Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  There was a pause. Colonel Arran waited a moment, then struck the bell:

  “Larraway, Mr. Berkley has decided to go.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You will accompany Mr. Berkley to the door.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And hand to Mr. Berkley the outer key of this house.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And in case Mr. Berkley ever again desires to enter this house, he is to be admitted, and his orders are to be obeyed by every servant in it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Colonel Arran rose trembling. He and Berkley looked at each other; then both bowed; and the butler ushered out the younger man.

  “Pardon — the latch-key, sir.”

  Berkley took it, examined it, handed it back.

  “Return it to Colonel Arran with Mr. Berkley’s undying — compliments,” he said, and went blindly out into the April night, but his senses were swimming as though he were drunk.

  Behind him the door of the house of Arran clanged.

  Larraway stood stealthily peering through the side-lights; then tiptoed toward the hallway and entered the dining-room with velvet tread.

  “Port or brandy, sir?” he whispered at Colonel Arran’s elbow.

  The Colonel shook his head.

  “Nothing more. Take that box to my study.”

  Later, seated at his study table before the open box, he heard Larraway knock; and he quietly laid away the miniature of Berkley’s mother which had been lying in his steady palm for hours.

  “Well?”

  “Pardon. Mr. Berkley’s key, with Mr. Berkley’s compliments, sir.”

  And he laid it upon the table by the box.

  “Thank you. That will be all.”

  “Thank you, sir. Good night, sir.”

  “Good night.”

  The Colonel picked up the evening paper and opened it mechanically:

  “By telegraph!” he read, “War inevitable. Postscript! Fort Sumter! It is now certain that the Government has decided to reinforce Major Andersen’s command at all hazards — —”

  The lines in the Evening Post blurred under his eyes; he passed one broad, bony hand across them, straightened his shoulders, and, setting the unlighted cigar firmly between his teeth, composed himself to read. But after a few minutes he had read enough. He dropped deeper into his arm-chair, groping for the miniature of Berkley’s mother.

  As for Berkley, he was at last alone with his letters and his keepsakes, in the lodgings which he inhabited — and now would inhabit no more. The letters lay still unopened before him on his writing table; he stood looking at the miniatures and photographs, all portraits of his mother, from girlhood onward.

  One by one he took them up, examined them — touched them to his lips, laid each away. The letters he also laid away unopened; he could not bear to read them now.

  The French clock in his bedroom struck eight. He closed and locked his desk, stood looking at it blankly for a moment; then he squared his shoulders. An envelope lay open on the desk beside him.

  “Oh — yes,” he said aloud, but scarcely heard his own voice.

  The envelope enclosed an invitation from one, Camilla Lent, to a theatre party for that evening, and a dance afterward.

  He had a vague idea that he had accepted.

  The play was “The Seven Sisters” at Laura, Keene’s Theatre. The dance was somewhere — probably at Delmonico’s. If he were going, it was time he was afoot.

  His eyes wandered from one familiar object to another; he moved restlessly, and began to roam through the richly furnished rooms. But to Berkley nothing in the world seemed familiar any longer; and the strangeness of it, and the solitude were stupefying him.

  When he became tired trying to think, he made the tour again in a stupid sort of way, then rang for his servant, Burgess, and started mechanically about his dressing.

  Nothing any longer seemed real, not even pain.

  He rang for Burgess again, but the fellow did not appear. So he dressed without aid. And at last he was ready; and went out, drunk with fatigue and the reaction from pain.

  He did not afterward remember how he came to the theatre. Presently he found himself in a lower tier box, talking to a Mrs. Paige who, curiously, miraculously, resembled the girlish portraits of his mother — or he imagined so — until he noticed that her hair was yellow and her eyes blue. And he laughed crazily to himself, inwardly convulsed; and then his own voice sounded again, low, humorous, caressingly modulated; and he listened to it, amused that he was able to speak at all.

  “And so you are the wonderful Ailsa Paige,” he heard himself repeating. “Camilla wrote me that I must beware of my peace of mind the moment I first set eyes on you — —”

  “Camilla Lent is supremely silly, Mr. Berkley — —”

  “Camilla is a sibyl. This night my peace of mind departed for ever.”

