Out of the Dark

by Robert W. Chambers

  ‘Yes – except for a professional trained nurse – poor thing!’

  ‘A man?’

  ‘No,’ said Lee disgustedly.

  Presently he gave me a peculiar glance; hesitated, and finally said: ‘Ask Halyard to tell you about his nurse and – the harbor-master. Goodbye; I’m due at the quarry. Come and stay with us whenever you care to; you will find a welcome at Port-of-Waves.’

  We shook hands and parted on the cliff, he turning back into the forest along the railway, I starting northward, pack slung, rifle over my shoulder. Once I met a group of quarrymen, faces burned brick-red, scarred hands swinging as they walked. And, as I passed them with a nod, turning, I saw that they also had turned to look after me, and I caught a word or two of their conversation, whirled back to me on the sea-wind.

  They were speaking of the harbor-master.

  III

  Towards sunset I came out on a sheer granite cliff where the sea-birds were whirling and clamoring, and the great breakers dashed, rolling in double-thundered reverberations on the sun-dyed, crimson sands below the rock.

  Across the half-moon of beach towered another cliff, and, behind this, I saw a column of smoke rising in the still air. It certainly came from Halyard’s chimney, although the opposite cliff prevented me from seeing the house itself.

  I rested a moment to refill my pipe, then resumed rifle and pack, and cautiously started to skirt the cliffs. I had descended half-way towards the beach, and was examining the cliff opposite, when something on the very top of the rock arrested my attention – a man darkly outlined against the sky. The next moment, however, I knew it could not be a man, for the object suddenly glided over the face of the cliff and slid down the sheer, smooth face like a lizard. Before I could get a square look at it, the thing crawled into the surf – or, at least, it seemed to – but the whole episode occurred so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that I was not sure I had seen anything at all.

  However, I was curious enough to climb the cliff on the land side and make my way towards the spot where I imagined I saw the man. Of course, there was nothing there – not a trace of a human being, I mean. Something had been there – a sea otter, possibly – for the remains of a freshly killed fish lay on the rock, eaten to the back-bone and tail.

  The next moment, below me, I saw the house, a freshly painted, trim, flimsy structure, modern, and very much out of harmony with the splendid savagery surrounding it. It struck a nasty, cheap note in the noble, grey monotony of headland and sea.

  The descent was easy enough. I crossed the crescent beach, hard as pink marble, and found a little trodden path among the rocks, that led to the front porch of the house.

  There were two people on the porch – I heard their voices before I saw them – and when I set my foot upon the wooden steps, I saw one of them, a woman, rise from her chair and step hastily towards me.

  ‘Come back!’ cried the other, a man with a smooth-shaven, deeply lined face, and a pair of angry blue eyes; and the woman stepped back quietly, acknowledging my lifted hat with a silent inclination.

  The man, who was reclining in an invalid’s rolling-chair, clapped both large, pale hands to the wheels and pushed himself out along the porch. He had shawls pinned about him, an untidy, drab-colored hat on his head, and, when he looked down at me, he scowled.

  ‘I know who you are,’ he said in his acid voice; ‘you’re one of the Zoological men from Bronx Park. You look it, anyway.’

  ‘It is easy to recognize you from your reputation,’ I replied, irritated at his discourtesy.

  ‘Really,’ he replied, with something between a sneer and a laugh, ‘I’m obliged for your frankness. You’re after my great auks, are you not?’

  ‘Nothing else would have tempted me into this place,’ I replied sincerely.

  ‘Thank Heaven for that,’ he said. ‘Sit down a moment; you’ve interrupted us.’ Then turning to the young woman, who wore the neat gown and tiny cap of a professional nurse, he bade her resume what she had been saying. She did so, with a deprecating glance at me, which made the old man sneer again.

  ‘It happened so suddenly,’ she said, in her low voice, ‘that I had no chance to get back. The boat was drifting in the cove; I sat in the stern reading, both oars shipped, and the tiller swinging. Then I heard a scratching under the boat, but thought it might be seaweed – and, next moment, came those soft thumpings, like the sound of a big fish rubbing its nose against a float.’

  Halyard clutched the wheels of his chair and stared at the girl in grim displeasure.

