Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “The mission of Science,” said I solemnly, “is to alleviate the inconveniences of mundane existence. Science, therefore, shall extend a helping hand to her frailer sister, Art—”

  “Science can’t patronize Art while I’m around!” he retorted. “I won’t have it!”

  “But, my dear Mr. Blythe—”

  “I won’t dispute with you, either! I don’t like to dispute!” he shouted. “Don’t try to make me. Don’t attempt to inveigle me into discussion! I know all I want to know. I don’t want to know anything you want me to know, either!”

  I looked at the old pig in haughty silence, nauseated by his conceit.

  After he had plastered a few more tubes of vermilion over his canvas he quieted down, and presently gave me an oblique glance over his shoulder.

  “Well,” he said, “what else are you intending to investigate?”

  “Those little animals that live in the crater fires,” I said bluntly.

  “Yes,” he nodded, indifferently, “there are creatures which live somewhere in the fires of that crater.”

  “Do you realize what an astounding statement you are making?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t astound me. What do I care whether it astounds you or anybody else? Nothing interests me except Art.”

  “But—”

  “I tell you nothing interests me except Art!” he yelled. “Don’t dispute it! Don’t answer me! Don’t irritate me! I don’t care whether anything lives in the fire or not! Let it live there!”

  “But have you actually seen live creatures in the flames?”

  “Plenty! Plenty! What of it? What about it? Let ’em live there, for all I care. I’ve painted pictures of ‘em, too. That’s all that interests me.”

  “What do they look like, Mr. Blythe?”

  “Look like? I don’t know! They look like weasels or rats or bats or cats or — stop asking me questions! It irritates me! It depresses me! Don’t ask any more! Why don’t you go in to lunch? And — tell my daughter to bring me a bowl of salad out here. I’ve no time to stuff myself. Some people have. I haven’t. You’d better go in to lunch.... And tell my daughter to bring me seven tubes of Chinese vermilion with my salad!”

  “You don’t mean to mix—” I began, then checked myself before his fury.

  “I’d rather eat vermilion paint on my salad than sit here talking to you!” he shouted.

  I cast a pitying glance at this impossible man, and went into the house. After all, he was her father. I had to endure him.

  “Miss Blythe had carried to her father a large bucket of lettuce leaves.”

  After Miss Blythe had carried to her father a large bucket of lettuce leaves, she returned to the veranda of the bungalow.

  A delightful luncheon awaited us; I seated her, then took the chair opposite.

  A delicious omelette, fresh biscuit, salad, and strawberry preserves, and a tall tumbler of iced tea imbued me with a sort of mild exhilaration.

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see Blythe down in the garden, munching his lettuce leaves like an ill-tempered rabbit, and daubing away at his picture while he munched.

  “Your father,” said I politely, “is something of a genius.”

  “I am so glad you think so,” she said gratefully. “But don’t tell him so. He has been surfeited with praise in Boston. That is why we came out here.”

  “Art,” said I, “is like science, or tobacco, or tooth-wash. Every man to his own brand. Personally, I don’t care for his kind. But who can say which is the best kind of anything? Only the consumer. Your father is his own consumer. He is the best judge of what he likes. And that is the only true test of art, or anything else.”

  “How delightfully you reason!” she said. “How logically, how generously!”

  “Reason is the handmaid of Science, Miss Blythe.”

  She seemed to understand me. Her quick intelligence surprised me, because I myself was not perfectly sure whether I had emitted piffle or an epigram.

  As we ate our strawberry preserves we discussed ways and means of capturing a specimen of the little fire creatures which, as she explained, so frequently peeped out at her from the crater fires, and, at her slightest movement, scurried back again into the flames. Of course I believed that this was only her imagination. Yet, for years I had entertained a theory that fire supported certain unknown forms of life.

  “I have long believed,” said I, “that fire is inhabited by living organisms which require the elements and temperature of active combustion for their existence — microörganisms, but not,” I added smilingly, “any higher type of life.”

