Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  In the dull light of a rainy noon-day the fire reddened the ceiling, throwing her giant shadow across the wall, where it towered, swaying, like a ghost above her. She caught sight of it over her shoulder, and watched it absently; then gazed into the coals again, her chin dropping on her bared chest.

  At her maid’s repeated knocking she turned, her boots and the single spur sparkling in the firelight, and opened the door.

  An hour later, fresh from her bath, luxurious in loose and filmy lace, her small, white feet shod with silk, she lunched alone, cradled among the cushions of her couch.

  Twice she strolled through the rooms leisurely, summoned by her maid to the telephone; the first time to chat with Grace Ferrall, who, it appeared, was a victim of dissipation, being still abed, and out of humour with the rainy world; the second time to answer in the negative Marion’s suggestion that she motor to Lakewood with her for the week’s end before they closed their house.

  Sauntering back again, she sipped her milk and vichy, tasted the strawberries, tasted a big black grape, discarded both, and lay back among the cushions, her naked arms clasped behind her head, and dropping one knee over the other, stared at the ceiling.

  Restlessness and caprice ruled her. She seldom smoked, but seeing on the table a stray cigarette of the sort she kept for any intimates who might desire them, she stretched out her arm, scratched a match, and lighted it with a dainty grimace.

  Lying there, she tried to make rings; but the smoke only got into her delicate uptilted nose and stung her tongue, and she very soon had enough of her cigarette.

  Watching the slow fire consume it between her fingers she lay supine, following the spirals of smoke with inattentive eyes. By-and-by the lengthening ash fell, powdering her, and she threw the cigarette into the grate, flicked the ashes from her bare, round arm, and, clasping her hands under her neck, turned over and closed her eyes.

  Sleep? — with every pulse awake and throbbing, every heart-beat sending the young blood rushing out through a body the incarnation of youth and life itself! There was a faint flush in the hollow of each upturned palm, where the fingers like relaxed petals curled inward; a deepening tint in the parted lips; and under the lids, through the dusk of the lashes, a glimmer of blue.

  Lying there, veiled gaze conscious of the rose-light which glowed and waned on the ceiling, she awaited the flowing tide on which so often she had embarked and drifted out into that golden gloom serene, where, spirit becalmed, Time and Grief faded, and Desire died out upon the unshadowed sea of dreams.

  It is long waiting for the tide when the wakeful heart beats loudly, when the pulses quicken at a memory, and the thousand idle little cellules of the brain, long sealed, long unused, and consigned to the archives of What Is Ended, open one by one, releasing each its own forgotten ghost.

  And how can the heart rest, the pulse sleep, startled to a flutter, as one by one the tiny cells unclose unbidden, and the dead remembrance, from its cerements freed, brightens to life?

  Words he had used, the idle lifting of his head, the forgotten inflection of his voice, the sunlight on his hair and the sea-wind stirring it; his figure as it turned to move away, the half-caught echo of his laugh, faint, faint! — so that her own ears, throbbing, strained to listen; the countless unimportant moments she had thought unmarked, yet carefully stored up, without her knowledge, in the magic cellules of her brain — all, all were coming back to life, more and more distinct, startlingly clear.

  And she lay like one afraid to move, lest her stirring waken a vague something that still slept, something she dared not arouse, dared not meet face to face, even in dreams. An interval — perhaps an hour, perhaps a second — passed, leaving her stranded so close to the shoals of slumber that sleep passed only near enough to awaken her.

  The room was very still and dim, but the clamour in her brain unnerved her, and she sat up among the cushions, looking vacantly about her with the blue, confused eyes, the direct, unseeing gaze of a child roused by a half-heard call.

  The call — low, imperative, sustained — continued softly persistent against her windows — the summons of the young year’s rain.

  She went to the window and stood among the filmy curtains, looking out into the mist; a springlike aroma penetrated the room. She opened the window a little way, and the sweet, virile odour enveloped her.

