Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “No,” she said indifferently, “I do not want it now, — it is too late.”

  “Then don’t let’s think about it,” said Garland quickly.

  “Think! think!” she answered without impatience, “what else can I do?”

  “And you think of him?” he asked.

  “No, not of him, but of his injustice,” she said quietly.

  They had talked sometimes on the subject — he never knew just how it came about. Perhaps his interest in Tip had moved her to the confidence, if it could be called a confidence, for all the free-born were unbidden participants in the secret. The story was commonplace enough. When Celia was sixteen, four years back, she lived with an elect uncle in the manufacturing town of Highfield, forty miles down the river. One day a road company with more repertoire than cash, stranded at Bowles’ Opera House and drifted back by highway and byway toward Boston. One member of the company, however, did not drift back. His name was Clarence Minster and he said he had found salvation, which was true in one sense, for Celia’s elect uncle clawed him into the fold and having cleansed his soul, gave him a job to cleanse the stable at very few dollars a month. Celia was young and simple and pitiful. She also possessed five hundred dollars of her own. So Clarence Minster first ran away with her and then with most of her five hundred dollars. Unfortunately the marriage was legal, and the uncle implacable, so Celia took her brother Tip in one hand, and a thinned-out pocket-book in the other, and went to her dead parent’s home, the stone house at Ten Pin Corners. She sometimes heard of Minster, never from him. He had struck the public taste as “Dick Willard,” the hero of the lachrymose melodrama, “Honour,” and his photographs were occasionally seen in Highfield store windows.

  This was Celia’s story — part of it. The other part began as she began to listen to Garland, and to bring him delicate winged moths that sought her chamber lamp as she bent over Tip’s patched clothes. Something also was beginning for Garland; he felt it growing as he moved among the lilies in the dusk while Celia held the bullseye lantern, and the great sphinx moths hovered over the pinks. He felt it in the crystal clear mornings when sleepy butterflies clung to the late lilacs, and Celia moved far afield through raspberries and yellow buttercups. He felt it now, as he lay beside her among level shadows and gilt-tipped verdure — he felt it and wondered whether it was love. Perhaps Celia could have told him, I don’t know, but it was plain enough to the tethered kid and the Maltese cat, to the drifting swallows, and the orioles in the linden tree besides the well-sweep. It was simple and self-evident to the Alderney, lowing at the bars, to the Jersey staring stolidly at Celia, to the robins, the hedge birds — yes, to the tireless crickets chirping from every tussock.

  Now whether or not it was equally plain to Tip as he came trudging up the gravel walk, I do not know.

  He said, “Hello, Cis,” and came and kissed her — a thing he did not often do voluntarily. “I smashed Bill Timerson in the jaw,” he continued, “and he told the teacher, and I dasn’t go back.” Then he glanced humbly at Garland.

  Celia had tears in her eyes, and she also turned instinctively to Garland. “Speak to him, please,” she said, “I can do nothing.”

  “Yes you can,” said Tip— “you and Mr. Garland together. I’ve told him.”

  “Tip will go back to school to-morrow,” said Garland, “and take his thrashing.”

  Tip looked doubtful.

  “And,” continued Garland, “as Bill Timerson is older and stronger than Tip, Tip will continue to punch him whenever assaulted.”

  “Oh — no!” pleaded Celia.

  “Let him,” said Garland, smiling. Tip threw his arms around his sister’s neck and kissed her again, and she held him tightly to her milk-stained apron.

  “Mr. Garland knows,” she whispered, “my darling, try to be good.”

  III.

