Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  Evidently the finer and more delicate instincts of a woman were divining my motive and sympathizing with my mental and sentimental perplexity.

  So when she said: “I don’t think you had better go near my father,” I was convinced of her gentle solicitude in my behalf.

  “With a bucket of salad,” I whispered softly, “much may be accomplished, Wilna.” And I took her little hand and pressed it gently and respectfully. “Trust all to me,” I murmured.

  She stood with her head turned away from me, her slim hand resting limply in mine. From the slight tremor of her shoulders I became aware how deeply her emotion was now swaying her. Evidently she was nearly ready to become mine.

  But I remained calm and alert. The time was not yet. Her father had had his prunes, in which he delighted. And when pleasantly approached with a bucket of salad he could not listen otherwise than politely to what I had to say to him. Quick action was necessary — quick but diplomatic action — in view of the imminence of this young man Green, who evidently was persona grata at the bungalow of this irritable old dodo.

  Tenderly pressing the pretty hand which I held, and saluting the finger-tips with a gesture which was, perhaps, not wholly ungraceful, I stepped into the kitchen, washed out several heads of lettuce, deftly chopped up some youthful onions, constructed a seductive French dressing, and, stirring together the crisp ingredients, set the savoury masterpiece away in the ice-box, after tasting it. It was delicious enough to draw sobs from any pig.

  When I went out to the veranda, Wilna had disappeared. So I unfolded and set up some more box-traps, determined to lose no time.

  Sunset still lingered beyond the chain of western mountains as I went out across the grassy plateau to the cornfield.

  Here I set and baited several dozen aluminium crow-traps, padding the jaws so that no injury could be done to the birds when the springs snapped on their legs.

  Then I went over to the crater and descended its gentle, grassy slope. And there, all along the borders of the vapoury wall, I set box-traps for the lithe little denizens of the fire, baiting every trap with a handful of fresh, sweet clover which I had pulled up from the pasture beyond the cornfield.

  My task ended, I ascended the slope again, and for a while stood there immersed in pleasurable premonitions.

  Everything had been accomplished swiftly and methodically within the few hours in which I had first set eyes upon this extraordinary place — everything! — love at first sight, the delightfully lightning-like wooing and winning of an incomparable maiden and heiress; the discovery of the fire creatures; the solving of the emerald problem.

  And now everything was ready, crow-traps, fire-traps, a bucket of irresistible salad for Blythe, a modest and tremulous avowal for Wilna as soon as her father tasted the salad and I had pleasantly notified him of my intentions concerning his lovely offspring.

  Daylight faded from rose to lilac; already the mountains were growing fairy-like under that vague, diffuse lustre which heralds the rise of the full moon. It rose, enormous, yellow, unreal, becoming imperceptibly silvery as it climbed the sky and hung aloft like a stupendous arc-light flooding the world with a radiance so white and clear that I could very easily have written verses by it, if I wrote verses.

  Down on the edge of the forest I could see Blythe on his camp-stool, madly besmearing his moonlit canvas, but I could not see Wilna anywhere. Maybe she had shyly retired somewhere by herself to think of me.

  So I went back to the house, filled a bucket with my salad, and started toward the edge of the woods, singing happily as I sped on feet so light and frolicsome that they seemed to skim the ground. How wonderful is the power of love!

  When I approached Blythe he heard me coming and turned around.

  “What the devil do you want?” he asked with characteristic civility.

  “I have brought you,” said I gaily, “a bucket of salad.”

  “I don’t want any salad!”

  “W-what?”

  “I never eat it at night.”

  I said confidently:

  “Mr. Blythe, if you will taste this salad I am sure you will not regret it.” And with hideous cunning I set the bucket beside him on the grass and seated myself near it. The old dodo grunted and continued to daub the canvas; but presently, as though forgetfully, and from sheer instinct, he reached down into the bucket, pulled out a leaf of lettuce, and shoved it into his mouth.

  My heart leaped exultantly. I had him!

