“Mr. Erroll’s, sir. Last night he evidentially found difficulty with the stairs and I seen him asleep on the parlour sofa when I come down to answer the milkman, a-smokin’ a cigar that wasn’t lit, with his feet on the angelus.”
“I’m very, very sorry, Mrs. Greeve,” he said— “and so is Mr. Erroll. He and I had a little talk to-day, and I am sure that he will be more careful hereafter.”
“There is cigar-holes burned into the carpet,” insisted Mrs. Greeve, “and a mercy we wasn’t all insinuated in our beds, one window-pane broken and the gas a blue an’ whistlin’ streak with the curtains blowin’ into it an’ a strange cat on to that satin dozy-do; the proof being the repugnant perfume.”
“All of which,” said Selwyn, “Mr. Erroll will make every possible amends for. He is very young, Mrs. Greeve, and very much ashamed, I am sure. So please don’t make it too hard for him.”
She stood, little slippered feet planted sturdily in the first position in dancing, fat, bare arms protruding from the kimona, her work-stained fingers linked together in front of her. With a soiled thumb she turned a ring on her third finger.
“I ain’t a-goin’ to be mean to nobody,” she said; “my gentlemen is always refined, even if they do sometimes forget theirselves when young and sporty. Mr. Erroll is now a-bed, sir, and asleep like a cherub, ice havin’ been served three times with towels, extra. Would you be good enough to mention the bill to him in the morning? — the grocer bein’ sniffy.” And she handed the wadded and inky memorandum of damages to Selwyn, who pocketed it with a nod of assurance.
“There was,” she added, following him to the door, “a lady here to see you twice, leavin’ no name or intentions otherwise than business affairs of a pressin’ nature.”
“A — lady?” he repeated, halting short on the stairs.
“Young an’ refined, allowin’ for a automobile veil.”
“She — she asked for me?” he repeated, astonished.
“Yes, sir. She wanted to see your rooms. But havin’ no orders, Captain Selwyn — although I must say she was that polite and ladylike and,” added Mrs. Greeve irrelevantly, “a art rocker come for you, too, and another for Mr. Lansing, which I placed in your respective settin’-rooms.”
“Oh,” said Selwyn, laughing in relief, “it’s all right, Mrs. Greeve. The lady who came is my sister, Mrs. Gerard; and whenever she comes you are to admit her whether or not I am here.”
“She said she might come again,” nodded Mrs. Greeve as he mounted the stairs; “am I to show her up any time she comes?”
“Certainly — thank you,” he called back— “and Mr. Gerard, too, if he calls.”
He looked into Boots’s room as he passed; that gentleman, in bedroom costume of peculiar exotic gorgeousness, sat stuffing a pipe with shag, and poring over a mass of papers pertaining to the Westchester Air Line’s property and prospective developments.
“Come in, Phil,” he called out; “and look at the dinky chair somebody sent me!” But Selwyn shook his head.
“Come into my rooms when you’re ready,” he said, and closed the door again, smiling and turning away toward his own quarters.
Before he entered, however, he walked the length of the hall and cautiously tried the handle of Gerald’s door. It yielded; he lighted a match and gazed at the sleeping boy where he lay very peacefully among his pillows. Then, without a sound, he reclosed the door and withdrew to his apartment.
As he emerged from the bedroom in his dressing-gown he heard the front door-bell below peal twice, but paid no heed, his attention being concentrated on the chair which Nina had sent him. First he walked gingerly all around it, then he ventured nearer to examine it in detail, and presently he tried it.
“Of course,” he sighed— “bless her heart! — it’s a perfectly impossible chair. It squeaks, too.” But he was mistaken; the creak came from the old stairway outside his door, weighted with the tread of Mrs. Greeve. The tread and the creaking ceased; there came a knock, then heavy descending footsteps on the aged stairway, every separate step protesting until the incubus had sunk once more into the depths from which it had emerged.
As this happened to be the night for his laundry, he merely called out, “All right!” and remained incurious, seated in the new chair and striving to adjust its stiff and narrow architecture to his own broad shoulders. Finally he got up and filled his pipe, intending to try the chair once more under the most favourable circumstances.
As he lighted his pipe there came a hesitating knock at the door; he jerked his head sharply; the knock was repeated.
Something — a faintest premonition — the vaguest stirring of foreboding committed him to silence — and left him there motionless. The match burned close to his fingers; he dropped it and set his heel upon the sparks.
Then he walked swiftly to the door, flung it open full width — and stood stock still.
And Mrs. Ruthven entered the room, partly closing the door behind, her gloved hand still resting on the knob.
For a moment they confronted one another, he tall, rigid, astounded; she pale, supple, relaxing a trifle against the half-closed door behind her, which yielded and closed with a low click.
At the sound of the closing door he found his voice; it did not resemble his own voice either to himself or to her; but she answered his bewildered question:
“I don’t know why I came. Is it so very dreadful? Have I offended you? . . . I did not suppose that men cared about conventions.”
“But — why on earth — did you come?” he repeated. “Are you in trouble?”
“I seem to be now,” she said with a tremulous laugh; “you are frightening me to death, Captain Selwyn.”
Still dazed, he found the first chair at hand and dragged it toward her.
She hesitated at the offer; then: “Thank you,” she said, passing before him. She laid her hand on the chair, looked a moment at him, and sank into it.
Resting there, her pale cheek against her muff, she smiled at him, and every nerve in him quivered with pity.
“World without end; amen,” she said. “Let the judgment of man pass.”
“The judgment of this man passes very gently,” he said, looking down at her. “What brings you here, Mrs. Ruthven?”
“Will you believe me?”
“Yes.”
“Then — it is simply the desire of the friendless for a friend. Nothing else — nothing more subtle, nothing of effrontery; n-nothing worse. Do you believe me?”
“I don’t understand—”
“Try to.”
“Do you mean that you have differed with—”
“Him?” She laughed. “Oh, no; I was talking of real people, not of myths. And real people are not very friendly to me, always — not that they are disagreeable, you understand, only a trifle overcordial; and my most intimate friend kisses me a little too frequently. By the way, she has quite succumbed to you, I hear.”
“Who do you mean?”
“Why, Rosamund.”
He said something under his breath and looked at her impatiently.
“Didn’t you know it?” she asked, smiling.
“Know what?”
“That Rosamund is quite crazy about you?”
“Good Lord! Do you suppose that any of the monkey set are interested in me or I in them?” he said, disgusted. “Do I ever go near them or meet them at all except by accident in the routine of the machinery which sometimes sews us in tangent patches on this crazy-quilt called society?”
“‘I don’t know why I came.’”
“But Rosamund,” she said, laughing, “is now cultivating Mrs. Gerard.”
“What of it?” he demanded.
“Because,” she replied, still laughing, “I tell you, she is perfectly mad about you. There’s no use scowling and squaring your chin. Oh, I ought to know what that indicates! I’ve watched you do it often enough; but the fact is that the handsomest and smartest woman in town is for ever dinning your perfections into my ears—”
&nbs
p; “I know,” he said, “that this sort of stuff passes in your set for wit; but let me tell you that any man who cares for that brand of humour can have it any time he chooses. However, he goes outside the residence district to find it.”
She flushed scarlet at his brutality; he drew up a chair, seated himself very deliberately, and spoke, his unlighted pipe in his left hand:
“The girl I left — the girl who left me — was a modest, clean-thinking, clean-minded girl, who also had a brain to use, and employed it. Whatever conclusion that girl arrived at concerning the importance of marriage-vows is no longer my business; but the moment she confronts me again, offering friendship, then I may use a friend’s privilege, as I do. And so I tell you that loosely fashionable badinage bores me. And another matter — privileged by the friendship you acknowledge — forces me to ask you a question, and I ask it, point-blank: Why have you again permitted Gerald to play cards for stakes at your house, after promising you would not do so?”
The colour receded from her face and her gloved fingers tightened on the arms of her chair.
“That is one reason I came,” she said; “to explain—”
“You could have written.”
“I say it was one reason; the other I have already given you — because I — I felt that you were friendly.”
“I am. Go on.”
“I don’t know whether you are friendly to me; I thought you were — that night. . . . I did not sleep a wink after it . . . because I was quite happy. . . . But now — I don’t know—”
“Whether I am still friendly? Well, I am. So please explain about Gerald.”
“Are you sure?” raising her dark eyes, “that you mean to be kind?”
“Yes, sure,” he said harshly. “Go on.”
“You are a little rough with me; a-almost insolent—”
“I — I have to be. Good God! Alixe, do you think this is nothing to me? — this wretched mess we have made of life! Do you think my roughness and abruptness comes from anything but pity? — pity for us both, I tell you. Do you think I can remain unmoved looking on the atrocious punishment you have inflicted on yourself? — tethered to — to that! — for life! — the poison of the contact showing in your altered voice and manner! — in the things you laugh at, in the things you live for — in the twisted, misshapen ideals that your friends set up on a heap of nuggets for you to worship? Even if we’ve passed through the sea of mire, can’t we at least clear the filth from our eyes and see straight and steer straight to the anchorage?”
She had covered her pallid face with her muff; he bent forward, his hand on the arm of her chair.
“Alixe, was there nothing to you, after all? Was it only a tinted ghost that was blown into my bungalow that night — only a twist of shredded marsh mist without substance, without being, without soul? — to be blown away into the shadows with the next and stronger wind — and again to drift out across the waste places of the world? I thought I knew a sweet, impulsive comrade of flesh and blood; warm, quick, generous, intelligent — and very, very young — too young and spirited, perhaps, to endure the harness which coupled her with a man who failed her — and failed himself.
“That she has made another — and perhaps more heart-breaking mistake, is bitter for me, too — because — because — I have not yet forgotten. And even if I ceased to remember, the sadness of it must touch me. But I have not forgotten, and because I have not, I say to you, anchor! and hold fast. Whatever he does, whatever you suffer, whatever happens, steer straight on to the anchorage. Do you understand me?”
Her gloved hand, moving at random, encountered his and closed on it convulsively.
“Do you understand?” he repeated.
“Y-es, Phil.”
Head still sinking, face covered with the silvery fur, the tremors from her body set her hand quivering on his.
Heart-sick, he forbore to ask for the explanation; he knew the real answer, anyway — whatever she might say — and he understood that any game in that house was Ruthven’s game, and the guests his guests; and that Gerald was only one of the younger men who had been wrung dry in that house.
No doubt at all that Ruthven needed the money; he was only a male geisha for the set that harboured him, anyway — picked up by a big, hard-eyed woman, who had almost forgotten how to laugh, until she found him furtively muzzling her diamond-laden fingers. So, when she discovered that he could sit up and beg and roll over at a nod, she let him follow her; and since then he had become indispensable and had curled up on many a soft and silken knee, and had sought and fetched and carried for many a pretty woman what she herself did not care to touch, even with white-gloved fingers.
What had she expected when she married him? Only innocent ignorance of the set he ornamented could account for the horror of her disillusion. What splendours had she dreamed of from the outside? What flashing and infernal signal had beckoned her to enter? What mute eyes had promised? What silent smile invited? All skulls seem to grin; but the world has yet to hear them laugh.
“Philip?”
“Yes, Alixe.”
“I did my best, w-without offending Gerald. Can you believe me?”
“I know you did. . . . Don’t mind what I said—”
“N-no, not now. . . . You do believe me, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Thank you. . . . And, Phil, I will try to s-steer straight — because you ask me.”
“You must.”
“I will. . . . It is good to be here. . . . I must not come again, must I?”
“Not again, Alixe.”
“On your account?”
“On your own. . . . What do I care?”
“I didn’t know. They say—”
“What?” he asked sharply.
“A rumour — I heard it — others speak of it — perhaps to be disagreeable to me—”
“What have you heard?”
“That — that you might marry again—”
“Well, you can nail that lie,” he said hotly.
“Then it is not true?”
“True! Do you think I’d take that chance again even if I felt free to do it?”
“Free?” she faltered; “but you are free, Phil!”
“I am not,” he said fiercely; “no man is free to marry twice under such conditions. It’s a jest at decency and a slap in the face of civilisation! I’m done for — finished; I had my chance and I failed. Do you think I consider myself free to try again with the chance of further bespattering my family?”
“Wait until you really love,” she said tremulously.
He laughed incredulously.
“I am glad that it is not true. . . . I am glad,” she said. “Oh, Phil! Phil! — for a single one of the chances we had again and again and again! — and we did not know — we did not know! And yet — there were moments—”
Dry-lipped he looked at her, and dry of eye and lip she raised her head and stared at him — through him — far beyond at the twin ghosts floating under the tropic stars locked fast in their first embrace.
Then she rose, blindly, covering her face with her hands, and he stumbled to his feet, shrinking back from her — because dead fires were flickering again, and the ashes of dead roses stirred above the scented embers — and the magic of all the East was descending like a veil upon them, and the Phantom of the Past drew nearer, smiling, wide-armed, crowned with living blossoms.
The tide rose, swaying her where she stood; her hands fell from her face. Between them the grave they had dug seemed almost filled with flowers now — was filling fast. And across it they looked at one another as though stunned. Then his face paled and he stepped back, staring at her from stern eyes.
“Phil,” she faltered, bewildered by the mirage, “is it only a bad dream, after all?” And as the false magic glowed into blinding splendour to engulf them: “Oh, boy! boy! — is it hell or heaven where we’ve fallen — ?”
There came a loud rapping at the door.
CHAPTER
V
AFTERGLOW
“Phil,” she wrote, “I am a little frightened. Do you suppose Boots suspected who it was? I must have been perfectly mad to go to your rooms that night; and we both were — to leave the door unlocked with the chance of somebody walking in. But, Phil, how could I know it was the fashion for your friends to bang like that and then come in without the excuse of a response from you?
“I have been so worried, so anxious, hoping from day to day that you would write to reassure me that Boots did not recognise me with my back turned to him and my muff across my eyes.
“But scared and humiliated as I am I realise that it was well that he knocked. Even as I write to you here in my own room, behind locked doors, I am burning with the shame of it.
“But I am not that kind of woman, Phil; truly, truly, I am not. When the foolish impulse seized me I had no clear idea of what I wanted except to see you and learn for myself what you thought about Gerald’s playing at my house after I had promised not to let him.
“Of course, I understood what I risked in going; I realised what common interpretation might be put upon what I was doing. But ugly as it might appear to anybody except you, my motive, you see, must have been quite innocent — else I should have gone about it in a very different manner.
“I wanted to see you, that is absolutely all; I was lonely for a word — even a harsh one — from the sort of man you are. I wanted you to believe it was in spite of me that Gerald came and played that night.
“He came without my knowledge. I did not know he was invited. And when he appeared I did everything to prevent him from playing; you will never know what took place — what I submitted to —
“I am trying to be truthful, Phil; I want to lay my heart bare for you — but there are things a woman cannot wholly confess. Believe me, I did what I could. . . . And that is all I can say. Oh, I know what it costs you to be mixed up in such contemptible complications. I, for my part, can scarcely bear to have you know so much about me — and what I am come to. That is my real punishment, Phil — not what you said it was.
“I do not think it is well for me that you know so much about me. It is not too difficult to face the outer world with a bold front — or to deceive any man in it. But our own little world is being rapidly undeceived; and now the only real man remaining in it has seen my gay mask stripped off — which is not well for a woman, Phil.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 335