  GARLAND leaned back in his chair in the dingy bar-room of the Constitution Hotel. His abstracted gaze wandered from Uncle Billy to a framed chromo on the wall, a faithful reproduction of some catchup bottles, a boiled lobster and a platter of uninviting oysters. The Hon. Hanford Perkins was speaking — he had been speaking for half an hour. For years, like Peffer, he had been telling the Government what to do, but his patience, unlike Peffer’s, was exhausted, and now he had decided to let the country go to the devil. He wrote no more letters to the Highfield Banner, he sulked, and au ungrateful country never even knew it At times, however, under the kindly stimulus of Uncle Billy’s “j’y-full juice,” he condescended to address the freeborn in the bar-room of the Constitution Hotel. He was doing it now. He had touched upon silver with the elephantine dexterity of a Populist, he had settled the tariff to the satisfaction of Ten Pin Corners, he spoke of the folly of maintaining a navy, and dismissed the army with a masterly sarcasm in which the phrase, “fuss ‘n feathers” was dwelt upon. Uncle Billy, in the popular attitude of a cherub, elbows on the bar, gazed at him with undisguised admiration. Cy Pettingil, fearful that he was not on an equality with the drummer in the corner, spat upon the stove until he was. Then the drummer told an unclean story which was a success, but the Hon. Hanford Perkins, feeling slighted at the loss of attention, told a scandalous bit of gossip which threw the drummer’s story into the shade.

  Garland stirred restlessly, and opened Wilson on Hybrids again. He had been reading for a moment or two when a name caught his ear, and he closed his book and raised his eyes.

  The Hon. Hanford Perkins was speaking, and Garland leaned over and touched his coat sleeve.

  “You are speaking of a woman,” he said, “that is not the tone to use nor is this the place to discuss any woman.”

  “Hey?” said the Hon. Hanford, with a laugh, and winked at Uncle Billy.

  “I guess he can say what he dam pleases in my house,” said Uncle Billy, expectorating; “the girl’s not yourn.”

  “The girl,” added Cy Pettingil, “is a damned little—”

  Then Garland took Cy Pettingil by the throat, swung him around the room twice, and kicked him headlong into the billiard-table, under which Pettingil hastily scrambled.

  “Now,” said Garland to the Honourable Hanford Perkins, “do you want to follow Pettingil? If you do, just wag that bunch of whiskers on your chin again.”

  The drummer in the corner smiled uneasily, picked up his sample case and key, and said goodnight in an uncertain voice to Garland. Uncle Billy’s eyes were fixed upon Garland with a fascinated stare, and his jaw slowly dropped. The Hon. Hanford Perkins cast one amazed glance at Pettingil, another at Uncle Billy, and waddled majestically out into the street.

  When Garland had picked up his book and left the hotel, Cy Pettingil crawled from beneath the billard-table and approached Uncle Billy. He expectorated and leaned on the bar, but no amount of ejected saliva could re-establish him in his own estimation — he felt this bitterly.

  “I’ll git the law on him,” he said after a moist silence, and rubbed his red hand over his chin. “I’ll hev the law onto him,” he repeated; but Uncle Billy was non-committal.

  “Gimme a little bug-juice,” said Cy, after an uncomfortable silence, and tossed a quarter upon the bar, with ostentatious carelessness,— “I’m dry, Billy.”

  “Yew be?” said Uncle Billy, “wall, yew don’t git no bug-juice nor nawthin’ here.”

  “Hey!” said Pettingil.

  “Naw,” said Uncle Billy, scornfully, and retired to the depths of the bar.

  Garland walked slowly down the road in the twilight, switching the grass with the bamboo staff of his butterfly-net, angry with himself and nauseated with the free-born. And as he walked he was aware of a light touch on his arm, and a lighter footstep by his side. It was Tip.

  “I — I was in the hallway of the hotel,” said Tip, eagerly, “‘n’ I seen what you done to Cy Pettingil—”

  “What were you doing there?” said Garland sharply.

  “Buyin’ salt for Cis, — oh! I just love you, Mister Garland!” And before Garland could raise
his eyes, Tip had flung himself into his arms sobbing: “I ain’t big enough to lick all the loafers in town, but I lick all their sons, and Cis says I am growin’ fast. Oh, you do love me and Cis, don’t you, Mister Garland?”

  “Yes,” said Garland, gravely, and kissed his wet face. Then he took him by the hand and told him how low and mean a bar-room fight was, and that he must never tell Celia what had happened. He tried to explain to him what was necessary to resent, and what was not; he spoke sympathetically as he always did, and Tip absorbed every word.

  “Now let us forget it,” said Garland, “Tip, your grammar is very uncertain. Why do you not try to speak as your sister does?”

  “The boys I play with don’t speak that way,” said Tip.

  “Neither does Cy Pettingil, — he speaks as you do,” said Garland.