  “Mr. Blythe,” I began in a winningly modulated voice, and, at the same instant, he sprang from his camp-chair, his face distorted.

  “There are onions in this salad!” he yelled. “What the devil do you mean! Are you trying to poison me! What are you following me about for, anyway? Why are you running about under foot every minute!”

  “My dear Mr. Blythe,” I protested — but he barked at me, kicked over the bucket of salad, and began to dance with rage.

  “Kicked over the bucket of salad, and began to dance with rage.”

  “What’s the matter with you, anyway!” he bawled. “Why are you trying to feed me? What do you mean by trying to be attentive to me!”

  “I — I admire and revere you—”

  “No you don’t!” he shouted. “I don’t want you to admire me! I don’t desire to be revered! I don’t like attention and politeness! Do you hear! It’s artificial — out of date — ridiculous! The only thing that recommends a man to me is his bad manners, bad temper, and violent habits. There’s some meaning to such a man, none at all to men like you!”

  He ran at the salad bucket and kicked it again.

  “They all fawned on me in Boston!” he panted. “They ran about under foot! They bought my pictures! And they made me sick! I came out here to be rid of ‘em!”

  I rose from the grass, pale and determined.

  “You listen to me, you old grouch!” I hissed. “I’ll go. But before I go I’ll tell you why I’ve been civil to you. There’s only one reason in the world: I want to marry your daughter! And I’m going to do it!”

  I stepped nearer him, menacing him with outstretched hand:

  “As for you, you pitiable old dodo, with your bad manners and your worse pictures, and your degraded mania for prunes, you are a necessary evil that’s all, and I haven’t the slightest respect for either you or your art!”

  “Is that true?” he said in an altered voice.

  “True?” I laughed bitterly. “Of course it’s true, you miserable dauber!”

  “D-dauber!” he stammered.

  “Certainly! I said ‘dauber,’ and I mean it. Why, your work would shame the pictures on a child’s slate!”

  “Smith,” he said unsteadily, “I believe I have utterly misjudged you. I believe you are a good deal of a man, after all—”

  “I’m man enough,” said I, fiercely, “to go back, saddle my mule, kidnap your daughter, and start for home. And I’m going to do it!”

  “Wait!” he cried. “I don’t want you to go. If you’ll remain I’ll be very glad. I’ll do anything you like. I’ll quarrel with you, and you can insult my pictures. It will agreeably stimulate us both. Don’t go, Smith—”

  “If I stay, may I marry Wilna?”

  “If you ask me I won’t let you!”

  “Very well!” I retorted, angrily. “Then I’ll marry her anyway!”

  “That’s the way to talk! Don’t go, Smith. I’m really beginning to like you. And when Billy Green arrives you and he will have a delightfully violent scene—”

  “What!”

  He rubbed his hands gleefully.

  “He’s in love with Wilna. You and he won’t get on. It is going to be very stimulating for me — I can see that! You and he are going to behave most disagreeably to each other. And I shall be exceedingly unpleasant to you both! Come, Smith, promise me that you’ll stay!”

  Profoundly worried, I stood staring at him in the moonlight, gnawing my mustache.

  “Very well,” I said, “I’ll remain
if—”

  Something checked me, I did not quite know what for a moment. Blythe, too, was staring at me in an odd, apprehensive way. Suddenly I realised that under my feet the ground was stirring.

  “Look out!” I cried; but speech froze on my lips as beneath me the solid earth began to rock and crack and billow up into a high, crumbling ridge, moving continually, as the sod cracks, heaves up, and crumbles above the subterranean progress of a mole.

  Up into the air we were slowly pushed on the ever-growing ridge; and with us were carried rocks and bushes and sod, and even forest trees.

  I could hear their tap-roots part with pistol-like reports; see great pines and hemlocks and oaks moving, slanting, settling, tilting crazily in every direction as they were heaved upward in this gigantic disturbance.

  Blythe caught me by the arm; we clutched each other, balancing on the crest of the steadily rising mound.