  ‘Didn’t you know enough to be frightened?’ he demanded.

  ‘No – not then,’ she said, coloring faintly; ‘but when, after a few moments, I looked up and saw the harbor-master running up and down the beach, I was horribly frightened.’

  ‘Really?’ said Halyard sarcastically; ‘it was about time.’ Then, turning to me, he rasped out: ‘And that young lady was obliged to row all the way to Port-of-Waves and call to Lee’s quarrymen to take her boat in.’

  Completely mystified, I looked from Halyard to the girl, not in the least comprehending what all this meant.

  ‘That will do,’ said Halyard ungraciously, which curt phrase was apparently the usual dismissal for the nurse.

  She rose and I rose, and she passed me with an inclination, stepping noiselessly into the house.

  ‘I want beef-tea!’ bawled Halyard after her; then he gave me an unamiable glance.

  ‘I was a well-bred man,’ he sneered; ‘I’m a Harvard graduate, too, but I live as I like, and I do what I like, and I say what I like.’

  ‘You certainly are not reticent,’ I said, disgusted.

  ‘Why should I be?’ he rasped; ‘I pay that young woman for my irritability; it’s a bargain between us.’

  ‘In your domestic affairs,’ I said, ‘there is nothing that interests me. I came to see those auks.’

  ‘You probably believe them to be razor-billed auks,’ he said contemptuously. ‘But they’re not; they’re great auks.’

  I suggested that he permit me to examine them, and he replied indifferently that they were in a pen in his backyard, and that I was free to step around the house when I cared to.

  I laid my rifle and pack on the verandah, and hastened off with mixed emotions, among which hope no longer predominated. No man in his senses would keep two such precious prizes in a pen in his backyard, I argued, and I was perfectly prepared to find anything from a puffin to a penguin in that pen.

  I shall never forget, as long as I live, my stupor of amazement when I came to the wire-covered enclosure. Not only were there two great auks in the pen, alive, breathing, squatting in bulky majesty on their seaweed bed, but one of them was gravely contemplating two newly hatched chicks, all bill and feet, which nestled sedately at the edge of a puddle of salt-water, where some small fish were swimming.

  For a while excitement blinded, nay, deafened me. I tried to realize that I was gazing upon the last individuals of an all but extinct race – the sole survivors of the gigantic auk, which, for thirty years, has been accounted an extinct creature.

  I believe that I did not move muscle nor limb until the sun had gone down and the crowding darkness blurred my straining eyes and blotted the great, silent, bright-eyed birds from sight.

  Even then I could not tear myself away from the enclosure; I listened to the strange, drowsy note of the male bird, the fainter responses of the female, the thin plaints of the chicks, huddling under her breast; I heard their flipper-like, embryotic wings beating sleepily as the birds stretched and yawned their beaks and clacked them, preparing for slumber.

  ‘If you please,’ came a soft voice from the door, ‘Mr Halyard awaits your company to dinner.’

  IV

  I dined well – or, rather, I might have enjoyed my dinner if Mr Halyard had been eliminated; and the feast consisted exclusively of a joint of beef, the pretty nurse, and myself. She was exceedingly attractive – with a disturbing fashion of lowering her head and raisin
g her dark eyes when spoken to.

  As for Halyard, he was unspeakable, bundled up in his snuffy shawls, and making uncouth noises over his gruel. But it is only just to say that his table was worth sitting down to and his wine was sound as a bell.

  ‘Yah!’ he snapped, ‘I’m sick of this cursed soup – and I’ll trouble you to fill my glass—’

  ‘It is pretty dangerous for you to touch claret,’ said the pretty nurse.

  ‘I might as well die at dinner as anywhere,’ he observed.

  ‘Certainly,’ said I, cheerfully passing the decanter, but he did not appear overpleased with the attention.

  ‘I can’t smoke, either,’ he snarled, hitching the shawls around until he looked like Richard the Third.

  However, he was good enough to shove a box of cigars at me, and I took one and stood up, as the pretty nurse slipped past and vanished into the little parlor beyond.

  We sat there for a while without speaking. He picked irritably at the bread-crumbs on the cloth, never glancing in my direction; and I, tired from my long foot-tour, lay back in my chair, silently appreciating one of the best cigars I ever smoked.

