Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Well?” she asked carelessly, laying her cue across the table.

  “Nothing.... I think I’ll clear out to-morrow.”

  “Oh.”

  She did not even inquire where he was going. For that matter he did not know, except that there was one place he could not go — home; the only place he cared to go.

  He had already offered her divorce — thinking of Innisbrae, or of some of the others. But she did not want it. It was, perhaps, not in her to care enough for any man to go through that amount of trouble. Besides, Their Majesties disapproved divorce. And for this reason alone nothing would have induced her to figure in proceedings certain to exclude her from one or two sets.

  “Anything I can do for you before I leave?” he asked, dully.

  It appeared that there was nothing he could do for his young wife before he wandered on in the jolly autumn sunshine.

  So the next morning he cleared out. Which proceeding languidly interested Innisbrae that evening in the billiard-room.

  That winter Clive got hurt while pig-sticking in Morocco, being but an indifferent spear. During convalescence he read “Under Two Flags,” and approved the idea; but when he learned that the Spahi cavalry was not recruiting Americans, and when, a month later, he discovered how much romance did not exist in either the First or Second Foreign Legions, he no longer desired dangers incognito under the tri-colour or under the standard bearing the open hand.

  “During convalescence he read ‘Under Two Flags’ and approved the idea.”

  Some casual wanderer through the purlieus of science whom he met in Brindisi, induced him to go to Sumatra where orchids and ornithoptera are the game. But he acquired only a perfectly new species of fever, which took six months to get over.

  He convalesced at leisure all the way from Australia to Cape Town; and would have been all right; but somebody shot at somebody else one evening, and got Clive. So it was several months more before he arrived in India, and the next year before he had enough of China.

  But Clive had seen many things in those two years and had learned fairly well the lesson of his own unimportance in a world which misses no man, neither king nor clown, after the dark curtain falls and satiated humanity shuffles home to bed.

  He saw a massacre — or the remains of it — where fifteen thousand yellow men and one white priest lay dead. He saw Republican China, 40,000 strong, move out after the banditti, shouldering its modern rifles, while its regimental music played “Rosie O’Grady” in quick march time. He saw the railway between Hankow and Pekin swarming with White Wolf’s bloody pack, limping westward from the Honan-Anhui border with dripping fangs. He peered into the stinking wells of Honan where women were cutting their own throats. He witnessed the levity of Lhasa priests and saw their grimy out-thrust hands clutching for tips beside their prayer-wheels.

  In India he gazed upon the degradation of woman and the unspeakable bestiality of man till that vile and dusty hell had sickened him to the soul.

  Back into Europe he drifted; and instantly and everywhere appeared the awful Yankee — shooting wells in Hungary, shooting craps in Monaco, digging antiques in Greece, digging tunnels in Servia, — everywhere the Yankee, drilling, bridging, constructing, exploring, pushing, arguing, quarrelling, insisting, telegraphing, gambling, touring, over-running older and better civilisations than his own crude Empire where he has nothing to learn from anybody but the Almighty — and then only when he condescends to ask for advice on Sunday.

  And Clive, nevertheless, longed with a longing that made him sick, for “God’s country” where all that is worst and best on earth still boils in the vast and seething cauldron of a continent in the making. There bubbles the elemental broth, dregs, scum, skimmings, residue, by-products, tailings, smoking corruption above the slowly forming and incorruptible matrix in its depths where lies imbedded, and ever growing, the Immam, the Hope of the World — gem indestructible, pearl beyond price. Difficilia quae pulchra.

  And once, Clive had almost set out for home; and then, grimly, turned away toward the southern continent of the hemisphere.

  In Lima he heard of an expedition fitting out to search for the lost Americans, Cromer and Page, and for the Hungarian Seljan. And that same evening he met Captain Dane.

  They looked at each other very carefully, and then shook hands. Clive said: “If you want a handy man in camp, I’d like to go.”

  “Come on,” said Dane, briefly.

