Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “That she turned him down?”

  “She declined to marry him.”

  Her husband seemed unable to grasp such a fact. Never had it occurred to Shotwell Senior that any living, human girl could decline such an invitation from his only son.

  After a painful silence: “Well,” he said in a perplexed and mortified voice, “she certainly seems to be, as you say, a most unusual girl.... But — if it’s settled — why do you continue to worry, Helen?”

  “Because Jim is very deeply in love with her.... And I’m sore at heart.”

  “Hard hit, is he?”

  “Very unhappy.”

  Shotwell Senior reddened again: “He’ll have to face it,” he said.... “But that girl seems to be a fool!”

  “I — wonder.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A girl may change her mind.” She lifted her head and looked with sad humour at her husband, whom she also had kept dangling for a while. Then:

  “James, dear, our son is as fine as we think him. But he’s just a splendid, wholesome, everyday, unimaginative New York business man. And he’s fallen in love with his absolute antithesis. Because this girl is all ardent imagination, full of extravagant impulses, very lovely to look at, but a perfectly illogical fanatic!

  “Mrs. Vance has told me all about her. She really belongs in some exotic romance, not in New York. She’s entirely irresponsible, perfectly unstable. There is in her a generous sort of recklessness which is quite likely to drive her headlong into any extreme. And what sort of mate would such a girl be for a young man whose ambition is to make good in the real estate business, marry a nice girl, have a pleasant home and agreeable children, and otherwise conform to the ordinary conventions of civilisation?”

  “I think,” remarked her husband grimly, “that she’d keep him guessing.”

  “She would indeed! And that’s not all, James. For I’ve got to tell you that the girl entertains some rather weird and dreadful socialistic notions. She talks socialism — a mild variety — from public platforms. She admits very frankly that she entertains no respect for accepted conventions. And while I have no reason to doubt her purity of mind and personal chastity, the unpleasant and startling fact remains that she proposes that humanity should dispense with the marriage ceremony and discard it and any orthodox religion as obsolete superstitions.”

  Her husband stared at her.

  “For heaven’s sake,” he began, then got frightfully red in the face once more. “What that girl needs is a plain spanking!” he said bluntly. “I’d like to see her or any other girl try to come into this family on any such ridiculous terms!”

  “She doesn’t seem to want to come in on any terms,” said Helen.

  “Then what are you worrying about?”

  “I am worrying about what might happen if she ever changed her mind.”

  “But you say she doesn’t believe in marriage!”

  “She doesn’t.”

  “Well, that boy of ours isn’t crazy,” insisted Shotwell Senior.

  But his mother remained silent in her deep misgiving concerning the sanity of the simpler sex, when mentally upset by love. For it seemed very difficult to understand what to do — if, indeed, there was anything for her to do in the matter.

  To express disapproval of Palla to Jim or to the girl herself — to show any opposition at all — would, she feared, merely defeat its own purpose and alienate her son’s confidence.

  The situation was certainly a most disturbing one, though not at present perilous.

  And Helen would not permit herself to believe that it could ever really become an impossible situation — that this young girl would deliberately slap civilisation in the face; or that her only son would add a kick to the silly assault and take the ruinous consequences of social ostracism.

  * * * * *

  The young girl in question was at that moment seated before her piano, her charming head uplifted, singing in the silvery voice of an immaculate angel, to her own accompaniment, the heavenly Mass of Saint Hildé:

  “Love me,

  Adorable Mother!

  Mary,

  I worship no other.

  Save me,

  O, graciously save me

  I pray!

  Let my Darkness be turned into Day

  By the Light of Thy Grace

  And Thy Face,

  I pray!”

  She continued the exquisite refrain on the keys for a while, then slowly turned to the man beside her.

  “The one Mass I still love,” she murmured absently, “ — memories of childhood, I suppose — when the Sisters made me sing the solo — I was only ten years old.” ... She shrugged her shoulders: “You know, in those days, I was a little devil,” she said seriously.

  He smiled.

  “I really was, Jim, — all over everything and wild as a swallow. I led the pack; Shadow Hill held us in horror. I remember I fought our butcher’s boy once — right in the middle of the street — —”

  “Why?”

  “He did something to a cat which I couldn’t stand.”

  “Did you whip him?”

  “Oh, Jim, it was horrid. We both were dreadfully battered. And the constable caught us both, and I shall never, never forget my mother’s face! — —”

  She gazed down at the keys of the piano, touched them pensively.

  “The very deuce was in me,” she sighed. “Even now, unless I’m occupied with all my might, something begins — to simmer in me — —”

  She turned and looked at him: “ — A sort of enchanted madness that makes me wild to seize the whole world and set it right! — take it into my arms and defend it — die for it — or slay it and end its pain.”

  “Too much of an armful,” he said with great gravity. “The thing to do is to select an individual and take him to your heart.”

  “And slay him?” she inquired gaily.

  “Certainly — like the feminine mantis — if you find you don’t like him. Individual suitors must take their chances of being either eaten or adored.”

  “Jim, you’re so funny.”

