Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  And he did, no longer tormented with the fears of being locked out, and presently she opened the door and stood a moment on the threshold, looking at him.

  “I wonder,” she said, “if ever a girl has done as mad a thing as I have to-day?”

  She stepped out and closed the door behind her.

  “Listen,” she said; “a thousand dreadful questions are on my lips — tortured pride refuses to ask for mercy — but — oh, I do care to know what you think of me!”

  He told her as much as he dared tell, haltingly, stammering under the enchantment thickening always around them.

  “You — you think — that?”

  “More. May — shall I say—”

  “Not — not now.”

  Dazed, their young heads turned, they descended the marble steps together.

  Elevator boys, hall servants, the gorgeous porter in his green and gilt livery, stared at the runaway. She passed them, head high.

  “There is going to be a great deal of trouble about nothing, I fear,” she said softly, as they walked out into Fifth Avenue.

  “I fear so,” he mused.

  You — you will probably be evicted by Mr. Thorne when the porter tells him where I’ve been.”

  “Probably,” he smiled.

  “Where will you go when you are evicted?”

  “Where are you going?”

  She glanced at him sweetly. “To tea — with you.”

  “And after that?” he asked unsteadily.

  But she pretended not to hear him, repeating, “To tea with the great artist, Mr. Leeds. Oh, you are surprised that I know how great you are? Did you think I didn’t know? Dear me, don’t my sisters talk of you as though our family discovered you?”

  “That settles it then,” he said, enchanted.

  “What settles what, if you please?”

  “My status. I’m one of your family and entitled to advise you.”

  A moment later two flushed young people entered Sherry’s, utterly oblivious of cloak rooms, bellboys, and butlers, and instinctively chose a remote table secluded in a corner, banked high with verdure.

  They may have had tea. They were so absorbed in talking to each other that they not only paid no attention to what they ordered, but did not notice whether they had eaten anything or not, when the early winter night found them on Fifth Avenue once more, strolling slowly uptown, absorbed in one another to the exclusion of time and similar unimportant trifles.

  She was saying in that full-throated sweet voice, pitched a trifle lower than the roar of traffic, “Yes, I do trust you. I have been horrid and common and silly to go dashing around that trust company, but you are perfectly lovely to understand, and I’ll do exactly what you tell me to do — except—”

  “What?”

  “Oh — you wouldn’t ask me that!”

  “What?”

  “To — to marry him—”

  “Good God,” he breathed.

  After a silence he said: “I have promised you an offer. But first you must go back as though nothing had happened.”

  “Yes, I will. There’s no use in my going to a hotel like a silly, romantic creature, and starting out to look for work in the morning. Besides, my mother would be frantic and call up the police. Besides, I haven’t enough money to really run away; I have only a dollar and some pennies.”

  “Home is the place for you,” he said, laughing under his breath. “When am I to come to tell you about my plan for you?”

  “You’d better hurry,” she said sincerely. “I’ll probably lose courage and be bullied into something or other if you don’t.”

  “May I come to-morrow?”

  “No; there’s a luncheon I don’t dare cut out, and in the evening there’s a dance at the Carringtons’. Do you — do you ever go about? I go to the Lanarks’ dance to-night—”

  “I was asked to that dance, too—”

  “Oh!” she cried enraptured, “will you come? Please — please! If you don’t, I won’t go. Mr. Thorne will be there, and between mamma and him I’ll be driven into something before I know it. Will you?”

  “Yes, I will. And I’ll do more,” he added under his breath; “I’ll lay that offer before you.”

  “That will be perfectly delightful! You won’t fail, will you? And” — she paused at the door of her own house and gave him a small gloved hand—” and I want to tell you how happy I am to have helped you, and how glad I am that you are able to keep to that wicked contract, and that I have had a perfectly lovely time, and I shall, never — never forget how nice you have been even if I have behaved like a brainless ninny. And I am so glad you don’t think me as horrid as I seemed to be. I was reckless for the first time in my life, and did all those desperate things because I’ve been — I’ve been a trifle unhappy.”