  Later, looking over together some maps in Dane’s rooms, the big blond soldier of fortune glanced up at the younger man, and saw a lean, bronzed visage clamped mute by a lean bronzed jaw; but he also saw two dark eyes fixed on him in the fierce silence of unuttered inquiry. After a moment Dane said very quietly:

  “Yes, she was well, and I think happy, when I left New York.... How long is it since you have heard from her?”

  “Three years.”

  “Three years,” mused Dane, gazing into space out of his slitted eyes of arctic blue; “yes, that’s some little time. Bailey.... She is well — I think I said that.... And very prosperous, and greatly admired ... and happy — I believe.”

  The other waited.

  Dane picked up a linen map, looked at it, fiddled with the corner. Then, carelessly: “She is not married,” he said.... “Here’s the Huallaga River as I located it four years ago. Seljan and O’Higgins were making for it, I believe.... That red crayon circle over there marks the habitat of the Uta fly. It’s worse than the Tsetse. If anybody is hunting death — esta aquí!... Here is the Putumayo district. Hell lies up here, just above it.... Here’s Iquitos, and here lies Para, three thousand miles away.... Were you going to say something?”

  But if Clive had anything to say he seemed to find no words to say it. And he only folded his arms on the table’s edge and looked down at the stained and crumpled map.

  “It will take us about a year,” remarked Dane.

  Clive nodded, but his eye involuntarily sought the irregular red circle where trouble of all sorts might be conveniently ended by a perfectly respectable Act of God.

  Actus Dei nemini facit injuriam.

  CHAPTER XIX

  THERE was a slight fragrance of tobacco in the room mingling with the fresh, spring-like scent of lilacs — great pale clusters of them decorated mantel and table, and the desk where Athalie sat writing to Captain Dane in the semi-dusk of a May evening.

  Here and there dim figures loomed in the big square room; the graceful shape of a young girl at the piano detached itself from the gloom; a man or two dawdled by the window, vaguely silhouetted against the lilac-tinted sky.

  Athalie wrote on: “I had not supposed you had landed until Cecil Reeve told me this evening. If you are not too tired to come, please do so. Do you realise that you have been away over a year? Do you realise that I am now twenty-four years old, and that I am growing older every minute? You had better hasten, then, because very soon I shall be too old to believe your magic fairy tales of field and flood and all your wonder lore of travel in those distant golden lands I dream of.

  “Who was your white companion? Cecil tells me that you said you had one. Bring him with you this evening; you’ll need corroboration, I fear. And mostly I desire to know if you are well, and next I wish to hear whether you did really find the lost city of Yhdunez.”

  A maid came to take the note to Dane’s hotel, the Great Eastern, and Cecil Reeve looked up and laid aside his cigarette.

  “Come on, Athalie,” he said, “tell Peg to turn on one of those Peruvian dances.”

  Peggy Brooks at the piano struck a soft sensuous chord or two, but Francis Hargrave would not have it, and he pulled out the proper phonographic record and cranked the machine while Cecil rolled up the Beluch rugs.

  The somewhat muffled air that exuded from the machine was the lovely Miraflores, gay, lively, languorous, sad by turns — and much danced at the moment in New York.

  A new spring moon looked into the room from the west where like elegant and graceful ph
antoms the dancers moved, swayed, glided, swung back again with sinuous grace into the suavely delicate courtship of the dance.

  The slender feet and swaying figure of Athalie seemed presently to bewitch the other couple, for they drew aside and stood together watching that exquisite incarnation of youth itself, gliding, bending, floating in the lilac-scented, lilac-tinted dusk under the young moon.

  The machine ran down in the course of time, and Hargrave went over to re-wind it, but Peggy Brooks waved him aside and seated herself at the piano, saying she had enough of Hargrave.

  She was still playing the quaint, sweet dance called “The Orchid,” and Hargrave was leaning on the piano beside her watching Cecil and Athalie drifting through the dusk to the music’s rhythm, when the door opened and somebody came in.

