Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Of course I mind,” he protested amiably, “but I suppose you wish to devote several hours to dressing.”

  She nodded. “Such a dream of a gown! Nina’s present! You’ll see it. I hope Gerald will be here to see it. He promised. You’ll say you like it if you do like it, won’t you?”

  “I’ll say it, anyway.”

  “Oh, well — if you are contented to be commonplace like other men—”

  “I’ve no ambition to be different at my age.”

  “Your age?” she repeated, looking up quickly. “You are as young as Nina, aren’t you? Half the men in the younger set are no younger than you — and you know it,” she concluded— “you are only trying to make me say so — and you’ve succeeded. I’m not very experienced yet. Does tea bring wisdom, Captain Selwyn?” pouring herself a cup. “I’d better arm myself immediately.” She sank back into the depths of the chair, looking gaily at him over her lifted cup. “To my rapid education in worldly wisdom!” She nodded, and sipped the tea almost pensively.

  He certainly did seem young there in the firelight, his narrow, thoroughbred head turned toward the fire. Youth, too, sat lightly on his shoulders; and it was scarcely a noticeably mature hand that touched the short sun-burnt moustache at intervals. From head to waist, from his loosely coupled, well-made limbs to his strong, slim foot, strength seemed to be the keynote to a physical harmony most agreeable to look at.

  The idea entered her head that he might appear to advantage on horseback.

  “We must ride together,” she said, returning her teacup to the tray; “if you don’t mind riding with me? Do you? Gerald never has time, so I go with a groom. But if you would care to go—” she laughed. “Oh, you see I am already beginning a selfish family claim on you. I foresee that you’ll be very busy with us all persistently tugging at your coat-sleeves; and what with being civil to me and a martyr to Drina, you’ll have very little time to yourself. And — I hope you’ll like my brother Gerald when you meet him. Now I must go.”

  Then, rising and partly turning to collect her furs:

  “It’s quite exciting to have you here. We will be good friends, won’t we? . . . and I think I had better stop my chatter and go, because my cunning little Alsatian maid is not very clever yet. . . . Good-bye.”

  She stretched out one of her amazingly white hands across the table, giving him a friendly leave-taking and welcome all in one frank handshake; and left him standing there, the fresh contact still cool in his palm.

  Nina came in presently to find him seated before the fire, one hand shading his eyes; and, as he prepared to rise, she rested both arms on his shoulders, forcing him into his chair again.

  “So you’ve bewitched Eileen, too, have you?” she said tenderly. “Isn’t she the sweetest little thing?”

  “She’s — ah — as tall as I am,” he said, blinking at the fire.

  “She’s only nineteen; pathetically unspoiled — a perfect dear. Men are going to rave over her and — not spoil her. Did you ever see such hair? — that thick, ruddy, lustrous, copper tint? — and sometimes it’s like gold afire. And a skin like snow and peaches! — she’s sound to the core. I’ve had her exercised and groomed and hardened and trained from the very beginning — every inch of her minutely cared for exactly like my own babies. I’ve done my best,” she concluded with a satisfied sigh, and dropped into a chair beside her brother.

  “Thoroughbred,” commented Selwyn, “to be turned out to-night. Is she bridle-wise and intelligent?”

  “More than sufficiently. That’s one trouble — she’s had, at times, a depressing, sponge-like desire for absorbing all sorts of irrelevant things that no girl ought to concern herself with. I — to tell the truth — if I had not rigorously drilled her — she might have become a trifle tiresome; I don’t mean precisely frumpy — but one of those earnest young things whose intellectual conversation becomes a visitation — one of the wants-to-know-for-the-sake-of-knowledge sort — a dreadful human blotter! Oh, dear; show me a girl with her mind soaking up ‘isms’ and I’ll show you a social failure with a wisp of hair on her cheek, who looks the dowdier the more expensively she’s gowned.”

  “So you believe you’ve got that wisp of copper-tinted hair tucked up snugly?” asked Selwyn, amused.

