Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  Ellis dropped the flipper, seized it again, and gazed into the scared eyes of Jones.

  “For Heaven’s sake, go easy,” he hissed, “or the thing will come apart!”

  Jones, in a cold perspiration, stood knee-deep in the flood, not daring to touch the flipper again.

  “You help here,” he whispered, hoarsely. “If she stands up, now, you can support her to camp, can’t you?”

  Ellis bent over and looked into the gaping jaws of Fafnir the Dragon.

  “Miss Sandys,” he said seriously, “do you think you could get on your hind — on your feet?”

  The legs of the monster splashed, groping for the bottom; Ellis passed his arm around the scaly body; Fafnir arose, rather wabbly, and took one dripping step forward.

  “Beyond, rocking wildly in a gilded boat, sat two people and a placid swan.”

  “I fancy we can manage it now, Jones,” said Ellis, cheerfully, turning around; but Jones did not answer; he was running away, dashing and splashing down the flooded forest. Beyond, rocking wildly in a gilded boat, sat two people and a placid swan.

  “Good Lord!” faltered Ellis, as the dragon turned with a little shriek. “Is the whole Summer School being washed away?”

  “No,” she said excitedly, “but the dam broke. Helen and Professor Rawson tried to save the swan-boat — we were giving tableaux from “Lohengrin” and “The Rheingold” — and — oh! oh! oh! such a torrent came! Helen — there she is in armour — Helen tried to paddle the boat, but the swans pulled the other way, and they flapped so wildly that Helen called for help. Then one of the Rhine-maidens — Professor Rawson — waded in and got aboard, but the paddle broke and they were adrift. Then one of those horrid swans got loose, and everybody screamed, and the water rose higher and higher, and nobody helped anybody, so, so — as I swim well, I jumped in without waiting to undress — you see I had been acting the dragon, Fafnir, and I went in just as I was; but the papier-mâché dragon kept turning turtle with me, and first I knew I was being spun around like a top.”

  There was a silence; they stood watching Jones scrambling after the swan-boat, which had come to grief in shallow water. Professor Rawson, the Rhine-maiden, gave one raucous and perfunctory shriek as Jones floundered alongside — for the garb of the normal Rhine-daughter is scanty, and Professor Rawson’s costume, as well as her maidenly physique, was almost anything except redundant.

  As for Helen, sometime known as brown-eyes, she rose to her slim height, all glittering in tin armour, and gave Jones a smile of heavenly gratitude that shot him through and through his Norfolk jacket.

  “Don’t look!” said Professor Rawson, in a voice which, between the emotions of recent terror and present bashfulness, had dwindled to a squeak. “Don’t look; I’m going to jump.” And jump she did, taking to the water with a trifle less grace than the ordinary Rhine-maiden.

  There was a spattering splash, a smothered squawk which may have been emitted by the swan, and the next moment Professor Rawson was churning toward dry land, her wreath of artificial seaweed over one eye, her spectacles glittering amid her dank tresses.

  Jones looked up at brown-eyes balancing in the bow of the painted boat.

  “I can get you ashore quite dry — if you don’t mind,” he said.

  She considered the water; she considered Jones; she looked carefully at the wallowing Rhine-daughter.

  “Are you sure you can?” she asked.

  “Perfectly certain,” breathed Jones.

  “I am rather heavy — —”

  The infatuated man laughed.

  “Well, then, I’ll carry the swan,” she said calmly; and, seizing that dignified and astonished bird, she walked demurely off the prow of the gaudy boat into the arms of Jones.

  To Ellis and the grey-eyed dragon, and to Professor Rawson, who had crawled to a dry spot on the ridge, there was a dreadful fascination in watching that swaying pyramid of Jones, Lohengrin, and swan tottering landward, knee-deep through the flood. The pyramid swayed dangerously at times; but the girl in the tin armour clasped Jones around the neck and clung to the off leg of the swan, and Jones staggered on, half-strangled by the arm and buffeted by the flapping bird, until his oozing shoes struck dry land.

  “Hurrah!” cried Ellis, his enthusiasm breaking out after an agonizing moment of suspense; and Miss

  Sandys, forgetting her plight, waved her lizard claws and hailed rescuer and rescued with a clear-voiced cheer as they came up excited and breathless, hustling before them the outraged swan, who waddled furiously forward, craning its neck and snapping.

