Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Stand by the world. Stand by me. And, through me, stand by your own self.”

  The young fellow’s forehead was wet with the vague horror of something. He made an effort to speak, to straighten up; gave her a dreadful look of appeal which turned into a snarl.

  He whispered between writhing lips: “Can’t you let me alone? Can’t I end it if I can’t stand it — without your blocking me every time — every time I stir a finger—”

  “McKay! Wait! Don’t touch me! — don’t do that!”

  But he had her in a sudden grip now — was looking right and left for a place to hurl her out of the way.

  “I’ve stood enough, by God!” he muttered between his teeth. “Now I’m through—”

  “Please listen. You’re out of your mind,” she said breathlessly, not struggling to free herself, but striving to twist both her arms around one of his.

  “You hurt me,” she whimpered. “Don’t be brutal to me!”

  “I’ve got to get you out of my way.” He tried to fling her across the corridor into her own cabin, but she had fastened herself to him.

  “Don’t!” she panted. “Don’t do anything to yourself—”

  “Let go of me! Unclasp your arms!”

  But she clung the more desperately and wound her limbs around his, almost tripping him.

  “I WON’T give you up!” she gasped.

  “What do you care?” he retorted hoarsely, striving to tear himself loose. “I want to get some rest — somewhere!”

  “You’re hurting! You’re breaking my arm! Kay! Kay! what are you doing to me?” she wailed.

  Something — perhaps the sound of his own name falling from her lips for the first time — checked his mounting frenzy. She could feel every muscle in his body become rigidly inert.

  “Kay!” she whispered, fastening herself to him convulsively. For a full minute she sustained his half-insane stare, then it altered, and her own eyes slowly closed, though her head remained upright on the rigid marble of her neck.

  The crisis had been reached: the tide of frenzy was turning, had turned, was already ebbing. She felt it, was conscious that he also had become aware of it. Then his grasp slackened, grew lax, loosened, and almost spent. She ventured to unwind her limbs from his, to relax her stiffened fingers, unclasp her arms.

  It was over. She could scarcely stand, felt blindly for support, rested so, and slowly unclosed her eyes.

  “I’ve had to fight very hard for you,” she whispered. “But I think

  I’ve won.”

  He answered with difficulty.

  “Yes — if you want the dog you fought for.”

  “It isn’t what I want, Kay.”

  “All right, I guess I can face it through — after this…. But I don’t know why you did it.”

  “I do.”

  “Do you? Don’t you know I’m not a man, but a beast? And there are half a hundred million real men to replace me — to do what you and the country expect of real men.”

  “What may be expected of them I expect of you. Kay, I’ve made a good fight for you, haven’t I?”

  He turned his quenched eyes on her. “From gutter to hospital, from hospital to sanitarium, from sanitarium to ship,” he said in a colourless voice. “Yes, it was — a — good — fight.”

  “What a Calvary!” she murmured, looking at him out of clear, sorrowful eyes. “And on your knees, poor boy!”

  “You ought to know. You have made every station with me — on your tender bleeding knees of a girl!” He choked, turned his head swiftly; and she caught his hand. The break had come.

  “Oh, Kay! Kay!” she said, quivering all over, “I have done my bit and you are cured! You know it, don’t you? Look at me, turn your head.” She laid her slim hand flat against his tense cheek but could not turn his face. But she did not care; the palm of her hand was wet. The break had come. She drew a deep, uneven breath, let go his hand.

  “Now,” she said, “we can understand each other at last — our minds are rational; and whether in accord or conflict they are at least in contact; and mine isn’t clashing with something disordered and foreign which it can’t interpret, can’t approach.”

  He said, not turning toward her: “You are kind to put it that way…. I think self-control has returned — will-power — all that…. I won’t-betray you — Miss Erith.”

  “YOU never would, Mr. McKay. But I — I’ve been in terror of what has been masquerading as you.”

  “I know…. But whatever you think of such a — a man — I’ll do my bit, now. I’ll carry on — until the end.”

