Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “There was a rumour yesterday of his suicide,” said Duane in a low voice. “I did not credit it.”

  Grandcourt shook his head: “He never would do that. He totally lacks whatever you call it — cowardice or courage — to do that. It is not like Dysart; it is not in him to do it. He never will, never could. I know him, Duane.”

  Duane nodded.

  Grandcourt spoke again: “He cares for few things; life is one of them. His father, his social position, his harmless — success with women—” Grandcourt hesitated, caught Duane’s eye. Both men’s features became expressionless.

  Duane said: “I had an exceedingly nice note from Rosalie the other day. She has bought one of those double-deck apartments — but I fancy you know about it.”

  “Yes,” said Grandcourt, turning red. “She was good enough to ask my opinion.” He added with a laugh: “I shouldn’t think anybody would want my opinion after the way I’ve smashed my own affairs.”

  Duane smiled, too. “I’ve heard,” he said, “that yours was the decentest smash of the season. What is that scriptural business about — about a man who lays down his fortune for a friend?”

  “His life,” corrected Grandcourt, very red, “but please don’t confound what I did with anything of importance to anybody.” He lighted a cigar from the burning match offered by Duane, very much embarrassed for a moment, then suddenly brightened up:

  “I’m in business now,” he observed, with a glance at the other, partly timid, partly of pride. “My father was thoroughly disgusted with me — and nobody blames him — so he bought me a seat and, Duane, do you know that I am doing rather well, considering that nobody is doing anything at all.”

  Duane laughed heartily, but his mirth did not hurt Grandcourt, who sat smiling and enjoying his cigar, and looking with confidence into a face that was so frankly and unusually friendly.

  “You know I always admired you, Duane — even in the days when you never bothered your head about me,” he added naïvely. “Do you remember at school the caricature you drew of me — all hands and feet and face, and absolutely no body? I’ve got that yet; and I’m very proud to have it when I hear people speak of your artistic success. Some day, if I ever have any money again, I’ll ask you to paint a better portrait of me, if you have time.”

  They laughed again over this mild pleasantry; a cordial understanding was developing between them, which meant much to Grandcourt, for he was a lonely man and his shyness had always deprived him of what he most cared for — what really might have been his only resource — the friendship of other men.

  For some time, while they were talking, Duane had noticed out of the corner of his eye another man at a neighbouring table — a thin, pop-eyed, hollow-chested, unhealthy young fellow, who, at intervals, stared insolently at Grandcourt, and once or twice contrived to knock over his glass of whiskey while reaching unsteadily for a fresh cigarette.

  The man was Stuyvesant Quest, drunk as usual, and evidently in an unpleasant mood.

  Grandcourt’s back was toward him; Duane paid him no particular attention, though at moments he noticed him scowling in their direction and seemed to hear him fussing and muttering over his whiskey and soda, which, with cigarettes, comprised his luncheon.

  “I wish I were going up to Roya-Neh with you,” repeated Grandcourt. “I had a bully time up there — everybody was unusually nice to me, and I had a fine time.”

  “I know they’ll ask you up whenever you can get away,” said Duane. “Geraldine Seagrave likes you immensely.”

  “Does she?” exclaimed Grandcourt, blushing. “I’d rather believe that than almost anything! She was very, very kind to me, I can tell you; and Lord knows why, because I’ve nothing intellectual to offer anybody, and I certainly am not pretty!”

  Duane, very much amused, looked at his watch.

  “When does your train leave?” asked Grandcourt.

  “I’ve an hour yet.”

  “Come up to my room and smoke. I’ve better whiskey than we dispense down here. I’m living at the club, you know. They haven’t yet got over my fiasco at home and I can’t stand their joshing.”

