Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  * * * *

  “Yes.”

  * * * *

  “Yes.”

  * * * *

  “Yes.”

  * * * *

  “Ye-s—”

  * * * *

  “Oh-h!”

  * * * *

  “What! Now!!”

  * * * *

  “Do you mean now? — at five o’clock in the — —”

  * * * *

  “I do! I am in love with you! But Pm not insane—”

  * * * *

  “Oh, this is dreadful! — Yes, I’ll hold the wire. Yes, the other name for it is the Church of the Transfiguration, but—”

  * * * *

  “Nobody will do it for us at this hour!”

  * * * *

  “Well, I’ll wait—”

  She leaned against the telephone shelf, the receiver pressed convulsively to her ear, blue eyes closed. Years seemed to drag Time in endless chains across her vision; her knees fell trembling; thought, run riot, raced through her brain, and every little pulse clamored to the heart’s hard beating.

  “Yes!” she gasped with a start; “I’m still here.”

  * * * *

  “No, I am not dressed for — for the street—”

  * * * *

  “Yes — if you wish it.... It will take only a few minutes. But, oh — do you think — ?”

  * * * *

  “Truly I will; I do love you.”

  * * * *

  “Yes, I will hurry. Good-by—”

  * * * *

  “I do! I do! You will see!”

  Up the dark stairway once more in velvet-footed haste, giving herself no moment for considering what she was about to do; masses of heavy, glowing hair in a tangle, with comb and brush flying; the soft, intimate perfume of lace and delicate linen, silk, and the flutter of ribbon; then gown and hat and furs — a stare at the unknown face in the mirror — her last adieu to the girl she had known so long. But, in the dark outside her door, she heard the summons — the voiceless call of the Ghost of Chance, waiting attendance; and her heart responded passionately. Down through the darkness again — fumbling at chain and bolt — the keen night air in her throat; and, through the wintry silence veiled in darkness, the yellow lamps of a brougham gilding her face, dazzling her as she laid her groping hand on the arm of the man who sprang forward to guide her.

  “You mustn’t shiver so — you must not tremble that way,” he whispered. “It is all right, dear; I’ve got McManus and Kenna for witnesses; they’re at the church; I’ve made arrangements. Naida! Naida! The inevitable was never inevitable while there was the ghost of a chance that you loved me.”

  She caught his hands in hers, staring into his face, which was as white as her own. “Oh!” she breathed. “I love you so. As maid — as wife, you have taken all there is to me — all of good, of evil — with my first kiss! I am yours — no matter what an outward fate might hold for me.... Listen; look at me! Am I to go with you? Shall you repent it? Wait — hush, dear; it is not too late yet. I am not thinking of myself — for the first time in my life I am not thinking of self; nor of my mother; she is easily reconciled. I am thinking of you — of you and all that splendor your spirit lives in — all the heavenly world into which you set me — into which you painted me, transfigured, with eyes that seemed just opening in paradise!

  “Tell me, dear; your life is important; it is really not your own to throw away. Shall I go with you? Shall I stay here, quiet with your memory — my life already fulfilled?”

  His answer was so low that she bent her head close to his to listen. And, after a long while, unclosing her eyes, she saw through the carriage window the dim gas lamps shining and the stained light of a church window tracing across the snow a celestial pathway tinted with crimson, azure, and gold. The horses halted with a snowy thud of dancing hoofs; the wintry air rushed into her face as the carriage door was opened by two tall Irishmen wearing very shiny silk hats.

  “Naida, Mr. McManus — Mr. Kenna—”

  The tall hats of the tall Irishmen swept the snow; to each in turn she offered an unsteady little hand; then leaning on Leeds’s arm she entered the iron gateway, the two contractors following.

  “The purty lady,” purred Kenna; “d’ye mind the little hand of her, McManus?”

  “I did so; an’ I seen the mitten to fit it. Shquare yer chist, man; we’re walkin’ on shtocks and bonds; we’re walkin’ on the red neck o’ pride and power, Kenna. Whisht; cock yer hat, an’ thread majestic!”

