Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  He opened the limousine door; she stepped in, and he wrapped the robe around her. A cloud over the sun had turned the world grey for a moment. Again she seemed to feel the sudden chill in the air, and tried to shake it off.

  “Look at Mr. Cairns and Cynthia,” she whispered, leaning forward from her seat and looking toward the church.

  He turned. Cairns and Miss Lessler had emerged from the portico and were lingering there in earnest consultation, quite oblivious of them.

  “Do you like her, Jim?” she asked.

  He smiled.

  “I didn’t notice her very much — or Jack either. A man isn’t likely to notice anybody at such a time — except the girl he is marrying — —”

  “Look at her now. Don’t you think her expression is very sweet?”

  “It’s all right. Dear, do you suppose I can fix my attention on — —”

  “You absurd boy! Are you really as much in love with me as that? Please be nice to her. Would you mind going back and speaking to her when I drive away?”

  “All right,” he said.

  Their glances lingered for a moment more; then he drew a quick, sharp breath, closed the limousine door, and spoke briefly to the chauffeur.

  As long as the car remained in sight across the square, he watched it; then, when it had disappeared, he turned toward the church. But Cairns and Cynthia were already far down the street, walking side by side, very leisurely, apparently absorbed in conversation. They must have seen him. Perhaps they had something more interesting to say to each other than to him.

  He followed them irresolutely for a few steps, then, as the idea persisted that they might not desire his company, he turned and started west across the sunny, wet pavement.

  It was quite true that Cairns and Cynthia had seen him; also it was a fact that neither had particularly wanted him to join them at that exact moment.

  Meeting at St. George’s for the first time in two years, and although prepared for the encounter, these two, who had once known each other so well, experienced a slight shock when they met. The momentary contact of her outstretched hand and his hand left them both very silent; even the formal commonplaces had failed them after the first swift, curious glance had been exchanged.

  Cairns noticed that she had grown taller and slenderer. And though there seemed to be no more of maturity to her than to the young girl he had once known, her poise and self-control were now in marked contrast to the impulsive and slightly nervous Cynthia he had found so amusing in callower days.

  Once or twice during the ceremony he had ventured to glance sideways at her. In the golden half-light of the altar there seemed to be an unfamiliar dignity and sweetness about the girl that became her. And in the delicate oval of her face he thought he discerned those finer, nobler contours made by endurance, by self-denial, and by sorrow.

  Later, when he saw her kiss Jacqueline, something in the sweet sincerity of the salute suddenly set a hidden chord vibrating within him; and, to his surprise, he found speech difficult for a moment, checked by emotions for which there seemed no reason.

  And at last Jacqueline and Desboro went away, and Cynthia slowly turned to him, offering her hand in adieu.

  “Mr. Cairns,” she said quietly, “this is the last place on earth that you and I ever thought to meet. Perhaps it is to be our last meeting place. So — I will say good-bye — —”

  “May I not walk home with you? Or, if you prefer to drive, my car is here — —” he began.

  “Thank you; it’s only to the theatre — if you care to walk with me — —”

  “Are you rehearsing?”

  “There is a rehearsal called for eleven.”

  “Shall we drive or walk, Cynthia?”

  “I prefer to walk. Please don’t feel that you ought to go back with me.”

  He said, reddening: “I do not remember that my sense of duty toward you has ever been persistent enough to embarrass either of us.”

  “Of course not. Why should you ever have felt that you owed any duty to me?”

  “I did not say that I ever felt it.”

  “Of course not. You owed me none.”

  “That is a different matter. Obligations once sat very lightly on my shoulders.”

  “You owe me none,” she repeated smilingly, as they emerged from the church into the warm March sunshine.

  He was saying: “But isn’t friendship an obligation, Cynthia?”

  She laughed: “Friendship is merely an imaginary creation, and exists only until the imagination wearies. That is not original,” she added. “It is in the new Barrie comedy we are rehearsing.”