  “I — it’s still a worry to me; at intervals she’s inclined to let it slop. Thank Heaven, I’ve made her spine permanently straight and her head is screwed properly to her neck. There’s not a slump to her from crown to heel — I know, you know. She’s had specialists to forestall every blemish. I made up my mind to do it; I’m doing it for my own babies. That’s what a mother is for — to turn out her offspring to the world as flawless and wholesome as when they came into it! — physically and mentally sound — or a woman betrays her stewardship. They must be as healthy of body and limb as they are innocent and wholesome minded. The happiest of all creatures are drilled thoroughbreds. Show me a young girl, unspoiled mentally and spiritually untroubled, with a superb physique, and I’ll show you a girl equipped for the happiness of this world. And that is what Eileen is.”

  “I should say,” observed Selwyn, “that she’s equipped for the slaughter of man.”

  “Yes, but I am selecting the victim,” replied his sister demurely.

  “Oh! Have you? Already?”

  “Tentatively.”

  “Who?”

  “Sudbury Gray, I think — with Scott Innis for an understudy — perhaps the Draymore man as alternate — I don’t know; there’s time.”

  “Plenty,” he said vaguely, staring into the fire where a log had collapsed into incandescent ashes.

  She continued to talk about Eileen until she noticed that his mind was on other matters — his preoccupied stare enlightened her. She said nothing for a while.

  But he woke up when Austin came in and settled his big body in a chair.

  “Drina, the little minx, called me back on some flimsy pretext,” he said, relighting his cigar; “I forgot that time was going — and she was wily enough to keep me talking until Miss Paisely caught me at it and showed me out. I tell you,” turning on Selwyn— “children are what make life worth wh—” He ceased abruptly at a gentle tap from his wife’s foot, and Selwyn looked up.

  Whether or not he divined the interference he said very quietly: “I’d rather have had children than anything in the world. They’re about the best there is in life; I agree with you, Austin.”

  His sister, watching him askance, was relieved to see his troubled face become serene, though she divined the effort.

  “Kids are the best,” he repeated, smiling at her. “Failing them, for second choice, I’ve taken to the laboratory. Some day I’ll invent something and astonish you, Nina.”

  “We’ll fit you up a corking laboratory,” began Austin cordially; “there is—”

  “You’re very good; perhaps you’ll all be civil enough to move out of the house if I need more room for bottles and retorts—”

  “Of course, Phil must have his laboratory,” insisted Nina. “There’s loads of unused room in this big barn — only you don’t mind being at the top of the house, do you, Phil?”

  “Yes, I do; I want to be in the drawing-room — or somewhere so that you all may enjoy the odours and get the benefit of premature explosions. Oh, come now, Austin, if you think I’m going to plant myself here on you—”

  “Don’t notice him, Austin,” said Nina, “he only wishes to be implored. And, by the same token, you’d both better let me implore you to dress!” She rose and bent forward in the firelight to peer at the clock. “Goodness! Do you creatures think I’m going to give Eileen half an hour’s start with her maid? — and I carrying my twelve years’ handicap, too. No, indeed! I’m decrepit but I’m going to die fighting. Austin, get up! You’re horribly slow, anyhow. Phil, Austin’s man — such as he is — will be at your disposal, and your luggage is unpacked.”

  “Am I really expected to grace this festival of babes?” inquired Selwyn. “Can’t yo
u send me a tray of toast or a bowl of gruel and let me hide my old bones in a dressing-gown somewhere?”

  “Oh, come on,” said Austin, smothering the yawn in his voice and casting his cigar into the ashes. “You’re about ripe for the younger set — one of them, anyhow. If you can’t stand the intellectual strain we’ll side-step the show later and play a little — what do you call it in the army? — pontoons?”

  They strolled toward the door, Nina’s arms linked in theirs, her slim fingers interlocked on her breast.

  “We are certainly going to be happy — we three — in this innocent ménage à trois,” she said. “I don’t know what more you two men could ask for — or I, either — or the children or Eileen. Only one thing; I think it is perfectly horrid of Gerald not to be here.”

  Traversing the hall she said: “It always frightens me to be perfectly happy — and remember all the ghastly things that could happen. . . . I’m going to take a glance at the children before I dress. . . . Austin, did you remember your tonic?”