  And so through the snowy darkness of dawn they passed across the frozen gardens to that little church around the corner where no sweeter bride shall ever kneel than knelt there then at prayer among the tinted shadows. And behind them knelt the Ghost of Chance.

  The sun rose at seven; and a little later the bride left the church, her pale, enraptured face uplifted to the rosy zenith. She returned to earth presently: “Jim, shall we stop and breakfast with — our mother?”

  He pressed her hand in agonized acquiescence; he was too scared to speak. At the same time he seemed to be conscious of something at his elbow, laughing in silence. It was the Ghost of Chance bidding them au revoir. Then the brougham drove up at a signal from Kenna; the bride entered, and Leeds turned to McManus: “At five o’clock this morning I wired Thorne that the key panel was finished and ready to deliver. We leave for Florida this afternoon. Will you see that the contract is carried out?”

  “Arrah, leave it to Kenna, Misther Leeds. Is that all, sorr?”

  “All — I think—”

  “There is wan little item I’m thinkin’ yer sweet lady has forgotten — but mayhap she has no need av it — now—”

  “What’s that, McManus?”

  “The other mitten, sorr,” giggled McManus. Leeds looked at him for a full second; they shook hands very seriously.

  Then, as the carriage wheeled and drove west, the bride, leaning on her husband’s shoulder to look back, caught a last glimpse of a snowy little church, an ice-festooned fountain behind the shrubbery, and, moving majestically in the middle distance, shoulder to shoulder, arm under arm, two dignified Irishmen, their tall hats burnished into splendor by the rising sun.

  THE END

  POLICE!!!

  Published in 1915, this short story collection is one of Chambers’ final works of fantastic fiction. The stories tackle themes that include xenobiology and cryptozoology – the study of creatures beyond the knowledge of conventional zoology. The tone is light and humorous rather than horrific, however, owing more to Mark Twain than to Ambrose Bierce. As with Chambers’ earlier collection, In Search of the Unknown, science fiction elements are intertwined with romantic love interest and comic touches to produce a whimsical atmosphere.

  Cover of the first edition

  CONTENTS

  POLICE!!!

  THE THIRD EYE

  THE IMMORTAL

  THE LADIES OF THE LAKE

  ONE OVER

  UN PEU D’AMOUR

  THE EGGS OF THE SILVER MOON

  Title page of the first edition

  TO

  LOUISE JOCELYN

  All the pretty things you say, All the pretty things you do In your own delightful way Make me fall in love with you, Turning Autumn into May.

  Every day is twice as gay Just because of you, Louise! Which is going some, you say? In my dull, pedantic way I am fashioning my lay Just because I want to please.

  Just because the things you say, Just because the things you do In your clever, charming way Make me fall in love with you. That is all, my dear, to-day.

  R.W.C.

  Christmas, 1915.

  “Dainty noses to the wind, their beautiful eyes wide and alert.”

  FOREWORD

  Give me no gold nor palaces Nor quarts of gems in chalices Nor mention me in Who is Who I’d rather roam abroad with you Investigating sky and land, Volcanoes, lakes, and glacial sand I’d rather climb with all my legs To find a nest of speckled eggs, Or wa
tch the spotted spider spin Or see a serpent shed its skin! Give me no star-and-garter blue! I’d rather roam around with you.

  Flatten me not with flattery! Walk with me to the Battery, And see in glassy tanks the seals, The sturgeons, flounders, smelt and eels Disport themselves in ichthyic curves — And when it gets upon our nerves Then, while our wabbling taxi honks I’ll tell you all about the Bronx, Where captive wild things mope and stare Through grills of steel that bar each lair Doomed to imprisonment for life — And you may go and take your wife.

  Come to the Park with me; I’ll show you crass stupidity Which sentences the hawk and fox To inactivity, and locks The door of freedom on the lynx Where puma pines and eagle stinks. Never a slaver’s fetid hold Has held the misery untold That crowds the great cats’ kennels where Their vacant eyes glare blank despair Half crazed by sloth, half dazed by fear All day, all night, year after year.

