Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  He had not been on a horse in years and it seemed as though only faith and a shoe-horn could get him into his riding-breeches; but with the aid of Heaven and a powerful valet he stood before his mirror arrayed at last; and presently went out across the lawn and through the grove to Malcourt’s house.

  Young Mrs. Malcourt in pink gingham apron and sun-bonnet was digging with a trowel in her garden when he appeared upon the landscape.

  “I don’t want you to tell Louis,” he cautioned her with a very knowing and subtle smile, “but I’m just going to ride over to Pride’s this morning and settle this lawsuit matter, and surprise him.”

  Shiela had straightened up, trowel in her gloved hand, and now stood looking at him in amused surprise.

  “I didn’t know you rode,” she said. “I should think it would be very good for you.”

  “Well,” he admitted, turning red, “I suppose I ought to ride now and then. Louis has been at me rather viciously. But you won’t tell him, will you?”

  “No,” said Shiela.

  “Because, you see, he doesn’t think me capable of settling this thing; and so I’m just going to gallop over and have a little friendly chat with Mrs. Ascott—”

  “Friendly?” very gravely.

  “Yes,” he said, alarmed; “why not?”

  “Do you think Mrs. Ascott will receive you?”

  “Well — now — Louis said something of that sort. And then he added that it didn’t matter — but he didn’t explain what I was to do when she refused to see me.... Ah — could — would you mind telling me what to do in that case, Mrs. Malcourt?”

  “What is there to do, Mr. Portlaw, if a woman refuses to receive you?”

  “Why — I don’t know,” he admitted vacantly. “What would you do?”

  Young Mrs. Malcourt, frankly amused, shook her head:

  “If Mrs. Ascott won’t see you, she won’t! You don’t intend to carry Pride’s Fall by assault, do you?”

  “But Louis said—”

  “Mr. Malcourt knows quite well that Mrs. Ascott won’t see you.”

  “W-why?”

  “Ask yourself. Besides, her lawyers have forbidden her.”

  But Portlaw’s simple faith in Malcourt never wavered; he stood his ground and quoted him naïvely, adding: “You see Louis must have meant something. Couldn’t you tell me what he meant? I’ll promise to do it.”

  “I suppose,” she answered, laughing, “that he meant me to write a note to Alida Ascott, making a personal appeal for your reception. He spoke of it; but, Mr. Portlaw, I am scarcely on such a footing with her.”

  Portlaw was so innocently delighted with the idea which bore Malcourt’s stamp of authority, that young Mrs. Malcourt found it difficult to refuse; and a few moments later, armed with a friendly but cautious note, he climbed laboriously aboard a huge chestnut hack, sat there doubtfully while a groom made all fast and tight for heavy weather, then, with a groan, set spurs to his mount, and went pounding away through the forest, upon diplomacy intent.

  Hamil, walking about the lawns in the sunshine, saw him come careering past, making heavy weather of it, and smiled in salute; Shiela on a rustic ladder, pruning-knife in hand, gazed over her garden wall until the woods swallowed rotund rider and steed. As she turned to descend, her glance fell upon Hamil who was crossing the lawn directly below. For a moment they looked at each other without sign of recognition; then scarcely aware of what she did she made him a carelessly gay salute with her pruning-knife, clinging to the ladder with the other hand in sheer fear of falling, so suddenly unsteady her limbs and body.

  He went directly toward her; and she, her knees scarcely supporting her, mounted the last rung of the ladder and seated herself sidewise on the top of the wall, looking down at him, leaning on one arm.

  “It is nice to see you out,” she said, as he came to the foot of the sunny wall.... “Do you really feel as thin as you look?... I had a letter from your aunt to-day asking an outsider’s opinion of your condition, and now I’ll be able to give it.... You do look pathetically thin — but I shan’t tell her that.... If you are tired standing up you may come into my garden where there are some very agreeable benches.... I would like to have you come if you care to.”

