Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Of course! And if you come at once we’ll have nearly an hour together before anybody arrives.”

  She had that sweet, unguarded way with her at moments, and it always sent a faint shock of surprise and delight through him.

  * * * * *

  Her smiling maid admitted him and took his hat, coat and stick as though accustomed to these particular articles.

  Palla was alone in the living-room when he was announced, and as soon as the maid disappeared she gave him both hands in swift welcome — an impulsive, unconsidered greeting entirely new to them both.

  “You didn’t mind my tormenting you. Did you, Jim? I was so happy that you did call me up, after all. Because you know you did tell me yesterday that you were going to the opera to-night. But all the same, when the ‘phone rang, somehow I knew it was you — I knew it — somehow — —”

  She loosened one hand from his and swung him with the other toward the piano: “Do you like my flower garden? Isn’t the room attractive?”

  “Charming,” he said. “And you are distractingly pretty to-night!”

  “In this dull, black gown? But, merci, anyway! See how effective your roses are! — the ones you sent yesterday and the day before! They’re all opening. And I went out and bought a lot more, and all that fluffy green camouflage — —”

  She withdrew her other hand from his without embarrassment and went over to rearrange a sheaf of deep red carnations, spreading the clustered stems to wider circumference.

  “What is this party you’re giving, anyway?” he asked, following her across the room and leaning beside her on the piano, where she still remained very busily engaged with her decorations.

  “An impromptu party,” she exclaimed. “I was shopping this morning — in fact I was buying pots and pans for the cook — when somebody spoke to me. And I recognised a university student whom I had known in Petrograd after the first revolution — Marya Lanois, her name is — —”

  She moved aside and began to fuss with a huge bowl of crimson roses, loosening the blossoms, freeing the foliage, and talking happily all the while:

  “Marya Lanois,” she repeated, “ — an interesting girl. And with her was a man I had met — a pianist — Vanya Tchernov. They told me that another friend of mine — a girl named Ilse Westgard — is now living in New York. They couldn’t dine with me, but they’re coming to supper. So I also called up Ilse Westgard, she’s coming, too; — and I also asked your friend, Mr. Estridge. So you see, Monsieur, we shall have a little music and much valuable conversation, and then I shall give them some supper — —”

  She stepped back from the piano, surveyed her handiwork critically, then looked around at him for his opinion.

  “Fine,” he said. “How jolly your new house is” — glancing about the room at the few well chosen pieces of antique furniture, the harmonious hangings and comfortably upholstered modern pieces.

  “It really is beginning to be livable; isn’t it, Jim?” she ventured. “Of course there are many things yet to buy — —”

  They leisurely made the tour of the white-panelled room, looking with approval at the delicate Georgian furniture; the mezzotints; the damask curtains of that beautiful red which has rose-tints in it, too; the charming old French clock and its lovely gilded garniture; the deep-toned ash-grey carpet under foot.

  Before the mantel, with its wood fire blazing, they paused.

  “It’s so enchantingly homelike,” she exclaimed. “I already love it all. When I come in from shopping I just stand here with my hat and furs on, and gaze about and adore everything!”

  “Do you adore me, too?” he asked, laughing at her warmth. “You see I’m becoming one of your fixtures here, also.”

  In her brown eyes the familiar irresponsible gaiety began to glimmer:

  “I do adore you,” she said, “but I’ve no business to.”

  “Why not?”

  She seated herself on the sofa and cast a veiled glance at him, enchantingly malicious.

  “Do you think you know me well enough to adore me?” she inquired with misleading gravity.

  “Indeed I do — —”

  “Am I as easy to know as that? Jim, you humiliate me.”

  “I didn’t say that you are easy to know — —”

  “You meant it!” she insisted reproachfully. “You think so, too — just because I let myself be picked up — by a perfectly strange man — —”

  “Good heavens, Palla—” he began nervously; but caught the glimmer in her lowered eyes — saw her child’s mouth tremulous with mirth controlled.