  To the swift, clean things that cleave the air To the swift, clean things that cleave the sea To the swift, clean things that brave and dare Forest and peak and prairie free, A cage to craze and stifle and stun And a fat man feeding a penny bun And a she-one giggling, “Ain’t it grand!” As she drags a dirty-nosed brat by the hand.

  Central Park, filthiest, cruellest and most outrageous of zoological exhibitions.

  PREFACE

  On a beautiful day in spring as I was running as hard as I could run pursued by the New York police and a number of excited citizens, my mind, which becomes brilliantly active under physical exhilaration, began to work busily.

  I thought about all sorts of things: I thought about hard times and financial depression and about our great President who is in a class all alone with himself and soon to become extinct; I thought about art and why there isn’t any when it’s talked about; I thought of macro-lepidoptera, of metagrammatism, monoliths, manicures, and monsoons.

  And all the time I was running as fast as I could run; and the faster I ran the more things I thought about until my terrific pace set my brain whizzing like a wheel.

  I felt no remorse at having published these memoirs of my life — which was why the police and populace were pursuing me, maddened to frenzy by the fearless revelation of mighty scientific truths in this little volume you are about to attempt to read. Ubicumque ars ostentatur, veritas abesse videtur!

  I thought about it clearly, calmly, concisely as I fled. The maddened shouts of the prejudiced populace did not disturb me. Around and around the Metropolitan Museum of Art I ran; the inmates of that institution came out to watch me and they knew at a glance that I was one of them for they set up a clamor like a bunch of decoy ducks when one of their wild comrades comes whirling by.

  “Police! Police!” they shouted; but I went careering on uptown, afraid only that the park squirrels might club together to corner me. There are corners in grain. Why not in — but let that pass.

  I took the park wall in front of the great Mr. Carnegie’s cottage at a single bound. He stood on his terrace and shouted, “Police!” He was quite logical.

  The Equal Franchise Society was having a May party in the park near the Harlem Mere. They had chosen the Honorable William Jennings Bryan as Queen of the May. He wore low congress-gaiters and white socks; he was walking under a canopy, crowned with paper flowers, his hair curled over his coat collar, the tips of his fingers were suavely joined over his abdomen.

  The moment he caught sight of me he shouted, “Police!”

  He was right. The cabinet lacked only me.

  And I might have consented to tarry — might have allowed myself to be apprehended for political purposes, had not a nobler, holier, more imperative duty urged me northward still.

  Though all Bloomingdale shouted, “Stop him!” and all Matteawan yelled, “Police!” I should not have consented to pause. Even the quackitudinous recognition spontaneously offered by the Metropolitan Museum had not been sufficient to decoy me to my fellows.

  I knew, of course, that I could find a sanctuary and a welcome in many places — in almost any sectarian edifice, any club, any newspaper office, any of the great publishers’, any school, any museum; I knew that I would be welcomed at Columbia University, at the annex to the Hall of Fame, in the Bishop’s Palace on Morningside Heights — there were many places all ready to receive, understand and honour me.

  For a sufficiently crippled intellect, for a still-born brain, for the intellectually aborted, there is always a place on some editorial, sectarian, or educational staff.

  Try It!

  But I had other ideas as I galloped northward. The voiceless summons of the most jealous of mistresses was making siren music in my ears. That coquettish jade, Science, was calling me by wireless, and I was responding with both legs.

  And so, at last, I arrived at the Bronx Park and dashed into the Administration Building where everybody rose and cheered me to the echo.

  I was at home at last, unterrified, undismayed, and ready again as always to dedicate my life to the service of Truth and to every caprice and whim of my immortal mistress, Science. But I don’t want to marry her.

  Magna est veritas! Sed major et longinquo reverentia.

  POLICE!!!

  Being a few deathless truths concerning several mysteries recently and scientifically unravelled by a modest servant of Science.

  Quo quisque stultior, eo magis insolescit.