  A thousand longings rose within her; unnumbered wistful questions stirred her, sighing, unanswered.

  Aware that her lips were moving unconsciously, she listened to the words forming automatic repetitions of phrases long forgotten:

  “And those that look out of the windows be darkened, And the door shall be shut in the streets.”

  What was it she was repeating?

  “Also they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fear shall be in the way.”

  What echo of the past was this?

  “And desire shall fail: because—”

  Intent, absorbed in retracing the forgotten sequence to its source, she stood, breathing the thickening incense of the rain; and every breath was drawing her backward, nearer, nearer to the source of memory. Ah, the cliff chapel in the rain! — the words of a text mumbled deafly — the yearly service for those who died at sea! And she, seated there in the chapel dusk thinking of him who sat beside her, and how he feared a heavier, stealthier, more secret tide crawling, purring about his feet!

  Enfin! Always, always at the end of everything, He! Always, reckoning step by step, backward through time, He! the source, the inception, the meaning of all!

  Unmoored at last, her spirit swaying, enveloped in memories of him, she gave herself to the flood — overwhelmed, as tide on tide rose, rushing over her — body, mind, and soul.

  She closed her eyes, leaning there heavily amid the cloudy curtains; she moved back into the room and stood staring at space through wet lashes. The hard, dry pulse in her throat hurt her till her under lip, freed from the tyranny of her small teeth, slipped free, quivering rebellion.

  She had been walking her room to and fro, to and fro, for a long time before she realised that she had moved at all.

  And now, impulse held the helm; a blind, unreasoning desire for relief hurried into action on the wings of impulse.

  There was a telephone at her elbow. No need to hunt through lists to find a number she had known so long by heart — the three figures which had reiterated themselves so often, monotonously insistent, slyly persuasive; repeating themselves even in her dreams, so that she awoke at times shivering with the vision in which she had listened to temptation, and had called to him across the wilderness of streets and men.

  “Is he at home?”

  “ — !”

  “Would you ask him to come to the telephone?”

  “ — !”

  “Please say to him that it is a — a friend.... Thank you.”

  In the throbbing quiet of her room she heard the fingers of the prying rain busy at her windows; the ticking of the small French clock, very dull, very far away — or was it her heart? And, faintly ringing in the receiver pressed against her ear, millions of tiny stirrings, sounds like instruments of an elfin orchestra tuning, echoes as of steps passing through the halls of fairy-land, a faint confusion of human-like tones; then:

  “Who is it?”

  Her voice left her for an instant; her dry lips made no answer.

  “Who is it?” he repeated in his steady, pleasant voice.

  “It is I.”

  There was absolute silence — so long that it frightened her. But before she could speak again his voice was sounding in her ears, patient, unconvinced:

  “I don’t recognise your voice. Who am I speaking to?”

  “Sylvia.”

  There was no response, and she spoke again:

  “I only wanted to say good morning. It is afternoon now; is it too late to say good morning?”

  “No. I’m badly rattled. Is it you, Sylvia?”

  “Indeed it is. I am in my own room. I — I though
t—”

  “Yes, I am listening.”

  “I don’t know what I did think. Is it necessary for me to telephone you a minute account of the mental processes which ended by my calling you up — out of the vasty deep?”

  The old ring in her voice hinting of the laughing undertone, the same trailing sweetness of inflection — could he doubt his senses any longer?

  “I know you, now,” he said.

  “I should think you might. I should very much like to know how you are — if you don’t mind saying?”

  “Thank you. I seem to be all right. Are you all right, Sylvia?”

  “Shamefully and outrageously well. What a season, too! Everybody else is in rags — make-up rags! Isn’t that a disagreeable remark? But I’ll come to the paint-brush too, of course.... We all do. Doesn’t anybody ever see you any more?”

  She heard him laugh to himself unpleasantly; then: “Does anybody want to?”

  “Everybody, of course! You know it. You always were spoiled to death.”

  “Yes — to death.”

