66 College St.
Providence, R. I.
Dec. 22, 1934
Dear Rhi'-Mhel:—
So I hadn't spoken about "Old Man" and my dreams of him! Well—he was a great fellow. He belonged to a market at the foot of Thomas street—the hill street mentioned in Cthulhu as the abode of the young artist—and could usually (in later life) be found asleep on the sill of a low window almost touching the ground. Occasionally he would stroll up the hill as far as the Art Club, seating himself at the entrance to one of those old-fashioned courtyard archways (formerly common everywhere) for which Providence is so noted. At night, when the electric lights make the street bright, the space within the archway would remain pitch-black, so that it looked like the mouth of an illimitable abyss, or the gateway of some nameless dimension. And there, as if stationed as a guardian of the unfathomed mysteries beyond, would crouch the Sphinxlike, jet-black, yellow-eyed, and incredibly ancient form of Old Man. I first knew him as a youngish cat in 1906, when my elder aunt lived in Benefit St. nearby, and Thomas St. lay on my route downtown from her place. I used to pat him and remark what a fine boy he was. I was sixteen then. The years went by, and I continued to see him off and on. He grew mature—then elderly—and finally cryptically ancient. After about ten years—when I was grown up and had a grey hair or two myself—I began calling him "Old Man". He knew me well, and would always purr and rub aorund my ankles, and greet me with a kind of friendly conversational "e-ew" which finally became hoarse with age. I came to regard him as an indispensable acquaintance, and would often go considerably out of my way to pass his habitual territory, on the chance that I might find him visible. Good Old Man! In fancy I pictured him as an hierophant of the mysteries behind the black archway, and wondered if he would ever invite me through it some midnight .... wondered, too, if I could ever come back to earth alive after accepting such an invitation. Well—more years slipped away. My Brooklyn period came and went; and in 19126, a middle-aged relique of thirty-six, with a goodly sprinkling of white in my thatch, I took up my abode in Barnes Street—whence my habitual downtown route led straight down Thomas St. hill. And there by the ancient archway Old Man still lingered! He was not very active now, and spent most of his time sleeping—but he still knew his fellow-elder, and never failed to give his hoarse, friendly "e-ew" when he chanced to be awake. About 1927 he took on a sort of final second youth and began to be awake more. He had been sticking rather close to the market, but now I met him farther and farther up the hill, and very often at the old archway. Goold Old Man! In 1928 he seemed a trifle feeble, but his purring friendliness was unabated. Not long before my thirty-eighth birthday I saw him—him whom I had known at sixteen! Then in August I began to miss him. Always when turning the corner on to the hill I used to look down ahead and see if I could discern a familiar lump of black by the archway or at the market. Now I failed to see the graceful old furry lump. I feared the worst—but scarcely dared to enquire at the market. At last—September—I did enquirex and found that my fears were all too well founded. After more than two decades Old Man had gone through the archway at last, and dissolved into that eternal night of which he was a true fragment—that eternal night which had sent him up to earth as a tiny black atom of sportive kittenhood so long ago! Assuredly, I felt desolate enough without my old friend—without any black lump to look for on the ancient hill! I had dreamed of him—and the musteries of the archway—before; but I know began to do so with redoubled vividness. He would greet me in sleep on a spectral Thomas Street Hill, and gaze with aged yellow eyes that spoke secrets older than Aegyptus or Atlantis. And he would mew an invitation for me to follow him through the archway—beyond which lay (as saith Dunsany) "the unreverberate darkness of the abyss." In no dreams up to now have I actually followed him through—but I have often wondered what will happen if I ever do ..... whether, in such an event, I shall ever again awake in this tridimensional world? When I mentioned these dreams to Dwyer he wanted to make a story about Old Man, but he has not yet done so. If he doesn't, I may myself some day. Good Old Man! But I am sure that no world he would lead me to would be a world of horror. He is too old and true a friend for that! When Little Sam Perkins appeared on the scene last summer I decided that he must be a great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Old Man—perhaps a messenger despatched from the Abyss by my old friend. As soon as his great violet eyes began to turn yellow, I occasionally addressed him as Old Man, and fancied I could sense a spark of recognition! Perhaps he was my friend himself in a new body! But, alas, he did not remain long. he, too, returned to that eternal Night of which he and all his kind are inalienable fragments! .....
...............
Yrs. most sincerely—
E'ch-Pi-El