  She swung her stool, rested her elbow on the piano, and gazed at him interrogatively, the odd, half-smile edging her lips and eyes. And, after a little duetto of silence:

  “Do you suppose I shall ever come to care for you — imprudently?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t let you.”

  “How could you help it? And, as far as that goes, how could I, if it happened?”

  “If you ever come to care at all,” he said, “you’ll care enough.”

  “That is the trouble with you,” she retorted, “you don’t care enough.”

  A slight flush stained his cheek-bones: “Sometimes,” he said, “I almost wish I cared less. And that would be what you call enough.”

  Colour came into her face, too:

  “Do you know, Jim, I really don’t know how much I do care for you? It sounds rather silly, doesn’t it?”

  “Do you care more than you did at first?”

  “Yes.”

  “Much more?”

  “I told you I don’t know how much.”

  “Not enough to marry me?”

  “Must we discuss that again?”

  He got up, went out to the hall, pulled a book from his overcoat pocket, and returned.

  “Would you care to hear what the greatest American says on the subject, Palla?”

  “On the subject of marriage?”

  “No; he takes the marriage for granted. It’s what he has to say concerning the obligations involved.”

  “Proceed, dear,” she said, laughingly.

  He read, eliminating what was not necessary to make his point:

  “‘A race is worthless and contemptible if its men cease to work hard and, at need, to fight hard; and if its women cease to breed freely. If the best classes do not reproduce themselves the nation will, of course, go down.

  “‘When the ordinary decent man does not unders
tand that to marry the woman he loves, as early as he can, is the most desirable of all goals; when the ordinary woman does not understand that all other forms of life are but makeshift substitutes for the life of the wife, the mother of healthy children; then the State is rotten at heart.

  “‘The woman who shrinks from motherhood is as low a creature as a man of the professional pacifist, or poltroon, type, who shirks his duty as a soldier.

  “‘The only full life for man or woman is led by those men and women who together, with hearts both gentle and valiant, face lives of love and duty, who see their children rise up to call them blessed, and who leave behind them their seed to inherit the earth.

  “‘No celibate life approaches such a life in usefulness. The mother comes ahead of the nun.

  “‘But if the average woman does not marry and become the mother of enough healthy children to permit the increase of the race; and if the average man does not marry in times of peace and do his full duty in war if need arises, then the race is decadent and should be swept aside to make room for a better one.

  “‘Only that nation has a future whose sons and daughters recognise and obey the primary laws of their racial being!’”

  He closed the book and laid it on the piano.

  “Now,” he said, “either we’re really a rotten and decadent race, and might as well behave like one, or we’re sound and sane.”

  Something unusual in his voice — in the sudden grim whiteness of his face — disturbed Palla.

  “I want you to marry me,” he said. “You care for no other man. And if you don’t love me enough to do it, you’ll learn to afterward.”

  “Jim,” she said gently, and now rather white herself, “that is an outrageous thing to say to me. Don’t you realise it?”

  “I’m sorry. But I love you — I need you so that I’m fit for nothing else. I can’t keep my mind on my work; I can’t think of anybody — anything but you.... If you didn’t care for me more or less I wouldn’t come whining to you. I wouldn’t come now until I’d entirely won your heart — except that — if I did — and if you refused me marriage and offered the other thing — I’d be about through with everything! And I’d know damned well that the nation wasn’t worth the powder to blow it to hell if such women as you betray it!”

  The girl flushed furiously; but her voice seemed fairly under control.

  “Hadn’t you better go, Jim, before you say anything more?”

  “Will you marry me?”

  “No.”

  He stood up very straight, unstirring, for a long time, not looking at her.

  Then he said “good-bye,” in a low voice, and went out leaving her quite pale again and rather badly scared.

  As the lower door closed, she sprang to the landing and called his name in a frightened voice that had no carrying power.

  * * * * *

  Later she telephoned to his several clubs. At eleven she called each club again; and finally telephoned to his house.

  At midnight he had not telephoned in reply to the messages she had left requesting him to call her.

  Her anxiety had changed to a vague bewilderment. Her dismayed resentment at what he had said to her was giving place to a strange and unaccustomed sense of loneliness.

  Suddenly an overwhelming desire to be with Ilse seized her, and she would have called a taxi and started immediately, except for the dread that Jim might telephone in her absence.

  Yet, she didn’t know what it was that she wanted of him, except to protest at his attitude toward her. Such a protest was due them both — an appeal in behalf of the friendship which meant so much to her — which, she had abruptly discovered, meant far more to her than she supposed.

  At midnight she telephoned to Ilse. A sleepy maid replied that Miss Westgard had not yet returned.

  So Palla called a taxi, pinned on her hat and struggled into her fur coat, and, taking her latch-key, started for Ilse’s apartment, feeling need of her in a blind sort of way — desiring to listen to her friendly voice, touch her, hear her clear, sane laughter.

  A yawning maid admitted her. Miss Westgard had dined out with Mr. Estridge, but had not yet returned.

  So Palla, wondering a little, laid aside her coat and went into the pretty living room.

  There were books and magazines enough, but after a while she gave up trying to read and sat staring absently at a photograph of Estridge in uniform, which stood on the table at her elbow.

