Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “That is all right as long as he doesn’t express it to me,” interrupted Quarren, bluntly.

  “He means to speak to you — —”

  “Please say to him that your report of his mental anguish is sufficient.”

  “Are you vindictive, Mr. Quarren?” she asked, reddening.

  “Not permanently. But I either like or I dislike. So let the incident close quietly.”

  “Very well — if you care to humiliate me — him — —”

  “Dear Mrs. Leeds, he isn’t going to be humiliated, because he doesn’t care. And you know I wouldn’t humiliate you for all the world — —”

  “You will unless you let Langly express his formal regrets to you — —”

  He looked up at her:

  “Would that make it easier for you?”

  “I — perhaps — please do as you see fit, Mr. Quarren.”

  “Very well,” he said quietly.

  He caressed the dog’s head where it lay across his knees, and looked out over the water. Breezes crinkled the surface in every direction and wind-blown dragon-flies glittered like swift meteors darting athwart the sun.

  She said in a low voice: “I hope your new business venture will be successful.”

  “I know you do. It is very sweet of you to care.”

  “I care — greatly.... As much as I — dare.”

  He laughed: “Don’t you dare care about me?”

  She bit her lip: “I have found it slightly venturesome on one or two occasions.”

  “So you don’t really dare express your kindly regard for me fearing I might again mistake it for something deeper.” He was still laughing, and she lifted her gray eyes in silence for a moment, then:

  “There is nothing in the world deeper than my regard for you — if you will let it be what it is, and seek to make nothing less spiritual out of it.”

  “Do you mean that?” he asked, his face altering.

  “Mean it? Why of course I do, Mr. Quarren.”

  “I thought I spoiled that for both of us,” he said.

  “I didn’t say so. I told you that I didn’t know what you had done. I’ve had time to reflect. It — our friendship isn’t spoiled — if you still value it.”

  “I value it above everything in the world, Strelsa.”

  There was a silence. The emotion in his face and voice was faintly reflected in hers.

  “Then let us have peace,” she said unsteadily. “I have — been — not very happy since you — since we — —”

  “I know. I’ve been utterly miserable, too.” He lifted one of her hands and kissed it, and she changed colour but left her hand lying inert in his.

  “Do you mind?” he asked.

  “N-no.”

  He laid his lips to her fingers again; she stirred uneasily, then rested her other arm on the back of the seat and shaded her eyes.

  “I think — you had better not — touch me — any more—” she said faintly.

  “Is it disagreeable?”

  “Yes — n-no.... It is — it has nothing to do with friendship—” she looked up, flushed, curious: “Why do you always want to touch me, Mr. Quarren?”

  “Did you never caress a flower?”

  “Rix!” — she caught her breath as his name escaped her for the first time, and he saw her face surging in the loveliest colour. “It was your nonsensical answer! — I — it took me by surprise ... and I ask your pardon for being stupid.... And — may I have my hand? I use it occasionally.”

  He quietly reversed it, laid his lips to the palm, and released her fingers.

  “Strelsa,” he said, “I’m coming back into the battle again.”

  “Then I am sorry I forgave you.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes, I am. Yes, yes, yes! Why can’t you be to me what I wish to be to you? Why can’t you be what I want — what I need — —”

  “Do you know what you need?”

  “Yes, I — —”

  “No, you don’t. You need to love — and to be loved. You don’t know it, but you do!”

  “That is a — a perfectly brutal thing to say — —”

  “Does it sound so to you?”

  “Yes, it does! It is brutal — common, unworthy of you and of me — —”

  He took both her hands in a grip that almost hurt her:

  “Can’t you have any understanding, any sympathy with human love? Can’t you? Doesn’t a man’s love mean anything to you but words? Is there anything to be ashamed of in it? — merely because nothing has ever yet awakened you to it?”