  “I will too! I promise you.”

  He turned his head at that and a mirthless laugh touched his wet eyes and drawn visage:

  “As though you had to promise anybody that you’d stick! You! You beautiful, magnificent young thing — you superb kid—”

  Her surprise and the swift blaze of colour in her face silenced him.

  After a moment, the painful red still staining his face, he muttered something about dressing.

  He watched her turn and enter her room; saw that she had closed her door-something she had not dared do heretofore; then he went into his own room and threw himself down on the bunk, shaking in every nerve.

  For a long while, preoccupied with the obsession for self-destruction, he lay there face downward, exhausted, trying to fight off the swimming sense of horror that was creeping over him again….. Little by little it mounted like a tide from hell…. He struggled to his feet with the unuttered cry of a dreamer tearing his throat. An odd sense of fear seized him and he dressed and adjusted his clumsy life-suit. For the ship was in the danger zone, now, and orders had been given, and dawn was not far off. Perhaps it was already day! he could not tell in his dim cabin.

  And after he was completely accoutred for the hazard of the Hun-cursed seas he turned and looked down at his bunk with the odd idea that his body still lay there — that it was a thing apart from himself — something inert, unyielding, corpse-like, sprawling there in a stupor — something visible, tangible, taking actual proportion and shape there under his very eyes.

  He turned his back with a shudder and went on deck. To his surprise the blue lights were extinguished, and corridor and saloon were all rosy with early sunlight.

  Blue sky, blue sea, silver spindrift flying and clouds of silvery gulls — a glimmer of Heaven from the depths of the pit — a glimpse of life through a crack in the casket — and land close on the starboard bow! Sheer cliffs, with the bonny green grass atop all furrowed by the wind — and the yellow-flowered broom and the shimmering whinns blowing.

  “Why, it’s Scotland,” he said aloud, “it’s Glenark Cliffs and the Head of Strathlone — my people’s fine place in the Old World — where we took root — and — O my God! Yankee that I am, it looks like home!”

  The cape of a white fleece cloak fluttered in his face, and he turned and saw Miss Erith at his elbow.

  Yellow-haired, a slender, charming thing in her white wind-blown coat, she stood leaning on the spray-wet rail close to his shoulder.

  And with him it was suddenly as though he had known her for years — as though he had always been aware of her beauty and her loveliness — as though his eyes had always framed her — his heart had always wished for her, and she had always been the sole and exquisite tenant of his mind.

  “I had no idea that we were off Scotland,” he said— “off Strathlone

  Head — and so close in. Why, I can see the cliff-flowers!”

  She laid one hand lightly on his arm, listening; high and heavenly sweet above the rushing noises of the sea they heard the singing of shoreward sky-larks above the grey cliff of Glenark.

  He began to tremble. “That nightmare through which I’ve struggled,” he began, but she interrupted:

  “It is quite ended, Kay. You are awake. It is day and the world’s before you.” At that he caught her slim hand in both of his:

  “Eve! Eve! You’ve brought me through death’s
shadow! You gave me back my mind!”

  She let her hand rest between his. At first he could not make out what her slightly moving lips uttered, and bending nearer he heard her murmur: “Beside the still waters.” The sea had become as calm as a pond.

  And now the transport was losing headway, scarcely moving at all. Forward and aft the gun-crews, no longer alert, lounged lazily in the sunshine watching a boat being loaded and swung outward from the davits.

  “Is somebody going ashore?” asked McKay.

  “We are,” said the girl.

  “Just you and I, Eve?”

  “Just you and I.”

  Then he saw their luggage piled in the lifeboat.’

  “This is wonderful,” he said. “I have a house a few miles inland from Strathlone Head.”

  “Will you take me there, Kay?”

  Such a sense of delight possessed him that he could not speak.

  “That’s where we must go to make our plans,” she said. “I didn’t tell you in those dark hours we have lived together, because our minds were so far apart — and I was fighting so hard to hold you.”

  “Have you forgiven me — you wonderful girl?”