  “Stephen!”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you becoming cynical?”

  “I? Why should I?”

  “You are! Stop it! Mercy on us! If that is what is going on in a certain house on lower Fifth Avenue, facing the corner of certain streets, it’s time somebody dropped in to—”

  “To — what?”

  “To the rescue! I’ve a mind to do it myself. They say you are not well, either.”

  “Who says that?”

  “Oh, the usual little ornithological cockatrice — or, rather, cantatrice. Don’t ask me, because I won’t tell you. I always tell you too much, anyway. Don’t I?”

  “Do you?”

  “Of course I do. Everybody spoils you and so do I.”

  “Yes — I am rather in that way, I suppose.”

  “What way?”

  “Oh — spoiled.”

  “Stephen!”

  “Yes?”

  And in a lower voice: “Please don’t say such things — will you?”

  “No.”

  “Especially to me.”

  “Especially to you. No, I won’t, Sylvia.”

  And, after a hesitation, she continued sweetly:

  “I wonder what you were doing, all alone in that old house of yours, when I called you up?”

  “I? Let me see. Oh, I was superintending some packing.”

  “Are you going off somewhere?”

  “I think so.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know, Sylvia.”

  “Stephen, how absurd! You must know where you are going! If you mean that you don’t care to tell me—”

  “I mean — that.”

  “I decline to be snubbed. I’m shameless, and I wish to be informed. Please tell me.”

  “I’d rather not tell you.”

  “Very well.... Good-bye.... But don’t ring off just yet, Stephen.... Do you think that, sometime, you would care to see — any people — I mean when you begin to go out again?”

  “Who, for example?”

  “Why, anybody?”

  “No; I don’t think I should care to.”

  “I wish you would care to. It is not well to let go every tie, drop everybody so completely. No man can do that to advantage. It would be so much better for you to go about a bit — see and be seen, you know; just to meet a few people informally; go to see some pretty girl you know well enough to — to—”

  “To what? Make love to?”

  “That would he very good for you,” she said.

  “But not for the pretty girl. Besides, I’m rather too busy to go about, even if I were inclined to.”

  “Are you really busy, Stephen?”

  “Yes — waiting. That is the very hardest sort of occupation. And I’m obliged to be on hand every minute.”

  “But you said that you were going out of town.”

  “Did I? Well, I did not say it, exactly, but I am going to leave town.”

  “For very long?” she asked.

  “Perhaps. I can’t tell yet.”

  “Stephen, before you go — if you are going for a very, very long while — perhaps you will — you might care to say good-bye?”

  “Do you think it best?”

  “No,” she said innocently; “but if you care—”

  “Do you care to have me?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  There was a silence; and when his voice sounded again it had altered:

  “I do not think you would care to see me, Sylvia. I — they say I am — I have — changed — since my — since a slight illness. I am not over it yet, not cured — not very well yet; and a little tired, you see — a little shaken. I am leaving New York to — to try once more to be cured. I expect to be well — one way or another—”

  “Stephen, where are you going? Answer me!”

  “I can’t answer you.”

  “Is your illness serious?”

  “A — it is — it requires some — some care.”

  Her fingers tightening around the receiver whitened to the delicate nails under the pressure. Mute, struggling with the mounting impulse, voice and lip unsteady, she still spoke with restraint:

  “You say you require care? And what care have you? Who is there with you? Answer me!”

  “Why — everybody; the servants. I have care enough.”

  “Oh, the servants! Have you a physician to advise you?”

  “Certainly — the best in the world. Sylvia, dea — , Sylvia, I didn’t mean to give you an impression—”

  “Stephen, I will have you truthful with me! I know perfectly well you are ill. I — if I could only — if there was something, some way — Listen: I am — I am going to do something about it, and I don’t care very much what I do!”

  “What sweet nonsense!” he laughed, but his voice was no steadier than hers.