  “Oh, Jim!” she said, still laughing, “do you think I care how we met? How absurd of you to let me torment you. You’re altogether too boyish, too self-conscious. You’re loaded down with all the silly traditions which I’ve thrown away. I don’t care how we met. I’m glad we know each other.”

  She opened a silver box on a little table at her elbow, chose a cigarette, lighted it, and offered it to him.

  “I rather like the taste of them now,” she remarked, making room for him on the sofa beside her.

  When he was seated, she reached up to a jar of flowers on the piano, selected a white carnation, broke it short, and then drew the stem through his lapel, patting the blossom daintily into a pom-pon.

  “Now,” she said gaily, “if you’ll let me, I’ll straighten your tie. Shall I?”

  He turned toward her; she accomplished that deftly, then glanced across at the clock.

  “We’ve only half an hour longer to ourselves,” she exclaimed, with that unconscious candour which always thrilled him. Then, turning to him, she said laughingly: “Does it really matter how two people meet when time races with us like that?”

  “And do you realise,” he said in a low, tense voice, “that since I met you every racing minute has been sweeping me headlong toward you?”

  She was so totally unprepared for the deeper emotion in his voice and bearing — so utterly surprised — that she merely gazed at him.

  “Haven’t you been aware of it, Palla?” he said, looking her in the eyes.

  “Jim!” she protested, “you are disconcerting! You never before have taken such a tone toward me.”

  She rose, walked over to the clock, examined it minutely for a few moments. Then she turned, cast a swift, perplexed glance at him, and came slowly back to resume her place on the sofa.

  “Men should be very, very careful what they say to me.” As she lifted her eyes he saw them beginning to glimmer again with that irresponsible humour he knew so well.

  “Be careful,” she said, her brown gaze gay with warning; “ — I’m godless and quite lawless, and I’m a very dangerous companion for any well-behaved and orthodox young man who ventures to tell me that I’m adorable. Why, you might as safely venture to adore Diana of the Ephesians! And you know what she did to her admirers.”

  “She was really Aphrodite, wasn’t she?” he said, laughing.

  “Aphrodite, Venus, Isis, Lada — and the Ephesian Diana — I’m afraid they all were hussies. But I’m a hussy, too, Jim! If you doubt it, ask any well brought up girl you know and tell her how we met and how we’ve behaved ever since, and what obnoxious ideas I entertain toward all things conventional and orthodox!”

  “Palla, are you really serious? — I’m never entirely sure what is under your badinage.”

  “Why, of course I am serious. I don’t believe in any of the things that you believe in. I’ve often told you so, though you don’t believe me — —”

  “Nonsense!”

  “I don’t, I tell you. I did once. But I’m awake. No ‘threats of hell or hopes of any sugary paradise’ influence me. Nor does custom and convention. Nor do the laws and teachings of our present civilisation matter one straw to me. I’d break every law if it suited me.”

  He laughed and lifted her hand from her lap: “You funny child,” he said, “you wouldn’t steal, for example — would you?”

  “I don’t desire to.”

 
“Would you commit perjury?”

  “No!”

  “Murder?”

  “I have a law of my own, kind sir. It doesn’t happen to permit murder, arson, forgery, piracy, smuggling — —”

  Their irresponsible laughter interrupted her.

  “What else wouldn’t you do?” he managed to ask.

  “I wouldn’t do anything mean, deceitful, dishonest, cruel. But it’s not your antiquated laws — it’s my own and original law that governs my conduct.”

  “You always conform to it?”

  “I do. But you don’t conform to yours. So I’ll try to help you remember the petty but always sacred conventions of our own accepted code — —”

  And, with unfeigned malice, she began to disengage her hand from his — loosened the slim fingers one by one, all the while watching him sideways with prim lips pursed and lifted eyebrows.

  “Try always to remember,” she said, “that, according to your code, any demonstration of affection toward a comparative stranger is exceedingly bad form.”

