Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Ailsa, dear, is anything wrong?”

  “I think,” she said quietly, “that we had better not let Colonel Arran see how wrong matters have gone between us. He is very badly hurt. I have talked a little with him. I came here because he asked for you and for no other reason.”

  “Did you know I was here?”

  “I saw you arrive last night — from the infirmary window. . . . I hope your wound is healed,” she added in a strained voice.

  “Ailsa! What has happened?”

  She shuddered slightly, looked at, him without a shadow of expression.

  “Let us understand one another now. I haven’t the slightest atom of — regard — left for you. I have no desire to see you, to hear of you again while I am alive. That is final.”

  “Will you tell me why?”

  She had turned to go; now she hesitated, silent, irresolute.

  “Will you tell me, Ailsa?”

  She said, wearily: “If you insist, I can make it plainer, some time. But this is not the time. . . And you had better not ask me at all, Philip.”

  “I do ask you.”

  “I warn you to accept your dismissal without seeking an explanation. It would spare — us both.”

  “I will spare neither of us. What has changed you?”

  “I shall choose my own convenience to answer you,” she replied haughtily.

  “Choose it, then, and tell me when to expect your explanation.”

  “When I send for you; not before.”

  “Are you going to let me go away with that for my answer?”

  “Perhaps.”

  He hooked his thumbs in his girdle and looked down, considering; then, quietly raising his head:

  “I don’t know what you have found out — what has been told you. I have done plenty of things in my life unworthy of you, but I thought you knew that.”

  “I know it now.”

  “You knew it before. I never attempted to conceal anything.”

  A sudden blue glimmer made her eyes brilliant. “That is a falsehood!” she said deliberately. The colour faded from his cheeks, then he said with ashy composure:

  “I lie much less than the average man, Ailsa. It is nothing to boast of, but it happens to be true. I don’t lie.”

  “You keep silent and act a lie!”

  He reflected for a moment; then:

  “Hadn’t you better tell me?”

  “No.”

  Then his colour returned, surging, making the scar on his face hideous; he turned, walked to the window, and stood looking into the darkness while the departing glimmer of her candle faded on the wall behind him.

  Presently, scraping, ducking, chuckling, the old darky appeared with his boots and uniform, everything dry and fairly clean; and he dressed by lantern light, buckled his belt, drew on his gloves, settled his forage cap, and followed the old man out into the graying dawn.

  They gave him some fresh light bread and a basin of coffee; he finished and waited, teeth biting the stem of his empty pipe for which he had no tobacco.

  Surgeons, assistant surgeons, contract physicians, ward-masters, nurses, passed and re-passed; stretchers filed into the dead house; coffins were being unloaded and piled under a shed; a constant stream of people entered and left the apothecary’s office; the Division Medical Director’s premises were besieged. Ambulances continually drove up or departed; files of sick and wounded, able to move without assistance, stood in line, patient, uncomplaining men, bloody, ragged, coughing, burning with fever, weakened for lack of nourishment; many crusted with filth and sometimes with vermin, humbly awaiting the disposition of their battered, half-dead bodies. . . .

  The incipient stages of many diseases were plainly apparent among them. Man after man was placed on a stretcher, and hurried off to the contagious wards; some were turned away and directed to other hospitals, and they went without protest, dragging their gaunt legs, even attempting some feeble jest as they passed their wretched comrades whose turns had not yet come.

  Presently a hospital servant came and took Berkley away to another

  building. The wards were where the schoolrooms had been.

  Blackboards still decorated the wall; a half-erased exercise in

  Latin remained plainly visible over the rows of cots.

  Ailsa and the apothecary stood together in low-voiced conversation by a window. She merely raised her eyes when Berkley entered; then, without giving him a second glance, continued her conversation.

  In the heavy, ether-laden atmosphere flies swarmed horribly, and men detailed as nurses from regimental companies were fanning them from helpless patients. A civilian physician, coming down the aisle, exchanged a few words with the ward-master and then turned to Berkley.