  “Nothing ever will,” she said steadily. “The friendship you can have of me is more than love — cleaner, better, stronger — —”

  “It isn’t strong enough to make you renounce what you are planning to do!”

  “No.”

  “Yet love would be strong enough to make you renounce anything!”

  She said calmly: “Call it by its right name. Yes, they say its slaves become irresponsible. I know nothing about it — I could not — I will not! I loathe and detest any hint of it — to me it is degrading — contemptible — —”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I am telling you the truth,” she retorted, pale, and breathing faster. “I’m telling you what I know — what I have learned in a bitter school — during two dreadful years — —”

  “That!”

  “Yes, that! Now you know! Now perhaps you can understand why I crave friendship and hold anything less in horror! Why can’t you be kind to me? You are the one man I could ask it of — the only man I ever saw who seemed fitted to give me what I want and need, and to whom I could return what he gave me with all my heart — all my heart — —”

  She bowed her face over the hands which he still held; suddenly he drew her close into his arms; and she rested so, her head against his shoulder.

  “I won’t talk to you of love any more,” he whispered. “You poor little girl — you poor little thing. I didn’t realise — I don’t want to think about it — —”

  “I don’t either,” she said. “You will be kind to me, won’t you?”

  “Of course — of course — you little, little girl. Nobody is going to find fault with you, nobody is going to blame you or be unkind or hurt you or demand anything at all of you or tell you that you make mistakes. People are just going to like you, Strelsa, and you needn’t love them if you don’t want to. You shall feel about everything exactly as you please — about Tom, Dick, and Harry and about me, too.”

  Her hot face against his shoulder was quivering.

  “There,” he whispered— “there, there — you little, little girl. That’s all I want of you after all — only what you want of me. I don’t wish to marry you if you don’t wish it; I won’t — I perhaps couldn’t really love you very deeply if you didn’t respond. I shall not bother you any more — or worry or nag or insist. What you do is right as far as I am concerned; what you offer I take; and whenever you find yourself unable to respond to anything I offer, say so fearlessly — look so, even, and I’ll understand. Is all well between us now, Strelsa?”

  “Yes.... You are so good.... I wanted this.... You don’t mean anything, do you by — by your arm around me — —”

  “No more than your face against my shoulder means.” He smiled— “Which I suppose signifies merely that you feel very secure with me.”

  “I — begin to.... Will you let me?”

  “Yes.... Do you feel restless? Do you want to lift your head?”

  She moved a little but made no reply. He could see only the full, smooth curve of her cheek against his shoulder. It was rather colourless.

  “I believe you are worn out,” he said.

  “I have not rested for weeks.”

  “On account of that Trust business?”

  “Yes.... But I was tired before that — I had done too much — lived too much — and I’ve felt as though I were being hunted for so long.... And then — I was unhappy about you.”r />
  “Because I had joined in the hunt,” he said.

  “You were different, but — you made me feel that way, too — a little — —”

  “I understand now.”

  “Do you really?”

  “Yes. It’s been a case of men following, crowding after you, urging, importuning you to consider their desires — to care for them in their own way — all sorts I suppose, sad and sentimental, eager and exacting, head-long and boisterous — all at you constantly to give them what is not in you to give — what has never been awakened — what lies stunned, crippled, perhaps mangled in its sleep — —”

  “Killed,” she whispered.

  “Perhaps.” He raised his eyes and looked absently out across the sparkling water. Sunlight slanted on his shoulder and her hair, gilding the nape of her white neck where the hair grew blond and fine as a child’s. And like a child, still confused by memories of past terror, partly quieted yet still sensitive to every sound or movement, Strelsa lay close to the arm that sheltered her, thinking, wondering that she could endure it, and all the while conscious that the old fear of him was no longer there.

  “Do you — know about me?” she asked in a still, low voice.

  “About the past?”

  “About my marriage.”

  “Yes.”

  “Everything?”

  “Some things.”

  “You know what the papers said?”

