Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  I looked at Sir Peter Grebe.

  “Have you seen this alleged bird skin in the Antwerp Museum?” he asked, perspiring with indignation.

  “Yes, I have,” said I. “It has been patched up, but how are we to know that the skin did not require patching? I have not found that ostrich skin has been used. It is true that the Tasmanians may have shot the bird to pieces and mended the skin with bits of cassowary hide here and there. But the greater part of the skin, and the beak and claws, are, in my estimation, well worth the serious attention of savants. To pronounce them fraudulent is, in my opinion, rash and premature.”

  I mopped my brow; I was in for it now. I had thrown in my reputation with the reputation of the Countess.

  The displeasure and astonishment of my confrères was unmistakable. In the midst of a strained silence I moved that a vote be taken upon the advisability of a hearing before the congress on the subject of the ux. After a pause the young Countess, pale and determined, seconded my motion. The result of the balloting was a foregone conclusion; the Countess had one vote — she herself refraining from voting — and the subject was entered on the committee-book as acceptable and a date set for the hearing before the International Congress.

  The effect of this vote on our little committee was most marked. Constraint took the place of cordiality, polite reserve replaced that guileless and open-hearted courtesy with which our proceedings had begun.

  With icy politeness, the Crown-Prince of Monaco asked me to state the subject of the paper I proposed to read before the congress, and I replied quietly that, as I was partly responsible for advocating the discussion of the ux, I proposed to associate myself with the Countess d’Alzette in that matter — if Madame la Comtesse would accept the offer of a brother savant.

  “Indeed I will,” she said, impulsively, her blue eyes soft with gratitude.

  “Very well,” observed Sir Peter Grebe, swallowing his indignation and waddling off towards the door; “I shall resign my position on this committee — yes, I will, I tell you!” — as the King of Finland laid a fatherly hand on Sir Peter’s sleeve— “I’ll not be made responsible for this damn—”

  He choked, sputtered, then bowed to the horrified Countess, asking pardon, and declaring that he yielded to nobody in respect for the gentler sex. And he retired with the Baron de Becasse.

  But out in the hallway I heard him explode. “Confound it! This is no place for petticoats, Baron! And as for that Yankee ornithologist, he’s hung himself with the Countess’s corset — string — yes, he has! Don’t tell me, Baron! The young idiot was all right until the Countess looked at him, I tell you. Gad! how she crumpled him up with those blue eyes of hers! What the devil do women come into such committees for? Eh? It’s an outrage, I tell you! Why, the whole world will jeer at us if we sit and listen to her monograph on that fraudulent bird!”

  The young Countess, who was writing near the window, could not have heard this outburst; but I heard it, and so did King Christian and the Crown-Prince of Monaco.

  “Lord,” thought I, “the Countess and I are in the frying-pan this time. I’ll do what I can to keep us both out of the fire.”

  When the King and the Crown-Prince had made their adieux to the Countess, and she had responded, pale and serious, they came over to where I was standing, looking out on the Seine.

  “Though we must differ from you,” said the King, kindly, “we wish you all success in this dangerous undertaking.”

  I thanked him.

  “You are a young man to risk a reputation already established,” remarked the Crown-Prince, then added: “You are braver than I. Ridicule is a barrier to all knowledge, and, though we know that, we seekers after truth always bring up short at that barrier and dismount, not daring to put our hobbies to the fence.”

  “One can but come a cropper,” said I.

  “And risk staking our hobbies? No, no, that would make us ridiculous; and ridicule kills in Europe.”

  “It’s somewhat deadly in America, too,” I said, smiling.

  “The more honor to you,” said the Crown-Prince, gravely.

  “Oh, I am not the only one,” I answered, lightly. “There is my confrère, Professor Hyssop, who studies apparitions and braves a contempt and ridicule which none of us would dare challenge. We Yankees are learning slowly. Some day we will find the lost key to the future while Europe is sneering at those who are trying to pick the lock.”

  When King Christian, of Finland, and the Crown-Prince of Monaco had taken their hats and sticks and departed, I glanced across the room at the young Countess, who was now working rapidly on a type-writer, apparently quite oblivious of my presence.

  I looked out of the window again, and my gaze wandered over the exposition grounds. Gilt and scarlet and azure the palaces rose in every direction, under a wilderness of fluttering flags. Towers, minarets, turrets, golden spires cut the blue sky; in the west the gaunt Eiffel Tower sprawled across the glittering Esplanade; behind it rose the solid golden dome of the Emperor’s tomb, gilded once more by the Almighty’s sun, to amuse the living rabble while the dead slumbered in his imperial crypt, himself now but a relic for the amusement of the people whom he had despised. O tempora! O mores! O Napoleon!

  Down under my window, in the asphalted court, the King of Finland was entering his beautiful victoria. An adjutant, wearing a cocked hat and brilliant uniform, mounted the box beside the green-and-gold coachman; the two postilions straightened up in their saddles; the four horses danced. Then, when the Crown-Prince of Monaco had taken a seat beside the King, the carriage rolled away, and far down the quay I watched it until the flutter of the green-and-white plumes in the adjutant’s cocked hat was all I could see of vanishing royalty.

  I was still musing there by the window, listening to the click and ringing of the type-writer, when I suddenly became aware that the clicking had ceased, and, turning, I saw the young Countess standing beside me.

  “Thank you for your chivalrous impulse to help me,” she said, frankly, holding out her bare hand.

