Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  Eileen had gone to her room to don a shorter skirt and rubber-soled shoes; Lansing followed her example; and Selwyn, entering his own room, found Gerald trying on a pair of white foot-gear.

  The boy looked up, smiled, and, crossing one knee, began to tie the laces:

  “I told Austin that I meant to slow down,” he said. “We’re on terms again. He was fairly decent.”

  “Good business!” commented Selwyn vigorously.

  “And I’m cutting out cards and cocktails,” continued the boy, eager as a little lad who tells how good he has been all day— “I made it plain to the fellows that there was nothing in it for me. And, Philip, I’m boning down like thunder at the office — I’m horribly in debt and I’m hustling to pay up and make a clean start. You,” he added, colouring, “will come first—”

  “At your convenience,” said Selwyn, smiling.

  “Not at all! Yours is the first account to be squared; then Neergard—”

  “Do you owe him, Gerald?”

  “Do I? Oh, Lord! But he’s a patient soul — really, Philip, I wish you didn’t dislike him so thoroughly, because he’s good company and besides that he’s a very able man. . . . Well, we won’t talk about him, then. Come on; I’ll lick the very life out of you over the net!”

  A few moments later the white balls were flying over the white net, and active white-flannelled figures were moving swiftly over the velvet turf.

  Drina, aloft on the umpire’s perch, calmly scored and decided each point impartially, though her little heart was beating fast in desire for her idol’s supremacy; and it was all her official composure could endure to see how Eileen at the net beat down his defence, driving him with her volleys to the service line.

  Selwyn’s game proved to be steady, old-fashioned, but logical; Eileen, sleeves at her elbows, red-gold hair in splendid disorder, carried the game through Boots straight at her brother — and the contest was really a brilliant duel between them, Lansing and Selwyn assisting when a rare chance came their way. The pace was too fast for them, however; they were in a different class and they knew it; and after two terrific sets had gone against Gerald and Boots, the latter, signalling Selwyn, dropped out and climbed up beside Drina to watch a furious single between Eileen and Gerald.

  “Oh, Boots, Boots!” said Drina, “why didn’t you stay forward and kill her drives and make her lob? I just know you could do it if you had only thought to play forward! What on earth was the matter?”

  “Age,” said Mr. Lansing serenely— “decrepitude, Drina. I am a Was, sweetheart, but Eileen still remains an Is.”

  “I won’t let you say it! You are not a Was!” said the child fiercely. “After luncheon you can take me on for practice. Then you can just give it to her!”

  “It would gratify me to hand a few swift ones to somebody,” he said. “Look at that demon girl, yonder! She’s hammering Gerald to the service line! Oh, my, oh, me! I’m only fit for hat-ball with Billy or cat’s-cradle with Kit-Ki. Drina, do you realise that I am nearly thirty?”

  “Pooh! I’m past thirteen. In five years I’ll be eighteen. I expect to marry you at eighteen. You promised.”

  “Sure thing,” admitted Boots; “I’ve bought the house, you know.”

  “I know it,” said the child gravely.

  Boots looked down at her; she smiled and laid her head, with its clustering curls, against his shoulder, watching the game below with the quiet composure of possession.

  Their relations, hers and Lansing’s, afforded infinite amusement to the Gerards. It had been a desperate case from the very first; and the child took it so seriously, and considered her claim on Boots so absolute, that neither that young man nor anybody else dared make a jest of the affair within her hearing.

  From a dimple-kneed, despotic, strenuous youngster, ruling the nursery with a small hand of iron, in half a year Drina had grown into a rather slim, long-legged, coolly active child; and though her hair had not been put up, her skirts had been lowered, and shoes and stockings substituted for half-hose and sandals.

  Weighted with this new dignity she had put away dolls, officially. Unofficially she still dressed, caressed, forgave, or spanked Rosalinda and Beatrice — but she excluded the younger children from the nursery when she did it.

  However, the inborn necessity for mimicry and romance remained; and she satisfied it by writing stories — marvellous ones — which she read to Boots. Otherwise she was the same active, sociable, wholesome, intelligent child, charmingly casual and inconsistent; and the list of her youthful admirers at dancing-school and parties required the alphabetical classification of Mr. Lansing.