  “Will you drive with me?” she asked impulsively, “some afternoon—”

  “Sylvia, dear, you don’t really want me to do it. Wait, listen: I — I’ve got to tell you that — that I’m not fit for it. I’ve got to be honest with you; I am not fit, not in physical condition to go out just yet. I’ve really been ill — for weeks. Plank has been very nice to me. I want to get well; I mean to try very hard. But the man you knew — is — changed.”

  “Changed?”

  “Not in that way!” he said in a slow voice.

  “H-how, then?” she stammered, all a-thrill.

  “Nerve gone — almost. Going to get it back again, of course. Feel a million times better already for talking with you.”

  “Do — does it really help?”

  “It’s the only panacea for me,” he said too quickly to consider his words.

  “The only one?” she faltered. “Do you mean to say that your trouble — illness — has anything to do with—”

  “No, no! I only—”

  “Has it, Stephen?”

  “No!”

  “Because, if I thought—”

  “Sylvia, I’m not that sort! You mustn’t talk to me that way. There’s nothing to be sorry for about me. Any man may lose his nerve, and, if he is a man, go after it and get it back again. Every man has a fighting chance. You said it yourself once — that a man mustn’t ask for a fighting chance; he must take it. And I’m going to take it and win out one way or another.”

  “What do you mean by ‘another,’ Stephen?”

  “I — Nothing. It’s a phrase.”

  “What do you mean? Answer me!”

  “It’s a phrase,” he said again; “no meaning, you know.”

  “Stephen, Mr. Plank says that you are lame.”

  “What did he say that for?” demanded Siward wrathfully.

  “I asked him. Kemp saw you on crutches at your window. So I asked Mr. Plank, and he said you had discarded your crutches too soon and had fallen and lamed yourself again. Are you able to walk yet?”

  “Yes, of course.”

&nb
sp; “Outdoors?”

  “A — no, not just yet.”

  “In other words, you are practically bedridden.”

  “No, no! I can get about the room very well.”

  “You couldn’t go down-stairs — for an hour’s drive, could you?”

  “Can’t manage that for awhile,” he said hastily.

  “Oh, the vanity of you, Stephen Siward! the vanity! Ashamed to let me see you when you are not your complete and magnificently attractive self! Silly, I shall see you! I shall drive down on the first sunny morning and sit outside in my victoria until you can’t stand the temptation another instant. I’m going to do it. You cannot stop me; nobody can stop me. I desire to do it, and that is sufficient, I think, for everybody concerned. If the sun is out to-morrow, I shall be out too!... I am so tired of not seeing you! Let central listen! I don’t care. I don’t care what I am saying. I’ve endured it so long — I — There’s no use! I am too tired of it, and I want to see you.... Can’t we see each other without — without — thinking about things that are settled once and for all?”

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “Then you’d better learn to! Because, if you think I’m going through life without seeing you frequently you are simple! I’ve stood it too long at a time. I won’t go through this sort of thing again! You’d better be amiable; you’d better be civil to me, or — or — nobody on earth can tell what will happen! The idea of you telling me you had lost your nerve! You’ve got to get it back — and help me find mine! Yes, it’s gone, gone, gone! I lost it in the rain, somewhere, to-day.... Does the scent of the rain come in at your window?... Do you remember — There! I can’t say it.... Good-bye. Good-bye. You must get well and I must, too. Good-bye.”

  The fruit of her imprudence was happiness — an excited happiness, which lasted for a day. The rain lasted, too, for another day, then turned to snow, choking the city with such a fall as had not been seen since the great blizzard — blocking avenues, barricading cross-streets, burying squares and circles and parks, and still falling, drifting, whirling like wind-whipped smoke from cornice and roof-top. The electric cars halted; even the great snow-ploughs roared impotent amid the snowy wastes; waggons floundered into cross-streets and stuck until dug out; and everywhere, in the thickening obscurity, battalions of emergency men with pick and shovel struggled with the drifts in Fifth Avenue and Broadway. Then the storm ended at daybreak.