  “You are trooper Ormond, orderly to Colonel Arran?”

  “Yes.”

  “Colonel Arran desires you to remain here at his orders for the present.”

  “Is Colonel Arran likely to recover, doctor?”

  “He is in no immediate danger.”

  “May I see him?”

  “Certainly. He sent for you. Step this way.”

  They entered another and much smaller ward in which there were very few cots, and from which many of the flies had been driven.

  Colonel Arran lay very white and still on his cot; only his eyes turned as Berkley came up and stood at salute.

  “Sit down,” he said feebly. And, after a long silence:

  “Berkley, the world seems to be coming right. I am grateful that

  I — lie here — with you beside me.”

  Berkley’s throat closed; he could not speak; nor did he know what he might have said could he have spoken, for within him all had seemed to crash softly into chaos, and he had no mind, no will, no vigour, only a confused understanding of emotion and pain, and a fierce longing.

  Colonel Arran’s sunken eyes never left his, watching, wistful, patient. And at last the boy bent forward and rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his face in both hands. Time ebbed away in silence; there was no sound in the ward save the blue flies’ buzz or the slight movement of some wounded man easing his tortured body.

  “Philip!”

  The boy lifted his face from his hands.

  “Can you forgive me?”

  “Yes, I have. . . . There was only one thing to forgive. I don’t count — myself.”

  “I count it — bitterly.”

  “You need not. . . . It was only — my mother — —”

  “I know, my boy. The blade of justice is double-edged. No mortal can wield it safely; only He who forged it. . . . I have never ceased to love — your mother.”

  Berkley’s face became ashen.

  Colonel Arran said: “Is there punishment more terrible than that for any man?”

  Presently Berkley drew his chair closer.

  “I wish you to know how mother died,” he said simply. “It is your right to know. . . . Because, there will come a time when she and — you will be together again . . . if you believe such things.”

  “I believe.”

  For a while the murmur of Berkley’s voice alone broke the silence. Colonel Arran lay with eyes closed, a slight flush on his sunken cheeks; and, before long, Berkley’s hand lay over his and remained there.

  The brilliant, ominous flies whirled overhead or drove headlong against the window-panes, falling on their backs to kick and buzz and scramble over the sill; slippered attendants moved softly along the aisle with medicines; once the ward-master came and looked down at Colonel Arran, touched the skin of his face, his pulse, and walked noiselessly away. Berkley’s story had already ended.

  After a while he said: “If you will get well — whatever I am — we two men have in common a memory that can never die. If there were nothing else — God knows whether there is — that memory is enough, to make us live at peace with one another. . . . I do not entirely understand how it is with me, but I know that some things have been washed out of my heart — leaving little
of the bitterness — nothing now of anger. It has all been too sad for such things — a tragedy too deep for the lesser passions to meddle with. . . . Let us forgive each other. . . . She will know it, somehow.”

  Their hands slowly closed together and remained.

  “Philip!”

  “Sir?”

  “Ailsa is here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Will you say to her that I would like to see her?”

  For a moment Berkley hesitated, then rose quietly and walked into the adjoining ward.

  Ailsa was bending over a sick man, fanning away the flies that clustered around the edge of the bowl from which he was drinking. And Berkley waited until the patient had finished the broth.

  “Ailsa, may I speak to you a moment?”

  She had been aware of his entrance, and was not startled. She handed the bowl and fan to an attendant, turned leisurely, and came out into the aisle.

  “What is it?”

  “Colonel Arran wishes to see you. Can you come?”

  “Certainly.”

  She led the way; and as she walked he noticed that all the lithe grace, all the youth and spring to her step had vanished. She moved wearily; her body under the gray garb was thin; blue veins showed faintly in temple and wrist; only her superb hair and eyes had suffered no change.

  Colonel Arran’s eyes opened as she stooped at his bedside and laid her lips lightly on his forehead.

  “Is there another chair?” he asked wearily.