  She herself scarcely knew what she was saying; smile, voice, animation were forced; the havoc of his illness stared at her from his sharp cheek-bones, thin, bloodless hands, eyes still slow in turning, dull, heavy-lidded.

  “I thought perhaps you would come to call,” he said listlessly.

  She flushed.

  “You did come, once?”

  “Yes.”

  “You did not come again while I was conscious, did you?”

  “No.”

  He passed his thin hand across eyes and forehead.

  She folded her arms under her breast and hung far over the shadow-dappled wall half-screened in young vine-leaves. Over her pink sun-bonnet and shoulders the hot spring sunshine fell; her face was in shadow; his, under the full glare of the unclouded sky, every ravage starkly revealed. And she could not turn her fascinated gaze or crush out the swelling tenderness that closed her throat to speech and set her eyes glimmering.

  The lids closed, slowly; she leaned there without a word, living through in the space of a dozen pulse-beats, the agony and sweetness of the past; then laid her flushed cheek on her arms and opened her eyes, looking at him in silence.

  But he dared not sustain her gaze and took refuge from it in a forced gaiety, comparing his reappearance to the return of Ulysses, where Dame Art, that respectable old Haus-Frau, awaited him in a rocking-chair, chastely preoccupied with her tatting, while rival architects squatted anxiously around her, urging their claims to a dead man’s shoes.

  She strove to smile at him and to speak coolly: “Will you come in? I have finished the vines and presently I’m going to dig. Wait a moment” — looking behind her and searching with one tentative foot for the ladder— “I will have to let you in—”

  A moment later she met him at the grille and flung it wide, holding out her hand in welcome with a careless frankness not quite natural — nor was the nervously vigorous handshake, nor the laughter, light as a breeze, leaving her breathing fast and unevenly with the hue of excitement deepening on lip and cheek.

  So, the handshaking safely over, and chatting together in a tone louder and more animated than usual, they walked down the moist gravel path together — the extreme width of the path apart.

  “I think,” she said, considering the question, with small head tipped sideways, “that you had better sit on this bench because the paint is dry and besides I can talk to you here and dig up these seedling larkspurs at the same time.”

  “Don’t you want me to do some weeding?”

  “With pleasure when you are a little stronger—”

  “I’m all right now—”

  He stood looking seriously at the bare flower-bed along the wall where amber shoots of peonies were feathering out into palmate grace, and older larkspurs had pushed up into fringed mounds of green foliage.

  She had knelt down on the bed’s edge, trowel in hand, pink sun-bonnet fallen back neglected; and with blade and gloved fingers she began transferring the irresponsible larkspur seedlings to the confines of their proper spheres, patting each frail little plant into place caressingly.

  And he was thinking of her as he had last seen her — on her knees at the edge of another bed, her hair fallen unheeded as her sun-bonnet hung now, and the small hands clasping, twisting, very busy with their agony — as busy as her gloved fingers were now, restlessly in motion among the thickets of living green.

  “Tell me,” she said, not looking back over her shoulder, “it must be heavenly to be out of doors again.”

  “It is rather pleasant,” he assented.

  “Did you — they said you had dreadful visions. Did you?”

  He laughed. “Some of them were absurd, Shiela; the most abominably grotesque creatures came swarming and crowding around the b
ed — faces without bodies — creatures that grew while I looked at them, swelling to gigantic proportions — Oh, it was a merry carnival—”

  Neither spoke. Her back was toward him as she knelt there very much occupied with her straying seedlings in the cool shade of the wall.

  Jonquils in heavy golden patches stretched away into sun-flecked perspective broken by the cool silver-green of iris thickets and the white star-clusters of narcissus nodding under sprays of bleeding-heart.

  The air was sweet with the scent of late apple-bloom and lilac — and Hamil, brooding there on his bench in the sun, clasped his thin hands over his walking-stick and bent his head to the fragrant memories of Calypso’s own perfume — the lilac-odour of China-berry in bloom, under the Southern stars.

