Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  It was just two weeks that I had been out of the dark room. I was totally blind in my right eye, but nobody except Keen and myself knew it. I was becoming used to it — I was only too thankful that the eye, to all appearances, was as perfect as the other eye. But I dreaded to begin painting again. I feared that everything might be colourless and lop-sided, that I should be a ruined man as far as my profession was concerned. I had put off the beginning of work from sheer cowardice. Nobody but an artist can appreciate my mental suffering; — nobody but an artist knows that two eyes are little enough to see with. Had the accident destroyed the balance of my sight? Would my drawing be exaggerated, unstable, badly constructed, out of proportion? Would my colour be weak or brutally crude? I decided to find out without further delay, so when Ysonde and her aunt and Blylock had disappeared, I went to my room, gathered up my well-worn sketching kit, screwed two canvases into the holder, and marched manfully out the door into the sunlit forest.

  Ridiculous Billy followed me. This capricious porcupine had taken a violent fancy to me, from the moment I emerged from the dark room. Of course I preferred his friendship to his enmity — I still bore a red scar on my ankle — but what soothed me most was his undisguised hatred of Blylock. Billy bit him whenever he could, and the blood of Bunker Hill appealed to Heaven from the piazza of the Rosebud Inn!

  Blylock took it very decently — the porcupine was Ysonde’s property — but although he himself suffered in silence, and Ysonde darned his golf-stockings as partial reparation, I always fancied that his blood was importuning Heaven, and, remembering George III, I trembled for Ridiculous Billy.

  Sometimes I was sorry for Blylock, sometimes I was not, especially when Ysonde darned his golf-stockings. Blylock was Lynda Sutherland’s cousin, but I demonstrated to Ysonde that this did not concern her. Sometimes I wished that Blylock would go back to Beacon Street, and yet I had grown fond of him in a way.

  The porcupine followed me into the forest, poking his rat-like muzzle into every soft rotten stump, twitching his white whiskers. A red squirrel followed him from tree to tree, chattering and squealing with rage, but Billy lumbered along, stolid, blasé, entirely wrapped up in his own business. What that business was I dared not enquire, for Billy’s malicious eyes boded evil for interlopers, and I respected his privacy.

  Walking along the fragrant brown trail, barred with sunlight, I recalled that cold gray morning in camp when Sutherland — Lynda’s late lamented — waking from the troubled dreams incident on an overdose of hot whiskey and water, called to me, to take “that thing away!”

  “That thing” was Billy. From his nest among the pine-clad ridges, he had smelled our pork, and being a freeborn American, he had descended to appropriate it. In the gray of the morning, through the smouldering camp-fire smoke, I saw Billy in the act of removing the pork from the crotches of a spruce tree.

  “What is it? Take it away for God’s sake!” bellowed Sutherland, associating Billy with other grotesque phantoms incident on overdoses.

  “It’s a porcupine,” said I.

  “Pink?” faltered Sutherland.

  “Go to sleep, you brute,” I muttered, not addressing the porcupine. I took a poncho, a thick one, and ran the porcupine down. Then I enveloped him in the blanket, and got a rope about his neck, tied him to a tree and examined my wounds. One of our guides helped me pull the spines from my person, and that night the other guide led Ridiculous Billy into the settlement which consists of the Rosebud Inn and three barns.

  The taking of Billy preceded Sutherland’s death by twenty-four hours; he was mauled by a panther whose cubs he was investigating. His wife, Lynda, who had secured a few month’s reprieve from his presence, and who first heard of his death at Fortress Monroe, came north with Ysonde. Sutherland was buried in New York, and two weeks later Lynda and Ysonde came to the Rosebud Inn. All this happened three years ago, and during those three years, Billy, gorgeous with a silver collar, had never forgiven me for removing him from his native wilds. His attitude toward the household was unmistakable. Lynda he avoided, Ysonde he followed with every mark of approbation, Blylock he loathed, and now, he had taken this sudden shine to me.

  Billy and I followed the trail, solemnly, deliberately. The trail was a blind one, now plain, brown and gold with trampled wet leaves, now invisible, a labyrinth of twisted moose-bush and hemlock, badly blazed. But we knew our business, Billy and I, for presently we crossed a swift brook, darkling among mossy hollows, and turning to the right, entered a moist glade all splashed with dewy sunlight.

