Free Masters of the Maze by Avram Davidson Page B

more such houses as Darkglen but why there ever had been. They really had no natural source in the United States at all. A case might be made for possible origins in the southern “plantations” or the relatively fewer “manors” of the Hudson Valley patroonships, but it could be a case only for the sake of argument. No — the American country mansion did not descend from anything, but neither was it original. It was imitative, artificial, conspicuous construction, neither useful nor ornamental, and often not even picturesquely ugly. No owner of Darkglen or any of its fellows had ever cultivated his fields for sustenance or even profit. It was one of the examples of giganticism which so often herald the coming extinction of a species, a great prostrate dinosaur of a house, sprawled in the glade which had given it its name, neo-Tudor out of mock-Gothic, with outbuildings wallowing about it like whale calves.
    “There she be,” said Ozzie Heid. Nate interrupted his socio-philosophizing to catch back at something Ozzie had answered earlier.
    “You and Mrs. Smith drive back to Nokomas and so does Mrs. — you mean, nobody stays here overnight but Mr. Bellamy?”
    Ozzie braked to a stop beside a smaller phenotype of the big house. “That’s right, but we’ve got the guest place all fixed up for you, it’s nice and warm there.”
    It was, indeed, even though it smelled of recent cleaning and of having been long closed up. The furniture was dark and heavy and the lamp shades had
art nouveau
designs in colored glass, the bathroom sink was marble — but it produced hot water. Nate unpacked, looked around some more while the long tub filled, and then took a long, slow bath. After that he remembered his mother’s warning about the danger of exposing himself to the cold air after a hot soak (“Your
pores
are open!”) and, bundling up warmly, he went off to see for the first time the master of Darkglen.
    • • •
    Certainly he had never met anyone exactly like him before.
    The difference lay in small things — he used a cocktail shaker — he had the dry, rather quiet, rather sexless look of an old, male librarian — the alert air of a hunter in the season of his chosen game — he quoted Paracelsus — his manner was old-fashioned, courteous, decisive — his skin seemed to show an inner unhealth as well as an outer pallor — and so on and on.
    “You are fortunate in your profession,” Mr. Bellamy said, as they drank their cocktails. “For one thing, it indicates … and I suppose it must tend to cultivate … the possession of inner resources, thus leaving you less dependent on the outer world for stimulus.”
    Nate said, “I hadn’t thought about it that way.” He at once began to think of it in that way, and this brought him back, of course, to the problems he had brought along with him.
    “But it can happen … it has been known to happen … that a certain attention away from the outer world has brought forth an outward-turning which proves in the long run much richer.”
    Nate made a brief attempt to grapple with this statement, which his host had made rather intently, even leaning forward a bit; but it only made him think of monasteries, and this in turn made him wonder if he ought to visit any monasteries on his European trip … Mount Athos seemed always good for an article … if he ever got to make a European trip … perhaps he might do a piece out here … hmmm … Buddhist monasteries …
evil Buddhist monks,
the public might go for that just at the moment: Evil Buddhist Monks Tried to Burn Me Alive,
It all began one mad, marijuana-merry night in a Zen “coffeehouse” in —
    “ — I don’t know that the concepts of duty and of self-gratification are incompatible,” Joseph Bellamy was saying, surveying the heavy glass held in his hand, “and — ”
    “ — I don’t, either,” Nate replied, to the surprise of both.
    Mr. Bellamy’s expression lightened, brightened. “It came, though,