  “In the fireplace,” she ventured diffidently, “I sometimes see curious things — dragons and snakes and creatures of grotesque and peculiar shapes.”

  I smiled indulgently, charmed by this innocently offered contribution to science. Then she rose, and I rose and took her hand in mine, and we wandered over the grass toward the crater, while I explained to her the difference between what we imagine we see in the glowing coals of a grate fire and my own theory that fire is the abode of living animalculae.

  On the grassy edge of the crater we paused and looked down the slope, where the circle of steam rose, partly veiling the pale flash of fire underneath.

  “How near can we go?” I inquired.

  “Quite near. Come; I’ll guide you.”

  Leading me by the hand, she stepped over the brink and we began to descend the easy grass slope together.

  There was no difficulty about it at all. Down we went, nearer and nearer to the wall of steam, until at last, when but fifteen feet away from it, I felt the heat from the flames which sparkled below the wall of vapour.

  Here we seated ourselves upon the grass, and I knitted my brows and fixed my eyes upon this curious phenomenon, striving to discover some reason for it.

  Except for the vapour and the fires, there was nothing whatever volcanic about this spectacle, or in the surroundings.

  From where I sat I could see that the bed of fire which encircled the crater; and the wall of vapour which crowned the flames, were about three hundred feet wide. Of course this barrier was absolutely impassable. There was no way of getting through it into the bottom of the crater.

  A slight pressure from Miss Blythe’s fingers engaged my attention; I turned toward her, and she said:

  “There is one more thing about which I have not told you. I feel a little guilty, because that is the real reason I asked you to come here.”

  “What is it?”

  “I think there are emeralds on the floor of that crater.”

  “Emeralds!”

  “I think so.” She felt in the ruffled pocket of her apron, drew out a fragment of mineral, and passed it to me.

  I screwed a jeweler’s glass into my eye and examined it in astonished silence. It was an emerald; a fine, large, immensely valuable stone, if my experience counted for anything. One side of it was thickly coated with vermilion paint.

  “Where did this come from?” I asked in an agitated voice.

  “From the floor of the crater. Is it really an emerald?”

  I lifted my head and stared at the girl incredulously.

  “It happened this way,” she said excitedly. “Father was painting a picture up there by the edge of the crater. He left his palette on the grass to go to the bungalow for some more tubes of colour. While he was in the house, hunting for the colours which he wanted, I stepped out on the veranda, and I saw some crows alight near the palette and begin to stalk about in the grass. One bird walked right over his wet palette; I stepped out and waved my sun-bonnet to frighten him off, but he had both feet in a sticky mass of Chinese vermilion, and for a moment was unable to free himself.

  “I almost caught him, but he flapped away over the edge of the crater, high above the wall of vapour, sailed down onto the crater floor, and alighted.

  “But his feet bothered him; he kept hopping about on the bottom of the crater, half running, half flying; and finally he to
ok wing and rose up over the hill.

  “As he flew above me, and while I was looking up at his vermilion feet, something dropped from his claws and nearly struck me. It was that emerald.”

  When I had recovered sufficient composure to speak steadily, I took her beautiful little hand in mine.

  “This,” said I, “is the most exciting locality I have ever visited for purposes of scientific research. Within this crater may lie millions of value in emeralds. You are probably, today, the wealthiest heiress upon the face of the globe!”

  I gave her a winning glance. She smiled, shyly, and blushingly withdrew her hand.

  For several exquisite minutes I sat there beside her in a sort of heavenly trance. How beautiful she was! How engaging — how sweet — how modestly appreciative of the man beside her, who had little beside his scientific learning, his fame, and a kind heart to appeal to such youth and loveliness as hers!

  There was something about her that delicately appealed to me. Sometimes I pondered what this might be; sometimes I wondered how many emeralds lay on that floor of sandy gravel below us.