  “W-what is it?” he stammered. “Look! It’s circular. The woods are rising in a huge circle. What’s happening? Do you know?”

  Over me crept a horrible certainty that something living was moving under us through the depths of the earth — something that, as it progressed, was heaping up the surface of the world above its unseen and burrowing course — something dreadful, enormous, sinister, and alive!

  “Look out!” screamed Blythe; and at the same instant the crumbling summit of the ridge opened under our feet and a fissure hundreds of yards long yawned ahead of us.

  And along it, shining slimily in the moonlight, a vast, viscous, ringed surface was moving, retracting, undulating, elongating, writhing, squirming, shuddering.

  “It’s a worm!” shrieked Blythe. “Oh, God! It’s a mile long!”

  “‘It’s a worm!’ shrieked Blythe.”

  As in a nightmare we clutched each other, struggling frantically to avoid the fissure; but the soft earth slid and gave way under us, and we fell heavily upon that ghastly, living surface.

  Instantly a violent convulsion hurled us upward; we fell on it again, rebounding from the rubbery thing, strove to regain our feet and scramble up the edges of the fissure, strove madly while the mammoth worm slid more rapidly through the rocking forests, carrying us forward with a speed increasing.

  Through the forest we tore, reeling about on the slippery back of the thing, as though riding on a plowshare, while trees clashed and tilted and fell from the enormous furrow on every side; then, suddenly out of the woods into the moonlight, far ahead of us we could see the grassy upland heave up, cake, break, and crumble above the burrowing course of the monster.

  “It’s making for the crater!” gasped Blythe; and horror spurred us on, and we scrambled and slipped and clawed the billowing sides of the furrow until we gained the heaving top of it.

  As one runs in a bad dream, heavily, half-paralyzed, so ran Blythe and I, toiling over the undulating, tumbling upheaval until, half-fainting, we fell and rolled down the shifting slope onto solid and unvexed sod on the very edges of the crater.

  Below us we saw, with sickened eyes, the entire circumference of the crater agitated, saw it rise and fall as avalanches of rock and earth slid into it, tons and thousands of tons rushing down the slope, blotting from our sight the flickering ring of flame, and extinguishing the last filmy jet of vapour.

  Suddenly the entire crater caved in and filled up under my anguished eyes, quenching for all eternity the vapour wall, the fire, and burying the little denizens of the flames, and perhaps a billion dollars’ worth of emeralds under as many billion tons of earth.

  Quieter and quieter grew the earth as the gigantic worm bored straight down into depths immeasurable. And at last the moon shone upon a world that lay without a tremor in its milky lustre.

  “I shall name it Verma gigantica,” said I, with a hysterical sob; “but nobody will ever believe me when I tell this story!”

  Still terribly shaken, we turned toward the house. And, as we approached the lamplit veranda, I saw a horse standing there and a young man hastily dismounting.

  And then a terrible thing occurred; for, before I could even shriek, Wilna had put both arms around that young man’s neck, and both of his arms were clasping her waist.

  Blythe was kind to me. He took me around the back way and put me to bed.

  And there I lay through the most awful night I ever experienced, listening to the piano below, where Wilna and William Green were singing, “Un Peu d’Amour.”

  THE EGGS OF THE SILVER MOON

  In the new white marble Administration Building at Bronx Park, my private office separated the offices of Dr. Silas Quint and Professor Boomly; and it had been arranged so on purpose, because of the increasingly frequent personal misunderstanding between these two celebrated entomologists. It was very plain to me that a crisis in this quarrel was rapidly approaching.

  A bitter animosity had for some months existed on both sides, born of the most intense professional jealousy. They had been friends for years. No unseemly rivalry disturbed this friendship as long as it was merely a question of collecting, preparing, and mounting for exhibition the vast numbers of butterflies and moths which haunt this insectivorous earth. Even their zeal in the eternal hunt for new and undescribed species had not made them enemies.

  I am afraid that my suggestion for the construction of a great glass flying-cage for living specimens of moths and butterflies started the trouble between these hitherto godly and middle-aged men. That, and the Carnegie Educational Medal were the causes which began this deplorable affair.