  His voice shook so that he could scarcely control it. Miss Erith laughed.

  “You adorable boy!” she said. “Stand still while I unlace your life-belt. You can’t travel in this.”

  He felt her soft fingers at his throat and turned his face upward. All the blue air seemed glittering with the sun-tipped wings of gulls. The skylark’s song, piercingly sweet, seemed to penetrate his soul. And, as his life-suit fell about him, so seemed to fall the heavy weight of dread like a shroud, dropping at his feet. And he stepped clear — took his first free step toward her — as though between them there were no questions, no barriers, nothing but this living, magic light — which bathed them both.

  There seemed to be no need of speech, either, only the sense of heavenly contact as though the girl were melting into him, dissolving in his arms.

  “Kay!”

  Her voice sounded as from an infinite distance. There came a smothered thudding like the soft sound of guns at sea; and then her voice again, and a greyness as if a swift cloud had passed across the sun.

  “Kay!”

  A sharp, cold wind began to blow through the strange and sudden darkness. He heard her voice calling his name — felt his numbed body shaken, lifted his head from his arms and sat upright on his bunk in the dim chill of his cabin.

  Miss Erith stood beside his bed, wearing her life-suit.

  “Kay! Are you awake?’

  “Yes.”

  “Then put on your life-suit. Our destroyers are firing at something.

  Quick, please, I’ll help you!”

  Dazed, shaken, still mazed by the magic of his dream, not yet clear of its beauty and its passion, he stumbled to his feet in the obscurity. And he felt her chilled hand aiding him.

  “Eve — I — thought—”

  “What?”

  “I thought your name — was Eve—” he stammered. “I’ve been — dreaming.”

  Then was a silence as he fumbled stupidly with his clothing and life-suit. The sounds of the guns, rapid, distinct, echoed through the unsteady obscurity.

  She helped him as a nurse helps a convalescent, her swift, cold little fingers moving lightly and unerringly. And at last he was equipped, and his mind had cleared darkly of the golden vision of love and spring.

  Icy seas, monstrous and menacing, went smashing past the sealed and blinded port; but there was no wind and the thudding of the guns came distinctly to their ears.

  A shape in uniform loomed at the cabin door for an instant and a calm, unhurried voice summoned them.

  Corridors were full of dark figures. The main saloon was thronged as they climbed the companion-way. There appeared to be no panic, no haste, no confusion. Voices were moderately low, the tone casually conversational.

  Miss Erith’s arm remained linked in McKay’s where they stood together amid the crowd.

  “U-boats, I fancy,” she said.

  “Probably.”

  After a moment: “What were you dreaming about, Mr. McKay?” she asked lightly. In the dull bluish dusk of the saloon his boyish face grew hot.

  “What was it you called me?” she insisted. “Was it Eve?”

  At that his cheeks burnt crimson.

  “What do you mean?” he muttered.

  “Didn’t you call me Eve?”

  “I — when a man is dreaming — asleep—”

  “My name is Evelyn, you know. Nobody ever called me Eve…. Yet — it’s odd, isn’t it, Mr. McKay? I’ve always wished that somebody would call me Eve…. But perhaps you were not dreaming of me?”

  “I — was.”

  “Really. How interesting!” He remained silent.

  “And did you call me Eve — in that dream?… That is curious, isn’t it, after what I’ve just told you?… So I’ve had my wish — in a dream.” She laughed a little. “In a dream — YOUR dream,” she repeated. “We must have been good friends in your dream — that you called me Eve.”

  But the faint thrill of the dream was in him again, and it troubled him and made him shy, and he found no word to utter — no defence to her low-voiced banter.

  Then, not far away on the port quarter, a deck-gun spoke with a sharper explosion, and intense stillness reigned in the saloon.

  “If there’s any necessity,” he whispered, “you recollect your boat, don’t you?”

  “Yes…. I don’t want to go — without you.” He said, in a pleasant firm voice which was new to her: “I know what you mean. But you are not to worry. I am absolutely well.”

