencer stared abstractedly at the red disk of the setting
+sun, reflected in the turgid waters of the pool in the garden beyond the
+edge of the terrace as he listened to his host recount the fascinating
+story of the love-life of the vallisneria.
+
+The cameo-face of the white-haired botany professor bore a whimsical
+expression as he declaimed, “Beneath the black surface of that muddy
+pool out there, the flowers of a score or so of this rare plant which I
+brought from tropical Asia, pass their entire humdrum life, except for
+one brief night of moonlit love—not unlike our human existence.”
+
+Tom Spencer shifted his keen gray eyes to stare at the matted,
+ribbon-like leaves, floating on top of the water, which gave little
+indication of floral life below.
+
+The old professor continued, “As you know from my lectures at Columbia,
+the vallisneria is a diœcious plant. On one night of each year, the
+night of the vernal full moon, the stem of each female flower begins to
+stretch, until its ghostly green and white bloom rises to the surface.
+Each male flower too feels that same impelling urge, ‘an instinct within
+it that reaches and towers,’ as James Russell Lowell says. Listen to how
+Maeterlinck, that great poet and scientist, describes their fatal
+wooing.”
+
+He opened a book which lay on his lap, tilted it so that its pages were
+illumined by the fading sunlight, and read aloud:
+
+    “The green-coated male flowers rise in turn, full of hope,
+    toward the flowers which already sway above them in the
+    moonlight, awaiting them and summoning them to the magic world
+    which lies beyond their native obscurity. But, when half their
+    upward journey is done, they reach the limit that their too
+    short stems can stretch, and are checked abruptly, before they
+    can win their way to their indifferent sweethearts, who
+    pridefully refuse to bend to caress them.
+
+    “Filled with yearning, the little heart of each male flower
+    swells and swells until it breaks. In a magnificent effort to
+    achieve his bliss, he tears himself from his stem, and in one
+    incomparable flight rises to perish in love on the surface of
+    the pool. Dying, but free and radiant, he floats for one brief
+    ecstatic moment beside his beloved, then shrivels and floats
+    away; while his mate closes the petals in which she has
+    imprisoned his last breath of life, and shrinks back into the
+    depths, there to ripen the fruit of that fatal union.”
+
+The sun set, as Professor Gordon closed his copy of Maeterlinck. A
+twilight mist began to form above the surface of the garden pool. “How
+much more noble are the flowers than we,” he mused. “As Shakespeare
+says, ‘Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but
+not for love.’”
+
+His athletic young guest narrowed his gray eyes and stared inwardly at
+the vision conjured up by the older man’s reading. “I wonder,” he
+breathed.
+
+Professor Gordon broke the spell by saying in a matter-of-fact tone,
+“Well, my boy, you are to see tonight the mating of vallisneria, a sight
+which my colleagues would give their eye-teeth to witness.”
+
+“I feel flattered——” Spencer began diffidently, shifting his broad
+shoulders in an embarrassed manner.
+
+But the fine-featured old man silenced him with a deprecatory, “Don’t,
+then! You are more outstanding as a football player than as a student of
+botany. I invited you for other reasons than any outstanding ability you
+may have shown in your four years of studies under me.”
+
+(Spencer thought, “Most likely to rub in on his colleagues his
+non-invitation of them, by asking instead a mere athlete, who is taking
+botany merely because it’s a cinch course.”)
+
+Meanwhile the professor was continuing, “I am sorry that I can’t stay
+out here with you. The mists affect my throat. And I’m sorry my daughter
+Natalie isn’t here either. She helps me take care of the plants, and
+you’d find her quite intelligent about them. But she had to go over to
+her aunt’s.”
+
+“I shouldn’t think she’d care to miss——”
+
+“Oh, it’s an old story with Natalie. She’s seen the phenomenon before.
+And now I must caution you about one thing. Don’t go any nearer the pool
+than the edge of the terrace. The flowers, when in bloom, exude a strong
+narcotic fragrance, which is rather dangerous. Anyhow, you can see quite
+clearly from here.”
+
+He rose, and held out one slender blue-veined hand.
+
+“Good night, sir,” said Spencer, taking the frail hand in his big strong
+one. “And thank you for inviting me.”
+
+                 *        *        *        *        *
+
+Tom Spencer eased his athletic frame down into one of the terrace
+chairs, and gazed abstractedly at the purpling pink of the western sky.
+
+“Just as well that that brat of his isn’t here tonight,” he mused. “What
+on earth could I do to amuse her?” He remembered having seen Natalie
+Gordon several times during his Freshman year, hanging around the door
+of the Botany Building at Morningside Heights, waiting for her father. A
+gawky, pug-nosed, freckle-faced, little thing, with two tightly braided
+pigtails—about fourteen or fifteen years old, so he judged. Just as
+well the brat wasn’t here.
+
+Spencer turned his attention back to the garden pool. But pitch-darkness
+had now fallen, and he could see nothing except the outline of the
+shrubs against the deep purple of the western sky. Then trees in the
+distance became dimly lit by the full moon, which was rising behind the
+house; but the long shadow of the house still obscured the garden and
+its pool. A vagrant zephyr wafted a damp, muddy scent of mist up from
+the hidden pool.
