Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “You misunderstood,” I said, wearily. “I don’t believe what the oculist told me; the eye will be all right.”

  “But he warned you that a sudden blow would—”

  “Might—”

  “Oh — did he say might?”

  “Yes — but it won’t. I’m all right — don’t take away your hand; are you tired?”

  “No, no,” she said, “shall I get some fresh water?”

  “Not yet — don’t go. The game was at deuce, wasn’t it?”

  Ysonde was silent.

  “Was it deuce? Does that point count against me?” I insisted.

  “How can you think of the game now?” said Ysonde, in a queer voice — like the note of a very young bird.

  I sat down on the turf, and the handkerchief fell from my eye. Ysonde hastened to the spring and returned carrying the heavy stone jar full of water. It must have strained her delicate wrist — she said it did not; and, kneeling beside me, she placed the cold bit of cambric over my eye.

  “Thank you,” I said; “will you sit beside me on the turf?” Both of my eyes were aching and closed, but I heard her skirts rustle and felt the momentary pressure of her palm on my cheek.

  “Are you seated?” I asked.

  “Yes, Bobby.”

  “Then tell me whether I lost that point.”

  “How can I tell,” she answered; “I would willingly concede it if it were not—”

  “For the forfeit,” I added; “then you think I did lose the point?”

  “Does your eye pain very much?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said I, truthfully. Perhaps it was ungenerous, but I dared not reject such an ally as truth. I opened one eye and looked at Ysonde. She was examining a buttercup.

  “All buttercups look as though they had been carefully varnished,” said she, touching one with the tip of her middle finger.

  “Did I win the set?” I began again.

  “Oh — no — not the set!” she protested.

  “Then I lost that point?”

  “Oh! why will you dwell upon tennis at such a moment!”

  “Because,” said I, “it means so much to me.” I suppose there was something in my voice that frightened her.

  “Forgive me,” I said, bitterly ashamed, for I had broken our compact, not directly, but in substance. “Forgive me, Ysonde,” I said, looking at the porcupine with my left eye.

  “Ridiculous Billy,” for that was his name, stared at me with the insolence born of safety, and his white whiskers twitched in derision.

  “You old devil,” I thought, remembering the scar on my ankle.

  “Where did he bite you?” asked Ysonde unconsciously reading my thoughts. It was a trick of hers.

  “In the ankle, — it was nothing. I would rather have him bite the other ankle than get any more of his quills into me!” I replied. “See how the snow-birds have followed you. They are there among the wild strawberries.”

  She turned her head.

  “Hush!” she whispered, raising one palm. It was pinker than the unripe berries. There was an ache in my heart as well as in my eyes, so I said something silly; “There was an old man who said, Hush! I perceive a young bird in this bush—”

  “When they said, Is it small? he replied, Not at all! It is four times as big as the bush!” repeated Ysonde, solemnly. We both laughed, but I read a gratitude in her eyes which annoyed me.

  “We digress,” I said, “speaking of the game—”

  “Oh, but we were not speaking of the game!” she said, half-alarmed, half-smiling; “there! I thought you were going to be sensible, Bobby.”

  “I am. I only wish to know whether I lost that game.”

  “You know the rules,” she said.

  “Yes — I know the rules.”

  “If it were not for the forfeit, I should not insist,” she continued, returning to her buttercup. “It seems unfair to take the point; — does the eye pain, Bobby?”

  “Not so much,” I replied, sticking to the truth to the bitter end. My ally was becoming a nuisance.

  “Let me see it,” she said, gently removing the handkerchief. The eye must have looked bad, for her face changed.

  “Oh, you poor fellow,” she said, and I fairly revelled in the delight of my own misery.

  “Then I lost that point,” said I, stifling conscience.

  She replaced the handkerchief. Her hand had become suddenly steady.

  “No,” she said, “you did not lose the point, — I concede it.”

  I wondered whether my ears were tricking me.

  “Then — if I won the point — I won the set,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “And the forfeit—”

  “The forfeit was that I should kiss you,” said Ysonde, gravely.