  However, he picked up her hand again, which she had carelessly left lying on the sofa near his, and again she freed it, leisurely.

  They conversed animatedly, as always, discussing matters of common interest, yet faintly in her ears sounded the unfamiliar echo of passion.

  It haunted her mind, too — an indefinable undertone delicately persistent — until at last she sat mute, absent-minded, while he continued speaking.

  Her stillness — her remote gaze, perhaps — presently silenced him. And after a little while she turned her charming head and looked at him with that unintentional provocation born of virginal curiosity.

  What had moved him so unexpectedly to deeper emotion? Had she? Had she, then, that power? And without effort? — For she had been conscious of none.... But — if she tried.... Had she the power to move him again?

  Naïve instinct — the emotionless curiosity of total inexperience — everything embryonic and innocently ruthless in her was now in the ascendant.

  She lifted her eyes and considered him with the speculative candour of a child. She wished to hear once more that unfamiliar something in his voice — see it in his features ——

  And she did not know how to evoke it.

  “Of what are you thinking, Palla?”

  “Of you,” she answered candidly, without other intention than the truth. And saw, instantly, the indefinable something born again into his eyes.

  Calm curiosity, faintly amused, possessed her — left him possessed of her hand presently.

  “Are you attempting to be sentimental?” she asked.

  Very leisurely she began once more to disengage her hand — loosening the fingers one by one — and watching him all the while with a slight smile edging her lips. Then, as his clasp tightened:

  “Please,” she said, “may I not have my freedom?”

  “Do you want it?”

  “You never did this before — touched me — unnecessarily.”

  As he made no answer, she fell silent, her dark eyes vaguely interrogative as though questioning herself as well as him concerning this unaccustomed contact.

  His head had been bent a little. Now he lifted it. Neither was smiling.

  Suddenly she rose to her feet and stood with her head partly averted. He rose, too. Neither spoke. But after a moment she turned and looked straight at him, the virginal curiosity clear in her eyes. And he took her into his arms.

  Her arms had fallen to her side. She endured his lips gravely, then turned her head and looked at the roses beside her.

  “I was afraid,” she said, “that we would do this. Now let me go, Jim.”

  He released her in silence. She walked slowly to the mantel and set one slim foot on the fender.

  Without looking around at him she said: “Does this spoil me for you, Jim?”

  “You darling — —”

  “Tell me frankly. Does it?”

  “What on earth do you mean, Palla! Does it spoil me for you?”

  “I’ve been thinking.... No, it doesn’t. But I wondered about you.”

  He came over to where she stood.

  “Dear,” he said unsteadily, “don’t you know I’m very desperately in love with you?”

  At that she turned her enchanting little head toward him.

  “If you are,” she said, “there need be nothing desperate about it.”

  “Do you mean you care enough to marry me, you darling?” he asked impetuously. “Will you, Palla?”

  “Why, no,” she said candidly. “I didn’t mean that. I meant that I care for you quite as much as you care for me. So you need not be desperate. But I really don’t think we are in love — I mean sufficiently — for anything serious.”

  “Why don’t you think so!” he demanded impatiently.

  “Do you wish me to be quite frank?”

  “Of course!”

  “Very well.” She lifted her head and let her clear eyes rest on his. “I like you,” she said. “I even like — what we did. I like you far better than any man I ever knew. But I do not care for you enough to give up my freedom of mind and of conduct for your asking. I do not care enough for you to subscribe to your religion and your laws. And that’s the tragic truth.”

  “But what on earth has all that to do with it? I haven’t asked you to believe as I believe or to subscribe to any law — —”

  Her enchanting laughter filled the room: “Yes, you have! You asked me to marry you, didn’t you?”

  “Of course!”

  “Well, I can’t, Jim, because I don’t believe in the law of marriage, civil or religious. If I loved you I’d live with you unmarried. But I’m afraid to try it. And so are you. Which proves that I’m not really in love with you, or you with me — —”

  The door bell rang.