  And so he left her, the door opening to engulf her, she turning her pretty head to nod to him as it closed. And he went away soberly, walking up the dark avenue under the flaring electric lights, absorbed, almost stunned, by what had come so suddenly into a life that, but a few hours since, had seemed to him too full, too complete, to hold anything except the love he bore for his profession.

  He dined at the club where he lived, read the evening papers, scarcely conscious of what he was reading, then went upstairs to his room, sat a long while on the bed’s edge, staring at vacancy, and finally lay down, closing his eyes. The Ghost of Chance stood by the bed a moment, considering his victim.

  Hour after hour he lay there, thinking as clearly as the tumult in his breast permitted. Later he bathed, dressed very carefully, and, descending, climbed into a hansom.

  “I’ve a ghost of a chance,” he muttered. “Thorne told me to take it once, and his advice was good. Now, I’ll try it again — for I have got a ghost of a chance again, and I’ll take that chance to-night!”

  And so he came to the great house of the Lanarkses, overlooking the wintry park, and he climbed out of his humble hansom amid the clustering clatter of the rich and great and agreeable, and entered the house which he might not have troubled himself to enter, had a young girl with red hair and wonderful blue eyes not asked him.

  After drifting about in the scented crush for half an hour, he caught a glimpse of her surrounded by a dozen men, among them a diplomat or two, and several attaches; and now, with the intention of claiming her, he marked her down in the glittering throng as carefully as he might have marked a flushed quail in a thicket of golden willow.

  But when, pressing his way through barriers of black coats and threading half an acre of rustling silk and lace, he found the spot where he had expected to find her, she was no longer there; only the red fez of the Turkish Ambassador, nodding affably above the press, indicated that he had reached the spot upon the floor that he had aimed at.

  Glancing up at the gilded musicians’ gallery to verify his bearings, he struck a circle, as he would have done in the woods, and presently came across young Terriss, who was also in love with her — but Leeds did not know that.

  “Thorne took her off,” said Terriss sullenly. “They’re in the conservatory. By the way, I didn’t know you knew her.”

  “I do,” growled Leeds.

  “That pasty-white Russian prince, the fellow with a fat face and a thin nose splitting a brace of eyes too close together” — Terriss shrugged his shoulders—” he’s hanging about, looking for her, too. Her mother steered him off. I suppose it will be announced to-night.”

  Leeds saw her mother and recalled himself to her memory, and her mother’s cordiality surprised and flattered him until he found he could not get past her to the conservatory.

  Meanwhile the musicians were playing away madly. He attempted to dodge her, affably explaining that it was his dance with her daughter. “But Naida is not in here,” said her mother, carefully riding him off.

  “Terriss said—”

  “Doubtless,” continued her mother cheerfully, “Naida is waiting for you with Constance. Do you remember my daughter Constance?
If you take me across, Mr. Leeds, we can find Naida.”

  Steered off, vaguely aware of too much sweetness in the matron’s guileless smile, he looked back and beheld the girl he was seeking emerging from the thicket of palms with Thorne, followed by a heavy and very white young man, with rings on his fingers and under his eyes.

  The girl looked at Leeds as though she had never before seen him. For a moment, as he instinctively stepped forward, they faced one another in silence. Then a faint recognition animated her eyes. She looked at Thorne, at the Russian, at her mother, then, as Leeds said a conventional but decisive word or two, she smiled, laid one hand on his shoulder as he encircled her waist with his right arm, nodded at her mother, and glided off into the glitter with a man who danced well enough to leave her indifferent and occupied with her own reflections.

  How long she had been dancing with him she did not know, nor care, when his voice roused her from a meditation that had left her red mouth sullen and her eyebrows bent.

  “

  “What did you say?” she asked. “I beg your pardon—”

  “Nothing. I wondered whether you were bored? I dance pretty well, you know.”

  “You dance very well. Do I look bored?”

  “You certainly do.”

  “I am.”

