The ninth vibration and other stories — Story, Setting & Ideas

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In Category - Folklore

Authors: Beck, L. Adams (Lily Adams), 1862-1931 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 1999 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Short stories; Fantasy fiction; Paranormal fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 72,952

Reading time 318 min

Text sections 9

For The ninth vibration and other stories — Story, Setting & Ideas, the stored edition analysis reports 72,952 words, 5 hr 18 min estimated reading time, and 9 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 17.9 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Short stories,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #1853

An editorial note on how the opening, middle, and later excerpts of L. Adams Beck's 'The Ninth Vibration and Other Stories' guide a first reading, focusing on the narrative voice, setting details, and thematic hints without claiming full knowledge of the book.

Editorial Edition Score 4.7/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

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Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg1853

Read the Text

and worse, we had no food, and the mountain air is an appetiser, and at night the woods have their dangers, apart from being absolutely trackless. We had not met a living being since we left the road and there seemed no likelihood of asking for directions. I stopped no longer for views but went steadily on, Ali Khan keeping up a running fire of low-voiced invocations and lamentations. And now it was dusk and the position decidedly unpleasant.

It was at that moment I saw a woman before us walking lightly and steadily under the pines. She must have struck into the trail from the side for she never could have kept before us all the way. A native woman, but wearing the all-concealing boorka, more like a town dweller than a woman of the hills. I put on speed and Ali Khan, now very tired, toiled on behind me as I came up with her and courteously asked the way. Her face was entirely hidden, but the answering voice was clear and sweet. I made up my mind she was young, for it had the bird-like thrill of youth.

“If the Presence continues to follow this path he will arrive. It is not far. They wait for him.”

That was all. It left me with a desire to see the veiled face. We passed on and Ali Khan looked fearfully back.

“Ajaib! (Wonderful!) A strange place to meet one of the purdah-nashin (veiled women)” he muttered. “What would she be doing up here in the heights? She walked like a Khanam (khan’s wife) and I saw the gleam of gold under the boorka.”

I turned with some curiosity as he spoke, and lo! there was no human being in sight. She had disappeared from the track behind us and it was impossible to say where. The darkening trees were beginning to hold the dusk and it seemed unimaginable that a woman should leave the way and take to the dangers of the woods.

“Puna-i-Khoda--God protect us!” said Ali Khan in a shuddering whisper. “She was a devil of the wilds. Press on, Sahib. We should not be here in the dark.”

There was nothing else to do. We made the best speed we could, and the trees grew more dense and the trail fainter between the close trunks, and so the night came bewildering with the expectation that we must pass the night unfed and unarmed in the cold of the heights. They might send out a search party from The House in the Woods--that was still a hope, if there were no other. And then, very gradually and wonderfully the moon dawned over the tree tops and flooded the wood with mysterious silver lights and about her rolled the majesty of the stars. We pressed on into the heart of the night. From the dense black depths we emerged at last. An open glade lay before us--the trees falling back to right and left to disclose--what?

A long low house of marble, unlit, silent, bathed in pale splendour and shadow. About it stood great deodars, clothed in clouds of the white blossoming clematis, ghostly and still. Acacias hung motionless trails of heavily scented bloom as if carved in ivory. It was all silent as death. A flight of nobly sculptured steps led up to a broad veranda and a wide open door with darkness behind it. Nothing more.

I forced myself to shout in Hindustani--the cry seeming a brutal outrage upon the night, and an echo came back numbed in the black woods. I tried once more and in vain. We stood absorbed also into the silence.

“Ya Alla! it is a house of the dead!” whispered Ali Khan, shuddering at my shoulder,--and even as the words left his lips I understood where we were. “It is the Sukh Mandir.” I said. “It is the House of the Maharao of Ranipur.”

