THE DANTE CLUB Lost Chapters

This page contains a "lost chapter" of The Dante Club—a chapter or section that didn't make it into the final version of the novel. Some include plot elements and characters not present in the printed edition.

"The Fall of Lowell"

LOWELL MADE his way up the trail to the inconspicuous wire fence. He had been uncertain whether he would recall the route dictated on his previous expedition by the sand. However, he found his memory provided more or less an accurate compass, and traveling alone he moved more freely than when weighed down by his publisher.

"Hullo," Lowell clucked to himself, quite satisfied.

The Professor reached the boulder bordering the fence. Propping one foot up, he raised himself above the fence and leaped, plunging onto the sandy patch where Chief Justice Artemus Healey had met his demise. Lowell carried a glass case to abduct the specimen of insect responsible for assailing him. As his heavy boots hit the ground in a cloud of sand, Lowell saw from the corner of his eye a slender figure crouched on a raised rock. But the image as it was burned into Lowell's mind was fleeting, for a heavy blow smashed into the back of Professor Lowell's head almost at once, sending him crashing face down into the rough sand.

Immediately, a small troupe of the speckled brown insects, and lean scorpions, climbed from under rocks to inspect the new flesh. One started immediately to prod against Lowell's low-cut beard.

"Lowell!" a voice cried from the mountain trail. An insect scrambled away from a wide, comfortable berth of Lowell's beard. The attacker pivoted at the sound of the voice and fled, as the young Harvard student hurried to the side of his fallen teacher.

When James Russell Lowell came to, he found Edmund Sheldon tending to his head with a handkerchief, and for a moment after recognizing the freshman Lowell believed he must have been among the disordered book-shelves of his Elmwood study, conducting a Dante class. When the sweeping silence and earthy chill of the mountainside reminded the poet otherwise, he abruptly sprang to his feet.

"Oh, but stay still, Professor!" Sheldon pleaded.

"What has happened?"

"Do you not remember?" Sheldon asked.

"Yes, I was jumped! Did you see who it was?"

"I am sorry to say I did not, Professor," Sheldon said with a faint blush. "I came upon you at the moment you collapsed to the ground, Professor Lowell, like a sail whose mast has cracked in two (as Dante says). I called out to you. Then I saw a figure standing above you, seeming more ghost than man; seeing my approach he quickly bolted. I thought to give chase."

"You thought? You should have flattened the fiend like an oyster out of season!" cried Lowell.

"Well, once I considered your condition, Professor Lowell, I decided it best to minister to your injuries, and remove from you the strange insects and crawlers that had gathered on your clothes and face."

"Sheldon... my what a daze it all is to me! Whatever were you doing on the mountain to begin with?"

"I am rooming with a near relative in Stockbridge for a few days, sir, and saw you from a distance starting up the mountain while I was out on my cousin's old horse. I gave chase to greet you, but could not catch up - that is, until the moment when I witnessed the attack!"

"But did you see the scoundrel who did this, Sheldon? It is more important than you could ever know. Pray tell me yes!" Lowell grabbed Sheldon's wrist, and noticed the blood which had drenched the young man's handkerchief. Only at that moment did the gash on the back of Lowell's head begin to throb.

Sheldon shook his head sadly. "Never have I seen someone run so swiftly as that slim fellow, Professor Lowell, and in a blink disappear entirely from sight."

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