  But Boots was her own particular possession; he was her chattel, her thing; and he and other people knew that it was no light affair to meddle with the personal property of Drina Gerard.

  Her curly head resting against his arm, she was now planning his future movements for the day:

  “You may do what you please while I’m having French,” she said graciously; “after that we will go fishing in Brier Water; then I’ll come home to practice, while you sit on the veranda and listen; then I’ll take you on at tennis, and by that time the horses will be brought around and we’ll ride to the Falcon. You won’t forget any of this, will you? Come on; Eileen and Gerald have finished and there’s Dawson to announce luncheon!” And to Gerald, as she climbed down to the ground: “Oh, what a muff! to let Eileen beat you six — five, six — three! . . . Where’s my hat? . . . Oh, the dogs have got it and are tearing it to rags!”

  And she dashed in among the dogs, slapping right and left, while a facetious dachshund seized the tattered bit of lace and muslin and fled at top speed.

  “That is pleasant,” observed Nina; “it’s her best hat, too — worn to-day in your honour, Boots. . . . Children! Hands and faces! There is Bridget waiting! Come, Phil; there’s no law against talking at table, and there’s no use trying to run an establishment if you make a mockery of the kitchen.”

  Eileen, one bare arm around her brother’s shoulders, strolled houseward across the lawn, switching the shaven sod with her tennis-bat.

  “What are you doing this afternoon?” she said to Selwyn. “Gerald” — she touched her brother’s smooth cheek— “means to fish; Boots and Drina are keen on it, too; and Nina is driving to Wyossett with the children.”

  “And you?” he asked, smiling.

  “Whatever you wish” — confident that he wanted her, whatever he had on hand.

  “I ought to walk over to Storm Head,” he said, “and get things straightened out.”

  “Your laboratory?” asked Gerald. “Austin told me when I saw him in town that you were going to have the cottage on Storm Head to make powder in.”

  “Only in minute quantities, Gerald,” explained Selwyn; “I just want to try a few things. . . . And if they turn out all right, what do you say to taking a look in — if Austin approves?”

  “Oh, please, Gerald,” whispered his sister.

  “Do you really believe there is anything in it?” asked the boy. “Because, if you are sure—”

  “There certainly is if I can prove that my powder is able to resist heat, cold, and moisture. The Lawn people stand ready to talk matters over as soon as I am satisfied. . . . There’s plenty of time — but keep the suggestion in the back of your head, Gerald.”

  The boy smiled, nodded importantly, and went off to remove the stains of tennis from his person; and Eileen went, too, turning around to look back at Selwyn:

  “Thank you for asking Gerald! I’m sure he will love to go into anything you think safe.”

  “Will you join us, too?” he called back, smilingly— “we may need capital!”

  “I’ll remember that!” she said; and, turning once more as she reached the landing: “Good-bye — until luncheon!” And touched her lips with the tips of her fingers, flinging him a gay salute.

  In parting and meeting — even after the briefest of intervals — it was always the same with her; always she had for
him some informal hint of the formality of parting; always some recognition of their meeting — in the light touching of hands as though the symbol of ceremony, at least, was due to him, to herself, and to the occasion.

  Luncheon at Silverside was anything but a function — with the children at table and the dogs in a semicircle, and the nurses tying bibs and admonishing the restless or belligerent, and the wide French windows open, and the sea wind lifting the curtains and stirring the cluster of wild flowers in the centre of the table.

  Kit-Ki’s voice was gently raised at intervals; at intervals some grinning puppy, unable to longer endure the nourishing odours, lost self-control and yapped, then lowered his head, momentarily overcome with mortification.

  All the children talked continuously, unlimited conversation being permitted until it led to hostilities or puppy-play. The elders conducted such social intercourse as was possible under the conditions, but luncheon was the children’s hour at Silverside.

  Nina and Eileen talked garden talk — they both were quite mad about their fruit-trees and flower-beds; Selwyn, Gerald, and Boots discussed stables, golf links, and finally the new business which Selwyn hoped to develop.