  “Yes.... Don’t speak of it — unless you care to, Strelsa.”

  “I want to.... Do you know this is the first time?”

  “Is it?”

  “The first time I have ever spoken of it to anybody.... As long as my mother lived I did not once speak of it to her.”

  She rested in silence for a while, then:

  “Could I tell you?”

  “My dear, my dear! — of course you can.”

  “I — it’s been unsaid so long — there was nobody to tell it to. I’ve done my best to forget it — and for days I seem to forget it. But sometimes when I wake at night it is there — the horror of it — the terror sinking deeper into my breast.... I was very young. You knew that?”

  “Yes.”

  “You knew my mother had very slender means?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wouldn’t have cared; I was an imaginative child — and could have lived quite happy with my fancies on very, very little.... I was a sensitive and affectionate child — inclined to be demonstrative. You wouldn’t believe it, would you?”

  “I can understand it.”

  “Can you? It’s odd because I have changed so.... I was quite romantic about my mother — madly in love with her.... There is nothing more to say.... In boarding-school I was perfectly aware that I was being given the best grooming that we could afford. Even then romance persisted. I had the ideas of a coloured picture-book concerning men and love and marriage. I remember, as a very little child, that I had a picture-book showing Cinderella’s wedding. It was a very golden sort of picture. It coloured my ideas long after I was grown up.”

  She moved her head a little, looked up for an instant and smiled; but at his answering smile she turned her cheek to his shoulder, hastily, and lay silent for a while. Presently she continued in a low voice:

  “It was when we were returning for the April vacation — and the platform was crowded and some of the girls’ brothers were there. There were two trains in — and much confusion — I don’t know how I became separated from Miss Buckley and my schoolmates — I don’t know to this day how I found myself on the Baltimore train, and Gladys Leeds’s brother laughing and talking and the train moving faster and faster.... There is no use saying any more. I was as ignorant as I was innocent — a perfect little fool, frightened, excited, even amused by turns.... He had been attentive to me. We both were fools. Only finally I became badly scared and he talked such nonsense — and I managed to slip away from him and board the train at Baltimore as soon as we arrived there.... If he hadn’t found me and returned to New York with me, it might not have been known. But we were recognised on the train and — it was a dreadful thing for me when I arrived home after midnight....”

  She fell silent; once or twice he looked down at her and saw that her eyes were closed. Then, with a quick, uneven breath:

  “I think you know the rest, don’t you?”

  “I think so.”

  But she went on in a low, emotionless voice: “I was treated like a damaged gown — for which depreciation in value somebody was to be made responsible. I suffered; days and nights seemed unreal. There were lawyers; did you know it?”

  “No.”

  “Yes,” she said wearily, “it was a bad dream — my mother, others — his family — many people strange and familiar passed through it. Then we travelled; I saw nothing, feeling half dead.... We were married in the Hawaiian Islands.”

  “I know.”

  “Then — the two years began.”

  After a long while she said again: “That was the real nightmare. I passed through the depths as in a trance. There was nothing lower, not even hell.... We travelled in Europe, Africa, and India for two years.... I scarcely remember a soul I saw or one single object. And then — that happened.”

  “I know, dear.”

  A slight shudder passed over her:

  “I’ve told you,” she whispered— “I’ve told you at last. Shall I tell you more?”

  “Not unless — —”

  “I don’t know whether I want to — about the gendarmes — and that terrible woman who screamed when they touched her with the handcuffs — and how ill I was — —”

  She had begun to tremble so perceptibly that Quarren’s arm tightened around her; and presently she became limp and motionless.

  “This — what I have told you — is a very close bond between us, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Very close, Strelsa.”

  “Was I much to blame?”

  “No.”

  “How much?”

  “You should have left him long before.”

  “Why, he was my husband! I had made a contract; I had to keep it and make the best of it.”

  “Is that your idea?”

  “That was all I could see to do about it.”

  “Don’t you believe in divorce?”