  Ailsa’s glance just rested on Berkley, measuring him in expressionless disdain. Then, as he brought another chair, she seated herself.

  “You, too, Philip,” murmured the wounded man.

  Ailsa’s violet eyes opened in surprise at the implied intimacy between these men whom she had vaguely understood were anything but friends. But she remained coldly aloof, controlling even a shiver of astonishment when Colonel Arran’s hand, which held hers, groped also for Berkley’s, and found it.

  Then with an effort he turned his head and looked at them.

  “I have long known that you loved each other,” he whispered. “It is a happiness that God sends me as well as you. If it be His will that I — do not recover, this makes it easy for me. If He wills it that I live, then, in His infinite mercy, He also gives me the reason for living.”

  Icy cold, Ailsa’s hand lay there, limply touching Berkley’s; the sick man’s eyes were upon them.

  “Philip!”

  “Sir?”

  “My watch is hanging from a nail on the wall. There is a chamois bag hanging with it. Give — it — to me.”

  And when it lay in his hand he picked at the string, forced it open, drew out a key, and laid it in Berkley’s hand with a faint smile.

  “You remember, Philip?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The wounded man looked at Ailsa wistfully.

  “It is the key to my house, dear. One day, please God, you and Philip will live there.” . . . He closed his eyes, groping for both their hands, and retaining them, lay silent as though asleep.

  Berkley’s palm burned against hers; she never stirred, never moved a muscle, sitting there as though turned to stone. But when the wounded man’s frail grasp relaxed, cautiously, silently, she freed her fingers, rose, looked down, listening to his breathing, then, without a glance at Berkley, moved quietly toward the door.

  He was behind her a second later, and she turned to confront him in the corridor lighted by a single window.

  “Will you tell me what has changed you?” he said.

  “Something which that ghastly farce cannot influence!” she said, hot faced, eyes brilliant with anger. “I loved Colonel Arran enough to endure it — endure your touch — which shames — defiles — which — which outrages every instinct in me!”

  Breathless, scornful, she drew back, still facing him.

  “The part you have played in my life!” she said bitterly— “think it over. Remember what you have been toward me from the first — a living insult! And when you remember — all — remember that in spite of all I — I loved you — stood before you in the rags of my pride — all that you had left me to clothe myself! — stood upright, unashamed, and acknowledged that I loved you!”

  She made a hopeless gesture.

  “Oh, you had all there was of my heart! I gave it; I laid it beside my pride, under your feet. God knows what madness was upon me — and you had flung my innocence into my face! And you had held me in your embrace, and looked me in the eyes, and said you would not marry me. And I still loved you!”

  Her hands flew to her breast, higher, clasped against the full, white throat.

  “Now, have I not dragged my very soul naked under your eyes? Have I not confessed enough. What more do you want of me before you consent to keep your distance and trouble me no more?”

  “I want to know what has angered you against me,” he said quietly.

  She set her teeth and stared at him, with beautiful resolute eyes.

  “Before I answer that,” she said, “I demand to know why you refused to marry me.”

  “I cannot tell you, Ailsa.”

  In a white rage she whispered:

  “No, you dare not tell me! — you coward! I had to learn the degrading reason from others!”

  He grew deathly white, caught her arms in a grasp of steel, held her twisting wrists imprisoned.

  “Do you know what you are saying?” he stammered.

  “Yes, I know! Your cruelty — your shame — —”

  “Be silent!” he said between his teeth. “My shame is my pride! Do you understand!”

  Outraged, quivering all over, she twisted out of his grasp.

  “Then go to her!” she whispered. “Why don’t you go to her?”

  And, as his angry eyes became blank:

  “Don’t you understand? She is there — just across the road!” She flung open the window and pointed with shaking anger.

  “Didn’t anybody tell you she is there? Then I’ll tell you. Now go to her! You are — worthy — of one another!”

  “Of whom are you speaking — in God’s name!” he breathed.