  She turned her pretty head and glanced down the street where Jacqueline and Desboro still stood beside the car. Cairn’s car was also waiting, and its owner made a signal to the chauffeur that he did not need him.

  Looking at Jacqueline, Cynthia said:

  “Long ago I knew that she was fitted for a marriage such as this — or a better one,” she added in a lower voice.

  “A better one?” he repeated, surprised.

  “Yes,” she nodded calmly. “Can you not imagine a more desirable marriage for a girl?”

  “Don’t you like Desboro?” he demanded.

  “I like him — considering the fact that I scarcely know him. He has very handsome and very reckless eyes, but a good mouth. To look at him for the first time a woman would be inclined to like him — but he might hesitate to trust him. I had hoped Jacqueline might marry a professional man — considerably older than Mr. Desboro. That is all I meant.”

  He said, looking at her smilingly but curiously: “Have you any idea, Cynthia, how entirely you have changed in two years?”

  She shook her head: “I haven’t changed.”

  “Indeed you have — —”

  “Only superficially. What I was born I shall always be. Years teach endurance and self-control — if they teach anything. All one can learn is how to control and direct what one already is.”

  “The years have taught you a lot,” he murmured, astonished.

  “I have been to school to many masters, Mr. Cairns; I have studied under Sorrow; graduated under Poverty and Loneliness; and I am now taking a finishing course with Experience. Truly enough, I should have learned something, as you say, by this time. Besides, you, also, once were kind enough to be interested in my education. Why should I not have learned something?”

  He winced and bit his lip, watching Desboro and Jacqueline below. And, after a moment:

  “Shall we walk?” she suggested, smilingly.

  He fell into step beside her. Half way down the block she glanced back. Desboro was already crossing the square; the limousine had disappeared.

  “I wonder sometimes,” she remarked, “what has become of all those amusing people we once knew so well — Marianne Valdez, Jessie Dain, Reggie Ledyard, Van Alstyne. Do you ever see them any more?”

  “Yes.”

  “And are they quite as gay and crazy as ever?”

  “They’re a bit wild — sometimes.”

  “Do they ever speak of me? I — wonder,” she mused, aloud.

  “Yes. They know, of course, what a clever girl you have turned into. It isn’t usual, you know, to graduate from a girlie show into the legit. And I was talking to Schindler the other evening; and he had to admit that he had seen nothing extraordinary in you when you were with his noisy shows. It’s funny, isn’t it?”

  “Slightly.”

  “Besides, you were such a wild little thing — don’t you remember what crazy things we used to do, you and I — —”

  “Did I? Yes, I remember. In those days a good dinner acted on me like champagne. You see I was very often hungry, and when I wasn’t starved it went to my head.”

  “You need not have wanted for anything!” he said sharply.

  “Oh, no! But I preferred the pangs of hunger to the pangs of conscience,” she retorted gaily.

  “I didn’t mean that. There was no string to what I offered you, and you
know it! And you know it now!”

  “Certainly I do,” she said calmly. “You mean to be very kind, Jack.”

  “Then why the devil didn’t — —”

  “Why didn’t I accept food and warmth and raiment and lodging from a generous and harebrained young man? I’ll tell you now, if you wish. It was because my conscience forbade me to accept all and offer nothing in return.”

  “Nonsense! I didn’t ask — —”

  “I know you didn’t. But I couldn’t give, so I wouldn’t take. Besides, we were together too much. I knew it. I think even you began to realise it, too. The situation was impossible. So I went on the road.”

  “You never answered any of those letters of mine.”

  “Mentally I answered every one.”

  “A lot of good that did me!”

  “It did us both a lot of good. I meant to write to you some day — when my life had become busy enough to make it difficult for me to find time to write.”

  He looked up at her sharply, and she laughed and swung her muff.

  “I suppose,” he said, “now that the town talks about you a little, you will have no time to waste on mere Johnnies.”