  “What is that?” muttered Jones aside to Ellis as the dragon and Lohengrin embraced hysterically. He glanced toward the Rhine-maiden, who was hiding behind a tree.

  “Rhine wine with the cork pulled,” replied Ellis, gravely. “Go up to camp and get her your poncho. I’ll do what I can to make things comfortable in camp.”

  The girl in armour was saying, “You poor, brave dear! How perfectly splendid it was of you to plunge into the flood with all that pasteboard dragon-skin tied to you — like Horatius at the bridge. Molly, I’m simply overcome at your bravery!”

  And all the while she was saying this, Molly Sandys was saying: “Helen, how did you ever dare to try to save the boat, with those horrid swans flapping and nipping at you every second! It was the most courageous thing I ever heard of, and I simply revere you, Helen Gay!”

  Jones, returning from camp with his poncho, said: “There’s a jolly fire in camp and plenty of provisions;” and sidled toward the tree behind which Professor Rawson was attempting to prevent several yards of cheese cloth from adhering too closely to her outline.

  “Go away!” said that spinster, severely, peering out at him with a visage terminating in a length of swan-like neck which might have been attractive if feathered.

  “I’m only bringing you a poncho,” said Jones, blushing.

  Ellis heard a smothered giggle behind him, but when he turned Molly Sandys had shrunk into her dragon-skin, and Helen Gay had lowered the vizor of her helmet.

  “I think we had better go to the camp-fire,” he said gravely. “It’s only a step.”

  “We think so, too,” they said. “Thank you for asking us, Mr. Ellis.”

  So Ellis led the way; after him slopped the dragon, its scaled tail dragging sticks and dead leaves in its wake; next waddled the swan, perforce, prodded forward by the brown-eyed maid in her tin armor. Professor Rawson, mercifully disguised in a rubber poncho, under which her thin shins twinkled, came in the rear, gallantly conducted by Jones in oozing shoes.

  CHAPTER XVI

  THE SIMPLEST SOLUTION OF AN ANCIENT PROBLEM

  In the silence befitting such an extraordinary occasion the company formed a circle about the camp-fire.

  Presently Professor Rawson looked sharply at the damp dragon. “Child!” she exclaimed, “you ought to take that off this instant!”

  “But — but I haven’t very much on,” protested Molly Sandys with a shiver. “I’m only dressed as a — a page.”

  “It can’t be helped,” retorted the professor with decision; “that dragon is nothing but soaking pulp except where the tail is on fire!”

  Ellis hastily set his foot on the sparks, just as Molly Sandys jumped. There was a tearing, ripping sound, a stifled scream, and three-quarters of a page in blue satin and lisle thread, wearing the head and shoulders of a dragon, shrank down behind Professor Rawson’s poncho-draped figure.

  “Here’s my poncho,” cried Ellis, hastily; “I am awfully sorry I ripped your gown — I mean your pasteboard tail — but you switched it into the fire and it was burning.”

  “Have you something for me?” inquired Miss Gay, coloring, but calm; “I’m not very comfortable, either.”

  Jones’s enraptured eyes lingered on the slim shape in mail; he hated to do it, but he brought a Navajo blanket and draped in it the most distractingly pretty figure his rather nearsighted eyes had ever encountered.

  “There,” expl
ained Ellis, courteously, “is the shanty. I’ve hung a blanket over it. Jones and I will sleep here by the fire.”

  “Sleep!” faltered Molly Sandys. “I think we ought to be starting — —”

  “The forests are flooded; we can’t get you back to the Summer School to-night,” said Ellis.

  Professor Rawson shuddered. “Do you mean that we are cut off from civilization entirely?” she asked.

  “Look!” replied Ellis.

  The ridge on which the camp lay had become an island; below it roared a spreading flood under a column of mist and spray; all about them the water soused and washed through the forest; below them from the forks came the pounding thunder of the falls.

  “There’s nothing to be alarmed at, of course,” he said, looking at Molly Sandys.

  The grey eyes looked back into his. “Isn’t there, really?” she asked.

  “Isn’t there?” questioned Miss Gray’s brown eyes of Jones’s pleasant, nearsighted ones.