  THE THIRD EYE

  Although the man’s back was turned toward me, I was uncomfortably conscious that he was watching me. How he could possibly be watching me while I stood directly behind him, I did not ask myself; yet, nevertheless, instinct warned me that I was being inspected; that somehow or other the man was staring at me as steadily as though he and I had been face to face and his faded, sea-green eyes were focussed upon me.

  It was an odd sensation which persisted in spite of logic, and of which I could not rid myself. Yet the little waitress did not seem to share it. Perhaps she was not under his glassy inspection. But then, of course, I could not be either.

  No doubt the nervous tension incident to the expedition was making me supersensitive and even morbid.

  Our sail-boat rode the shallow torquoise-tinted waters at anchor, rocking gently just off the snowy coral reef on which we were now camping. The youthful waitress who, for economy’s sake, wore her cap, apron, collar and cuffs over her dainty print dress, was seated by the signal fire writing in her diary. Sometimes she thoughtfully touched her pencil point with the tip of her tongue; sometimes she replenished the fire from a pile of dead mangrove branches heaped up on the coral reef beside her. Whatever she did she accomplished gracefully.

  As for the man, Grue, his back remained turned toward us both and he continued, apparently, to scan the horizon for the sail which we all expected. And all the time I could not rid myself of the unpleasant idea that somehow or other he was looking at me, watching attentively the expression of my features and noting my every movement.

  The smoke of our fire blew wide across leagues of shallow, sparkling water, or, when the wind veered, whirled back into our faces across the reef, curling and eddying among the standing mangroves like fog drifting.

  Seated there near the fire, from time to time I swept the horizon with my marine glasses; but there was no sign of Kemper; no sail broke the far sweep of sky and water; nothing moved out there save when a wild duck took wing amid the dark raft of its companions to circle low above the ocean and settle at random, invisible again except when, at intervals, its white breast flashed in the sunshine.

  Meanwhile the waitress had ceased to write in her diary and now sat with the closed book on her knees and her pencil resting against her lips, gazing thoughtfuly at the back of Grue’s head.

  It was a ratty head of straight black hair, and looked greasy. The rest of him struck me as equally unkempt and dingy — a youngish man, lean, deeply bitten by the sun of the semi-tropics to a mahogany hue, and unusually hairy.

  I don’t mind a brawny, hairy man, but the hair on Grue’s arms and chest
was a rusty red, and like a chimpanzee’s in texture, and sometimes a wildly absurd idea possessed me that the man needed it when he went about in the palm forests without his clothes.

  But he was only a “poor white” — a “cracker” recruited from one of the reefs near Pelican Light, where he lived alone by fishing and selling his fish to the hotels at Heliatrope City. The sail-boat was his; he figured as our official guide on this expedition — an expedition which already had begun to worry me a great deal.

  For it was, perhaps, the wildest goose chase and the most absurdly hopeless enterprise ever undertaken in the interest of science by the Bronx Park authorities.

  Nothing is more dreaded by scientists than ridicule; and it was in spite of this terror of ridicule that I summoned sufficient courage to organize an exploring party and start out in search of something so extraordinary, so hitherto unheard of, that I had not dared reveal to Kemper by letter the object of my quest.

  No, I did not care to commit myself to writing just yet; I had merely sent Kemper a letter to join me on Sting-ray Key.

  He telegraphed me from Tampa that he would join me at the rendezvous; and I started directly from Bronx Park for Heliatrope City; arrived there in three days; found the waitress all ready to start with me; inquired about a guide and discovered the man Grue in his hut off Pelican Light; made my bargain with him; and set sail for Sting-ray Key, the most excited and the most nervous young man who ever had dared disaster in the sacred cause of science.

  Everything was now at stake, my honour, reputation, career, fortune. For, as chief of the Anthropological Field Survey Department of the great Bronx Park Zoölogical Society, I was perfectly aware that no scientific reputation can survive ridicule.

  Nevertheless, the die had been cast, the Rubicon crossed in a sail-boat containing one beachcombing cracker, one hotel waitress, a pile of camping kit and special utensils, and myself!