  “Here,” said I, unstrapping my camp-stool, “is a woodland Mecca”; and I drove my white umbrella deep into the bank, where the brook widened in sunny shallows.

  Billy eyed me a moment, rolled a pine-cone over with his nose, and mounted a tree. I liked to watch him mount trees. He did not climb, he neither scrambled nor scratched, he simply flowed up the trunk.

  “Pleasant dreams,” said I, as he curled up in the first moss-covered crotch; and I began to set my palette.

  In the fragrant sun-soaked glade the long grass, already crisp as hay, was vibrating with the hum of insects. Shy forest butterflies waved their soft wings over the Linnea, long-legged gnats with spotted wings danced across the fern patches, and I saw a great sleepy moth hanging from a chestnut twig among the green branches overhead. His powdery wings, soft as felt, glistened like gilded dust.

  “An Imperial Moth,” said I to myself, for I was glad to recognize a friend. Then a wood-thrush ruffled his feathers under the spreading ferns, and I saw a baby rabbit sit up and wriggle its nose at me.

  “Lucky for you I’m not a fox,” said I, picking up a pointed sable brush; and I drew the outline of the chestnut tree, omitting the porcupine in the branches.

  When I had indicated a bit of the forest beyond the glade, using a pointed brush dipped in Garance Rose foncée, I touched in a mousey shadow or two, scrubbed deep warm tones among my trees, using my rag when I pleased, and then, digging up a brushful of sunny greens and yellows, slapped it boldly on the foreground. Over this I drew a wavering sky reflection, indicated a sparkle among the dewy greens, scrubbed more sunlight into the shallow depths of the brook, and leaned back with a nervous sigh. What had God taken from me when he took the light from my eye? I pondered in silence while round me the brown-winged forest flies buzzed and hummed and droned an endless symphony. To me, with my single trembling eye, my painted foreground seemed aglow with sunlight, and the depths of the quiet forest, wrapped in hazy mystery, appeared true and just, slumbering there upon my canvas.

  The brook prattled to me of dreams and splendid hopes, the pines whispered of fame, the ferns rustled and nodded consolation. I raised my head. High in the circle of quivering blue above, a gray hawk hung, turning, turning, turning in silence.

  A light step sounded among the fallen leaves. Slowly I turned, my sight dazzled by the sky, but before my eye had found its focus I heard her low laughter and felt her touch on my arm.

  “You were asleep,” she said, “you must not deny it, do you hear me?”

  “I was not asleep,” I answered, rising from my camp-stool.

  “Then you are blind, — why I have been standing there for two minutes.”

  “Two minutes? then I believe that I must be blind,” said I, turning so that I could see her better. She stood on my right.

  “I expected to be challenged,” said she; “I did not hear your qui vive.”

  Then she sat down on my camp-stool and gazed at my canvas with amazement.

  I watched her in silence, proud of my work, happy that she should recognize it, for she knew good work every time. After a while I began to chafe at her silence, and I bent my head to see her face. I shall never forget the pained surprise in her eyes nor the quiver of her voice as she said:

  “Bobby, this is childish, what on earth do you mean by such work?”

  The blow had fallen. At first I was stunned. Then terror seized me, and I grasped a low swinging branch to steady myself,
for I felt as though I were falling.

  “Bobby,” she cried, “you are white — are you ill?”

  “No,” said I, “that sketch was only a joke, — to tease you.”

  “It is a very stupid joke,” she said coldly; “I cannot understand how an artist could bring himself to do such a thing.”

  “It was a poor joke,” said I, red as fire, “pardon me, Ysonde, I don’t know what possessed me to paint like that.”

  She picked up my paint rag and swept it across the face of my canvas; then turning to me:

  “Now you are forgiven; come and talk to me, Bobby.”

  The sun climbed to the zenith and still we sat there, she with her round white chin on her wrist, I at her feet.