It was impossible to be in Ranipur and hear nothing of the dead house of the forest and Ali Khan had heard--God only knows what tales. In his terror all discipline, all the inborn respect of the native forsook him, and without word or sign he turned and fled along the track, crashing through the forest blind and mad with fear. It would have been insanity to follow him, and in India the first rule of life is that the Sahib shows no fear, so I left him to his fate whatever it might be, believing at the same time that a little reflection and dread of the lonely forest would bring him to heel quickly.

Continue Reading →

The first story, 'The Ninth Vibration,' opens with a precise geographical ascent: a track from Simla into Tibet, climbing nine thousand feet through deodar woods to a secluded bungalow called the House in the Woods. The narrator’s voice is measured, observant, and slightly detached, describing the journey with a cataloguer’s eye for detail—coolies, khuds, and the ‘austerely pure’ breath of the trees. This initial section establishes a pattern of layered description and a narrator who is both traveler and recorder, setting expectations for the stories that follow.

The Narrator as Observer and Participant

The excerpts reveal a narrator who is consistently present but rarely the center of action. In the opening, he is planning a route to Upper Kashmir and consulting a friend; later, he listens to a woman speak of mushrooms, seeds, and the Dream of the God. His role is to witness and report, not to dominate. This narrative stance creates a sense of intimacy without intrusion, allowing the reader to focus on the landscapes and conversations. The woman’s words—‘What do I know? Will you eat the seeds?’—are given without editorial comment, leaving their meaning open. The narrator’s restraint is a deliberate structural choice, inviting readers to interpret rather than be told.

Landscape as a Character

Setting is not merely backdrop but an active presence. The opening describes the track narrowing, the deodars darkening, and the bungalow ‘in the deeps of the trees.’ Later, the Lidar River, wild peonies, and a ‘tormented white cascade’ are rendered with sensory precision. The woman connects landscape to folklore: mushrooms are ‘elfin plunder,’ and a plant’s seeds allow one to ‘rise on the air light as thistledown.’ The physical world is charged with potential magic, and the narrator’s careful observations—of an eagle’s ‘double-jointed’ wings, of ‘silver-grey dew’—ground the fantastical in the tangible. Readers should attend to how each story uses place to frame its events.

Thematic Threads: Dreams, Gods, and Transformation

Recurring motifs appear across the excerpts. The woman speaks of the universe as ‘an image in the dream of Ishvara,’ and a man who ate the seeds saw ‘the Dream of the God.’ Gods ‘fall from high estate’ and are ‘re-born into a new life.’ These ideas are introduced but not resolved within the excerpts, suggesting they may weave through multiple stories. The narrator’s own journey—physical and perhaps spiritual—remains incomplete: he is ‘too early’ for the pilgrims’ shrine. The fragments hint at a collection concerned with perception, belief, and change, but the evidence is partial. Readers should note how each story picks up or varies these threads.

Voice and Cultural Positioning

The narrator’s language is formal and literary, with occasional quotations of verse (‘These are the Friars of the wood’). He refers to ‘coolies’ and ‘khansamah’ without explanation, assuming a reader familiar with colonial India. The woman, though unnamed, is described with a mix of admiration and distance: ‘a sweetness that I could not reach.’ The excerpts do not reveal her identity or fate. This cultural and emotional positioning—an English narrator in an Indian setting, observing but not fully belonging—shapes the stories’ perspective. Readers should consider how the narrator’s viewpoint colors the tales, and whether later stories shift in voice or setting.

The excerpts from The Ninth Vibration and Other Stories offer a coherent sample of L. Adams Beck’s style: precise, atmospheric, and philosophically inclined. A first reading benefits from tracking the narrator’s evolving role, the function of landscape, and the recurrence of dream and divinity motifs. Because the excerpts are incomplete, readers should approach each story as a self-contained unit while watching for echoes across the collection. The book rewards attention to detail and patience with ambiguity.

There’s a strange comfort in how Beck’s voice lingers between stories, like a half-remembered room. It reminded me of rereading the Aeneid years ago — not for plot, but for that same quiet ache of something ancient and unfinished. The Aeneid — A Reader’s Guide holds that feeling gently, without hurry. A familiar pause, perhaps.