  Yes, I loved her. I realised it now. I could even endure her father for her sake. I should make a good husband. I was quite certain of that.

  I turned and gazed upon her, meltingly. But I did not wish to startle her, so I remained silent, permitting the chaste language of my eyes to interpret for her what my lips had not yet murmured. It was a brief but beautiful moment in my life.

  “The way to do,” said I, “is to trap several dozen crows, smear their feet with glue, tie a ball of Indian twine to the ankle of every bird, then liberate them. Some are certain to fly into the crater and try to scrape the glue off in the sand. Then,” I added, triumphantly, “all we have to do is to haul in our birds and detach the wealth of Midas from their sticky claws!”

  “That is an excellent suggestion,” she said gratefully, “but I can do that after you have gone. All I wanted you to tell me was whether the stone is a genuine emerald.”

  I gazed at her blankly.

  “You are here for purposes of scientific investigation,” she added, sweetly. “I should not think of taking your time for the mere sake of accumulating wealth for my father and me.”

  There didn’t seem to be anything for me to say at that moment. Chilled, I gazed at the flashing ring of fire.

  And, as I gazed, suddenly I became aware of a little, pointed muzzle, two pricked-up ears, and two ruby-red eyes gazing intently out at me from the mass of flames.

  The girl beside me saw it, too.

  “Don’t move!” she whispered. “That is one of the flame creatures. It may venture out if you keep perfectly still.”

  Rigid with amazement, I sat like a stone image, staring at the most astonishing sight I had ever beheld.

  For several minutes the ferret-like creature never stirred from where it crouched in the crater fire; the alert head remained pointed toward us; I could even see that its thick fur must have possessed the qualities of asbestos, because here and there a hair or two glimmered incandescent; and its eyes, nose, and whiskers glowed and glowed as the flames pulsated around it.

  After a long while it began to move out of the fire, slowly, cautiously, cunning eyes fixed on us — a small, slim, wiry, weasel-like creature on which the sunlight fell with a vitreous glitter as it crept forward into the grass.

  Then, from the fire behind, another creature of the same sort appeared, another, others, then dozens of eager, lithe, little animals appeared everywhere from the flames and began to frisk and play and run about in the grass and nibble the fresh, green, succulent herbage with a snipping sound quite audible to us.

  One came so near my feet that I could examine it minutely.

  Its fur and whiskers seemed heavy and dense and like asbestos fibre, yet so fine as to appear silky. Its eyes, nose, and claws were scarlet, and seemed to possess a glassy surface.

  I waited my opportunity, and when the little thing came nosing along within reach, I seized it.

  Instantly it emitted a bewildering series of whistling shrieks, and twisted around to bite me. Its body was icy.

  “Don’t let it bite!” cried the girl. “Be careful, Mr. Smith!”

  But its jaws were toothless; only soft, cold gums pinched me, and I held it twisting and writhing, while the icy temperature of its body began to benumb my fingers and creep up my wrist, paralyzing my arm; and its incessant and piercing shrieks deafened me.

  In vain I transferred it to the other hand, and then passed it from one hand to the other, as one shifts a lump of ice or a hot potato, in an attempt to endure the temperature: it shrieked and squirmed and doubled, and finally wriggled out of my stiffened and useless hands, and scuttled away into the fire.

  It was an overwhelming disappointment. For a moment it seemed unendurable.

  “Never mind,” I said, huskily, “if I caught one in my hands, I can surely catch another in a trap.”

  “I am so sorry for your disappointment,” she said, pitifully.

  “Do you care, Miss Blythe?” I asked.

  She blushed.

  “Of course I care,” she murmured.

  My hands were too badly frost-nipped to become eloquent. I merely sighed and thrust them into my pockets. Even my arm was too stiff to encircle her shapeful waist. Devotion to Science had temporarily crippled me. Love must wait. But, as we ascended the grassy slope together, I promised myself that I would make her a good husband, and that I should spend at least part of every day of my life in trapping crows and smearing their claws with glue.

