The prose is often clumsy enough to match the norm for Weird Tales, with adverbs that tell us what we already know, unconscious rhymes, and stuttering alliteration:
"She clutched his knee excitedly."
- - - -
"She shrugged again, apathetically."
- - - -
"'It -- it’s alive,' he stammered, startled."
Worst of all is a gimmick used by A. Merritt, and one that has no place in the work of a writer as good as Moore:
"'Better not to -- speak of it,' she said."
- - - -
“We believe it best not to wonder what lies -- beyond.”
- - - -
"It may be a long time before my next -- meal.”
Also reminiscent of Merritt is a crippling vagueness in the descriptions. Moore was able to compensate for this vagueness in "Black God's Kiss" by emphasizing the fierce emotions of an active protagonist, Jirel. Here, in a languid setting, with a protagonist of little agency, the vagueness has nothing to provide contrast:
"Presently steps rose under his feet, almost imperceptibly, and after a while the pressure on his arm drew him aside. They went in under a low, heavy arch of stone and entered the strangest room he had ever seen. It appeared to be seven-sided, as nearly as he could judge through the drifting mist, and curious, converging lines were graven deep in the floor.
"It seemed to him that forces outside his comprehension were beating violently against the seven walls, circling like hurricanes through the dimness until the whole room was a maelstrom of invisible tumult."
Despite these limitations, two things make the story worth reading.
There is a mood of hopelessness and resignation that reminds me of the Eloi in H. G. Wells:
"He began to harry his companion with questions that woke more and more often the look of dread behind her eyes, but he gained little satisfaction. She belonged to a people without history, without ambition, their lives bent wholly toward wringing from each moment its full sweetness in anticipation of the terror to come. Evasion was the keynote of their existence, perhaps with reason. Perhaps all the adventurous spirits among them had followed their curiosity into danger and death, and the only ones left were the submissive souls who led their bucolically voluptuous lives in this Elysium so shadowed with horror."
That sense of bucolic life tinged with horror leads to some quietly striking passages:
"The darkness had deepened until he could no longer see any more than the nearest wavelets lapping the sand. Beyond, and all about, the dream-world melted into the violet-misted blueness of the twilight. He was not aware that he had turned his head, but presently he found himself looking down on the girl beside him. She was lying on the pale sand, her hair a fan of darkness to frame the pallor of her face. In the twilight her mouth was dark too, and from the darkness under her lashes he slowly became aware that she was watching him unwinkingly. [ Ugh! ]
"For a long while he sat there, gazing down, meeting the half-hooded eyes in silence. And presently, with the effortless detachment of one who moves in a dream, he bent down to meet her lifting arms. The sand was cool and sweet, and her mouth tasted faintly of blood."
Finally, there is a startling, often disturbing emphasis on sexual imagery and implications. This is typical of Moore, and perhaps one of the many reasons why her stories left a strong impression on her decade.
"The great hall lay straight and veiled before them, but after a few steps the girl drew him aside and under another archway, into a long gallery through whose drifting haze he could see rows of men and women kneeling against the wall with bowed heads, as if in prayer. She led him down the line to the end, and he saw then that they knelt before small spigots curving up from the wall at regular intervals. She dropped to her knees before one and, motioning him to follow, bent her head and laid her lips to the up-curved spout. Dubiously he followed her example.
"Instantly with the touch of his mouth on the nameless substance of the spigot something hot and, strangely, at once salty and sweet flowed into his mouth. There was an acridity about it that gave a curious tang, and the more he drank the more avid he became. Hauntingly delicious it was, and warmth flowed through him more strongly with every draft. Yet somewhere deep within him memory stirred unpleasantly… somewhere, somehow, he had known this hot, acrid, salty taste before, and -- suddenly suspicions struck him like a bludgeon, and he jerked his lips from the spout as if it burnt. A tiny thread of scarlet trickled from the wall. He passed the back of one hand across his lips and brought it away red."
A weak story, then, but with compensating virtues to make it readable.
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