  “Yes; but I thought he’d be killed; I thought he was a little insane. If he’d been well mentally and merely cruel and brutal I would have left him. But one can’t abandon a helpless person.”

  “Every word you utter,” he said, “forges a new link in my love for you.”

  “You don’t mean — love?”

  “We mean the same I think — differing only in degree.”

  “Thank you. That is nice of you.”

  He nodded, smiling to himself; then, graver:

  “Is your little fortune quite gone, Strelsa?”

  “All gone — all of it.”

  “I see.... And something has got to be done.”

  “You know it has.... And I’m old before my time — tired, worn out. I can’t work — I have no heart, no courage. My heart and strength were burnt out; I haven’t the will to struggle; I have no capacity to endure. What am I to do?”

  “Not what you plan to do.”

  “Why not? As long as I need help — and the best is offered — —”

  “Wouldn’t you take less — and me?”

  “Oh, Rix! I couldn’t use you!”

  She turned and looked up at him, blushed, and dis-engaged herself from his arm.

  “I — I — you are my friend. I couldn’t do that. I have nothing to give anybody — not even you.” She smiled, tremulously— “And I suspect that as far as your fortune is concerned, you can offer me little more.... But it’s sweet of you. You are generous, having so little and wishing to share it with me — —”

  “Could you wait for me, Strelsa?”

  “Wait? You mean until you become wealthy? Why, you dear boy, how can I? — even if it were a certainty.”

>   “Can’t you hold on for a couple of years?”

  “Please tell me how? Why, I can’t even pay my attorneys until I sell my house.”

  He bit his lip and frowned at the sunlit water.

  “Besides,” she said, “I haven’t anything to offer you that I haven’t already given you — —”

  “I ask no more.”

  “Oh, but you do!”

  “No, I want only what you want, Strelsa — only what you have to offer of your own accord.”

  They fell silent, leaning forward on their knees, eyes absent, remote.

  “I don’t see how it can be done; do you?” she said.

  “If you could wait — —”

  “But Rix; I’ve told him that I would marry him.”

  “Does that count?”

  “Yes — I don’t know. I don’t know how dishonest I might be.... I don’t know what is going to happen. I’m so poor, Rix — you don’t realise — and I’m tired and sad — old before my time — perplexed, burnt out — —”

  She rested her head on one slender curved hand and closed her eyes. After a while she opened them with a weary smile.

  “I’ll try to think — after you are gone.... What time does your train leave?”

  He glanced at his watch and rose; and she sprang up, too:

  “Have I kept you too long?”

  “No; I can make it. We’ll have to walk rather fast — —”

  “I’d rather you left me here.”

  “Would you? Then — good-bye — —”

  “Good-bye.... Will you come up again?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Shall we write?”

  “Will you?”

  “Yes. I have so much to say, now that you are going. I am glad you came. I am glad I told you everything. Please believe that my heart is enlisted in your new enterprise; that I pray for your success and welfare and happiness. Will you always remember that?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “Then — I mustn’t keep you a moment longer. Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye.”

  They stood a moment, neither stirring; then he put his arms around her; she touched his shoulder once more, lightly with her cheek — a second’s contact; then he kissed her clasped hands and was gone.

  CHAPTER XI

  Quarren arrived in town about twilight. Taxis were no longer for him nor he for them. Suit-case and walking-stick in hand, he started up Lexington Avenue still excited and exhilarated from his leave-taking with Strelsa. An almost imperceptible fragrance seemed to accompany him, freshening the air around him in the shabby streets of Ascalon; the heat-cursed city grew cooler, sweeter for her memory. Through the avenue’s lamp-lit dusk passed the pale ghosts of Gath and the phantoms of the Philistines, and he thought their shadowy forms moved less wearily; and that strange faces looked less wanly at him as they grew out of the night— “clothed in scarlet and ornaments of gold” — and dissolved again into darkness.