  Neither of the men noticed that a third man followed them, stumbling up the stairs as they took the elevator. Duane was seated in an easy chair by the fire, Grandcourt in another, the decanter stood on a low table between them, when, without formality, the door opened and young Quest appeared on the threshold, white, self-assertive, and aggressively at his ease:

  “If you fellows don’t mind, I’ll butt in a moment,” he said. “How are you, Mallett? How are you?” giving Grandcourt an impertinent look; and added: “Do you, by any chance, expect your friend Dysart in here this afternoon?”

  “Dysart is no longer a member of this club,” said Grandcourt quietly. “I’ve told you that a dozen times.”

  “All right, I’ll ask you two dozen times more, if I choose,” retorted Quest. “Why not?” And he gave him an ugly stare.

  The man was just drunk enough to be quarrelsome. Duane paid him no further attention; Grandcourt asked him very civilly if he could do anything for him.

  “Sure,” sneered Quest. “You can tell Dysart that if I ever come across him I’ll shoot him on sight! Tell him that and be damned!”

  “I’ve already told him that,” said Grandcourt with a shrug of contempt.

  The weak, vicious face of the other reddened:

  “What do you mean by taking that tone with me?” he demanded loudly. “Do you think I won’t make good?” He fumbled around in his clothing for a moment and presently jerked a pistol free — one of the automatic kind with rubber butt and blued barrel.

  “Unless you are drunker than I’ve ever seen you,” said Grandcourt, “you’ll put up that pistol before I do.”

  Quest cursed him steadily for a minute: “Do you think I haven’t got the nerve to use it when m’ honour’s ‘volved? I tell you,” he said thickly, “when m’ honour’s ‘volved — —”

  “You get drunk, don’t you?” observed Duane. “What a pitiful pup you are, anyway. Go to bed.”

  Quest stood swaying slightly on his heels and considering Duane with the inquiring solemnity of one who is in process of grasping and digesting an abstruse proposition.

  “B-bed?” he repeated; “me?”

  “Certainly. A member of this club disgracefully drunk in the afternoon will certainly hear from the governing board unless he keeps out of sight until he’s sane again.”

  “Thank you,” said Quest with owlish condescension; “I’m indebted to you for calling ‘tention to m-matters which ‘volve honour of m’ own club and — —”

  His voice rambled off into a mutter; he sat or rather fell into an armchair and lay there twitching and mumbling to himself and inspecting his automatic pistol with prominent watery eyes.

  “You’d better leave that squirt-gun with me,” said Grandcourt.

  Quest refused with an oath, and, leaning forward and hammering the padded chair-arm with his unhealthy looking fist, he broke out into a violent arraignment of Dysart:

  “Damn him!” he yelled, “I’ve written him, I’ve asked for an explanation, I’ve ‘m-manded t’ know why his name’s coupled with my sister’s — —”

  Duane leaned over, slammed the door, and turned short on Quest:

  “Shut up!” he said sharply. “Do you hear! Shut up!”

  “No, I won’t shut up! I’ll say what I damn please — —”

  “Haven’t you any decency at all — —”

  “I’ve enough to fix Dysart good and plenty, and I’ll do it! I’ll — let go of me, Mallett! — let go, I tell you or — —”

  Duane jerked the pistol from his shaky fingers, and when Quest struggled to his feet with a baffled howl, jammed him back into the chair again and handed the pistol to Grandcourt, who locked it in a bureau drawer and pocketed the key.

  “You belong in Matteawan,” said the latter, flinging Quest back into the chair again as the infuriated man still struggled to rise
. “You miserable drunken kid — do you think you would be enhancing your sister’s reputation by dragging her name into a murder trial? What are you, anyway? By God, if I didn’t know your sister as a thoroughbred, I’d have you posted here for a mongrel and sent packing. The pound is your proper place, not a club-house”; which was an astonishing speech for Delancy Grandcourt.