  Billy, who had descended from his perch in the chestnut tree as soon as he heard Ysonde’s voice, rambled about us, snuffling and snooping into every tuft of fern, one evil eye fixed on us, one on the red squirrel who chattered and twitched his brush, and rushed up and down a big oak tree in a delirium of temper.

  “No,” replied Ysonde to my question, “Mr. Blylock did not fish; he talked to Lynda most of the time. I came here because I had an intuition that you were going to paint.”

  “But,” said I, “how did you know I was coming here? I never before painted in this glade.”

  “I don’t know how I knew it,” said Ysonde, slowly.

  “Witchcraft?” I asked.

  “Possibly,” she said, with an almost imperceptible frown.

  “I have noticed already,” I said, “that you have a mysterious faculty for reading my thoughts and divining my intentions. Are you aware of it?”

  “No,” she said shortly.

  “But you have,” I persisted.

  “You flatter yourself, Bobby. I am not thinking of you every minute.”

  “Suppose,” said I, after a moment’s silence, “that you loved me—”

  “I shall not suppose so,” she answered haughtily.

  “Let us suppose, then,” said I, “that I love you—”

  “Really, Bobby, you are more than tiresome.”

  I thought for a while in silence. The wood-thrush, who had come quite close to Ysonde — all wild creatures loved her — began to sing. The baby rabbit sat up to listen and wriggle its nose, and the speckled gnats danced giddily.

  “Suppose,” said I, with something in my voice that silenced her, “suppose that you loved me, and that I had lost my eye. Would you still love me?”

  “Yes,” said Ysonde, with an effort.

  “And suppose,” I continued, “I had been born with an eye blind; could you have loved such a man?”

  “I do not think I could,” she answered truthfully.

  “Probably not,” I repeated, biting the stem of a wild strawberry. After a moment I looked up into the sky. The hawk was not there; but I was not looking for the hawk.

  “Come,” said I, rising, “dinner must be ready and your aunt should not be kept waiting.”

  I gathered up my sketching kit, tenderly perhaps, for I should never use it again, and whistled Billy to heel, — which he did when he chose.

  Perhaps it was something in my face — I don’t know — but Ysonde suddenly came up to me and took both my hands.

  “Are you going to be sensible, Bobby?” she asked. Her face was very serious.

  “Yes, Ysonde,” I said.

  But she did not seem satisfied — there came a faint glow on her face — it may have been a sunbeam — and she dropped my hands and whistled to Billy.

  “Come!” she cried, with a tinge of anger in her voice that I had never before heard,—” heel, Billy!”

  But as Billy lingered, sniffing and rooting among the ferns, she picked up a twig and struck Billy on the nose. The blow was gentle — it would not have hurt a mosquito — but I was astounded, for it was the first time I had ever seen her lift her hand in anger to any living creature. Perplexed and wondering I followed her through the forest, my locked colour-box creaking on my shoulder.

  IV.

  “To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he hath,” said I, knocking my pipe against the verandah railing.

  “Scripture,” said Blylock, approvingly.

  “For this is the law and the prophets,” I continued, grateful that the Bible had received Boston’s approval.

  “Scripture,” repeated Blylock, with the smile of a publisher mentioning the work of a very young author.

  “Exactly,” I replied, “also the Koran; I forget whether Tupper mentions it.”

  “Probably,” said Blylock seriously.

  “Probably,” I repeated, inserting a straw in the stem of my pipe. Ysonde frowned at me.

  “Blylock,” I continued, smiling at nothing, “have you read Emerson?”

  “Heavens!” murmured Blylock under his breath.

  I had aroused him. I made it a point to stir him up once every day, satisfied to allow him to relapse into his normal Beacon Street trance afterward.

  “Your scriptural quotation,” said Ysonde, with a dangerous light in her eyes, “would indicate that you have suffered a loss.”

  “From him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he hath,” I repeated; “yes, having nothing, I have lost all I have, which,” I continued, “is of course nothing. But I am encroaching on Brook Farm, — and the Koran—”

  “And on the patience of your friends,” said Ysonde; “don’t try to be epigrammatic, Bobby.” There was a glass of water standing on a table to my right. I did not see it, my right eye being sightless, and I knocked it over. I was confused and startled at this — it brought back to me my misfortune so cruelly that I apologized more than was necessary, and received a puzzled stare from Ysonde. I noted it and chafed helplessly. Lynda Sutherland came out on the porch, and I rose and brought her a chair.