  Athalie, in Cecil’s arms, turned her head, looking back over her shoulder. Dane loomed tall in the twilight.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed; “I am so glad!” — slipping out of Cecil’s arms and wheeling on Dane, both hands outstretched.

  The others came up, also, with quick, gay greetings, and after a moment or two of general and animated chatter Athalie drew Dane into a corner and made room for him beside her on the sofa. Peggy had turned on the music machine again and, snubbing Hargrave, was already beginning the Miraflores with Cecil Reeve.

  Athalie said: “Are you well? That’s the first question.”

  He said he was well.

  “And did you find your lost city?”

  He said, quietly: “We found Yhdunez.”

  “We?”

  “I and my white companion.”

  “Why didn’t you bring him with you this evening?” she asked. “Did you tell him I invited him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.... Couldn’t he come?”

  And, as he made no answer: “Couldn’t he?” she repeated. “Who is he, anyway—”

  “Clive Bailey.”

  She sat motionless, looking at him, the question still parting her lips. Dully in her ears the music sounded. The pallor which had stricken her face faded, grew again, then waned in the faint return of colour.

  Dane, who was looking away from her rather fixedly, spoke first, still not looking at her: “Yes,” he said in even, agreeable tones, “Clive was my white companion.... I gave him your note to read.... He did not seem to think that he ought to come.”

  “Why?” Her lips scarcely formed the word.

  “ — As long as you were not aware of whom you were inviting.... There had been some misunderstanding between you and him — or so I gathered — from his attitude.”

  A few moments more of silence; then she was fairly prepared.

  “Is he well?” she asked coolly.

  “Yes. He had one of those nameless fevers, down there. He’s coming out of it all right.”

  “Is he — his appearance — changed?”

  “He’s changed a lot, judging from the photographs he showed me taken three or four years ago. He’s changed in other ways, too, I fancy.”

  “How?”

  “Oh, I only surmise it. One hears about people — and their characteristics.... Clive is a good deal of a man.... I never had a better companion.... There were hardships — tight corners — we had a bad time of it for a while, along the Andes.... And the natives are treacherous — every one of them.... He was a good comrade. No man can say more than that, Miss Greensleeve. That includes about everything I ever heard of — when a man proves to be a good comrade. And there is no place on earth where a man can be so thoroughly tried out as in that sunless wilderness.”

  “Is he stopping at the Great Eastern?”

  “Yes. I believe he’s going back on Saturday.”

  She looked up sharply: “Back? Where?”

  “Oh, not to Peru. Only to England,” said Dane, forcing a laugh.

  After a moment she said: “And he wouldn’t come.... It is only three blocks, isn’t it?”

  “It wasn’t the distance, of course—”

  “No; I remember. He thought I might not have cared to see him.”

  “That was it.”

  Another silence; then in a lower voice which sounded a little hard: “His wife is living in England, I suppose.”

  “She is living — I don’t know where.”

  “Have they — children?”

  “I believe not.”

  She remained silent for a while, then, coolly enough:

  “I suppose he is sailing on Saturday to see his wife.”

  “I think not,” said Dane, gravely.

  “You say he is sailing for England.”

  “Yes, but I imagine it’s because he has nowhere else to go.”

  “Why doesn’t he stay here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He is American. His friends live here. Why doesn’t he remain here?”

  Dane shook his head: “He’s a restless man, Miss Greensleeve. That kind of man can’t stay anywhere. He’s got to go on — somewhere.”

  “I see.”

  There came a pause; then they talked of other things for a while until other people began to drop in, Arthur Ensart, Anne Randolph, and young Welter — Helter Skelter Welter, always, metaphorically speaking, redolent of saddle leather and reeking of sport. His theme happened to be his own wonderful trap record, that evening; and the fat, good-humoured, ardent young man prattled on about “unknown angles,” and “incomers,” until Dane, who had been hunting jaguars and cannibals along the unknown Andes, concealed his yawns with difficulty.

