Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “What’s this?” he demanded.

  “A monotype.”

  “You did it?”

  “Y-yes.”

  He seemed unable to take his eyes from it — from the exquisite figures there in the sun on the bank of the brimming river under an iris-tinted April sky.

  “What do you call it, Rue?”

  “Baroque.”

  He continued to scrutinise it in silence, then drew another carton prepared for oil from the sheaf on the sofa.

  Over autumn woods, in a windy sky, high-flying crows were buffeted and blown about. From the stark trees a few phantom leaves clung, fluttering; and the whole scene was possessed by sinuous, whirling forms — mere glimpses of supple, exquisite shapes tossing, curling, flowing through the naked woodland. A delicate finger caught at a dead leaf here; there frail arms clutched at a bending, wind-tossed bough; grey sky and ghostly forest were obsessed, bewitched by the winnowing, driving torrent of airy, half seen spirits.

  “The Winds,” he said mechanically.

  He looked at another — a sketch of the Princess Naïa. And somehow it made him think of vast skies and endless plains and the tumult of surging men and rattling lances.

  “A Cossack,” he said, half to himself. “I never before realised it.” And he laid it aside and turned to the next.

  “I haven’t brought any life studies or school drawings,” she said. “I thought I’d just show you the — the results of them and of — of whatever is in me.”

  “I’m just beginning to understand what is in you,” he said.

  “Tell me — what is it?” she asked, almost timidly.

  “Tell you?” He rose, stood by the window looking out, then turned to her:

  “What can I tell you?” he added with a short laugh. “What have I to say to a girl who can do — these — after two years abroad?”

  Sheer happiness kept her silent. She had not dared hope for such approval. Even now she dared not permit herself to accept it.

  “I have so much to say,” she ventured, “and such an appalling amount of work before I can learn to say it — —”

  “Your work is — stunning!” he said bluntly.

  “You don’t think so!” she exclaimed incredulously.

  “Indeed I do! Look at what you have done in two years. Yes, grant all your aptitude and talents, just look what you’ve accomplished and where you are! Look at you yourself, too — what a stunning, bewildering sort of girl you’ve developed into!”

  “Jim Neeland!”

  “Certainly, Jim Neeland, of Neeland’s Mills, who has had years more study than you have, more years of advantage, and who now is an illustrator without anything in particular to distinguish him from the several thousand other American illustrators — —”

  “Jim! Your work is charming!”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I have everything you ever did! I sent for the magazines and cut them out; and they are in my scrapbook — —”

  She hesitated, breathless, smiling back at him out of her beautiful golden-grey eyes as though challenging him to doubt her loyalty or her belief in him.

  It was rather curious, too, for the girl was unusually intelligent and discriminating; and Neeland’s work was very, very commonplace.

  His face had become rather sober, but the smile still lurked on his lips.

  “Rue,” he said, “you are wonderfully kind. But I’m afraid I know about my work. I can draw pretty well, according to school standards; and I approach pretty nearly the same standards in painting. Probably that is why I became an instructor at the Art League. But, so far, I haven’t done anything better than what is called ‘acceptable.’”

  “I don’t agree with you,” she said warmly.

  “It’s very kind of you not to.” He laughed and walked to the window again, and stood there looking out across the sunny garden. “Of course,” he added over his shoulder, “I expect to get along all right. Mediocrity has the best of chances, you know.”

  “You are not mediocre!”

  “No, I don’t think I am. But my work is. And, do you know,” he continued thoughtfully, “that is very often the case with a man who is better equipped to act than to tell with pen or pencil how others act. I’m beginning to be afraid that I’m that sort, because I’m afraid that I get more enjoyment out of doing things than in explaining with pencil and paint how they are done.”

  But Rue Carew, seated on the arm of her chair, slowly shook her head:

  “I don’t think that those are the only alternatives; do you?”

  “What other is there?”

  She said, a little shyly:

  “I think it is all right to do things if you like; make exact pictures of how things are done if you choose; but it seems to me that if one really has anything to say, one should show in one’s pictures how things might be or ought to be. Don’t you?”