  She looked up surprised when her husband laughed.

  “I’ve taken my tonic and nobody’s kidnapped the kids,” he said. She hesitated, then picking up her skirts she ran upstairs for one more look at her slumbering progeny.

  The two men glanced at one another; their silence was the tolerant, amused silence of the wiser sex, posing as such for each other’s benefit; but deep under the surface stirred the tremors of the same instinctive solicitude that had sent Nina to the nursery.

  “I used to think,” said Gerard, “that the more kids you had the less anxiety per kid. The contrary is true; you’re more nervous over half a dozen than you are over one, and your wife is always going to the nursery to see that the cat hasn’t got in or the place isn’t afire or spots haven’t come out all over the children.”

  They laughed tolerantly, lingering on the sill of Selwyn’s bedroom.

  “Come in and smoke a cigarette,” suggested the latter. “I have nothing to do except to write some letters and dress.”

  But Gerard said: “There seems to be a draught through this hallway; I’ll just step upstairs to be sure that the nursery windows are not too wide open. See you later, Phil. If there’s anything you need just dingle that bell.”

  And he went away upstairs, only to return in a few minutes, laughing under his breath: “I say, Phil, don’t you want to see the kids asleep? Billy’s flat on his back with a white ‘Teddy bear’ in either arm; and Drina and Josephine are rolled up like two kittens in pajamas; and you should see Winthrop’s legs—”

  “Certainly,” said Selwyn gravely, “I’ll be with you in a second.”

  And turning to his dresser he laid away the letters and the small photograph which he had been examining under the drop-light, locking them securely in the worn despatch box until he should have time to decide whether to burn them all or only the picture. Then he slipped on his smoking jacket.

  “ — Ah, about Winthrop’s legs—” he repeated vaguely, “certainly; I should be very glad to examine them, Austin.”

  “I don’t want you to examine them,” retorted Gerard resentfully, “I want you to see them. There’s nothing the matter with them, you understand.”

  “Exactly,” nodded Selwyn, following his big brother-in-law into the hall, where, from beside a lamp-lit sewing table a trim maid rose smiling:

  “Miss Erroll desires to know whether Captain Selwyn would care to see her gown when she is ready to go down?”

  “By all means,” said Selwyn, “I should like to see that, too. Will you let me know when Miss Erroll is ready? Thank you.”

  Austin said as they reached the nursery door: “Funny thing, feminine vanity — almost pathetic, isn’t it? . . . Don’t make too much noise! . . . What do you think of that pair of legs, Phil? — and he’s not yet five. . . . And I want you to speak frankly; did you ever see anything to beat that bunch of infants? Not because they’re ours and we happen to be your own people—” he checked himself and the smile faded as he laid his big ruddy hand on Selwyn’s shoulder;— “your own people, Phil. Do you understand? . . . And if I have not ventured to say anything about — what has happened — you understand that, too, don’t you? You know I’m just as loyal to you as Nina is — as it is natural and fitting that your own people should be. Only a man finds it difficult to convey his — his—”

  “Don’t say ‘sympathies’!” cut in Selwyn nervously.

  “I wasn’t going to, confound you! I was going to say ‘sentiments.’ I’m sorry I said anything. Go to the deuce!”

  Selwyn did not even deign to glance around at him. “You big red-pepper box,” he muttered affectionately, “you’ll wake up Drina. Look at her in her cunning pajamas! Oh, but she is a darling, Austin. And look at that boy with his two white bears! He’s a corker! He’s a wonder — honestly, Austin. As for that Josephine kid she can have me on demand; I’ll answer to voice, whistle, or hand. . . . I say, ought we to go away and leave Winthrop’s thumb in his mouth?”

  “I guess I can get it out without waking him,” whispered Gerard. A moment later he accomplished the office, leaned down and drew the bed-covers closer to Tina’s dimpled chin, then grasped Selwyn above the elbow in sudden alarm: “If that trained terror, Miss Paisely, finds us in here when she comes from dinner, we’ll both catch it! Come on; I’ll turn off the light. Anyway, we ought to have been dressed long ago; but you insisted on butting in here.”