  Again, half contemptuously, but with something almost vicious in his violence, Grandcourt slammed young Quest back into the chair from which he had attempted to hurl himself: “Keep quiet,” he said; “you’re a particularly vile little wretch, particularly pitiable; but your sister is a girl of gentle breeding — a sweet, charming, sincere young girl whom everybody admires and respects. If you are anything but a gutter-mut, you’ll respect her, too, and the only way you can do it is by shutting that unsanitary whiskey-trap of yours — and keeping it shut — and by remaining as far away from her as you can, permanently.”

  There were one or two more encounters, brief ones; then Quest collapsed and began to cry. He was shaking, too, all over, apparently on the verge of some alcoholic crisis.

  Grandcourt went over to Duane:

  “The man is sick, helplessly sick in mind and body. If you’ll telephone Bailey at the Knickerbocker Hospital, he’ll send an ambulance and I’ll go up there with this fool boy. He’s been like this before. Bailey knows what to do. Telephone from the station; I don’t want the club servants to gossip any more than is necessary. Do you mind doing it?”

  “Of course not,” said Duane. He glanced at the miserable, snivelling, twitching creature by the fire: “Do you think he’ll get over this, or will he buy another pistol the next time he gets the jumps?”

  Grandcourt looked troubled:

  “I don’t know what this breed is likely to do. He’s absolutely no good. He’s the only person in the world that is left of the family — except his sister. He’s all she has had to look out for her — a fine legacy, a fine prop for her to lean on. That’s the sort of protection she has had all her life; that’s the example set her in her own home. I don’t know what she’s done; it’s none of my business; but, Duane, I’m for her!”

  “So am I.”

  They stood together in silence for a moment; maudlin sniffles of self-pity arose from the corner by the fire, alternating with more hysterical and more ominous sounds presaging some spasmodic crisis.

  Grandcourt said: “Bunny Gray has helped me kennel this pup once or twice. He’s in the club; I think I’ll send for him.”

  “You’ll need help,” nodded Duane. “I’ll call up the hospital on my way to the station. Good-bye, Delancy.”

  They shook hands and parted.

  At the station Duane telephoned to the hospital, got Dr. Bailey, arranged for a room in a private ward, and had barely time to catch his train — in fact, he was in such a hurry that he passed by without seeing the sister of the very man for whom he had been making such significant arrangements.

  She wore, as usual, her pretty chinchilla furs, but was so closely veiled that he might not have recognised her under any circumstances. She, however, forgetting that she was veiled, remained uncertain as to whether his failure to speak to her had been intentional or otherwise. She had halted, expecting him to speak; now she passed on, cheeks burning, a faint sinking sensation in her heart.

  For she cared a great deal about Duane’s friendship; and she was very unhappy, and morbid and more easily wounded than ever, because somehow it had come to her ears that rumour was busily hinting things unthinkable concerning her — nothing definite; yet the very vagueness of it added to her distress and horror.

  Around her silly head trouble was accumulating very fast since Jack Dysart had come sauntering into her youthful isolation; and in the beginning it had been what it usually is to lonely hearts — shy and grateful recognition of a friendship that flattered; fascination, an infatuation, innocent enough, until the man in the combination awoke her to the terrors of stranger emotions involving her deeper and deeper until she lost her head, and he, for the first time in all his career, lost his coolly selfish caution.

  How any rumours concerning herself and him had arisen nobody could explain. There never is any explanation. But they always arise.

  In their small but pretty house, terrible scenes had already occurred between her and her brother — consternation, anger, and passionate denial on her part; on his, fury, threats, maudlin paroxysms of self-pity, and every attitude that drink and utter demoralisation can distort into a parody on what a brother might say and do.

  To escape it she had gone to Tuxedo for a week; now, fear and foreboding had brought her back — fear intensified at the very threshold of the city when Duane seemed to look straight at her and pass her by without recognition. Men don’t do that, but she was too inexperienced to know it; and she hastened on with a heavy heart, found a taxi-cab to take her to the only home she had ever known, descended, and rang for admittance.