  He seemed surprised and interested in her logic, and she took courage to speak again in her pretty, deprecating way:

  “If the function of painting and literature is to reflect reality, a mirror would do as well, wouldn’t it? But to reflect what might be or what ought to be requires something more, doesn’t it?”

  “Imagination. Yes.”

  “A mind, anyway.... That is what I have thought; but I’m not at all sure I am right.”

  “I don’t know. The mind ought to be a mirror reflecting only the essentials of reality.”

  “And that requires imagination, doesn’t it?” she asked. “You see you have put it much better than I have.”

  “Have I?” he returned, smiling. “After a while you’ll persuade me that I possess your imagination, Rue. But I don’t.”

  “You do, Jim — —”

  “I’m sorry; I don’t. You construct, I copy; you create, I ring changes on what already is; you dissect, I skate over the surface of things — Oh, Lord! I don’t know what’s lacking in me!” he added with gay pretence of despair which possibly was less feigned than real. “But I know this, Rue Carew! I’d rather experience something interesting than make a picture of it. And I suppose that confession is fatal.”

  “Why, Jim?”

  “Because with me the pleasures of reality are substituted for the pleasures of imagination. Not that I don’t like to draw and paint. But my ambition in painting is and always has been bounded by the visible. And, although that does not prevent me from appreciation — from understanding and admiring your work, for example — it sets an impregnable limit to any such aspiration on my part — —”

  His mobile and youthful features had become very grave; he stood a moment with lowered head as though what he was thinking of depressed him; then the quick smile came into his face and cleared it, and he said gaily:

  “I’m an artistic Dobbin; a reliable, respectable sort of Fido on whom editors can depend; that’s all. Don’t feel sorry for me,” he added, laughing; “my work will be very much in demand.”

  CHAPTER XXIX

  EN FAMILLE

  The Princess Mistchenka came leisurely and gracefully downstairs a little before eight that evening, much pleased with her hair, complexion, and gown.

  She found Neeland alone in the music-room, standing in the attitude of the conventional Englishman with his back to the fireless grate and his hands clasped loosely behind him, waiting to be led out and fed.

  The direct glance of undisguised admiration with which he greeted the Princess Naïa confirmed the impression she herself had received from her mirror, and brought an additional dash of colour into her delicate brunette face.

  “Is there any doubt that you are quite the prettiest objet d’art in Paris?” he enquired anxiously, taking her hand; and her dark eyes were very friendly as he saluted her finger-tips with the reverent and slightly exaggerated appreciation of a connoisseur in sculpture.

  “You hopeless Irishman,” she laughed. “It’s fortunate for women that you’re never serious, even with yourself.”

  “Princess Na
ïa,” he remonstrated, “can nothing short of kissing you convince you of my sincerity and — —”

  “Impudence?” she interrupted smilingly. “Oh, yes, I’m convinced, James, that, lacking other material, you’d make love to a hitching post.”

  His hurt expression and protesting gesture appealed to the universe against misinterpretation, but the Princess Mistchenka laughed again unfeelingly, and seated herself at the piano.

  “Some day,” she said, striking a lively chord or two, “I hope you’ll catch it, young man. You’re altogether too free and easy with your feminine friends.... What do you think of Rue Carew?”

  “An astounding and enchanting transformation. I haven’t yet recovered my breath.”

  “When you do, you’ll talk nonsense to the child, I suppose.”

  “Princess! Have I ever — —”

  “You talk little else, dear friend, when God sends a pretty fool to listen!” She looked up at him from the keyboard over which her hands were nervously wandering. “I ought to know,” she said; “I also have listened.” She laughed carelessly, but her glance lingered for an instant on his face, and her mirth did not sound quite spontaneous to either of them.

  Two years ago there had been an April evening after the opera, when, in taking leave of her in her little salon, her hand had perhaps retained his a fraction of a second longer than she quite intended; and he had, inadvertently, kissed her.