  He drew his breath sharply, raising his head — because this sort of thing would not do to begin life with again.

  “How is Louis?” he asked in a pleasantly deliberate voice.

  The thing had to be said sooner or later. They both knew that. It was over now, with no sign of effort, nothing in his voice or manner to betray him. Fortunately for him her face was turned away — fortunately for her, too.

  There was a few moments’ silence; the trowel, driven abruptly into the earth to the hilt, served as a prop for her clinched hand.

  “I think — Louis — is very well,” she said.

  “He is remaining permanently with Mr. Portlaw?”

  “I think so.”

  “I hope it will be agreeable for you — both.”

  “It is a very beautiful country.” She rose to her slender, graceful height and surveyed her work: “A pretty country, a pretty house and garden,” she said steadily. “After all, you know, that is the main thing in this world.”

  “What?”

  “Why, an agreeable environment; isn’t it?”

  She turned smilingly, walked to the bench and seated herself.

  “Your environment promises to be a little lonely at times,” he ventured.

  “Oh, yes. But I rather like it, when it’s not over-populated. There will be a great deal for me to do in my garden — teaching young plants self-control.”

  “Gardens freeze up, Shiela.”

  “Yes, that is true.”

  “But you’ll have good shooting—”

  “I will never again draw trigger on any living thing!”

  “What? The girl who—”

  “No girl, now — a woman who can never again bring herself to inflict death.”

  “Why?”

  “I know better now.”

  “You rather astonish me?” he said, pretending amusement.

  She sat very still, thoughtful eyes roaming, then rested her chin on her hand, dropping one knee over the other to support her elbow. And he saw the sensitive mouth droop a little, and the white lids drooping too until the lashes rested on the bloom of the curved cheek. So he had seen her, often, silent, absent-minded, thoughts astray amid some blessed day-dream in that golden fable they had lived — and died in.

  She said, as though to herself: “How can a woman slay?... I think those who have ever been victims of pain never desire to inflict it again on any living thing.”

  She looked up humbly, searching his face.

  “You know it has become such a dreadful thing to me — the responsibility for pain and death.... It is horrible for humanity to usurp such a power — to dare interfere with life — to mar it, end it!... Children do not understand. I was nothing more a few months ago. To my intelligence the shallow arguments of those takers of life called sportsmen was sufficient. I supposed that because almost all the little children of the wild were doomed to die by violence, sooner or later, that the quicker death I offered was pardonable on the score of mercy.” ... She shook her head. “Why death and pain exist, I do not know; He who deals them must know why.”

  He said, surprised at her seriousness: “Right or wrong, a matter of taste cannot be argued—”

  “A matter of taste! Every fibre of me rebels at the thought of death — of inflicting it on anything. God knows how I could have done it when I had so much of happiness myself!” She swung around toward him:

  “Sooner or later what remains to say between us must be said, Garry. I think the time is now — here in my garden — in the clear daylight of the young summer.... You have that last letter of my girlhood?”

  “I burned it.”

  “I have every letter you ever wrote me. They are in my desk upstairs. The desk is not locked.”

  “Had you not better destroy them?”

  “Why?”

  “As you wish,” he said, looking at the ground.

  “One keeps the letters of the dead,” she said; “your youth and mine” — she made a little gesture downward as though smoothing a grave — daintily.

  They were very unwise, sitting there in the sunshine side by side, tremendously impressed with the catastrophe of life and with each other — still young enough to be in earnest, to take life and each other with that awesome finality which is the dread privilege of youth.

  She spoke with conviction of the mockery of life, of wisdom and its sadness; he looked upon the world in all the serious disillusion of youth, and saw it strewn with the fragments of their wrecked happiness.

  They were very emotional, very unhappy, very, very much in love; but the truly pathetic part of it all lay in her innocent conviction that a marriage witnessed by the world was a sanctuary within the circle of which neither she nor he had any reason to fear each other or themselves.