  “Well, I don’t know. When a mere Johnnie is also a Jack, it makes a difference — doesn’t it? Do you think that you would care to see me again?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “The tickets,” she said demurely, “are three dollars — two weeks in advance — —”

  “I know that by experience.”

  “Oh! Then you have seen ‘The Better Way’?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Do you like — the show?”

  “You are the best of it. Yes, I like it.”

  “It’s my first chance. Did you know that? If poor little Graham hadn’t been so ill, I’d never have had a look in. They wouldn’t give me anything — except in a way I couldn’t accept it. I tell you, Jack, I was desperate. There seemed to be absolutely no chance unless I — paid.”

  “Why didn’t you write me and let me — —”

  “You know why.”

  “It would have been reward enough to see you make good — and put it all over that bald-headed, dog-faced — —”

  “My employer, please remember,” she said, pretending to reprove him. “And, Jack, he’s amusingly decent to me now. Men are really beginning to be kind. Walbaum’s people have written to me, and O’Rourke sent for me, and I’m just beginning to make professional enemies, too, which is the surest sign that I’m almost out of the ranks. If I could only study! Now is the time! I know it; I feel it keenly — I realise how much I lack in education! You see I only went to high-school. It’s a mercy that my English isn’t hopeless — —”

  “It’s good! It’s better than I ever supposed it would be — —”

  “I know. I used to be careless. But what can you expect? After I left home you know the sort of girls I was thrown among. Fortunately, father was educated — if he was nothing else. My degeneracy wasn’t permanent. Also, I had been thrown with Jacqueline, and with you — —”

  “Fine educational model I am!”

  “And,” she continued, not heeding him, “when I met you, and men like you, I was determined that whatever else happened to me my English should not degenerate. Jacqueline helped me so much. I tried to study, too, when I was not on the road with the show. But if only I could study now — study seriously for a year or two!”

  “What do you wish to study, Cynthia?” he asked carelessly.

  “English! Also French and German and Italian. I would like to study what girls in college study. Then I’d like to learn stage dancing thoroughly. And, of course, I’m simply crazy to take a course in dramatic art — —”

  “But you already know a lot! Every paper spoke well of you — —”

  “Oh, Jack! Does that mean anything — when I know that I don’t know anything!”

  “Rot! Can you beat professional experience as an educator?”

  “I’m not quite ready for it — —”

  “Very well. If you feel that way, will you be a good sort, Cynthia, and let me — —”

  “No!”

  “I ask you merely to let me take a flyer!”

  “No, Jack.”

  “Why can’t I take a flyer? Why can’t I have the pleasure of speculating on a perfectly sure thing? It’s a million to nothing that you’ll make good. For the love of Mike, Cynthia, borrow the needful and — —”

  “From you?”

  “Naturally.”

  “No, Jack!”

  “Why not? Why cut off your nose to spite your face? What difference does it make where you get it as long as it’s a decent deal? You can’t afford to take two or three years off to complete your education — —”

  “Begin it, you mean.”

  “I mean finish it! You can’t afford to; but if you’ll borrow the money you’ll make good in exactly one-tenth of the time you’d otherwise take to arrive — —”

  “Jack, I won’t discuss it with you. I know you are generous and kind — —”

  “I’m not! I’m anything but! For heaven’s sake let a man indulge his vanity, Cynthia. Imagine my pride when you are famous! Picture my bursting vanity as I sit in front and tell everybody near me that the credit is all mine; that if it were not for me you would be nowhere!”

  “It’s so like you,” she said sweetly. “You always were an inordinate boaster, so I am not going to encourage you.”

  “Can’t you let me make you a business loan at exorbitant interest without expiring of mortification?”

  They had reached the theatre; a few loafers sunning themselves by the stage entrance leered at them.

  “Hush, Jack! I can’t discuss it with you. But you know how grateful I am, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t — —” he said sulkily.

  “You are cross now, but you’ll see it as I do half an hour hence.”

  “No, I won’t!” he insisted.