  Ensart insisted on turning on the lights and starting the machine; and presently Anne Randolph and Peggy were dancing the Miraflores with Cecil and Ensart.

  Welter had cornered Hargrave and Dane and was telling them all about it, and Athalie went slowly through the passage-way and into her own bedroom, where she stood quite motionless for a while, looking at the floor. Hafiz, dozing on the bed, awoke, gazed at his mistress gravely, yawned, and went to sleep again.

  “His theme happened to be his own wonderful trap record, that evening.”

  Presently she dropped onto a chair by her little ivory-tinted Louis XVI desk. There was a telephone there and a directory.

  When she had decided to open the latter, and had found the number she wanted, she unhooked the receiver and called for it.

  After a few minutes somebody said that he was not in his room, but that he was being paged.

  She waited, dully attentive to the far noises which sounded over the wire; then came a voice:

  “Yes; who is it?”

  She said: “I wished to speak to Mr. Bailey — Mr. Clive Bailey.”

  “I am Mr. Bailey.”

  For a moment the fact that she had not recognised his voice seemed to strike her speechless. And it was only when he spoke again, inquiringly, that she said in a low voice: “Clive!”

  “Yes.... Is — is it you!”

  “Yes.”

  And in the next heavily pulsating moment her breath came back with her self-control:

  “Why didn’t you come, Clive?”

  “I didn’t imagine you wanted me.”

  “I asked Captain Dane to invite you.”

  “Did you know whom you were inviting?”

  “No.... But I do now. Will you come?”

  “Yes. When?”

  “When you like. Come now if you like — unless you were engaged—”

  “No—”

  “What were you doing when I called you?”

  “Nothing.... Walking about the lobby.”

  “Did you find it interesting?”

  She heard him laugh — such a curious, strange, shaken laugh.

  She said: “I shall be very glad to see you, Clive. There are some of your friends here, too, who will be glad to see you.”

  “Then I’ll wait until—”

  “No; I had rather meet you for the first time when others are here — if you don’t mind. Do you?”

  “No,” he said, coolly; “I’ll come.”

&nb
sp; “Now?”

  “Yes, immediately.”

  Her heart was going at a terrific pace when she hung up the receiver. She went to her mirror, turned on the side-lights, and looked at herself. From the front room came the sound of the dance music, a ripple or two of laughter. Welter’s eager voice singing still of arms and the man.

  Long she stood there, motionless, studying herself, so that, when the moment came that was coming now so swiftly upon her, she might know what she appeared like in his eyes.

  All, so far, was sheer, fresh youth with her; her eyes had not lost their dewy beauty; the splendour of her hair remained unchanged. There were no lines, nothing lost, nothing hardened in contour. Clear and smooth her snowy chin; perfect, so far, the lovely throat: nothing of blemish was visible, no souvenirs of grief, of pain.

  And, as she looked, and all the time she was looking, she felt, subtly, that the ordered routine of her thoughts was changing; that a transformation was beginning somewhere deep within her — a new character emerging — a personality unfamiliar, disturbing, as though not entirely to be depended on.

  And in the mirror she saw her lips, scarcely parted, more vivid than she had ever seen them, and her eyes two wells of azure splendour; saw the smooth young bosom rise and fall; felt her heart, rapid, imperious, beating the “colours” into her cheeks.

  Suddenly, as she stood there, she heard him come in; — heard the astonished and joyous exclamations — Cecil’s bantering, cynical voice, Welter’s loud welcome. She pressed both hands to her hot cheeks, stared at herself a moment, then turned and walked leisurely toward the living-room.

  In her heart a voice was crying, crying: “Let the world see so that there may be no mistake! This man who was friendless is my friend. Let there be no mistake that he is more or less than that.” But she only said with a quick smile, and offering her hand: “I am so glad to see you, Clive. I am so glad you came.” And stood, still smiling, looking into the lean, sun-tanned face, under the concentrated eyes of her friends around them both.

  For a second it was difficult for him to speak; but only she saw the slight quiver of the mouth.