  “That was not all—”

  “No, — you are to be allowed to tell me that you love me,” continued Ysonde in calm, even tones.

  “Then,” said I, flushing uncomfortably, “when will you pay the forfeit?”

  “Now, if you wish it. Shall I kiss you?”

  She leaned on the turf, one hand hidden by the buttercups. She had dropped the handkerchief, and I picked it up and held it to my eye with my left hand. Then, with my right hand, I took her right hand, listlessly drooping beside her, and I looked her full in the eyes.

  “When we made the wager,” I said, “we were boy and girl. That was almost twenty-four hours ago. You need not kiss me, Ysonde.”

  “A kiss means more at our age,” she said.

  “We were very silly,” said I.

  “It should mean love,” she said, faintly.

  “Indeed it should,” I said.

  Ysonde sat straight up among the field flowers.

  “I do not love,” she said.

  “I know it,” I replied gaily, and I let the bandage drop from my eye. “The pain is all gone, “ I said, closing my left eye to see whether my vision was impaired.

  I was totally blind in my right eye.

  For an instant the shock staggered me. I don’t know how long I sat, mouth open, staring at the sun with one sound, one sightless eye. Ysonde, her chin on her hands, lay with her face turned toward the White Lady, a towering peak in the east.

  “Come,” I said, rising, “your aunt will be impatient; dinner has been served this half hour.”

  She sprang to her feet, — she had been in a reverie, — and gave me a long look which I could not define.

  “And your eye doesn’t pain?” she asked, after a moment.

  “No,” I said, for the pain had disappeared with the sight; “I am all right except a headache.”

  “And you can see perfectly well?”

  “Perfectly.”

  It was at this point that truth and I parted; for what was a lost eye that it should cause her a moment’s regret?

  II.

  IT was about this time that the oculist came to Holderness and visited me at the Rosebud Inn. I was in a dark room; Ysonde thought it better, believing darkness a cure for headache.

  When the oculist walked in — his name was Keen, — he said, “What the devil are you doing here?”

  “I am blind in one eye — will it be noticeable?” I asked.

  “Banged in the eye?” he enquired, opening the shutters.

  “Banged in the eye,” I repeated, as he bent over me.

  His examination lasted scarcely ten seconds. After a moment he rose and closed the shutters, and I stood up in the darkness.

  “Will it disfigure me?” I asked again.

  “No, — an oculist could tell the difference perhaps. You may go out in three weeks.”

  “Blind?”

  “Nonsense,” growled Keen, “you have another eye yet.”

  “But I am an artist,” I said in a low voice, “is there hope?”

  I heard Keen sit down in the room, and his rocking-chair squeaked through five minutes of the bitterest darkness I ever knew. I could stand it no longer, so I rose and felt my way towards the r
ocking-chair, — I wanted to touch him — I was terrified. Well, it only lasted a few moments — most men pass through crises — I was glad he did not attempt to pity me.

  “It was Miss—” he began.

  “Hush!” I whispered. “Who told you, Keen?”

  “She did,” he replied. “Of course, she need never know you are—”

  “Blind,” I said,— “No, she need not know it.”

  I heard him feeling for the door.

  “Turn your back,” he said.

  I did so.

  “Three weeks?” I enquired over my shoulder.

  “Yes — don’ t smoke.”

  “What the devil shall I do?” I said, savagely.

  “Think on your sins, old chap,” — we had studied together in the Latin Quarter— “think of Pépita—”

  “I won’t,” I cried. Keen hummed in a mischievous voice,

  “Quand le sommeil sur ta famille

  Autour de toi s’est repondu,

  O Pépita, charmante fille,

  Mon amour, à quoi penses-tu?”

  “Keen,” I said, “I’ll break your head, if I am one-eyed.”

  “I’m a married man,” he replied, “and I refuse your offer; that’s better, I like to hear the old ring in your voice, Bobby — keep a stiff upper lip. Surgery and painting are not the only things we learned in the Quarter.”