  Tip’s hand trembled and clasped Garland’s tighter. “Learn me what to say, Mister Garland,” he said after a silence.

  “I will,” replied Garland, “how would you like to go to school in Boston?”

  “When?”

  “Next winter.”

  “Can Cis come too?”

  “I — hadn’t thought, — you can’t leave her, can you, Tip?”

  “No,” said Tip.

  “Well — we’ll see — you need not speak of this to your sister; I will — er — discuss the question with her later,” said Garland.

  Celia was standing under the pines as they walked up the gravel path. She knew his footsteps and came up on the verandah to greet him.

  “Why, you are all over white!” she said; “has Tip spilled the salt on you?”

  “Tip and I hugged each other to the detriment of the salt,” said Garland laughing and brushing the white grains from his coat.

  “Tip, dear, have you been naughty?” asked Celia.

  “Nope,” said Tip so promptly that even Celia laughed, and Tip retired to bed, glowing with virtuous resolves. Celia went up to his room and waited until he had said his prayers. She was troubled by the fervency of his prayer for Garland, but joined faintly in the Amen, and covered Tip with the white sheets.

  “Mr. Garland says he loves you, Cis,” said Tip, holding up his lips to be kissed. Celia caught her breath and laid one hand on the bedpost.

  “Tip,” she faltered.

  “Yep — an’ me, too,” said Tip, blissfully.

  He fell asleep soon; Celia stood and watched him in the moonlight. She was thinking of Garland; Tip was dreaming of him.

  When she came down, Garland was busy among the lilies with bullseye lantern and butterfly net, and she took a chair on the verandah and watched him. Two “Imperial” moths had fallen to his lot, perfect specimens, and he was happy, for had not Professor Wormly cautiously deplored the absence of this species in the whole country?

  “One on Wormly,” laughed Garland, dropping the great yellow and violet-brown moths from his cyanide-jar into her lap, “are they not pretty, Celia?”

  Since Garland had come, Celia had seen beauty through his eyes where ever his eyes saw it; the shadows on the pasture, the long light over the hills, the massed pines red in the sunset, the morning meadow sheeted with cobwebs. For the first time in her innocent life she had turned to watch the colour in the evening sky, she had stooped to lift a clover-drunk butterfly and examine the rainbow span of its wings, she lingered at the bars, listening to the music of the meadow brook along the alders. So when he asked her if the moths were beautiful, she smiled and saw that they were; and when he asked her to hold his lantern among the lilies, she prettily consented.

  Up and down they moved, to and fro through the lilies and clustered pinks, but the moonlight was too clear and the swift sphinx moths did not visit the garden that night.

  He was standing still, looking at the lilies, and she was swinging the lantern idly. “About Tip,” he said abruptly, “do you think the school here is good for him?”

  “I know it is not,” she said sadly.

  “His English is alarming,” said Garland.

  “I know it — what can I do?”

  “I don’t know; if he goes to school he will play with those children, I suppose.”

  “He was such a well-bred child,” said Celia, “before — before we came here. He talked when he was three. I seem to have little influence over him.”

  “You have a great deal — not in that way perhaps. Suppose you take Tip out of school, Celia.”

  “What would become of him?” exclaimed Celia in gentle alarm.

  “It’s better than leaving him there. I — er — I might help him a bit.”

  “But — it’s very, very kind of you — but you will go away before winter — will you not?”

  “I don’t know,” said Garland, and instinctively laid his hand on hers. At the contact, her cheeks flamed in the darkness.

  “Celia,” he said, “I do not want to go.”

  Her face was turned from him. After a moment his fingers unclosed and her impassive hand fell to her side. The swift touch left him silent and awkward. He tried to speak lightly again but could not. Finally he folded his net, extinguished the lantern and said good-night. Long after he had disappeared she stood among the lilies, her hands softly clasped to her breast.

  IV

  “HEU!” sniffed Uncle Billy, as he poured out a glass of beer for himself behind the fly-soiled bar at the Constitution Hotel, “there hain’t a man around taown dass say a word abaout the Minster girl when Mister Garland’s a settin’ here.”

  “Mister Garland’s a skunk!” said Cy Pettingil, morosely.