  ‘Well,’ he rasped out at length, ‘what do you think of my auks – and my veracity?’

  I told him that both were unimpeachable.

  ‘Didn’t they call me a swindler down there at your museum?’ he demanded.

  I admitted that I had heard the term applied. Then I made a clean breast of the matter, telling him that it was I who had doubted; that my chief, Professor Farrago, had sent me against my will, and that I was ready and glad to admit that he, Mr Halyard, was a benefactor of the human race.

  ‘Bosh!’ he said. ‘What good does a confounded wobbly, bandy-toed bird do to the human race?’

  But he was pleased, nevertheless; and presently he asked me, not unamiably, to punish his claret again.

  ‘I’m done for,’ he said; ‘good things to eat and drink are no good to me. Some day I’ll get mad enough to have a fit, and then—’

  He paused to yawn.

  ‘Then,’ he continued, ‘that little nurse of mine will drink up my claret and go back to civilization, where people are polite.’

  Somehow or other, in spite of the fact that Halyard was an old pig, what he said touched me. There was certainly not much left in life for him – as he regarded life.

  ‘I’m going to leave her this house,’ he said, arranging his shawls. ‘She doesn’t know it. I’m going to leave her my money, too. She doesn’t know that. Good Lord! What kind of a woman can she be to stand my bad temper for a few dollars a month!’

  ‘I think,’ said I, ‘that it’s partly because she’s poor, partly because she’s sorry for you.’

  He looked up with a ghastly smile.

  ‘You think she really is sorry?’

  Before I could answer he went on: ‘I’m no mawkish sentimentalist, and I won’t allow anybody to be sorry for me – do you hear?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not sorry for you!’ I said hastily, and, for the first time since I had seen him, he laughed heartily, without a sneer.

  We both seemed to feel better after that; I drank his wine and smoked his cigars, and he appeared to take a certain grim pleasure in watching me.

  ‘There’s no fool like a young fool’ he observed, presently.

  As I had no doubt he referred to me, I paid him no attention. After fidgeting with his shawls, he gave me an oblique scowl and asked me my age.

  ‘Twenty-four,’ I replied.

  ‘Sort of a tadpole, aren’t you?’ he said.

  As I took no offence, he repeated his remark.

  ‘Oh, come,’ said I, ‘there’s no use in trying to irritate me. I see through you; a row acts like a cocktail on you – but you’ll have to stick to gruel in my company.’

  ‘I call that impudence!’ he rasped out wrathfully.

  ‘I don’t care what you call it,’ I replied, undisturbed. ‘I am not going to be worried by you. Anyway,’ I ended, ‘it is my opinion that you could be very good company if you chose.’

  The proposition appeared to take his breath away – at least, he said nothing more; and I finished my cigar in peace and tossed the stump into a saucer.

  ‘Now,’ said I, ‘what price do you set upon your birds, Mr Halyard?’

  ‘Ten thousand dollars,’ he snapped, with an evil smile.

  ‘You will receive a certified cheque when the birds are delivered,’ I said quietly.

  ‘You don’t mean to say you agree to that outrageous bargain – and I won’t take a cent less, either – Good Lord! haven’t you any spirit left?’ he cried, half rising from his pile of shawls.

  His piteous eagerness for a dispute sent me into laughter impossible to control, and he eyed me, mouth open, animosity rising visibly.

  Then he seized the wheels of his invalid chair and trundled away, too mad to speak; and I strolled out into the parlor, still laughing.

  The pretty nurse was there, sewing under a hanging lamp.

  ‘If I am not indiscreet—’ I began.

  ‘Indiscretion is the better part of valor,’ said she, dropping her head but raising her eyes.

  So I sat down with a frivolous smile peculiar to the appreciated.

  ‘Doubtless,’ said I, ‘you are hemming a kerchief.’

  ‘Doubtless I am not,’ she said; ‘this is a night-cap for Mr Halyard.’

  A mental vision of Halyard in a night-cap, very mad, nearly set me to laughing again.

  ‘Like the King of Yvetot, he wears his crown in bed,’ I said flippantly.