  I heard the door close behind him, then turned and groped my way toward the bed.

  * * * * * *

  How I ever lived through those three weeks! — Well, I did, and every fresh pipe of Bird’s-eye tasted sweeter for my disobedience.

  “Write him,” I dictated through the closed door to Ysonde,—” write him that I am smoking six pipes a day as he directed.” After all, if I was going to be blind in one eye, I did not care whether tobacco hastened the blow, and I was glad to poke a little fun at Keen.

  Ysonde could not imagine why the doctor had recommended smoking — she had heard that it weakened the sight, but she wrote as I directed, merely expressing her distrust in Keen, which amused me, for he is now one of the most famous oculists in the world.

  “Yes,” said I, through the key-hole, “Keen is young, and has much to learn, but I dare not disobey orders. How is your aunt?”

  “My aunt is well, thank you, Bobby; did you like the sherbet she made?”

  “Yes — that’s six times you have asked me.”

  I was wearying of lying. The sherbet reposed among the soapsuds of my toilet jar.

  Ysonde’s aunt, a tall aristocratic beauty, whose perfectly arched eye-brows betrayed the complacent vacancy of her mind, had actually prepared, with her own fair hands, a sherbet for me. I cannot bear sweets of any kind.

  “Aunt Lynda will make another to-morrow,” cooed Ysonde through the key-hole.

  “Thank her for me,” said I faintly; “Ysonde, I am coming out to-night.”

  “It is not yet three weeks!” cried Ysonde.

  “It will be three weeks to-morrow at 1 p m. My eyes won’t suffer at night. I should like to smell the woods a little. Will you walk with me this evening?”

  “If Aunt Lynda will allow me,” said Ysonde. After a moment she added: “I will ask her now”; and I heard her rise from her chair outside my door.

  When she came back, I was lying face downwards on my bed, miserable, dreading the hour when I should first face my own reflection in a mirror. I heard her step on the stairs, and I jumped up and groped my way toward the door.

  “Bobby,” she called softly.

  “Ysonde,” I answered, with my mouth close to the key-hole. She started — I heard her — for she did not know I was so near. I bent my head to listen.

  “Aunt Lynda says you are foolish to go out before to-morrow—”

  “The evening won’t hurt me.”

  “But suppose — only suppose your disobedience should cost you the sight of your eye?”

  “It won’t,” said I.

  “Think how I should feel?”

  “It won’t,” I repeated. The perspiration suddenly dampened my forehead, and I wiped it away.

  “Can’t you wait?” she pleaded.

  “No. Have you your aunt’s permission to walk with me this evening?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Shall I read to you a little while?”

  For an hour I listened to her voice, and if it was Lovelace or Herrick or Isaac Walton, I do not know upon my soul, but I do know that my dark room was filled with the delicious murmur; and I heard the trees moving in the evening wind and the twitter of sleepy birds from the hedge. It might have been the perfume from the roses under my window — perhaps it was the fragrance of her hair — she bent so close to my door outside — but a sweet smell tinctured the darkness about me, stealing into my senses; and I rose and opened my blinds a little way.

  It was night. I heard the rocky river rushing through the alders and the pines swaying on the ridge. The ray from the moon which silvered the windows caused my eyes no pain.

  I listened. Through the low music of her voice crept the song of a night-thrush. A breeze stirred the roses under my window; the music of voice and thrush was stilled. Then, in the silence, some wild creature cried out from the mountain side.

  “me damnée!” I muttered; for my soul was heavy with the dread of the coming morning.

  “What are you murmuring in there by yourself?” whispered Ysonde, through the door.

  “Nothing — was it a lynx on Noon Peak?”

  “I heard nothing,” she said.

  “Nor I,” said I, opening the door.

  The light from the lamp dazzled but did not hurt me. She laid down the book and came swiftly toward me.

  “Now,” said I, ‘‘we will walk under the stars — with your aunt’s permission.”

  I heard her sigh as she took my arm; “Bobby, I am so glad your eye is well. What could you have done if you had lost the sight of an eye?”