  “He ain’t the skunk that yew be, Cy Pettingil,” retorted Uncle Billy, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Garland came in a moment later, satchel in hand, and laid a roll of bills on the bar. Uncle Billy moistened his thumb with his tongue, counted them, and shoved them into his waistcoat pocket. “C’rect,” he said, shifting his quid, “what can I dew for yew, sir?”

  “Send this satchel with my trunk,” said Garland, “good-bye, Uncle Billy.”

  Uncle Billy emerged from the bar, wiped his right hand on his trousers and extended it.

  “Good luck, an’ many bugs to yew, Mister Garland. I’m real cut up that yew air goin’, sir; ennything in the bug line thet I hev I’ll send t’ Noo York.”

  “Thank you, Uncle Billy,” said Garland, and walked out of the hotel, gloves in one hand, cane in the other.

  Cy Pettingil sneered when he was gone, but, receiving no sympathy from Uncle Billy, went home and nagged at his wife, a pale woman weighed down with trouble and American pastry — until she retorted. Then he struck her.

  Garland walked on past the church and school-house, through the sweet-briar lane by the Post Office, and, taking the path above the cemetery, followed it until he came in sight of the stone house among the pines. The Maltese cat trotted out to greet him, the tethered kid stared at him from the lawn, but Celia was invisible, and he stood hesitating under the woodbine on the porch. He had never entered Celia’s house. She had never asked him in, and he knew that she was right. He sat down under the pines and looked off over the pastures where the Alderney and Jersey were feeding along the brookside.

  Garland had come to say good-bye. There was nothing that he could do for Tip; Celia was not able to send him to a better school, nor could she have afforded to go with him. Even if she should accept an offer to send Tip to school, what would she do there alone in that scandal nest of the freeborn? So Garland sat poking pine cones with his stick and crumpling his gloves in his brown hand until a tangle of sun-warmed curls rose over the fence and Tip appeared, smoking a cigarette. When he saw Garland he dropped the cigarette and looked the other way, whistling.

  “Come, Tip,” said Garland, wearily, “let’s have it out before Celia comes.”

  Tip went to him at once.

  “Who gave you that cigarette?” asked Garland. “No one, I made it.”

  “Tobacco?”

  “No, sir, sweet-fern and corn silk.”
r />   “That is not much better. Tip, are you going to stop this?”

  The child picked up a pine cone, examined it carefully, and tossed it toward the Maltese cat.

  “Answer me,” said Garland.

  The child was silent.

  “Very well,” said Garland.

  “I promise!” cried Tip,— “I won’t never smoke nothing, — don’t go away, Mr. Garland!”

  “Is that your word of honour, Tip?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right, ‘r said Garland, smiling, “now you have promised me not to drink or smoke until you are twenty-one. I know I can trust you, and I am very happy. You need not tell Celia of this.”

  “I — I will if you want?” said Tip, humbly. “No, — it will only worry her — and you have promised now. What did you do in school today?”

  “I punched Jimmy Bro—”

  “I did not ask for an account of your athletic victories,” said Garland, “I merely wished to know in what particular branch of the applied sciences you excelled.”

  “Wh — a — at, sir?”

  “Were you perfect in reading?”

  “N — no, sir.”

  “In writing?”

  “No — o—”

  “In arithmetic?”

  Tip stirred restlessly, and looked at the Maltese cat. Then he brightened and said, “A skunk got into the cellar while school was goin’. Teacher told us all about skunks an’ anermals.”

  “Oh,” said Garland, “an object lesson in natural history?”

  “Yep. Skunk ain’t its real name, its real name is Methodist Americanus—”

  “What’s that?” exclaimed Garland.

  “Methodist Americanus—”

  “Mephetis Americanus, Tip,” said Garland gravely.

  “Oh! I thought the man what named it might have had a uncle like mine—”

  “Tip!”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “That will do,” Said Garland seriously.

  The child nodded contentedly and began an elaborate series of evolutions, the object of which was to capture the Maltese cat. The cat was perfectly aware of this; she allowed the boy to approach her until his hand was within an inch of her back; then she ran a few feet, cocked her ears, switched her tail, and pretended to forget him. After a while they disappeared behind the lilac bushes at the end of the verandah, and Garland leaned back against the tree and poked at pine cones again.