  He had thought of it as a charming and agreeable incident; what the Princess Naïa Mistchenka thought of it she never volunteered. But she so managed that he never again was presented with a similar opportunity.

  Perhaps they both were thinking of this rather ancient episode now, for his face was touched with a mischievously reminiscent smile, and she had lowered her head a trifle over the keyboard where her slim, ivory-tinted hands still idly searched after elusive harmonies in the subdued light of the single lamp.

  “There’s a man dining with us,” she remarked, “who has the same irresponsible and casual views on life and manners which you entertain. No doubt you’ll get along very well together.”

  “Who is he?”

  “A Captain Sengoun, one of our attachés. It’s likely you’ll find a congenial soul in this same Cossack whom we all call Alak.” She added maliciously: “His only logic is the impulse of the moment, and he is known as Prince Erlik among his familiars. Erlik was the Devil, you know — —”

  He was announced at that moment, and came marching in — a dark, handsome, wiry young man with winning black eyes and a little black moustache just shadowing his short upper lip — and a head shaped to contain the devil himself — the most reckless looking head, Neeland thought, that he ever had beheld in all his life.

  But the young fellow’s frank smile was utterly irresistible, and his straight manner of facing one, and of looking directly into the eyes of the person he addressed in his almost too perfect English, won any listener immediately.

  He bowed formally over Princess Naïa’s hand, turned squarely on Neeland when he was named to the American, and exchanged a firm clasp with him. Then, to the Princess:

  “I am late? No? Fancy, Princess — that great booby, Izzet Bey, must stop me at the club, and I exceedingly pressed to dress and entirely out of humour with all Turks. ‘Eh bien, mon vieux!’ said he in his mincing manner of a nervous pelican, ‘they’re warming up the Balkan boilers with Austrian pine. But I hear they’re full of snow.’ And I said to him: ‘Snow boils very nicely if the fire is sufficiently persistent!’ And I think Izzet Bey will find it so!” — with a quick laugh of explanation to Neeland: “He meant Russian snow, you see; and that boils beautifully if they keep on stoking the boiler with Austrian fuel.”

  The Princess shrugged:

  “What schoolboy repartée! Why did you answer him at all, Alak?”

  “Well,” explained the attaché, “as I was due here at eight I hadn’t time to take him by the nose, had I?”

  Rue Carew entered and went to the Princess to make amends:

  “I’m so sorry to be late!” — turned to smile at Neeland, then offered her hand to the Russian. “How do you do, Prince Erlik?” she said with the careless and gay cordiality of old acquaintance. “I heard you say something about Colonel Izzet Bey’s nose as I came in.”

  Captain Sengoun bowed over her slender white hand:

  “The Mohammedan nose of Izzet Bey is an admirable bit of Oriental architecture, Miss Carew. Why should it surprise you to hear me extol its bizarre beauty?”

  “Anyway,” said the girl, “I’m contented that you left devilry for revelry.” And, Marotte announcing dinner, she took the arm of Captain Sengoun as the Princess took Neeland’s.

  * * * * *

  Like all Russians and some Cossacks, Prince Alak ate and drank as though it were the most delightful experience in life; and he did it with a whole-souled heartiness and satisfaction that was flattering to any hostess and almost fascinating to anybody observing him.

  His teeth were even and very white; his appetite splendid: when he did his goblet the honour of noticing it at all, it was to drain it; when he resumed knife and fork he used them as gaily, as gracefully, and as thoroughly as he used his sabre on various occasions.

  He had taken an instant liking to Neeland, who seemed entirely inclined to return it; and he talked a great deal to the American but with a nice division of attention for the two ladies on either side.

  “You know, Alak,” said the Princess, “you need not torture yourself by trying to converse with discretion; because Mr. Neeland knows about many matters which concern us all.”

  “Ah! That is delightful! And indeed I was already quite assured of Mr. Neeland’s intelligent sympathy in the present state of European affairs.”

  “He’s done a little more than express sympathy,” remarked the Princess; and she gave a humorous outline of Neeland’s part in the affair of the olive-wood box.