  III.

  THE morning was magnificent. A gentleman with symmetrical whiskers named Blylock, and I were standing on the verandah of the Rosebud Inn. Blylock’s mind was neutral. His lineage was long, his voice modulated, his every action acutely impersonal. The subdued polish of Harvard was reflected from his shoes to his collar. When he smoked he smoked judiciously, joylessly.

  “And you lost the fish?” said I.

  “Yes,” said Blylock, with colourless enthusiasm.

  “In the West Branch?”

  “Near the Forks,” said Blylock. “Do you know the pool?”

  I regretted that I did not. He had once asked me whether I knew the Stryngbenes of Beacon Street, and I had replied with the same regret. Now he learned that I was culpably ignorant of the pool at the West Branch Forks.

  Blylock looked at the mountains. The White Lady was capped with mist, but except for that there was not a cloud in the sky. The Gilded Dome towered, clear cut as a cameo, against the pure azure of the northern horizon; Lynx Peak, jagged and cold, shot up above the pines of Crested Hawk, whose sweeping base was washed by the icy river.

  “Do you think he might weigh five pounds?” I asked.

  “Possibly,” replied Blylock; “I regret exceedingly that I lost him.”

  “But, thank God, Plymouth Rock still stands!” was what I felt he expected me to say. I did not; I merely asked him if he had ever experienced emotion. “Why, of course,” he answered seriously, but when I begged him to tell me when, he suspected a joke and smiled. If I had a son who smiled like that I would send him to Tony Pastor’s. Oh, that smile! — gentle, vacant, blank as the verses of a Brook Farm Bard, bleaker than Bunker Hill.

  “For sweet charity’s sake,” said I, “tell me why you do it, Blylock.”

  “Do what?” he asked.

  “Oh,” said I wearily, “nothing — lose a five-pound trout, for instance.”

  “I had on a brown hackle,” said Blylock; “it was defective.”

  “It bust,” said I, brutally, “did you curse?”

  “No,” re
plied Blylock. Ysonde came out and we took off our shooting-caps.

  “Put them on again directly,” said Ysonde, nestling deep into the collar of her jacket; “is it too cold for the trout to rise, Mr. Blylock?”

  Blylock looked at the sky and then at his finger tips. There was a seal ring on one of his fingers which I was tired of seeing.

  I listened to his even voice, I noticed his graceful carriage — I even noticed the momentary flush on his cold cheeks. Oh, how tired I was of looking at him; it wearied me as it wearies me to read advertisements in the cars of the elevated railroad. But I liked him.

  “Blylock,” said I, “get a gait on you, and we’ll whip the stream to the Intervale before dinner.”

  “The water will be cold,” said Ysonde. “You ought to have waders.”

  Now Ysonde knew that I had no waders. I loathed them. Blylock always wore waders.

  “Thank you,” said Blylock, “I will not neglect to wear them.”

  I looked at Ysonde and met her eyes.

  “Oh,” said I, spoiling everything with intentional obstinacy, “Mr. Blylock never forgets his waders.” For a moment the colour touched her cheek, but she treated me much better than I deserved.

  “Bobby,” said Ysonde, “remember that you have been ill, and if you wade the river in knickerbockers you will be obliged to eat sherbert again.”

  So she knew the mystery of the soapsuds.

  “I have no waders, Ysonde,” I said humbly, “do you think I had better not go?”

  “You know best,” she said indifferently; and I got my deserts to the placid satisfaction of Blylock.

  Ysonde walked away to join her aunt and I loafed about, sniffing the breeze, sulky, undecided, until Blylock appeared with rod and creel.

  “Going?” enquired Blylock.

  “No, I shall paint,” I said, after a moment’s silence.

  He joined Ysonde and her aunt, and I saw them all walking toward the trail that crosses the river by the White Cascade. Blylock had undertaken to teach Ysonde to cast. I was surprised when she accepted, for I myself had taught her to cast. However I never asked any explanation and she never offered any — to my secret annoyance.