  That evening I was seated on the veranda beside Wilna — Miss Blythe’s name was Wilna — and what with gazing at her and fitting together some of the folding box-traps which I always carried with me — and what with trying to realise the pecuniary magnificence of our future existence together, I was exceedingly busy when Blythe came in to display, as I supposed, his most recent daub to me.

  The canvas he carried presented a series of crimson speckles, out of which burst an eruption of green streaks — and it made me think of stepping on a caterpillar.

  My instinct was to placate this impossible man. He was her father. I meant to honour him if I had to assault him to do it.

  “Supremely satisfying!” I nodded, chary of naming the subject. “It is a stride beyond the art of the future: it is a flying leap out of the Not Yet into the Possibly Perhaps! I thank you for enlightening me, Mr. Blythe. I am your debtor.”

  He fairly snarled at me:

  “What are you talking about!” he demanded.

  I remained modestly mute.

  To Wilna he said, pointing passionately at his canvas:

  “The crows have been walking all over it again! I’m going to paint in the woods after this, earthquakes or no earthquakes. Have the trees been heaved up anywhere recently?”

  “Not since last week,” she said, soothingly. “It usually happens after a rain.”

  “I think I’ll risk it then — although it did rain early this morning. I’ll do a moonlight down there this evening.” And, turning to me: “If you know as much about science as you do about art you won’t have to remain here long — I trust.”

  “What?” said I, very red.

  He laughed a highly disagreeable laugh, and marched into the house. Presently he bawled for dinner, and Wilna went away. For her sake I had remained calm and dignified, but presently I went out and kicked up the turf two or three times; and, having foozled my wrath, I went back to dinner, realising that I might as well begin to accustom myself to my future father-in-law.

  It seemed that he had a mania for prunes, and that’s all he permitted anybody to have for dinner.

  Disgusted, I attempted to swallow the loathly stewed fruit, watching Blythe askance as he hurriedly stuffed himself, using a tablespoon, with every symptom of relish.

  “Now,” he cried, shoving back his chair, “I’m going to paint a moonlight by moonlight. Wilna, if Billy arrives, make him comfortable, and tell him I’ll
return by midnight.” And without taking the trouble to notice me at all, he strode away toward the veranda, chewing vigorously upon his last prune.

  “Your father,” said I, “is eccentric. Genius usually is. But he is a most interesting and estimable man. I revere him.”

  “It is kind of you to say so,” said the girl, in a low voice.

  I thought deeply for a few moments, then:

  “Who is ‘Billy?’” I inquired, casually.

  I couldn’t tell whether it was a sudden gleam of sunset light on her face, or whether she blushed.

  “Billy,” she said softly, “is a friend of father’s. His name is William Green.”

  “Oh.”

  “He is coming out here to visit — father — I believe.”

  “Oh. An artist; and doubtless of mature years.”

  “He is a mineralogist by profession,” she said, “ — and somewhat young.”

  “Oh.”

  “Twenty-four years old,” she added. Upon her pretty face was an absent expression, vaguely pleasant. Her blue eyes became dreamy and exquisitely remote.

  I pondered deeply for a while:

  “Wilna?” I said.

  “Yes, Mr. Smith?” as though aroused from agreeable meditation.

  But I didn’t know exactly what to say, and I remained uneasily silent, thinking about that man Green and his twenty-four years, and his profession, and the bottom of the crater, and Wilna — and striving to satisfy myself that there was no logical connection between any of these.

  “I think,” said I, “that I’ll take a bucket of salad to your father.”

  Why I should have so suddenly determined to ingratiate myself with the old grouch I scarcely understood: for the construction of a salad was my very best accomplishment.

  Wilna looked at me in a peculiar manner, almost as though she were controlling a sudden and not unpleasant inward desire to laugh.