  “May I offer you a little of mine?”

  “I may ask more than that of you?”

  “You mean a dance?”

  “More than one.”

  “How many?”

  “All of them. How many will you give me?”

  “One. Please look at the stage. Isn’t Laura Keene bewitching?”

  “Your voice is.”

  “Such nonsense. Besides, I’d rather hear what Laura Keene is saying than listen to you.”

  “Do you mean it?”

  “Incredible as it may sound, Mr. Berkley, I really do.”

  He dropped back in the box. Camilla laid her painted fan across his arm.

  “Isn’t Ailsa Paige the most enchanting creature you ever saw? I told you so! Isn’t she?”

  “Except one. I was looking at some pictures of her a half an hour ago.”

  “She must be very beautiful,” sighed Camilla.

  “She was.”

  “Oh. . . . Is she dead?”

  “Murdered.”

  Camilla looked at the stage in horrified silence. Later she touched him again on the arm, timidly.

  “Are you not well, Mr. Berkley?”

  “Perfectly. Why?”

  “You are so pale. Do look at Ailsa Paige. I am completely enamoured of her. Did you ever see such a lovely creature in all your life? And she is very young but very wise. She knows useful and charitable things — like nursing the sick, and dressing injuries, and her own hats. And she actually served a whole year in the horrible city hospital! Wasn’t it brave of her!”

  Berkley swayed forward to look at Ailsa Paige. He began to be tormented again by the feverish idea that she resembled the girl pictures of his mother. Nor could he rid himself of the fantastic impression. In the growing unreality of it all, in the distorted outlines of a world gone topsy-turvy, amid the deadly blurr of things material and mental, Ailsa Paige’s face alone remained strangely clear. And, scarcely knowing what he was saying, he leaned forward to her shoulder again.

  “There was only one other like you,” he said. Mrs. Paige turned slowly and looked at him, but the quiet rebuke in her eyes remained unuttered.

  “Be more genuine with me,” she said gently. “I am worth it, Mr.

  Berkley.”

  Then, suddenly there seemed to run a pale flash through his brain,

  “Yes,” he said in an altered voice, “you are worth it. . . . Don’t drive me away from you just yet.”

  “Drive you away?” in soft concern. “I did not mean — —”

  “You will, some day. But don’t do it to-night.” Then the quick, feverish smile broke out.

  “Do you need a servant? I’m out of a place. I can either cook, clean silver, open the door, wash sidewalks, or wait on the table; so you see I have every qualification.”

  Smilingly perplexed, she let her eyes rest on his pallid face for a moment, then turned toward the stage again.

  The “Seven Sisters” pursued its spectacular course; Ione Burke, Polly Marshall, and Mrs. Vining were in the cast; tableau succeeded tableau; “I wish I were in Dixie,” was s
ung, and the popular burlesque ended in the celebrated scene, “The Birth of the Butterfly in the Bower of Ferns,” with the entire company kissing their finger-tips to a vociferous and satiated audience.

  Then it was supper at Delmonico’s, and a dance — and at last the waltz promised him by Ailsa Paige.

  Through the fixed unreality of things he saw her clearly, standing, awaiting him, saw her sensitive face as she quietly laid her hand on his — saw it suddenly alter as the light contact startled both.

  Flushed, she looked up at him like a hurt child, conscious yet only of the surprise.

  Dazed, he stared back. Neither spoke; his arm encircled her; both seemed aware of that; then only of the swaying rhythm of the dance, and of joined hands, and her waist imprisoned. Only the fragrance of her hair seemed real to him; and the long lashes resting on curved cheeks, and the youth of her yielding to his embrace.

  Neither spoke when it had ended. She turned aside and stood motionless a moment, resting against the stair rail as though to steady herself. Her small head was lowered.

  He managed to say: “You will give me the next?”

  “No.”

  “Then the next — —”

  “No,” she said, not moving.