  In the hallway below they encountered a radiant and bewildering vision awaiting them: Eileen, in all her glory.

  “Wonderful!” said Gerard, patting the vision’s rounded bare arm as he hurried past— “fine gown! fine girl! — but I’ve got to dress and so has Philip—” He meant well.

  “Do you like it, Captain Selwyn?” asked the girl, turning to confront him, where he had halted. “Gerald isn’t coming and — I thought perhaps you’d be interested—”

  The formal, half-patronising compliment on his tongue’s tip remained there, unsaid. He stood silent, touched by the faint under-ringing wistfulness in the laughing voice that challenged his opinion; and something within him responded in time:

  “Your gown is a beauty; such wonderful lace. Of course, anybody would know it came straight from Paris or from some other celestial region—”

  “But it didn’t!” cried the girl, delighted. “It looks it, doesn’t it? But it was made by Letellier! Is there anything you don’t like about it, Captain Selwyn? Anything?”

  “Nothing,” he said solemnly; “it is as adorable as the girl inside it, who makes it look like a Parisian importation from Paradise!”

  She colored enchantingly, and with pretty, frank impulse held out both her hands to him:

  “You are a dear, Captain Selwyn! It is my first real dinner gown and I’m quite mad about it; and — somehow I wanted the family to share my madness with me. Nina will — she gave it to me, the darling. Austin admires it, too, of course, but he doesn’t notice such things very closely; and Gerald isn’t here. . . . Thank you for letting me show it to you before I go down.”

  She gave both his hands a friendly little shake and, glancing down at her skirt in blissful consciousness of its perfection, stepped backward into her own room.

  Later, while he stood at his dresser constructing an immaculate knot in his white tie, Nina knocked.

  “Hurry, Phil! Oh, may I come in? . . . You ought to be downstairs with us, you know. . . . And it was very sweet of you to be so nice to Eileen. The child had tears in her eyes when I went in. Oh, just a single diamond drop in each eye; your sympathy and interest did it. . . . I think the child misses her father on an occasion such as this — the beginning of life — the first step out into the world. Men do not understand what it means to us; Gerald doesn’t, I’m sure. I’ve been watching her, and I know the shadow of that dreadful tragedy falls on her more often than Austin and I are aware of. . . . Shall I fix that tie for you, dear? . . . Certainly I can; Austin won’t let a man touch him. . . . There, Phil. . . . W
ait! . . . Now if you are decently grateful you’ll tell me I look well. Do I? Really? Nonsense, I don’t look twenty; but — say it, Phil. Ah, that clever maid of mine knows some secrets — never mind! — but Drina thinks I’m a beauty. . . . Come, dear; and thank you for being kind to Eileen. One’s own kin counts so much in this world. And when a girl has none, except a useless brother, little things like that mean a lot to her.” She turned, her hand falling on his sleeve. “You are among your own people, anyhow!”

  His own people! The impatient tenderness of his sister’s words had been sounding in his ears all through the evening. They rang out clear and insistent amid the gay tumult of the dinner; he heard them in the laughing confusion of youthful voices; they stole into the delicate undertones of the music to mock him; the rustling of silk and lace repeated them; the high heels of satin slippers echoed them in irony.

  His own people!

  The scent of overheated flowers, the sudden warm breeze eddying from a capricious fan, the mourning thrill of the violins emphasised the emphasis of the words.

  And they sounded sadder and more meaningless now to him, here in his own room, until the monotony of their recurrent mockery began to unnerve him.

  He turned on the electricity, shrank from it, extinguished it. And for a long time he sat there in the darkness of early morning, his unfilled pipe clutched in his nerveless hand.

  CHAPTER II

  A DREAM ENDS

  To pick up once more and tighten and knot together the loosened threads which represented the unfinished record that his race had woven into the social fabric of the metropolis was merely an automatic matter for Selwyn.

  His own people had always been among the makers of that fabric. Into part of its vast and intricate pattern they had woven an inconspicuously honourable record — chronicles of births and deaths and marriages, a plain memorandum of plain living, and upright dealing with their fellow men.