  “But I do care for you,” she whispered, bending swiftly toward him. Her lips rested lightly on his a moment, then she turned and walked out into the centre of the room.

  The maid announced: “Mr. Estridge!”

  CHAPTER VIII

  Young Shotwell, still too incredulous to be either hurt or angry, stood watching Palla welcoming her guests, who arrived within a few minutes of each other.

  First came Estridge, — handsome, athletic, standing over six feet, and already possessed of that winning and reassuring manner which means success for a physician.

  “It’s nice of you to ask me, Palla,” he said. “And is Miss Westgard really coming to-night?”

  “But here she is now!” exclaimed Palla, as the maid announced her. “ — Ilse! You astonishing girl! How long have you been in New York?”

  And Shotwell beheld the six-foot goddess for the first time — gazed with pleasurable awe upon this young super-creature with the sea-blue eyes and golden hair and a skin of roses and cream.

  “Fancy, Palla!” she said, “I came immediately back from Stockholm, but you had sailed on the Elsinore, and I was obliged to wait! — Oh!—” catching sight of Estridge as he advanced— “I am so very happy to see you again!” — giving him her big, exquisitely sculptured hand. “Except for Mr. Brisson, we are quite complete in our little company of death!” She laughed her healthy, undisturbed defiance of that human enemy as she named him, gazed rapturously at Palla, acknowledged Shotwell’s presentation in her hearty, engaging way, then turned laughingly to Estridge:

  “The world whirls like a wheel in a squirrel cage which we all tread: — only to find ourselves together after travelling many, many miles at top speed!... Are you well, John Estridge?”

  “Fairly,” he laughed, “but nobody except the immortals could ever be as well as you, Ilse Westgard!”

  She laughed in sheer exuberance of her own physical vigour: “Only that old and toothless nemesis of Loki can slay me, John Estridge!” And, to Palla: “I had some slight trouble in Stockholm. Fancy! — a little shrimp of a man approached me on the street one evening when there chanced to be nobody near.

  “And the first I kne
w he was mouthing and grinning and saying to me in Russian: ‘I know you, hired mercenary of the aristocrats! — I know you! — big white battle horse that carried the bloody war-god!’

  “I was too astonished, my dear; I merely gazed upon this small and agitated toad, who continued to run alongside and grimace and pull funny faces at me. He appeared to be furious, and he said some very vile things to me.

  “I was disgusted and walked faster, and he had to run. And all the while he was squealing at me: ‘I know you! You keep out of America, do you hear? If you sail on that steamer, we follow you and kill you! You hear it what I say? We kill! Kill! Kill! — —’”

  She threw up her superb head and laughed:

  “Can you see him — this insect — Palla! — so small and hairy, with crazy eyes like little sparks among the furry whiskers! — and running, running at heel, underfoot, one side and then the other, and squealing ‘Kill! Kill? Kill’ — —”

  She had made them see the picture and they all laughed.

  “But all the same,” she added, turning to Estridge, “from that evening I became conscious that people were watching me.

  “It was the same in Copenhagen and in Christiania — always I felt that somebody was watching me.”

  “Did you have any trouble?” asked Estridge.

  “Well — there seemed to be so many unaccountable delays, obstacles in securing proper papers, trouble about luggage and steamer accommodations — petty annoyances,” she added. “And also I am sure that letters to me were opened, and others which I should have received never arrived.”

  “You believe it was due to the Reds?” asked Palla. “Have they emissaries in Scandinavia?”

  “My dear, their agents and spies swarm everywhere over the world!” said Ilse calmly.

  “Not here,” remarked Shotwell, smiling.

  “Oh,” rejoined Ilse quickly, “I ask your pardon, but America, also, is badly infested by these people. As their Black Plague spreads out over the entire world, so spread out the Bolsheviki to infect all with the red sickness that slays whole nations!”

  “We have a few local Reds,” he said, unconvinced, “but I had scarcely supposed — —”