  ‘The King of Yvetot might have made that remark,’ she observed, re-threading her needle.

  It is unpleasant to be reproved. How large and red and hot a man’s ears feel.

  To cool them, I strolled out to the porch; and after a while, the pretty nurse came out too, and sat down in a chair not far away. She probably regretted her lost opportunity to be flirted with.

  ‘I have so little company – it is a great relief to see somebody from the world,’ she said. ‘If you can be agreeable, I wish you would.’

  The idea that she had come out to see me was so agreeable that I remained speechless until she said: ‘Do tell me what people are doing in New York.’

  So I seated myself on the steps and talked about the portion of the world inhabited by me, while she sat sewing in the dull light that straggled out from the parlor windows.

  She had a certain coquetry of her own, using the usual methods with an individuality that was certainly fetching. For instance, when she lost her needle – and, another time, when we both, on hands and knees, hunted for her thimble.

  However, directions for these pastimes may be found in contemporary classics.

  I was as entertaining as I could be – perhaps not quite as entertaining as a young man usually thinks he is. However, we got on very well together until I asked her tenderly who the harbor-master might be, whom they all discussed so mysteriously.

  ‘I do not care to speak about it,’ she said, with a primness of which I had not suspected her capable.

  Of course I could scarcely pursue the subject after that – and, indeed, I did not intend to – so I began to tell her how I fancied I had seen a man on the cliff that afternoon, and how the creature slid over the sheer rock like a snake.

  To my amazement, she asked me kindly to discontinue the account of my adventures, in an icy tone, which left no room for protest.

  ‘It was only a sea-otter,’ I tried to explain, thinking perhaps she did not care for snake stories.

  But the explanation did not appear to interest her, and I was mortified to observe that my impression upon her was anything but pleasant.

  ‘She doesn’t seem to like me and my stories,’ thought I, ‘but she is too young, perhaps, to appreciate them.’

  So I forgave her – for she was even prettier than I had thought her at first – and I took my leave, saying that Mr Halyard would doubtless direct me to my room.

  Halyard was in hi
s library, cleaning a revolver, when I entered.

  ‘Your room is next to mine,’ he said; ‘pleasant dreams, and kindly refrain from snoring.’

  ‘May I venture an absurd hope that you will do the same!’ I replied politely.

  That maddened him, so I hastily withdrew.

  I had been asleep for at least two hours when a movement by my bedside and a light in my eyes awakened me. I sat bolt upright in bed, blinking at Halyard, who, clad in a dressing-gown and wearing a night-cap, had wheeled himself into my room with one hand, while with the other he solemnly waved a candle over my head.

  ‘I’m so cursed lonely,’ he said – ‘come, there’s a good fellow, talk to me in your own original, impudent way.’

  I objected strenuously, but he looked so worn and thin, so lonely and bad-tempered, so lovelessly grotesque, that I got out of bed and passed a spongeful of cold water over my head.

  Then I returned to bed and propped the pillows up for a back-rest, ready to quarrel with him if it might bring some little pleasure into his morbid existence.

  ‘No,’ he said amiably, ‘I’m too worried to quarrel, but I’m much obliged for your kindly offer. I want to tell you something.’

  ‘What?’ I asked suspiciously.

  ‘I want to ask you if you ever saw a man with gills like a fish?’

  ‘Gills?’ I repeated.

  ‘Yes, gills! Did you?’

  ‘No,’ I replied angrily, ‘and neither did you.’

  ‘No, I never did,’ he said, in a curiously placid voice, ‘but there’s a man with gills like a fish who lives in the ocean out there. Oh, you needn’t look that way – nobody ever thinks of doubting my word, and I tell you that there’s a man – or a thing that looks like a man – as big as you are too, all slate-coloured, with nasty red gills like a fish! And I’ve a witness to prove what I say!’

  ‘Who?’ I asked sarcastically.

  ‘The witness? My nurse.’

  ‘Oh! She saw a slate-coloured man with gills?’

  ‘Yes, she did. So did Francis Lee, superintendent of the mica Quarry Company at Port-of-Waves. So have a dozen men who work in the quarry. Oh, you needn’t laugh, young man. It’s an old story here, and anybody can tell you about the harbor-master.’