  “No,” signalled the orbs of Jones through his mud-spattered eyeglasses.

  “I’m hungry,” observed Professor Rawson in a patient but plaintive voice, like the note of a widowed guinea-hen.

  So they all sat down on the soft pine-needles, while Ellis began his culinary sleight-of-hand; and in due time trout were frying merrily, bacon sputtered, ash-cakes and coffee exhaled agreeable odors, and mounds of diaphanous flapjacks tottered in hot and steaming fragrance on either flank.

  There were but two plates; Jones constructed bark platters for Professor Rawson, Ellis and himself; Helen Gay shared knife and fork with Jones; Molly Sandys condescended to do the same for Ellis; Professor Rawson had a set of those articles to herself.

  And there, in the pleasant glow of the fire, Molly Sandys, cross-legged beside Ellis, drank out of his tin cup and ate his flapjacks; and Helen Gay said shyly that never had she tasted such a banquet as this forest fare washed down with bumpers of icy, aromatic spring water. As for Professor Rawson, she lifted the hem of her poncho and discreetly dried that portion of the Rhine-maiden’s clothing which needed it; and while she sizzled contentedly, she ate flapjack on flapjack, and trout after trout, until merriment grew within her and she laughed when the younger people laughed, and felt a delightful thrill of recklessness tingling the soles of her stockings. And why not?

  “It’s a very simple matter, after all,” declared Jones; “it’s nothing but a state of mind. I thought I was leading a simple life before I came here, but I wasn’t. Why? Merely because I was not in a state of mind. But” — and here he looked full at Helen Gay— “but no sooner had I begun to appreciate the charm of the forest” — she blushed vividly “no sooner had I realised what these awful solitudes might contain, than, instantly, I found myself in a state of mind. Then, and then only, I understood what heavenly perfection might be included in that frayed and frazzled phrase, ‘The Simple Life.’”

  “I understood it long ago,” said Ellis, dreamily.

  “Did you?” asked Molly Sandys.

  “Yes — long ago — about six hours ago” — he lowered his voice, for Molly Sandys had turned her head away from the firelight toward the cooler shadow of the forest.

  “What happened,” she asked, carelessly, “six hours ago?”

  “I first saw you.”

  “No,” she said calmly; “I first saw you and took your picture!” She spoke coolly enough, but her color was bright.

  “Ah, but before that shutter clicked, convicting me of a misdemeanor, your picture had found a place — —”

  “Mr. Ellis!”

  “Please let me — —”

  “No!”

  “Please — —”

  A silence.

  “Then you must speak lower,” she said, “and pretend to be watching the stream.”

  Professor Rawson gleefully scraped her plate and snuggled up in her poncho. She was very happy. When she could eat no more she asked Jones what his theory might be concerning Wagner’s influence on Richard Strauss, and Jones said he liked waltzes, but didn’t know that the man who wrote The Simple Life had anything to do with that sort of thing. And Professor Rawson laughed and laughed, and quoted a Greek proverb; and presently arose and went into the shanty, dropping the blanket behind her.

  “Don’t sit up late!” she called sleepily.

  “Oh, no!” came the breathless duet.

  “And don’t forget to feed the swan!”

  “Oh, no!”

  A few minutes later a gentle, mellow, muffled monotone vibrated in the evening air. It was the swan-song of Professor Rawson.

  Ellis laid fresh logs on the blaze, lighted a cigarette, and returned to his seat beside Molly Sandys, who sat, swathed in her poncho, leaning back against the base of a huge pine.

  “Jones is right,” he said; “the simple life — the older and simpler emotions, the primal desire — is a state of mind.”

  Molly Sandys was silent.

  “And a state of — heart.”

  Miss Sandys raised her eyebrows.

  “Why be insincere?” persisted Ellis.

  “I’m not!”

  “No — no — I didn’t mean you. I meant everybody — —”

  “I’m somebody — —”

  “Indeed you are!” — much too warmly; and Molly Sandys looked up at the evening star.

  “The simple life,” said Ellis, “is an existence replete with sincerity. Impulse may play a pretty part in it; the capacity for the enjoyment of simple things grows out of impulse; and impulse is a child’s reasoning. Therefore, impulse, being unsullied, unaffected in its source, is to be respected, cherished, guided into a higher development, so that it may become a sweet reasonableness, an unerring philosophy. Am I right, Miss Sandys?”