  “The moonlight reminds me of Venice,” said Lynda, turning her lovely face to the moon.

  We all agreed with her, although we knew it was nonsense, for we all had lived in Venice. If she had said it reminded her of peach ice-cream, we would have agreed. She was too beautiful for one to analyze what she said — she was too beautiful to analyze it herself. I remembered with a shock that the late lamented had once referred to his wife’s being “d — nd ornamental,” and I was glad the panther had clawed his besotted soul from his body. But Sutherland had never said a truer thing in his life; drunkard that he was, he always spoke the truth.

  “Lynda,” cooed Ysonde, “do you think that we might camp for a few days with Bobby and Mr. Blylock? They are going to the Black Water to-morrow and Mr. Blylock asked us.”

  “We take two guides,” added Blylock, vaguely.

  “We will only stay three days,” said I.

  “We will have a trout supper,” suggested Blylock.

  “And flap-jacks for breakfast,” said I.

  “I should so like to go,” pleaded Ysonde.

  Blylock examined the moon, and I saw Lynda look at him.

  “Is there any danger?” she asked.

  I was discreetly silent; the question was not addressed to me.

  “I think not,” said Blylock turning around, “I carry a rifle.”

  “Threecheers for Bunker Hill,” I said, “there is nothing to shoot—”

  “Except — panthers,” observed Blylock dryly.

  At this tactless remark I expected to hear Lynda refuse to go. She did not, although she looked at Blylock a little reproachfully. He, serenely unconscious, examined his seal ring in silence. Possibly Lynda did not believe that panthers ranged so near the Inn, perhaps she was not ungrateful to the last one that had patted her late lamented into a better land.

  “There are,” said I, truthfully, “a few panthers ranging between the Gilded Dome and Crested Hawk. Sometimes they get as far as Noon Peak and the White Lady, sometimes even as far as Lynx Peak, but I never heard of anything bigger than a lynx being seen near the Black Water.”

  “I have been i
n these forests every summer and autumn for twenty years,” said Blylock, “and I never saw either panther or lynx; have you?” he ended, turning toward me. Then, recollecting that I had witnessed the mauling of the late lamented, he turned rosy, and I was pleased to see that he was capable of experiencing two whole emotions in one evening.

  I did not answer — it was not necessary, of course. I could show him the panther skin in my studio some day when I wanted to take a rise out of him. It measured nine feet from tip to tip — it might have measured more had the panther had time to nourish himself with Sutherland.

  Now Ysonde must have read what was passing in my mind, for she looked shocked and nestled closer to Lynda.

  “What is a lynx,” demanded Lynda, shivering.

  “There are two species found here,” replied Blylock, glad to change the subject, “one the big grey Canada lynx, the other the short-tailed American lynx—”

  “Otherwise Bob-cat, Lucivee, and wild-cat,” I interposed; “they make a horrid noise in the woods and are harmless.”

  “If you let them alone,” added Blylock, conscientious to the end.

  “Which we will,” said Ysonde, gaily, “we are going, are we not, Lynda?”

  “No,” said Lynda, firmly.

  But the next morning when the first sunbeams scattered the mist which clung to copse and meadow, and sent it rolling up the flanks of the Gilded Dome, Lynda said, “Yes,” and possibly her pretty mountain costume tipped the balance in Ysonde’s favour, for Lynda looked like a fin-de-siècle Diana in that frock and she knew it, bless her fair face!

  The guides, Jimmy Ellis and Buck Hanson, were tightening straps and rolling blankets on the lawn outside.

  “Buck,” said I, “how many pounds do you take in?”

  “Fifty, sir,” drawled Buck, wiping the sweat from his face with the back of his hand.

  “And you, Jimmy?” I asked.

  “About forty, sir,” replied Ellis, seriously.

  “I cal’late,” added Buck, “the ladies will want extry blankets.”

  “They will,” I replied, “the wind is hauling around to the northwest.” Then I took a step nearer and dropped my voice.