  The thing was done; hope slain. They, the mourners, might now meet in safety to talk together over the dead — suffer together among the graves of common memories, sadly tracing, reverently marking with epitaphs appropriate the tombs which held the dead days of their youth.

  Youth believes; Age is the sceptic. So they did not know that, as nature abhors a vacuum, youth cannot long tolerate the vacuity of grief. Rose vines, cut to the roots, climb the higher. No checking ever killed a passion. Just now her inexperience was driving her into platitudes.

  “Dear Garry,” she said gently, “it is such happiness to talk to you like this; to know that you understand.”

  There is a regulation forbidding prisoners to converse upon the subject of their misdemeanours, but neither he nor she seemed to be aware of it.

  Moreover, she was truly convinced that no nun in cloister was as hopelessly certain of safety from world and flesh and devil as was her heart and its meditations, under the aegis of admitted wedlock.

  She looked down at the ring she wore, and a faint shiver passed over her.

  “You are going to Mrs. Ascott?”

  “Yes, to make her a Trianon and a smirking little park. I can’t quarrel with my bread and butter, but I wish people would let these woods alone.”

  She sat very still and thoughtful, hands clasped on her knee.

  “So you are going to Mrs. Ascott,” she repeated. And, still thoughtful: “I am so fond of Alida Ascott.... She is very pretty, isn’t she?”

  “Very,” he said absently.

  “Don’t you think so?” — warmly.

  “I never met her but once.”

  She was considering him, the knuckle of one forefinger resting against her chin in an almost childish attitude of thoughtful perplexity.

  “How long are you to remain there, Garry?”

  “Where?” — coming out of abstraction.

  “There — at Mrs. Ascott’s?”

  “Oh, I don’t know — a month, I suppose.”

  “Not longer?”

  “I can’t tell, Shiela.”

  Young Mrs. Malcourt fell silent, eyes on the ground, one knee loosely crossed over the other, and her small foot swinging gently above its blue shadow on the gravel.

  Some details in the eternal scheme of things were troubling her already; for one, the liberty of this man to come and go at will; and the dawning perception of her own chaining.

  It was curious, too, to be sitting here s
o idly beside him, and realise that she had belonged to him so absolutely — remembering the thousand thrilling intimacies that bound them immortally together — and now to be actually so isolated, so beyond his reach, so alone, so miserably certain of her soul’s safety!... And now, for the first time, she missed the pleasures of fear — the exquisite trepidation that lay in unsafety — the blessed thrill of peril warning her to avoid his eyes, his touch, his — lips.

  She glanced uneasily at him, a slow side gaze; and met his eyes.

  Her heart had begun beating faster; a glow grew in her veins; she closed her eyes, sitting there surprised — not yet frightened.

  Time throbbed on; rigid, motionless, she endured the pulsing silence while the blood quickened till body and limbs seemed burning; and suddenly, from heart to throat the tension tightened as though a cry, echoing within her, was being strangled.

  “Perhaps you had better — go—” she managed to say.

  “Why?”

  She looked down at her restless fingers interlacing, too confused to be actually afraid of herself or him.

  What was there to fear? What occult uneasiness was haunting them? Where might lie any peril, now? How could the battle begin again when all was quiet along the firing line — quiet with the quiet of death? Do dead memories surge up into furies? Can dead hopes burn again? Is there any resurrection for the insurgent passions of the past laid for ever under the ban of wedlock? The fear within her turned to impatience — to a proud incredulity.

  And now she felt the calm reaction as though, unbidden, an ugly dream, passing, had shadowed her unawakened senses for a moment, and passed away.

  As long as they lived there was nothing to be done. Endurance could cease only with death. What was there to fear? She asked herself, waiting half contemptuously for an answer. But her unknown self had now subsided into the obscurity from whence it rose. The Phantom of the Future was laid.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  A CAPITULATION

  As Hamil left the garden Malcourt sauntered into view, halted, then came forward.