  “I think you are.”

  “Well, then, following out my theorem logically, what is a man to do when, without an instant’s warning, he finds himself — —”

  There was a pause, a long one.

  “Finds himself where?” asked Molly Sandys.

  “In love.”

  “I — I don’t know,” she said, faintly. “Doesn’t the simple life teach him what is — is proper — on such brief acquaintance — —”

  “I didn’t say the acquaintance was brief. I only said the love was sudden.”

  “Oh — then I — I don’t know — —”

  “M-Mo-Mi-M-M — —”

  He wanted to say “Molly,” and he didn’t want to say “Miss Sandys,” and he couldn’t keep his mouth shut, so that was the phonetic result — a muttering monotone which embarrassed them both and maddened him till he stammered out: “The moment I saw you I — I can’t help it; it’s the simplest thing to do, anyhow — to tell you — —”

  “Me!”

  “You, M-M-Mo-Mi-M — —” He couldn’t say it.

  “Try,” she whispered, stifling with laughter.

  “Molly!” Like a cork from a popgun came the adored yet dreaded name.

  Molly turned scarlet as Miss Gay and Jones looked up in pure amazement from the farther side of the camp-fire.

  “Don’t you know how to make love?” she whispered in a fierce little voice; “don’t you? If you don’t I am going off to bed.”

  “Molly!” That was better — in fact, it was so low that she could scarcely hear him. But she said: “Doesn’t Helen Gay look charming in her tin armour? She is the dearest, sweetest girl, Mr. Ellis. She’s my cousin. Do you think her pretty?”

  “Do you know,” whispered Ellis, “that I am in dead earnest?”

  “Why, I — I hope so.”

  “Then tell me what chance I stand. I am in love; it came awfully quickly, as quickly as you snapped that kodak — but it has come to stay — —”

  “But I am not in — love.

  “That is why I speak. I can’t endure it to let you go — Heaven knows where — —”

  “Only to New York,” she said, demurely, and, in a low voice, she named the street and the number. “In an interval of sanit
y you shall have an opportunity to reflect on what you have said to me, Mr. Ellis. Being a — a painter — and a rather famous one — for so young a man — you are, no doubt, impulsive — in love with love — not with a girl you met six hours ago.”

  “But if I am in love with her?”

  “We will argue that question another time.”

  “In New York?”

  She looked at him, a gay smile curving her lips. Suddenly the clear, grey eyes filled; a soft, impulsive hand touched his for an instant, then dropped.

  “Be careful,” she said, unsteadily; “so far, I also have only been in love with love.”

  Stunned by the rush of emotion he rose to his feet as she rose, eye meeting eye in audacious silence.

  Then she was gone, leaving him there — gone like a flash into the camp-hut; he saw the blanket twitching where she had passed behind it; he heard the muffled swan-song of her blanket-mate; he turned his enchanted eyes upon Jones. Jones, his elbows on the ground, chin on his palms, was looking up into the rapt face of Helen Gay, who sat by the fire, her mailed knees gathered up in her slim hands, the reflection of the blaze playing scarlet over her glittering tin armour.

  “Why may I not call you Helen?” he was saying.

  “Why should you, Mr. Jones?”

  The infatuated pair were oblivious of him. Should he sneeze? No; his own case was too recent; their attitude fascinated him; he sat down softly to see how it was done.

  “If — some day — I might be fortunate enough to call you more than Helen — —”

  “Mr. Jones!”

  “I can’t help it; I love you so — so undauntedly that I have got to tell you something about it! You don’t mind, do you?”

  “But I do mind.”

  “Very much?”

  Ellis thought: “Is that the way a man looks when he says things like that?” He shuddered, then a tremor of happiness seized him. Molly Sandys had emerged from the hut.

  Passing the fire, she came straight to Ellis. “It’s horrid in there. Don’t you hear her? It’s muffled, I know, because she’s taken the swan to bed with her, and it’s asleep, too, and acting as though Professor Rawson’s head were a nest-egg. I am not sleepy; I — I believe I shall sit up by this delightful fire all night. Make me a nest of blankets.”