  A young fellow came up eagerly, cocksure of her, but she shook her head — and shook her head to all — and Berkley remained standing beside her. And at last her reluctant head turned slowly, and, slowly, her gaze searched his.

  “Shall we rest?” he said.

  “Yes. I am — tired.”

  Her dainty avalanche of skirts filled the stairs as she settled there in silence; he at her feet, turned sideways so that he could look up into the brooding, absent eyes.

  And over them again — over the small space just then allotted them in the world — was settling once more the intangible, indefinable spell awakened by their first light contact. Through its silence hurried their pulses; through its significance her dazed young eyes looked out into a haze where nothing stirred except a phantom heart, beating, beating the reveille. And the spell lay heavy on them both.

  “I shall bear your image always. You know it.”

  She seemed scarcely to have heard him.

  “There is no reason in what I say. I know it. Yet — I am destined never to forget you.”

  She made no sign.

  “Ailsa Paige,” he said mechanically.

  And after a long while, slowly, she looked down at him where he sat at her feet, his dark eyes fixed on space.

  CHAPTER II

  All the morning she had been busy in the Craig’s backyard garden, clipping, training, loosening the earth around lilac, honeysuckle, and Rose of Sharon. The little German florist on the corner had sent in two loads of richly fertilised soil and a barrel of forest mould. These she sweetened with lime, mixed in her small pan, and applied judiciously to the peach-tree by the grape-arbour, to the thickets of pearl-gray iris, to the beloved roses, prairie climber, Baltimore bell, and General Jacqueminot. A neighbour’s cat, war-scarred and bold, traversing the fences in search of single combat, halted to watch her; an early bee, with no blossoms yet to rummage, passed and repassed, buzzing distractedly.

  The Craig’s next-door neighbour, Camilla Lent, came out on her back veranda and looked down with a sleepy nod of recognition and good-morning, stretching her pretty arms luxuriously in the sunshine.

  “You look very sweet down there, Ailsa, in your pink gingham apron and garden gloves.”

  “And you look very sweet up there, Camilla, in your muslin frock and satin skin! And every time you yawn you resemble a plump, white magnolia bud opening just enough to show the pink inside!”

  “It’s mean to call me plump!” returned Camilla reproachfully. “Anyway, anybody would yawn with the Captain keeping the entire household awake all night. I vow, I haven’t slept one wink since that wretched news from Charleston. He thinks he’s a battery of horse artillery now; that’s the very latest development; and I shed tears and the chandeliers shed prisms every time he manoeuvres.”

  “The dear old thing,” said Mrs. Paige, smiling as she moved among the shrubs. For a full minute her sensitive lips remained tenderly curved as she stood considering the agricultural problems before her. Then she settled down again, naively — like a child on its haunches — and continued to mix nourishment for the roses.

  Camilla, lounging sideways on her own veranda window sill, rested her head against the frame, alternately blinking down at the pretty widow through sleepy eyes, and patting her lips to control the persistent yawns that tormented her.

  “I had a horrid dream, too,” she said, “about the ‘Seven Sisters.’ I was Pluto to your Diavoline, and Philip Berkley was a phantom that grinned at everybody and rattled the bones; and I waked in a dreadful fright to hear uncle’s spurred boots overhead, and that horrid noisy old sabre of his banging the best furniture.

  “Then this morning just before sunrise he came into my bedroom, hair and moustache on end, and in full uniform, and attempted to read the Declaration of Independence to me — or maybe it was the Constitution — I don’t remember — but I began to cry, and that always sends him off.”

  Ailsa’s quick laugh and the tenderness of her expression were her only comments upon the doings of Josiah Lent, lately captain, United States dragoons.

  Camilla yawned again, rose, and, arranging her spreading white skirts, seated herself on her veranda steps in full sunshine.

  “We did have a nice party, didn’t we, Ailsa?” she said, leaning a little sideways so that she could see over the fence and down into the Craig’s backyard garden.

  “I had such a good time,” responded Ailsa, looking up radiantly.

  “So did I. Billy Cortlandt is the most divine dancer. Isn’t

  Evelyn Estcourt pretty?”