+
+“I wonder if those water-plants have any consciousness, any volition,
+about their tragic mating,” mused Spencer, “or is it all merely
+automatic, mechanistic?”
+
+He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and visualized the passage
+from Maeterlinck, which the old botany professor had read to him.
+
+                 *        *        *        *        *
+
+He opened his eyes again with a start, and sat erect. The shadow of the
+house had receded to the edge of the terrace, and the entire garden,
+with the pool in its midst, was now bathed in the chalky light of the
+moon almost overhead.
+
+Above the surface of the water hung a cottony swirling mist, which
+seemed to portend some sort of boiling activity in the depths of the
+muddy pool. The mist thickened and spilled out onto the surrounding
+garden.
+
+“Humph!” sniffed Spencer, getting up out of his chair. “Can’t see a
+thing from here.” And, forgetful of Professor Gordon’s express
+injunction, he ambled down off the terrace, and along the garden walk to
+the edge of the pool.
+
+Through gaps in the swirling mist, he could see the matted ribbon-like
+vegetation floating inertly in the water. Not a sign of a flower. So he
+swung back to the terrace, and slumped down again in his chair.
+
+The mist continued to thicken.
+
+“I guess there’ll be no show tonight,” Spencer grumbled disgustedly.
+Then suddenly he sat erect, thrust his broad shoulders forward, and
+peered intently through the gathering fog, where dark shapes—human-like
+shapes—seemed to be moving.
+
+Brushing the mist away, shedding it, rising above it, and yet still
+seeming to be a part of it, they stood out at last, clear in the
+moonlight; majestic women, Valkyries, with proudly-held blond heads, and
+flashing eyes. Filmy, floating, luna-green robes set off the chalky
+whiteness of their perfect features.
+
+A heady perfume wafted across from the hidden pool.
+
+The mist receded until it concealed merely the feet of the beautiful
+creatures. Where they stood, whether on the surface of the pool or on
+its banks, Spencer could not tell. Swaying slightly, as though rooted,
+they undulated their green-swathed arms like seaweed in the tide. Their
+heads thrown back with an almost defiant gesture, they bathed their
+perfect features in the glaring white light of the zenith moon.
+
+Never had Tom Spencer seen such sheer feminine beauty. He had no
+recollection of leaving his seat, but now he found himself standing at
+the edge of the terrace, irresistibly drawn by a strange yearning toward
+that galaxy of pulchritude. There were some twenty or so of the young
+women, their faces all different, each a face of character and
+personality, each more beautiful than the last.
+
+Irresolute, Spencer held out his arms toward the entire group.
+Which—which one drew him? To which one should he drift? The uncertainty
+held him back—that, and the subconscious memory of some warning, some
+prohibition—and some third as yet undefined prompting.
+
+And, while he hesitated, there appeared, poking up through the mist at
+the feet of the strange regal women, the points of a score of
+green-peaked hats. Up they came, and faces appeared beneath them, dark,
+cleanly-cut, handsome faces of men; tense, yearning faces, with
+flashing, fanatic eyes, each pair of eyes fixed on one of the beautiful
+women who towered above.
+
+Gradually they rose, until each man, clad in dark Lincoln green, stood
+beside one of the pale, diaphanous women.
+
+And then a strange, inexplicable paradox! The beautiful women were
+slender, completely feminine, utterly adorable. The men were well-built,
+athletic, thoroughly masculine, seemingly tall rather than short. And
+yet the women towered above them.
+
+Tom Spencer’s mind flashed incongruously back to the scrapbooks of his
+childhood days, in which he had frequently pasted figures from pictures
+taken in different scales, with the result that each figure, properly
+proportioned by itself, failed to match the others in size.
+
+Each of the men now clasped his arms around the waist of his beloved,
+and stretched and stretched, every sinew of his athletic body taut with
+the effort. Although Spencer could not see their feet for the mist which
+covered them, he knew that they were standing on tiptoe. An inarticulate
+sigh went up from all of them. “Kiss me! Kiss me!” it pleaded. “Kiss me,
+though I die!”
+
+But the stately women stiffened, and held themselves more aloof, and
+towered even more inaccessibly, with a beauty so flaming that it hurt.
+Then their sea-swaying arms floated down until their slim white hands
+rested on the shoulders of the men. The pearly faces of the women
+inclined slightly—not enough to meet the upward-straining lips of their
+mates, but just enough so that they could gaze coldly but enticingly
+down. A silvery ripple of sound floated through the moonlight. The women
+were speaking, but what they were saying Spencer could not tell.
+
+A strangled flush spread over the faces of the men, as, lifted by the
+hands of the women, they rose slowly, until white now with a livid
+whiteness, their lips met in one passionate, soul-searing embrace.
+
+Tom Spencer drew in a deep breath, and his fingers clenched, then sprang
+open with a sudden gesture of horror, as he realized that those male
+heads, so tightly clinging lip to lip with the beautiful mist-women,
+were bodiless! The green-clad bodies, which had strained so tautly to
+thrust their heads up to that kiss of death, were now slowly slumping,
+settling downward, shriveling, turning brown, drifting away in the
+swirling mists which bathed the feet of the majestic women.
+
+The heads themselves had lost their realness. The skin had become
+wrinkled, leathery, deflated, flabby. The features were scarcely
+distinguishable.
+
+Then one by one, with a contemptuous gesture of satiation, the women
+flung away the sucked-dry rinds. And Tom Spencer, his gaze intent upon
+the expressions on the women’s faces, took no heed what became of the
+cast-off rinds.
+
+For a subtle change was taking place in those beautiful but cruel
+creatures. A certain matronly smugness coarsened their features, and
+they seemed less tall. Yes, they were visibly shrinking, shrinking and
+becoming squat and ugly, shrinking back into the mists which masked the
+muddy pool. All, all returning to the slime which had spawned them.
+
+All but one! Alone she stood, unmated, still towering slim and beautiful
+in the moonlight. And then Tom Spencer knew why he had waited, why he
+had not gone to any of the others. For, transcendently beautiful though
+they had all been, yet this sole survivor of that glorious company
+outshone them all.
+
+Erect she stood, her golden head thrown back, her arms stretched to each
+side and raised a little, so that the filmy pale green gauze of her gown
+hung from them like the wings of a luna moth.
+
+                 *        *        *        *        *
+
+Spencer gasped and rose from his chair. Forgotten were the warnings of
+Professor Gordon, as the young man moved steadily out off the terrace
+into the misty moonlight.
+
+Her lips parted, a smile of welcome overspread her cameo face, and then
+she spoke—a tinkly, silver, moonlit, rippling voice. “Have you been
+waiting long for me?”
+
+“All my life!” breathed Spencer.
+
+She laughed, a friendly, silvery laugh.
+
+Like a sleep-walker, Spencer continued to plod toward her.
+
+Six-feet one he was, a gridiron star, and yet this frail, slim wisp of a
+feminine creature towered inaccessibly above him in the mists of the
+pool.
+
+Spencer reached her. He clasped his arms around her waist, and stretched
+and stretched, every sinew of his athletic body taut with the effort. He
+raised his heels from the ground, and strained on tiptoe. A sigh
+breathed upward from his lips.
+
+“Kiss me! Kiss me!” he pleaded. “Kiss me, though I die.”
+
+But she stiffened, and held herself more aloof, and towered even more
+inaccessibly, while her beauty flamed out so intensely that it gripped
+Spencer’s heart with a stabbing pain.
+
+Then her wide-spread arms floated down, until her slim, cool, white
+hands rested on Spencer’s shoulders. Her cameo-cut face inclined
+slightly, not enough to meet the upward-straining lips of the young man,
+but merely enough so that she could gaze coldly but enticingly down into
+his eyes.
+
+Like a drowning man, there swept through his mind the vision of heads
+wrenched from male shoulders, sucked dry, and cast aside; male bodies
+shriveling and drifting away. Well, it was worth it, for that one moment
+of transcendent ecstasy. But, at the memory-picture of the
+transformation wrought in the beautiful mist-woman by that long,
+passionate embrace, he shuddered momentarily. However, he would be gone
+then—he would not be there to see it. Once more he strained to reach
+his beloved.
+
+But the expected strangling wrench on his neck did not come. Instead the
+stiff aloofness of the beautiful girl softened. An expression of
+yielding consecration suffused her lovely face. She leaned, she bent
+over him, and floated down into his arms.
+
+Their lips met and clung.
+
+                 *        *        *        *        *
+
+A breeze whipped her moon-green gown about him. Opening his eyes, he saw
+the mists blown away from the stone bench on which she had been
+standing, by the edge of the garden pool.
+
+Now, nestled in his arms, she no longer seemed terrifyingly dominating
+and aloof, but instead small and sweet and soft. And she did not coarsen
+and sink back into the slime of the pool.
+
+Side by side they sat down together on the stone bench, his arm about
+her slender waist, her golden head against his shoulder.
+
+For a long time they sat thus in silence. Then, “Tom,” she breathed.
+
+“You know my name?” he asked in surprise.
+
+“Why not?” she laughed a silvery moonlit laugh.
+
+Again they sat in silence.
+
+At last she pushed softly away from him. “Well, dear,” she said, “it is
+very late, and we really ought to be going in.”
+
+“In? Into the pool?”
+
+“No, silly! Into the house.”
+
+He turned, and seized her by the shoulders, and stared fixedly down at
+her in the moonlight. Then, with a sigh of gladness, he clasped her to
+him.
+
+“You’re Natalie Gordon!” he breathed. “You’re real! And I like you much
+better that way.”
+
+“I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about,” said she, “but it’s
+all right with me.”
+
+She held up her face, and once more his lips closed on hers, this time
+in a wholly human embrace.
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76112 ***