  Various field collectors, employed by both Quint and Boomly, were always out all over the world foraging for specimens; also, they were constantly returning with spoils from every quarter of the globe.

  Now, to secure rare and beautiful living specimens of butterflies and moths for the crystal flying-cage was a serious and delicate job. Such tropical insects could not survive the journey of several months from the wilds of Australia, India, Asia, Africa, or the jungles of South America — nor could semi-tropical species endure the captivity of a few weeks or even days, when captured in the West Indies, Mexico, or Florida. Only our duller-coloured, smaller, and hardier native species tolerated capture and exhibition.

  Therefore, the mode of procedure which I suggested was for our field expeditions to obtain males and females of the same species of butterfly or moth, mate them, and, as soon as any female deposited her eggs, place the tiny pearl-like eggs in cold storage to retard their hatching, which normally occurs, in the majority of species, within ten days or two weeks.

  This now was the usual mode of procedure followed by the field collectors employed by Dr. Quint and Professor Boomly. And not only were the eggs of various butterflies and moths so packed for transportation, but a sufficient store of their various native food-plants was also preserved, where such food-plants could not be procured in the United States. So when the eggs arrived at Bronx Park, and were hatched there in due time, the young caterpillars had plenty of nourishment ready for them in cold storage.

  Might I not, legitimately, have expected the Carnegie Educational Medal for all this? I have never received it. I say this without indignation — even without sorrow. I merely make the statement.

  Yet, my system was really a very beautiful system; a tiny batch of eggs would arrive from Ceylon, or Sumatra, or Africa; when taken from cold storage and placed in the herbarium they would presently hatch; the caterpillars were fed with their accustomed food-plant — a few leaves being taken from cold storage every day for them — they would pass through their three or four moulting periods, cease feeding in due time, transform into the chrysalis stage, and finally appear in all the splendour and magnificence of butterfly or moth.

  The great glass flying-cage was now alive with superb moths and butterflies, flitting, darting, fluttering among the flowering bushes or feeding along the sandy banks of the brook which flowed through the flying-cage, bordered by thickets of scented flowers. And it was like looking at a meteoric shower of winged jewels, where
the huge metallic-blue Morphos from South America flapped and sailed, and the orange and gold and green Ornithoptera from Borneo pursued their majestic, bird-like flight — where big, glittering Papilios flashed through the bushes or alighted nervously to feed for a few moments on jasmine and phlox, and where the slowly flopping Heliconians winged their way amid the denser tangles of tropical vegetation.

  Nothing like this flying-cage had ever before been seen in New York; thousands and thousands of men, women, and children thronged the lawn about the flying-cage all day long.

  By night, also, the effect was wonderful; the electric lights among the foliage broke out; the great downy-winged moths, which had been asleep all day while the butterflies flitted through the sunshine, now came out to display their crimson or peacock-spotted wings, and the butterflies folded their wings and went to bed for the night.

  The public was enchanted, the authorities of the Bronx proud and delighted; all apparently was happiness and harmony. Except that nobody offered me the Carnegie medal.

  I was sitting one morning in my office, which, as I have said, separated the offices of Dr. Quint and Professor Boomly, when there came a loud rapping on my door, and, at my invitation, Dr. Quint bustled in — a little, meagre, excitable, near-sighted man with pointed mustaches and a fleck of an imperial smudging his lower lip.

  “Last week,” he began angrily, “young Jones arrived from Singapore bringing me the eggs of Erebia astarte, the great Silver Moon butterfly. Attempts to destroy them have been made. Last night I left them in a breeding-cage on my desk. Has anybody been in there?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “What has happened?”

  “I found an ichneumon fly in the cage yesterday!” he shouted; “and this morning the eggs have either shrunk to half their size or else the eggs of another species have been secretly substituted for them and the Silver Moon eggs stolen! Has he been in there?”

  “Who?” I asked, pretending to misunderstand.