  The girl turned toward him, the echoes of the guns filling her ears, and strove to read his face in the ghastly, dreary light.

  “I’m really cured, Miss Erith,” he said. “If there’s any emergency

  I’ll fight to live. Do you believe me?”

  “If you tell me so.”

  “I tell you so.”

  The girl drew a deep, unsteady breath, and her arm tightened a trifle within his.

  “I am — so glad,” she said in a voice that sounded suddenly tired.

  There came an ear-splitting detonation from the after-deck, silencing every murmur.

  “Something is shelling us,” whispered McKay. “When orders come, go instantly to your boat and your station.”

  “I don’t want to go alone.”

  “The nurses of the unit to which you—”

  The crash of a shell drowned his voice. Then came a deathly silence, then the sound of the deck-guns in action once more.

  Miss Erith was leaning rather heavily on his arm. He bent it, drawing her closer.

  “I don’t want to leave you,” she said again.

  “I told you—”

  “It isn’t that…. Don’t you understand that I have become — your friend?”

  “Such a brute as I am?”

  “I like you.”

  In the silence he could hear his heart drumming between the detonations of the deck-guns. He said: “It’s because you are you. No other woman on earth but would have loathed me… beastly rotter that I was—”

  “Oh-h, don’t,” she breathed…. “I don’t know — we may be very close to death…. I want to live. I’d like to. But I don’t really mind death. … But I can’t bear to have things end for you just as you’ve begun to live again—”

  Crash! Something was badly smashed on deck that time, for the brazen jar of falling wreckage seemed continuous.

  Through the metallic echo she heard her voice:

  “Kay! I’m afraid — a little.”

  “I think it’s all right so far. Listen, there go our guns again.

  It’s quite all right, Eve dear.”

  “I didn’t know I was so cowardly. But of course I’ll never show it when the time comes.”

  “Of course you won’t. Don’t worry. Shells make a lot of noise when they explode on deck. All that tinpan
effect we heard was probably a ventilator collapsing — perhaps a smokestack.”

  After a silence punctured by the flat bang of the deck-guns:

  “You ARE cured, aren’t you, Kay?”

  “Yes.”

  She repeated in a curiously exultant voice: “You ARE cured. All of a sudden — after that black crisis, too, you wake up, well!”

  “You woke me.”

  “Of course, I did — with those guns frightening me!”

  “You woke me, Eve,” he repeated coolly, “and my dream had already cured me. I am perfectly well. We’ll get out of this mess shortly, you and I. And — and then—” He paused so long that she looked up at him in the bluish dusk:

  “And what then?” she asked.

  He did not answer. She said: “Tell me, Kay.”

  But as his lips unclosed to speak a terrific shock shook the saloon — a shock that seemed to come from the depths of the ship, tilt up the cabin floor, and send everybody reeling about.

  Through the momentary confusion in the bluish obscurity the cool voice of an officer sounded unalarmed, giving orders. There was no panic. The hospital units formed and started for the deck. A young officer passing near exchanged a calm word with McKay, and passed on speaking pleasantly to the women who were now moving forward.

  McKay said to Miss Erith: “It seems that we’ve been torpedoed. We’ll go on deck together. You know your boat and station?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll see you safely there. You’re not afraid any more, are you?”

  “No.”

  He gave a short dry laugh. “What a rotten deal,” he said. “My dream was — different…. There is your boat — THAT one!… I’ll say good luck. I’m assigned to a station on the port side. … Good luck…. And thank you, Eve.”

  “Don’t go—”

  “Yes, I must.. We’ll find each other — ashore — or somewhere.”

  “Kay! The port boats can’t be launched—”

  “Take your place! you’re next, Eve.”… Her hand, which had clung to his, he suddenly twisted up, and touched the convulsively tightening fingers with his lips.

  “Good luck, dear,” he said gaily. And watched her go and take her place. Then he lifted his cap, as she turned and looked for him, and sauntered off to where his boat and station should have been had not the U-boat shells annihilated boat and rail and deck.