  In these miserable days she had come to look for hidden meaning even in the expressionless faces of her trained servants, and now she misconstrued the respectful smile of welcome, brushed hastily past the maid who admitted her, and ran upstairs.

  Except for the servants she was alone. She rang for information concerning her brother; nobody had any. He had not been home in a week.

  Her toilet, after the journey, took her two hours or more to accomplish; it was dark at five o’clock and snowing heavily when tea was served. She tasted it, then, unable to subdue her restlessness, went to the telephone; and after a long delay, heard the voice she tremblingly expected:

  “Is that you, Jack?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “H-how are you?”

  “Not very well.”

  “Have you heard anything new about certain proceedings?” she inquired tremulously.

  “Yes; she’s begun them.”

  “On — on w-what grounds?”

  “Not on any grounds to scare you. It will be a Western matter.”

  Her frightened sigh of relief turned her voice to a whisper:

  “Has Stuyve — has a certain relative — annoyed you since I’ve been away?”

  “Yes, over the telephone, drunk, as usual.”

  “Did he make — make any more threats, Jack?”

  “The usual string. Where is he?”

  “I don’t know,” she said; “he hasn’t been home in a week, they tell me. Jack, do you think it safe for you to drop in here for a few moments before dinner?”

  “Just as you say. If he comes in, there may be trouble. Which isn’t a good idea, on your account.”

  No woman in such circumstances is moved very much by an appeal to her caution.

  “But I want to see you, Jack,” she said miserably.

  “That seems to be the only instinct that governs you,” he retorted, slightly impatient. “Can’t you ever learn the elements of prudence? It seems to me about time that you substituted common sense for immature impulse in dealing with present problems.”

  His voice was cold, emotionless, unpleasant. She stood with the receiver at her ears, flushing to the tips of them under his rebuke. She always did; she had known many, recently, but the quick pang of pain was never any less keen. On the contrary.

  “Don’t you want to see me? I have been away for ten days.”

  “Yes, I want to see you, of course, but I’m not anxious to spring a mine under myself — under us both by going into your house at this time.”

  “My brother has not been here in a week.”

  “Does that accidental fact bar his possible appearance ten minutes from now?”

  She wondered, vaguely, whether he was afraid of anything except possible damage to her reputation. She had, lately, considered this question on several occasions. Being no coward, as far as mere fear for her life was concerned, she found it difficult to attribute such fear to him. Indeed, one of the traits in her which he found inexplicable and which he disliked was a curious fearlessness of death — not
uncommon among women who, all their lives, have had little to live for.

  She said: “If I am not worth a little risk, what is my value to you?”

  “You talk like a baby,” he retorted. “Is an interview worth risking a scandal that will spatter the whole town?”

  “I never count such risks,” she said wearily. “Do as you please.”

  His voice became angry: “Haven’t I enough to face already without hunting more trouble at present? I supposed I could look to you for sympathy and aid and common sense, and every day you call me up and demand that I shall drop everything and fling caution to the winds, and meet you somewhere! Every day of the year you do it — —”

  “I have been away ten days—” she faltered, turning sick and white at the words he was shouting through the telephone.

  “Well, it was understood you’d stay for a month, wasn’t it? Can’t you give me time to turn around? Can’t you give me half a chance? Do you realise what I’m facing? Do you?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry I called you; I was so miserable and lonely — —”

  “Well, try to think of somebody besides yourself. You’re not the only miserable person in this city. I’ve all the misery I can carry at present; and if you wish to help me, don’t make any demands on me until I’m clear of the tangle that’s choking me.”

  “Dear, I only wanted to help you—” she stammered, appalled at his tone and words.

  “All right, then, let me alone!” he snarled, losing all self-command. “I’ve stood about all of this I’m going to, from you and your brother both! Is that plain? I want to be let alone. That is plainer still, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she said. Her face had become deathly white; she stood frozen, motionless, clutching the receiver in her small hand.

  His voice altered as he spoke again: