Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  Still he stood there, jaw loose, gazing at her as though fascinated; and she smiled and settled deeper in her chair, framing the gilded foliations of the back with her beautiful arms.

  “We might as well understand one another now,” she said languidly. “If you mean to get rid of me, there is no use in attempting to couple my name with that of any man; first, because it is untrue, and you not only know it, but you know you can’t prove it. There remains the cowardly method you have been nerving yourself to attempt, never dreaming that I was aware of your purpose.”

  A soft, triumphant little laugh escaped her. There was something almost childish in her delight at outwitting him, and, very slowly, into his worn and faded eyes a new expression began to dawn — the flickering stare of suspicion. And in it the purely personal impression of rage and necessity of vengeance subsided; he eyed her intently, curiously, and with a cool persistence which finally began to irritate her.

  “What a credulous fool you are,” she said, “to build your hopes of a separation on any possible mental disability of mine.”

  He stood a moment without answering, then quietly seated himself. The suspicious glimmer in his faded eyes had become the concentration of a curiosity almost apprehensive.

  “Go on,” he said; “what else?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You have been saying several things — about doctors whom I have set to watch you — for a year or more.”

  “Do you deny it?” she retorted angrily.

  “No — no, I do not deny anything. But — who are these doctors — whom you have noticed?”

  “I don’t know who they are,” she replied impatiently. “I’ve seen them often enough — following me on the street, or in public places — watching me. They are everywhere — you have them well paid, evidently; I suppose you can afford it. But you are wasting your time.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yes!” she cried in a sudden violence that startled him, “you are wasting your time! And so am I — talking to you — enduring your personal affronts and brutal sneers. Sufficient for you that I know my enemies, and that I am saner, thank God, than any of them!” She flashed a look of sudden fury at him, and rose from her chair. He also rose with a promptness that bordered on precipitation.

  “For the remainder of the spring and summer,” she said, “I shall make my plans regardless of you. I shall not go to Newport; you are at liberty to use the house there as you choose. And as for this incident with Gerald, you had better not pursue it any further. Do you understand?”

  He nodded, dropping his hands into his coat-pockets.

  “Now you may go,” she said coolly.

  He went — not, however, to his room, but straight to the house of the fashionable physician who ministered to wealth with an unction and success that had permitted him, in summer time, to occupy his own villa at Newport and dispense further ministrations when requested.

  On the night of the conjugal conference between Nina Gerard and her husband — and almost at the same hour — Jack Ruthven, hard hit in the card-room of the Stuyvesant Club, sat huddled over the table, figuring up what sort of checks he was to draw to the credit of George Fane and Sanxon Orchil.

  Matters had been going steadily against him for some time — almost everything, in fact, except the opinions of several physicians in a matter concerning his wife. For, in that scene between them in early spring, his wife had put that into his head which had never before been there — suspicion of her mental soundness.

  And now, as he sat there, pencil in hand, adding up the score-cards, he remembered that he was to interview his attorney that evening at his own house — a late appointment, but necessary to insure the presence of one or two physicians at a consultation to definitely decide what course of action might be taken.

  He had not laid eyes on his wife that summer, but for the first time he had really had her watched during her absence. What she lived on — how she managed — he had not the least idea, and less concern. All he knew was that he had contributed nothing, and he was quite certain that her balance at her own bank had been nonexistent for months.

  But any possible additional grounds for putting her away from him that might arise in a question as to her sources of support no longer interested him. That line of attack was unnecessary; besides, he had no suspicion concerning her personal chastity. But Alixe, that evening in early spring, had unwittingly suggested to him the use of a weapon the existence of which he had never dreamed of. And he no longer entertained any doubts of its efficiency as a means of finally ridding him of a wife whom he had never been able to fully subdue or wholly corrupt, and who, as a mate for him in his schemes for the pecuniary maintenance of his household, had proven useless and almost ruinous.

  He had not seen her during the summer. In the autumn he had heard of her conduct at Hitherwood House. And, a week later, to his astonishment, he learned of her serious illness, and that she had been taken to Clifton. It was the only satisfactory news he had had of her in months.

  So now he sat there at the bridge-table in the private card-room of the Stuyvesant Club, deftly adding up the score that had gone against him, but consoled somewhat at the remembrance of his appointment, and of the probability of an early release from the woman who had been to him only a source of social mistakes, domestic unhappiness, and financial disappointment.

  When he had finished his figuring he fished out a check-book, detached a tiny gold fountain-pen from the bunch of seals and knick-knacks on his watch-chain, and, filling in the checks, passed them over without comment.

  Fane rose, stretching his long neck, gazed about through his spectacles, like a benevolent saurian, and finally fixed his mild, protruding eyes upon Orchil.

  “There’ll be a small game at the Fountain Club,” he said, with a grin which creased his cheeks until his retreating chin almost disappeared under the thick lower lip.

  Orchil twiddled his long, crinkly, pointed moustache and glanced interrogatively at Harmon; then he yawned, stretched his arms, and rose, pocketing the check, which Ruthven passed to him, with a careless nod of thanks.

  As they filed out of the card-room into the dim passageway, Orchil leading, a tall, shadowy figure in evening dress stepped back from the door of the card-room against the wall to give them right of way, and Orchil, peering at him without recognition in the dull light, bowed suavely as he passed, as did Fane, craning his curved neck, and Harmon also, who followed in his wake.

  But when Ruthven came abreast of the figure in the passage and bowed his way past, a low voice from the courteous unknown, pronouncing his name, halted him short.

  “I want a word with you, Mr. Ruthven,” added Selwyn; “that card-room will suit me, if you please.”

  But Ruthven, recovering from the shock of Selwyn’s voice, started to pass him without a word.

  “I said that I wanted to speak to you!” repeated Selwyn.

  Ruthven, deigning no reply, attempted to shove by him; and Selwyn, placing one hand flat against the other’s shoulder, pushed him violently back into the card-room he had just left, and, stepping in behind him, closed and locked the door.

  “W-what the devil do you mean!” gasped Ruthven, his hard, minutely shaven face turning a deep red.

  “What I say,” replied Selwyn; “that I want a word or two with you.”

  He stood still for a moment, in the centre of the little room, tall, gaunt of feature, and very pale. The close, smoky atmosphere of the place evidently annoyed him; he glanced about at the scattered cards, the empty oval bottles in their silver stands, the half-burned remains of cigars on the green-topped table. Then he stepped over and opened the only window.

  “Sit down,” he said, turning on Ruthven; and he seated himself and crossed one leg over the other. Ruthven remained standing.

  “This — this thing,” began Ruthven in a voice made husky and indistinct through fury, “this ruffianly behaviour amounts to assault.”

  “As you ch
oose,” nodded Selwyn, almost listlessly, “but be quiet; I’ve something to think of besides your convenience.”

  For a few moments he sat silent, thoughtful, narrowing eyes considering the patterns on the rug at his feet; and Ruthven, weak with rage and apprehension, was forced to stand there awaiting the pleasure of a man of whom he had suddenly become horribly afraid.

  And at last Selwyn, emerging from his pallid reverie, straightened out, shaking his broad shoulders as though to free him of that black spectre perching there.

  “Ruthven,” he said, “a few years ago you persuaded my wife to leave me; and I have never punished you. There were two reasons why I did not: the first was because I did not wish to punish her, and any blow at you would have reached her heavily. The second reason, subordinate to the first, is obvious: decent men, in these days, have tacitly agreed to suspend a violent appeal to the unwritten law as a concession to civilisation. This second reason, however, depends entirely upon the first, as you see.”

  He leaned back in his chair thoughtfully, and recrossed his legs.

  “I did not ask you into this room,” he said, with a slight smile, “to complain of the wrong you have committed against me, or to retail to you the consequences of your act as they may or may not have affected me and my career; I have — ah — invited you here to explain to you the present condition of your own domestic affairs” — he looked at Ruthven full in the face— “to explain them to you, and to lay down for you the course of conduct which you are to follow.”

  “By God!—” began Ruthven, stepping back, one hand reaching for the door-knob; but Selwyn’s voice rang out clean and sharp:

  “Sit down!”

  And, as Ruthven glared at him out of his little eyes:

  “You’d better sit down, I think,” said Selwyn softly.

  Ruthven turned, took two unsteady steps forward, and laid his heavily ringed hand on the back of a chair. Selwyn smiled, and Ruthven sat down.

  “Now,” continued Selwyn, “for certain rules of conduct to govern you during the remainder of your wife’s lifetime. . . . And your wife is ill, Mr. Ruthven — sick of a sickness which may last for a great many years, or may be terminated in as many days. Did you know it?”

  Ruthven snarled.

  “Yes, of course you knew it, or you suspected it. Your wife is in a sanitarium, as you have discovered. She is mentally ill — rational at times — violent at moments, and for long periods quite docile, gentle, harmless — content to be talked to, read to, advised, persuaded. But during the last week a change of a certain nature has occurred which — which, I am told by competent physicians, not only renders her case beyond all hope of ultimate recovery, but threatens an earlier termination than was at first looked for. It is this: your wife has become like a child again — occupied contentedly and quite happily with childish things. She has forgotten much; her memory is quite gone. How much she does remember it is impossible to say.”

  His head fell; his brooding eyes were fixed again on the rug at his feet. After a while he looked up.

  “It is pitiful, Mr. Ruthven — she is so young — with all her physical charm and attraction quite unimpaired. But the mind is gone — quite gone, sir. Some sudden strain — and the tension has been great for years — some abrupt overdraft upon her mental resource, perhaps; God knows how it came — from sorrow, from some unkindness too long endured—”

  Again he relapsed into his study of the rug; and slowly, warily, Ruthven lifted his little, inflamed eyes to look at him, then moistened his dry lips with a thick-coated tongue, and stole a glance at the locked door.

  “I understand,” said Selwyn, looking up suddenly, “that you are contemplating proceedings against your wife. Are you?”

  Ruthven made no reply.

  “Are you?” repeated Selwyn. His face had altered; a dim glimmer played in his eyes like the reflection of heat lightning at dusk.

  “Yes, I am,” said Ruthven.

  “On the grounds of her mental incapacity?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, as I understand it, the woman whom you persuaded to break every law, human and divine, for your sake, you now propose to abandon. Is that it?”

  Ruthven made no reply.

  “You propose to publish her pitiable plight to the world by beginning proceedings; you intend to notify the public of your wife’s infirmity by divorcing her.”

  “Sane or insane,” burst out Ruthven, “she was riding for a fall — and she’s going to get it! What the devil are you talking about? I’m not accountable to you. I’ll do what I please; I’ll manage my own affairs—”

  “No,” said Selwyn, “I’ll manage this particular affair. And now I’ll tell you how I’m going to do it. I have in my lodgings — or rather in the small hall bedroom which I now occupy — an army service revolver, in fairly good condition. The cylinder was a little stiff this morning when I looked at it, but I’ve oiled it with No. 27 — an excellent rust solvent and lubricant, Mr. Ruthven — and now the cylinder spins around in a manner perfectly trustworthy. So, as I was saying, I have this very excellent and serviceable weapon, and shall give myself the pleasure of using it on you if you ever commence any such action for divorce or separation against your wife. This is final.”

  Ruthven stared at him as though hypnotised.

  “Don’t mistake me,” added Selwyn, a trifle wearily. “I am not compelling you to decency for the purpose of punishing you; men never trouble themselves to punish vermin — they simply exterminate them, or they retreat and avoid them. I merely mean that you shall never again bring publicity and shame upon your wife — even though now, mercifully enough, she has not the faintest idea that you are what a complacent law calls her husband.”