  “Fancy!” exclaimed Captain Sengoun. “That impudent canaille! Yes; I heard at the Embassy what happened to that accursed box this morning. Of course it is a misfortune, but as for me, personally, I don’t care — —”

  “It doesn’t happen to concern you personally, Prince Erlik,” said Princess Naïa dryly.

  “No,” he admitted, unabashed by the snub, “it does not touch me. Cavalry cannot operate on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Therefore, God be thanked, I shall be elsewhere when the snow boils.”

  Rue tuned to Neeland:

  “His one idea of diplomacy and war is a thousand Kuban Cossacks at full speed.”

  “And that is an excellent idea, is it not, Kazatchka?” he said, smiling impudently at the Princess, who only laughed at the familiarity.

  “I hope,” added Captain Sengoun, “that I may live to gallop through a few miles of diplomacy at full speed before they consign me to the Opolchina.” Turning to Neeland, “The reserve — the old man’s home, you know. God forbid!” And he drained his goblet and looked defiantly at Rue Carew.

  “A Cossack is a Cossack,” said the Princess, “be he Terek or Kuban, Don or Astrachan, and they all know as much about diplomacy as Prince Erlik — or Izzet Bey’s nose.... James, you are unusually silent, dear friend. Are you regretting those papers?”

  “It’s a pity,” he said. But he had not been thinking of the lost papers; Rue Carew’s beauty preoccupied him. The girl was in black, which made her skin dazzling, and reddened the chestnut colour of her hair.

  Her superb young figure revealed an unsuspected loveliness where the snowy symmetry of neck and shoulders and arms was delicately accented by the filmy black of her gown.

  He had never seen such a beautiful girl; she seemed more wonderful, more strange, more aloof than ever. And this was what preoccupied and entirely engaged his mind, and troubled it, so that his smile had a tendency to become indefinite and his conversation mechanical at times.

  Captain Sengoun drained one more of numerous goblets; gazed sentimentally at the Princess, then with equal sentiment at R
ue Carew.

  “As for me,” he said, with a carelessly happy gesture toward the infinite, “plans are plans, and if they’re stolen, tant pis! But there are always Tartars in Tartary and Turks in Turkey. And, while there are, there’s hope for a poor devil of a Cossack who wants to say a prayer in St. Sophia before he’s gathered to his ancestors.”

  “Have any measures been taken at your Embassy to trace the plans?” asked Neeland of the Princess.

  “Of course,” she said simply.

  “Plans,” remarked Sengoun, “are not worth the tcherkeske of an honest Caucasian! A Khirgize pony knows more than any diplomat; and my magaika is better than both!”

  “All the same,” said Rue Carew, “with those stolen plans in your Embassy, Prince Erlik, you might even gallop a sotnia of your Cossacks to the top of Achi-Baba.”

  “By heaven! I’d like to try!” he exclaimed, his black eyes ablaze.

  “There are dongas,” observed the Princess dryly.

  “I know it. There are dongas every twenty yards; and Turkish gorse that would stop a charging bull! My answer is, mount! trot! gallop! and hurrah for Achi-Baba!”

  “Very picturesque, Alak. But wouldn’t it be nicer to be able to come back again and tell us all about it?”

  “As for that,” he said with his full-throated, engaging laugh, “no need to worry, Princess, for the newspapers would tell the story. What is this Gallipoli country, anyway, that makes our Chancellery wag its respected head and frown and whisper in corners and take little notes on its newly laundered cuffs?

  “I know the European and Asiatic shores with their forts — Kilid Bahr, Chimilik, Kum Kale, Dardanos. I know what those Germans have been about with their barbed wire and mobile mortar batteries. What do we want of their plans, then — —”

  “Nothing, Prince Erlik!” said Rue, laughing. “It suffices that you be appointed adviser in general to his majesty the Czar.”

  Sengoun laughed with all his might.

  “And an excellent thing that would be, Miss Carew. What we need in Russia,” he added with a bow to the Princess, “are, first of all, more Kazatchkee, then myself to execute any commands with which my incomparable Princess might deign to honour me.”