  They swung out through the center of the perfumed crush a little recklessly, but with sufficient skill.

  “I wish you would look at me — once,” he said. “What has happened since we parted?”

  She raised her eyes, amused. “The inevitable. I couldn’t escape.”

  “I can’t give you up yet to your own reflections,” he said. “You dance too perfectly. What do you mean by the ‘inevitable’?”

  “Oh, it is not you or the dancing that I meant! You must not mind me; I am likely to say anything to-night.”

  “Anything?”

  “Absolutely anything to anybody.” She raised her eyes again to his face. It was a cleanly modeled countenance, rather lean — not at all like Thorne’s or Prince Minksky’s.

  A vague feeling of being at home again after a foreign tour came over her, a comfortable sensation, lasting for a second — time enough to contrast his amiable features with the features of the man she had been with in the conservatory.

  Constantly passing dancers nodded to them, exchanged a word or two or a brief smile — Terriss with a pretty girl who called her Naida, the British third secretary, very gay in his greeting, dozens and dozens, all whirling by; and through the brilliant glare, the scented breezy wavering scene, Leeds guided the girl with the ruddy gold hair and the sulky mouth — sulky, for she was preoccupied again, oblivious of all in her perfect grace and poise, swinging where he led, as easily, as unconsciously as a wind-blown bird floating half asleep in the flow of the upper air.

  “If you are really too much bored,” he breathed —

  She looked up disturbed. “I told you it was not you. You don’t bore me. You don’t know me well enough.”

  “Is there no chance that I might know you better?”

  “No, no chance.”

  “May I try it?”

  Her beautiful brows unbent. “Why, yes, try it; but I am not worth the effort.”

  “Very well. For this evening you and I will speak the absolute and unvarnished truth; shall we? You may ask me whatever you care to; I will ask you. Dare you?”

  She had shaken her head first, but at the word “dare” her indifference changed to a slight amusement.

  “Oh, I dare anything to-night,” she said. “What question am I to answer?”

  “Is it a bargain that we tell the truth?” he persisted.

  “Certainly, if it amuses you. It won’t amuse me.”

  “And I may venture to be cheerfully impertinent?”

  She nodded, smiling.

  “Then tell me why you asked me to come to this dance?”

  She hesitated. A little more color crept into her face.

  “Am I to answer truthfully?”

  “You promised.”

  Then her entire personality changed with an impulse as illogical, as sudden as any caprice that ever swept over a heart too young to bear bitterness.

  “I asked you,” she said, “to come because — because I was happy with you to-day. But now — now it is too late. I am for sale once more.... Will you buy me?”

  “Willingly,” he returned, amazed but smiling.

  “Too late,” she said, looking up; “I have sold myself.”

  They were on the outer edge of the whirl now. Her hand slid from his shoulder, and she stepped back, flushed, brilliant-eyed, perfectly self-possessed.

  “Thank you for offering to purchase,” she laughed, looking him straight in the face. “Shall we finish the dance? I am ready.”

  “Let me see your card,” he said coolly. She held out the cluster of ivory and gold filigree for his inspection.

  “I thought you had undertaken to amuse me,” she observed. “I didn’t bargain to amuse you.” Her blue eyes were too brilliant, her color almost feverish now.

  “I am going to,” he said. “But I warn you, you may not like it.”

  “Try. Perhaps I may.”

  “I’m going to rub out these names,” he said, watching her.

  “That will be deliciously rude and impertinent. Do it. Can you think of anything else?”

  “Oh, yes!” he said, filling in the card with his own name.

  “Let me see,” she breathed, looking over his shoulder. “Delightful! Why, what you have done is exquisitely indecent, and will certainly involve us both in everything unpleasant. Now, what else are you going to do?”

  “That sale,” he reflected—” you remember?”

  “Oh, yes!”

  “It’s canceled.”

  “No, it isn’t,” she said with a laugh ending in a little check. “But you may compromise me if you — if you can manage it. I’ll flirt with you if you can keep the others off.”