  A slow blaze lighted up his eyes, and he got up from his chair.

  “You decadent little beast!” he said slowly, “do you suppose that the dirty accident of your intrusion into an honest man’s life could dissolve the divine compact of wedlock? Soil it — yes; besmirch it, render it superficially unclean, unfit, nauseous — yes. But neither you nor your vile code nor the imbecile law you invoked to legalise the situation really ever deprived me of my irrevocable status and responsibility. . . . I — even I — was once — for a while — persuaded that it did; that the laws of the land could do this — could free me from a faithless wife, and regularise her position in your household. The laws of the land say so, and I — I said so at last — persuaded because I desired to be persuaded. . . . It was a lie. My wife, shamed or unshamed, humbled or unhumbled, true to her marriage vows or false to them, now legally the wife of another, has never ceased to be my wife. And it is a higher law that corroborates me — higher than you can understand — a law unwritten because axiomatic; a law governing the very foundation of the social fabric, and on which that fabric is absolutely dependent for its existence intact. But” — with a contemptuous shrug— “you won’t understand; all you can understand is the gratification of your senses and the fear of something interfering with that gratification — like death, for instance. Therefore I am satisfied that you understand enough of what I said to discontinue any legal proceedings which would tend to discredit, expose, or cast odium on a young wife very sorely stricken — very, very ill — whom God, in his mercy, has blinded to the infamy where you have dragged her — under the law of the land.”

  He turned on his heel, paced the little room once or twice, then swung round again:

  “Keep your filthy money — wrung from women and boys over card-tables. Even if some blind, wormlike process of instinct stirred the shame in you, and you ventured to offer belated aid to the woman who bears your name, I forbid it — I do not permit you the privilege. Except that she retains your name — and the moment you attempt to rob her of that I shall destroy you! — except for that, you have no further relations with her — nothing to do or undo; no voice as to the disposal of what remains of her; no power, no will, no influence in her fate. I supplant you; I take my own again; I reassume a re
sponsibility temporarily taken from me. And now, I think, you understand!”

  He gave him one level and deadly stare; then his pallid features relaxed, he slowly walked past Ruthven, grave, preoccupied; unlocked the door, and passed out.

  His lodgings were not imposing in their furnishings or dimensions — a very small bedroom in the neighbourhood of Sixth Avenue and Washington Square — but the heavy and increasing drain on his resources permitted nothing better now; and what with settling Gerald’s complications and providing two nurses and a private suite at Clifton for Alixe Ruthven, he had been obliged to sell a number of securities, which reduced his income to a figure too absurd to worry over.

  However, the Government had at last signified its intention of testing his invention — Chaosite — and there was that chance for better things in prospect. Also, in time, Gerald would probably be able to return something of the loans made. But these things did not alleviate present stringent conditions, nor were they likely to for a long while; and Selwyn, tired and perplexed, mounted the stairs of his lodging-house and laid his overcoat on the iron bed, and, divesting himself of the garments of ceremony as a matter of economy, pulled on an old tweed shooting-jacket and trousers.

  Then, lighting his pipe — cigars being now on the expensive and forbidden list — he drew a chair to his table and sat down, resting his worn face between both hands. Truly the world was not going very well with him in these days.

  For some time, now, it had been his custom to face his difficulties here in the silence of his little bedroom, seated alone at his table, pipe gripped between his firm teeth, his strong hands framing his face. Here he would sit for hours, the long day ended, staring steadily at the blank wall, the gas-jet flickering overhead; and here, slowly, painfully, with doubt and hesitation, out of the moral confusion in his weary mind he evolved the theory of personal responsibility.

  With narrowing eyes, from which slowly doubt faded, he gazed at duty with all the calm courage of his race, not at first recognising it as duty in its new and dreadful guise.