  Across it was an inscription, dated only a few days back: “To Ilse from Jack, on the road to Asgard.”

  Then, as she gazed at the man’s handsome features, for the first time a vague sense of uneasiness invaded her.

  Of a gradually growing comradeship between these two she had been tranquilly aware. And yet, now, it surprised her to realise that their comradeship had drifted into intimacy.

  Lying back in her armchair, her thoughts hovered about these two; and she went back in her mind to recollect something of the beginning of this intimacy; — and remembered various little incidents which, at the time, seemed of no portent.

  And, reflecting, she recollected now what Ilse had said to her after the last party she had given — and which Palla had not understood.

  What had Ilse meant by asking her to “wait”? Wait for what?... Where was Ilse, now? Why did she remain out so late with John Estridge? It was after one o’clock.

  Of course they must be dancing somewhere or other. There were plenty of dances to go to.

  Palla stirred restlessly in her chair. Evidently Ilse had not told her maid that she meant to be out late, for the girl seemed to have expected her an hour ago.

  Palla’s increasing restlessness finally drove her to the windows, where she pulled aside the shades and stood looking out into the silent night.

  The night was cold and clear and very still. Rarely a footfarer passed; seldom a car. And the stillness of the dark city increased her nervousness.

  New York has rare phases of uncanny silence, when, for a space, no sound disturbs the weird stillness.

  The clang of trains, the feathery whirr of motors, the echo of footsteps, the immense, indefinable breathing vibration of the iron monster, drowsing on its rock between three rivers and the sea, ceases utterly. And a vast stillness reigns, mournful, ominous, unutterably sad.

  Palla looked down into the empty street. The dark chill of it seemed to rise and touch her; and she shivered unconsciously and turned back into the lighted room.

  * * * * *

  It was two o’clock. Her eyes were heavy, her heart heavier. Why should everything suddenly happen to her in that way? Where had Jim gone when he left her? And who was it answered the telephone at his house when she had called up and asked to speak to him? It was a woman’s voice — a maid, no doubt — yet, for an instant, she had fancied that the voice resembled his mother’s.

  But it couldn’t have been, for Palla had given her name, and Mrs. Shotwell would have spoken to her — unless — perhaps his mother — disapproved of something — of her calling Jim at such an hour.... Or of something ... perhaps of their friendship ... of herself, perhaps ——

  She heard the clock strike and looked across at the mantel.

  What was Ilse doing at half-past two in the morning? Where could she be?

  Palla involuntarily turned her head and looked at the photograph. Of course Ilse was safe with a man like John Estridge.... That is to say ...

  Without warning, her face grew hot and the crimson tide mounted to the roots of her hair, dyeing throat and temples.

  A sort of stunning reaction followed as the tide ebbed; she found herself stupidly repeating the word “safe,” as though to interpret what it meant.

  Safe? Yes, Ilse was safe. She knew how to take care of herself ... unless....

  Again the crimson tide invaded her skin to the temples.... A sudden and haunting fear came creeping after it had ebbed once more, leaving her gazing fixedly into space through the tumult of her thoughts. And always in dull, unmea
ning repetition the word “safe” throbbed in her ears.

  Safe? Safe from what? From the creed they both professed? From their common belief? From the consequences of living up to it?

  At the thought, Palla sprang to her feet and stood quivering all over, both hands pressed to her throat, which was quivering too.

  Where was Ilse? What had happened? Had she suddenly come face to face with that creed of theirs — that shadowy creed which they believed in, perhaps because it seemed so unreal! — because the ordeal by fire seemed so vague, so far away in that ghostly bourne which is called the future, and which remains always so inconceivably distant to the young — star-distant, remote as inter-stellar dust — aloof as death.

  It was three o’clock. There were velvet-dark smears under Palla’s eyes, little colour in her lips. The weight of fatigue lay heavily on her young shoulders; on her mind, too, partly stupefied by the violence of her emotions.

  Once she had risen heavily, had gone into the maid’s room and had told her to go to bed, adding that she herself would wait for Miss Westgard.

  That, already, was nearly an hour ago, and the gilt hands of the clock were already creeping around the gilded dial toward the half hour.

  As it struck on the clear French bell, a key turned in the outside door; then the door closed; and Palla rose trembling from her chair as Ilse entered, her golden hair in lovely disorder, the evening cloak partly flung from her shoulders.

  There was a moment’s utter silence. Then Ilse stepped swiftly forward and took Palla in her arms.

  “My darling! What has happened?” she asked. “Why are you here at this hour? You look dreadfully ill! — —”

  Palla’s head dropped on her breast.

  “What is it?” whispered Ilse. “Darling — darling — you did — you did wait — didn’t you?”

  Palla’s voice was scarcely audible: “I don’t know what you mean.... I was only frightened about you.... I’ve been so unhappy.... And Jim said — good-bye — and I can’t — find him — —”

  “I want you to answer me! Are you in love with him?”

  “No.... I don’t — think so — —”

  Ilse drew a deep breath.

  “It’s all right, then,” she said.

  Then, suddenly, Palla seemed to understand what Ilse had meant when she had said, “Wait!”