  “I’ll do my best,” he said, looking at her, scarcely knowing what he was saying. “You danced too well for me to let you go when I bored you; now that I don’t, do you think I shall let you go?”

  She was on the verge of something — laughter or tears. He felt it, yet knew that she would not pass the verge.

  “Now I have amused you a little,” he said, “will you sit out the rest of this dance with me?”

  “How can I help it? Your name has replaced the others.”

  He erased his name, and, from memory, filled in the other names in sequence. Then pocketing the tablets, he said airily: “Technically, I recover my self-respect — but, there’s a second conservatory beyond this one where I may lose yours.”

  “I hope it is dark,” she said calmly.

  “It is. We’ll go to the farthest corner.” Passing through palms and tree ferns, they heard the music behind them cease; and they moved a trifle more quickly.

  “It’s locked,” he said.

  “I don’t care. Unlock it.”

  He turned the key. They entered. A few electric bulbs glimmered here and there, gilding thickets of blossoms. There were no chairs to be found, and he had started to return for them, when she called his attention to a green bench under a mass of flowering vines, and, seating herself, looked up at him expectantly.

  “Now,” he said, as he took his place beside her, “you may tell me anything or nothing, as you please. You are terribly excited — I’m rather excited, too. Every normal man is always reckless; every normal woman is, once in a lifetime. It’s a crisis; you’ve reached it. I’m a decent sort of fellow — safer than the next man, maybe. And now I’m keyed up, ready to listen, ready to talk, seriously or frivolously — ready to make love — either way.”

  “Make love to me, seriously?” she said gayly. “Ah, but you are safe to say so — knowing that I am sold!” After a moment she looked up: “Why don’t you ask me who bought me?”

  “Oh, I know,” he nodded.

  “How do you know?”

&
nbsp; “I saw your face — after the bargain.”

  The smile on her mouth remained, but he looked away, unable to meet her haunted eyes.

  “Rub out these names,” she said suddenly, offering to take the card again. And, as he made no movement, she suddenly tore it to pieces in her gloved hands and held the fragments toward him with a miserable little laugh. He took them, retaining her hand in his.

  “You are the prettiest girl in the world,” he said lightly. “Shall I tell you more?”

  “Do you know that I am engaged to Mr. Thorne again?”

  “But I am going to make love to you.”

  “But — I am really going to marry him — on Monday.”

  He laughed, looking her in the eyes.

  “Do you not believe me?” she asked.

  “No,” he said, laughing.

  “But it is true. I have put it off — I have waited until the last moment — you know what I said to-day—”

  Incredulous, smiling, he recovered the hand she had withdrawn. She suffered it to lie in his, looking at him almost frightened.

  “It is stupid not to believe me,” she said. “Can’t a man tell when a girl is speaking the truth? I tell you I must marry him on Monday, if I’m to get anything from my grandfather—”

  His hand, holding hers, relaxed; he looked at her uneasily.

  “All my sisters did the same thing,” she went on— “all hung back until the last moment. Then, like me, deadly tired of the pressure, they gave in in a hurry. I’m the youngest and last — thank Heaven!”

  “What is all this?” he demanded.

  “Nothing — indolence — an idea that I might fall in love, perhaps — kept me from marrying.

  Her voice trailed, vaguely reminiscent; she gazed at him with dimmed, speculative eyes, resting her chin on one curved wrist, elbow denting her silken knee.

  “If a girl has a fool for a grandfather, what can she do? And I’m tired of the home pressure.”

  She bent her head, idly lifting finger after finger of the white gloved hand that lay passively in his palm.

  “So there you are,” she added; and, as he said nothing, she went on: “Tuesday, I’m twenty-one. Isn’t it absurd and dreadful? But there you are; I put it off and put it off, vowing and declaring I wouldn’t marry just to inherit my part. Mother has wept most of this year; but I said ‘No! no! no!’ and I refused to be the victim of any grandfather, and I declined to consider his wishes, or Mr. Thorne’s.”