  Panting, flushed, flat against the wall, she looked back out of eyes that had become dark and wide, fumbling in the bosom of her gray garb. And, just where the scarlet heart was stitched across her breast, she drew out a letter, and, her fascinated gaze still fixed on him, extended her arm.

  He took the crumpled sheets from her in a dazed sort of way, but did not look at them.

  “Who is there — across the road?” he repeated stupidly.

  “Ask — Miss — Lynden.”

  “Letty!”

  But she suddenly turned and slipped swiftly past him, leaving him there in the corridor by the open window, holding the letter in his hand.

  For a while he remained there, leaning against the wall. Sounds from the other ward came indistinctly — a stifled cry, a deep groan, the hurried tread of feet, the opening or closing of windows. Once a dreadful scream rang out from a neighbouring ward, where a man had suddenly gone insane; and he could hear the sounds of the struggle, the startled orders, the shrieks, the crash of a cot; then the dreadful uproar grew fainter, receding. He roused himself, passed an unsteady hand across his eyes, looked blindly at the letter, saw only a white blurr, and, crushing it in his clenched fist, he went down the kitchen stairs and out across the road.

  A hospital guard stopped him, but on learning who he was and that he had business with Miss Lynden, directed him toward a low, one-storied, stone structure, where, under the trees, a figure wrapped in a shawl lay asleep in a chair.

  “She’s been on duty all night,” observed the guard. “If you’ve got to speak to her, go ahead.”

  “Yes,” said Berkley in a dull voice, “I’ve got to speak to her.”

  And he walked toward her across the dead brown grass.

  Letty’s head lay on a rough pine table; her slim body, supported by a broken chair, was covered by a faded shawl; and,
as he looked down at her, somehow into his memory came the recollection of the first time he ever saw her so — asleep in Casson’s rooms, her childish face on the table, the room reeking with tobacco smoke and the stale odour of wine and dying flowers.

  He stood for a long while beside her, looking down at the thin, pale face. Then, in pity, he turned away; and at the same moment she stirred, sat up, confused, and saw him.

  “Letty, dear,” he said, coming back, both hands held out to her, “I did not mean to rob you of your sleep.”

  “Oh — it doesn’t matter! I am so glad—” She sat up suddenly, staring at him. The next moment the tears rushed to her eyes.

  “O — h,” she whispered, “I wished so to see you. I am so thankful you are here. There is — there has been such — a terrible change — something has happened — —”

  She rose unsteadily; laid her trembling hand on his arm.

  “I don’t know what it is,” she said piteously, “but

  Ailsa — something dreadful has angered her against me — —”

  “Against you!”

  “Oh, yes. I don’t know all of it; I know — partly.”

  Sleep and fatigue still confused her mind; she pressed both frail hands to her eyes, her forehead:

  “It was the day I returned from seeing you at Paigecourt. . . . I was deadly tired when the ambulance drove into Azalea; and when it arrived here I had fallen asleep. . . . I woke up when it stopped. Ailsa was sitting here — in this same chair, I think — and I remember as I sat up in the ambulance that an officer was just leaving her — Captain Hallam.”

  She looked piteously at Berkley.

  “He was one of the men I have avoided. Do you understand?”

  “No. . . . Was he — —”

  “Yes, he often came to the — Canterbury. He had never spoken to me there, but Ione Carew knew him; and I was certain he would recognise me. . . . I thought I had succeeded in avoiding him, but he must have seen me when I was not conscious of his presence — he must have recognised me.”

  She looked down at her worn shoes; the tears fell silently; she smoothed her gray gown for lack of employment for her restless hands.

  “Dear,” he said, “do you believe he went to Ailsa with his story about you?”

  “Oh, yes, yes, I am sure. What else could it be that has angered her — that drives me away from her — that burns me with the dreadful gaze she turns on me — chills me with her more dreadful silence? . . . Why did he do it? I don’t know — oh, I don’t know. . . . Because I had never even spoken to him — in those days that I have tried so hard — so hard to forget — —”