  She laughed: “You haven’t changed, at all events, have you? It takes me back years to see that rather becoming scowl gather over the bridge of your ornamental nose. But it is very nice to know that you haven’t entirely forgotten me; that we are still friends.”

  “Where are you living, Cynthia?”

  She told him, adding: “Do you really mean to come?”

  “Watch me!” he said, almost savagely, took off his hat, shook her hand until her fingers ached, and marched off still scowling.

  The stage loafers shifted quids and looked after him with sneers.

  “Trun out!” observed one.

  “All off!” nodded another.

  The third merely spat and slowly closed his disillusioned and leisure-weary eyes.

  Cairns’ energetic pace soon brought him to the Olympian Club, where he was accustomed to lunch, it being convenient to his office, which was on Forty-sixth Street.

  Desboro, who, at Jacqueline’s request, had gone back to business, appeared presently and joined Cairns at a small table.

  “Anything doing at the office?” inquired the latter. “I suppose you were too nervous and upset to notice the market though.”

  “Well, ask yourself how much you’d feel like business after marrying the most glorious and wonderful — —”

  “Ring off! I concede everything. It is going to make some splash in the papers. Yes? Lord! I wish you could have had a ripping big wedding though! Wouldn’t she have looked the part? Oh, no!”

  “It couldn’t be helped,” said Desboro in a low, chagrined voice. “I’d have given the head off my shoulders to have had the sort of a wedding to which she was entitled. But — I couldn’t.”

  Cairns nodded, not, however, understanding; and as Desboro offered no explanation, he remained unenlightened.

  “Rather odd,” he remarked, “that she didn’t wish to have Aunt Hannah with her at the fatal moment. They’re such desperate chums these days.”

  “She did want her. I wouldn’t have her.”


  “Is that so?”

  “It is. I’ll tell you why some day. In fact, I don’t mind telling you now. Aunt Hannah has it in for me. She’s a devil sometimes. You know it and I do. She has it in for me just now. She’s wrong; she’s made a mistake; but I couldn’t tell her anything. You can’t tell that sort of a woman anything, once she’s made up her mind. And the fact is, Jack, she’s already made up her mind that I was not to marry Jacqueline. And I was afraid of her. And that’s why I married Jacqueline this way.”

  Cairns stared.

  “So now,” added Desboro, “you know how it happened.”

  “Quite so. Rotten of her, wasn’t it?”

  “She didn’t mean it that way. She got a fool idea into her head, that’s all. Only I was afraid she’d tell it to Jacqueline.”

  “I see.”

  “That’s what scared me. I didn’t know what she might tell Jacqueline. She threatened to tell her — things. And it would have involved a perfectly innocent woman and myself — put me in a corner where I couldn’t decently explain the real facts to Jacqueline. Now, thank God, it’s too late for Aunt Hannah to make mischief.”

  Cairns nodded, thinking of Mrs. Clydesdale. And whatever he personally was inclined to believe, he knew that gossip was not dealing very leniently with that young wife and the man who sat on the other side of the table, nervously pulling to pieces his unlighted cigarette.

  But it needed no rumour, no hearsay evidence, no lifted eyebrows, no shrugs, no dubious smiles, no half-hearted defence of Elena Clydesdale, to thoroughly convince Mrs. Hammerton of Desboro’s utter unfitness as a husband for the motherless girl she had begun to love with a devotion so fierce that at present it could brook no rival at all of either sex.

  For Mrs. Hammerton had never before loved. She had once supposed that she loved her late husband, but soon came to regard him as a poor sort of thing. She had been extremely fond of Desboro, too, in her own way, but in the vivid fire of this new devotion to Jacqueline, any tenderness she ever might have cherished for that young man was already consumed and sacrificed to a cinder in the fiercer flame.

  Into her loneliness, into her childless solitude, into the hardness, cynicism, and barren emptiness of her latter years, a young girl had stepped from nowhere, and she had suddenly filled her whole life with the swift enchantment of love.