  “She is growing up to be very beautiful some day. Stephen paid her a great deal of attention. Did you notice it?”

  “Really? I didn’t notice it,” replied Camilla without enthusiasm. “But,” she added, “I did notice you and Phil Berkley on the stairs. It didn’t take you long, did it?”

  Ailsa’s colour rose a trifle.

  “We exchanged scarcely a dozen words,” she observed sedately.

  Camilla laughed.

  “It didn’t take you long,” she repeated, “either of you. It was the swiftest case of fascination that I ever saw.”

  “You are absurd, Camilla.”

  “But isn’t he perfectly fascinating? I think he is the most romantic-looking creature I ever saw. However,” she added, folding her slender hands in resignation, “there is nothing else to him. He’s accustomed to being adored; there’s no heart left in him. I think it’s dead.”

  Mrs. Paige stood looking up at her, trowel hanging loosely in her gloved hand.

  “Did anything — kill it?” she asked carelessly.

  “I don’t think it ever lived very long. Anyway there is something missing in the man; something blank in him. A girl’s time is wasted in wondering what is going on behind those adorable eyes of his. Because there is nothing going on — it’s all on the surface — the charm, the man’s engaging ways and manners — all surface. . . . I thought I’d better tell you, Ailsa.”

  “There was no necessity,” said Ailsa calmly. “We scarcely exchanged a dozen words.”

  As she spoke she became aware of a shape behind the veranda windows, a man’s upright figure passing and repassing. And now, at the open window, it suddenly emerged into full sunlight, a spare, sinewy, active gentleman of fifty, hair and moustache thickly white, a deep seam furrowing his forehead from the left ear to the roots of the hair above the right temple.

  The most engaging of smiles parted the young widow’s lips.

  “Good morning, Captain Lent,” she cried gaily. “You have neglected me dreadfully of late.”

  The Captain came to a rigid salute.

  “April eleventh, eighteen-sixty-one!” he said with clean-cut precision. “Good morning, Mrs. Paige! How d
oes your garden blow? Blow — blow ye wintry winds! Ahem! How have the roses wintered — the rose of yesterday?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, sir. I am afraid my sister’s roses have not wintered very well. I’m really a little worried about them.”

  “I am worried about nothing in Heaven, on Earth, or in Hell,” said the Captain briskly. “God’s will is doing night and day, Mrs. Paige. Has your brother-in-law gone to business?”

  “Oh, yes. He and Stephen went at eight this morning.”

  “Is your sister-in-law well. God bless her!” shouted the Captain.

  “Uncle, you mustn’t shout,” remonstrated Camilla gently.

  “I’m only exercising my voice,” — and to Ailsa:

  “I neglect nothing, mental, physical, spiritual, that may be of the slightest advantage to my country in the hour when every respiration, every pulse beat, every waking thought shall belong to the Government which I again shall have the honour of serving.”

  He bowed stiffly from the waist, to Ailsa, to his niece, turned right about, and marched off into the house, his white moustache bristling, his hair on end.

  “Oh, dear,” sighed Camilla patiently, “isn’t it disheartening?”

  “He is a dear,” said Ailsa. “I adore him.”

  “Yes — if he’d only sleep at night. I am very selfish I suppose to complain; he is so happy and so interested these days — only — I am wondering — if there ever should be a war — would it break his poor old heart if he couldn’t go? They’ll never let him, you know.”

  Ailsa looked up, troubled:

  “You mean — because!” she said in a low voice.

  “Well I don’t consider him anything more than delightfully eccentric.”

  “Neither do I. But all this is worrying me ill. His heart is so entirely wrapped up in it; he writes a letter to Washington every day, and nobody ever replies. Ailsa, it almost terrifies me to think what might happen — and he be left out!”

  “Nothing will happen. The world is too civilised, dear.”

  “But the papers talk about nothing else! And uncle takes every paper in New York and Brooklyn, and he wants to have the editor of the Herald arrested, and he is very anxious to hang the entire staff of the Daily News. It’s all well enough to stand there laughing, but I believe there’ll be a war, and then my troubles will begin!”