  Afterward, when the children had been excused, and Drina had pulled her chair close to Lansing’s to listen — and after that, on the veranda, when the men sat smoking and Drina was talking French, and Nina and Eileen had gone off with baskets, trowels, and pruning-shears — Selwyn still continued in conference with Boots and Gerald; and it was plain that his concise, modest explanation of what he had accomplished in his experiments with Chaosite seriously impressed the other men.

  Boots frankly admitted it: “Besides,” he said, “if the Lawn people are so anxious for you to give them first say in the matter I don’t see why we shouldn’t have faith in it — enough, I mean, to be good to ourselves by offering to be good to you, Phil.”

  “Wait until Austin comes down — and until I’ve tried one or two new ideas,” said Selwyn. “Nothing on earth would finish me quicker than to get anybody who trusted me into a worthless thing.”

  “It’s plain,” observed Boots, “that although you may have been an army captain you’re no captain of industry — you’re not even a non-com.!”

  Selwyn laughed: “Do you really believe that ordinary decency is uncommon?”

  “Look at Long Island,” returned Boots. “Where does the boom of worthless acreage and paper cities land investors when it explodes?”

  Gerald had flushed up at the turn in the conversation; and Selwyn steered Lansing into other and safer channels until Gerald went away to find a rod.

  And, as Drina had finished her French lesson, she and Lansing presently departed, brandishing fishing-rods adorned with the gaudiest of flies.

  The house and garden at Silverside seemed to be logical parts of a landscape, which included uplands, headlands, sky, and water — a silvery harmonious ensemble, where the artificial portion was neither officiously intrusive nor, on the other hand, meagre and insignificant.

  The house, a long two-storied affair with white shutters and pillared veranda, was built of gray stone; the garden was walled with it — a precaution against no rougher intruder than the wind, which would have whipped unsheltered flowers and fruit-trees into ribbons.

  Walks of hardened earth, to which green mould clung in patches, wound through the grounds and threaded the three little groves of oak, chestnut, and locust, in the centres of which, set in circular lawns, were the three axes of interest — the stone-edged fish-pond, the spouting fountain, and the ancient ship’s figurehead — a wind-worn, sea-battered mermaid cuddling a tiny, finny sea-child between breast and lips.

  Whoever the unknown wood-carver had been he had been an artist, too, and a good one; and when the big China trader, the First Born, went to pieces off Frigate Light, fifty years ago, this figurehead had been cast up from the sea.

  Wandering into the garden, following the first path at random, Selwyn chanced upon it, and stood, pipe in his mouth, hands in his pockets, surprised and charmed.

  Plunkitt, the head gardener, came along, trundling a mowing-machine.

  “Ain’t it kind ‘er nice,” he said, lingering. “When I pass here moonlight nights, it seems like that baby was a-smilin’ right up into his mamma’s face, an’ that there fish-tailed girl was laughin’ back at him. Come here some night when there’s a moon, Cap’in Selwyn.”

  Selwyn stood for a while listening to the musical click of the machine, watching the green shower flying into the sunshine, and enjoying the raw perfume of juicy, new-cut grass; then he wandered on in quest of Miss Erroll.

  Tulips, narcissus, hyacinths, and other bulbs were entirely out of bloom, but the earlier herbaceous borders had come into flower, and he passed through masses of pink and ivory-tinted peonies — huge, heavy, double blossoms, fragrant and delicate as roses. Patches of late iris still lifted crested heads above pale sword-bladed leaves; sheets of golden pansies gilded spaces steeped in warm transparent shade, but larkspur and early rocket were as yet only scarcely budded promises; the phlox-beds but green carpets; and zinnia, calendula, poppy, and coreopsis were symphonies in shades of green against the dropping pink of bleeding-hearts or the nascent azure of flax and spiderwort.

  In the rose garden, and along that section of the wall included in it, the rich, dry, porous soil glimmered like gold under the sun; and here Selwyn discovered Nina and Eileen busily solicitous over the tender shoots of favourite bushes. A few long-stemmed early rosebuds lay in their baskets; Selwyn drew one through his buttonhole and sat down on a wheelbarrow, amiably disposed to look on and let the others work.

  “Not much!” said Nina. “You can start in and ‘pinch back’ this prairie climber — do you hear, Phil? I won’t let you dawdle around and yawn while I’m pricking my fingers every instant! Make him move, Eileen.”

  Eileen came over to him, fingers doubled into her palm and small thumb extended.

  “Thorns and prickles, please,” she said; and he took her hand in his and proceeded to extract them while she looked down at her almost invisible wounds, tenderly amused at his fear of hurting her.

  “Do you know,” she said, “that people are beginning to open their houses yonder?” She nodded toward the west: “The Minsters are on the way to Brookminster, the Orchils have already arrived at Hitherwood House, and the coachmen and horses were housed at Southlawn last night. I rather dread the dinners and country formality that always interfere with the jolly times we have; but it will be rather good fun at the bathing-beach. . . . Do you swim well? But of course you do.”

  “Pretty well; do you?”

  “I’m a fish. Gladys Orchil and I would never leave the surf if they didn’t literally drag us home. . . . You know Gladys Orchil? . . . She’s very nice; so is Sheila Minster; you’ll like her better in the country than you do in town. Kathleen Lawn is nice, too. Alas! I see many a morning where Drina and I twirl our respective thumbs while you and Boots are off with a gayer set. . . . Oh, don’t interrupt! No mortal man is proof against Sheila and Gladys and Kathleen — and you’re not a demi-god — are you? . . . Thank you for your surgery upon my thumb—” She naïvely placed the tip of it between her lips and looked at him, standing there like a schoolgirl in her fresh gown, burnished hair loosened and curling in riotous beauty across cheeks and ears.

  He had seated himself on the wheelbarrow again; she stood looking down at him, hands now bracketed on her narrow hips — so close that the fresh fragrance of her grew faintly perceptible — a delicate atmosphere of youth mingling with the perfume of the young garden.

  Nina, basket on her arm, snipping away with her garden shears, glanced over her shoulder — and went on, snipping. They did not notice how far away her agricultural ardour led her — did not notice when she stood a moment at the gate looking back at them, or when she passed out, pretty head bent thoughtfully, the shears swinging loose at her girdle.

  The prairie rosebuds in Eileen’s basket exhaled their wil
d, sweet odour; and Selwyn, breathing it, removed his hat like one who faces a cooling breeze, and looked up at the young girl standing before him as though she were the source of all things sweet and freshening in this opening of the youngest year of his life.

  She said, smiling absently at his question: “Certainly one can grow younger; and you have done it in a day, here with me.”

  She looked down at his hair; it was bright and inclined to wave a little, but whether the lighter colour at the temples was really silvered or only a paler tint she was not sure.

  “You are very like a boy, sometimes,” she said— “as young as Gerald, I often think — especially when your hat is off. You always look so perfectly groomed: I wonder — I wonder what you would look like if your hair were rumpled?”

  “Try it,” he suggested lazily.

  “I? I don’t think I dare—” She raised her hand, hesitated, the gay daring in her eyes deepening to audacity. “Shall I?”

  “Why not?”

  “T-touch your hair? — rumple it? — as I would Gerald’s! . . . I’m tempted to — only — only—”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know; I couldn’t. I — it was only the temptation of a second—” She laughed uncertainly. The suggestion of the intimacy tinted her cheeks with its reaction; she took a short step backward; instinct, blindly stirring, sobered her; and as the smile faded from eye and lip, his face changed, too. And far, very far away in the silent cells of his heart a distant pulse awoke.

  She turned to her roses again, moving at random among the bushes, disciplining with middle-finger and thumb a translucent, amber-tinted shoot here and there. And when the silence had lasted too long, she broke it without turning toward him:

  “After all, if it were left to me, I had rather be merciful to these soft little buds and sprays, and let the sun and the showers take charge. A whole cluster of blossoms left free to grow as Fate fashions them! — Why not? It is certainly very officious of me to strip a stem of its hopes just for the sake of one pampered blossom. . . . Non-interference is a safe creed, isn’t it?”