  I bent over it.

  “I had not realized how desperate my case was,” she said, with a smile. “I supposed that they would at least give me a hearing. How can I thank you for your brave vote in my favor?”

  “By giving me your confidence in this matter,” said I, gravely. “If we are to win, we must work together and work hard, madame. We are entering a struggle, not only to prove the genuineness of a bird skin and the existence of a bird which neither of us has ever seen, but also a struggle which will either make us famous forever or render it impossible for either of us ever again to face a scientific audience.”

  “I know it,” she said, quietly “And I understand all the better how gallant a gentleman I have had the fortune to enlist in my cause. Believe me, had I not absolute confidence in my ability to prove the existence of the ux I should not, selfish as I am, have accepted your chivalrous offer to stand or fall with me.”

  The subtle emotion in her voice touched a responsive chord in me. I looked at her earnestly; she raised her beautiful eyes to mine.

  “Will you help me?” she asked.

  Would I help her? Faith, I’d pass the balance of my life turning flip-flaps to please her. I did not attempt to undeceive myself; I realized that the lightning had struck me — that I was desperately in love with the young Countess from the tip of her bonnet to the toe of her small, polished shoe. I was curiously cool about it, too, although my heart gave a thump that nigh choked me, and I felt myself going red from temple to chin.

  If the Countess d’Alzette noticed it she gave no sign, unless the pink tint under her eyes, deepening, was a subtle signal of understanding to the signal in my eyes.

  “Suppose,” she said, “that I failed, before the congress, to prove my theory? Suppose my investigations resulted in the exposure of a fraud and my name was held up to ridicule before all Europe? What would become of you, monsieur?”

  I was silent.

  “You are alread
y celebrated as the discoverer of the mammoth and the great auk,” she persisted. “You are young, enthusiastic, renowned, and you have a future before you that anybody in the world might envy.”

  I said nothing.

  “And yet,” she said, softly, “you risk all because you will not leave a young woman friendless among her confrères. It is not wise, monsieur; it is gallant and generous and impulsive, but it is not wisdom. Don Quixote rides no more in Europe, my friend.”

  “He stays at home — seventy million of him — in America,” said I.

  After a moment she said, “I believe you, monsieur.”

  “It is true enough,” I said, with a laugh. “We are the only people who tilt at windmills these days — we and our cousins, the British, who taught us.”

  I bowed gayly, and added:

  “With your colors to wear, I shall have the honor of breaking a lance against the biggest windmill in the world.”

  “You mean the Citadel of Science,” she said, smiling.

  “And its rock-ribbed respectability,” I replied.

  She looked at me thoughtfully, rolling and unrolling the scroll in her hands. Then she sighed, smiled, and brightened, handing me the scroll.

  “Read it carefully,” she said; “it is an outline of the policy I suggest that we follow. You will be surprised at some of the statements. Yet every word is the truth. And, monsieur, your reward for the devotion you have offered will be no greater than you deserve, when you find yourself doubly famous for our joint monograph on the ux. Without your vote in the committee I should have been denied a hearing, even though I produced proofs to support my theory. I appreciate that; I do most truly appreciate the courage which prompted you to defend a woman at the risk of your own ruin. Come to me this evening at nine. I hold for you in store a surprise and pleasure which you do not dream of.”

  “Ah, but I do,” I said, slowly, under the spell of her delicate beauty and enthusiasm.

  “How can you?” she said, laughing. “You don’t know what awaits you at nine this evening?”

  “You,” I said, fascinated.

  The color swept her face; she dropped me a deep courtesy.

  “At nine, then,” she said. “No. 8 Rue d’Alouette.”

  I bowed, took my hat, gloves, and stick, and attended her to her carriage below.

  Long after the blue-and-black victoria had whirled away down the crowded quay I stood looking after it, mazed in the web of that ancient enchantment whose spell fell over the first man in Eden, and whose sorcery shall not fail till the last man returns his soul.

  X

  I lunched at my lodgings on the Quai Malthus, and I had but little appetite, having fed upon such an unexpected variety of emotions during the morning.

  Now, although I was already heels over head in love, I do not believe that loss of appetite was the result of that alone. I was slowly beginning to realize what my recent attitude might cost me, not only in an utter collapse of my scientific career, and the consequent material ruin which was likely to follow, but in the loss of all my friends at home. The Zoological Society of Bronx Park and the Smithsonian Institution of Washington had sent me as their trusted delegate, leaving it entirely to me to choose the subject on which I was to speak before the International Congress. What, then, would be their attitude when they learned that I had chosen to uphold the dangerous theory of the existence of the ux.

  Would they repudiate me and send another delegate to replace me? Would they merely wash their hands of me and let me go to my own destruction?

  “I will know soon enough,” thought I, “for this morning’s proceedings will have been cabled to New York ere now, and read at the breakfast-tables of every old, moss-grown naturalist in America before I see the Countess d’Alzette this evening.” And I drew from my pocket the roll of paper which she had given me, and, lighting a cigar, lay back in my chair to read it.

  The manuscript had been beautifully type-written, and I had no trouble in following her brief, clear account of the circumstances under which the notorious ux-skin had been obtained. As for the story itself, it was somewhat fishy, but I manfully swallowed my growing nervousness and comforted myself with the belief of Darwin in the existence of the ux, and the subsequent testimony of Wallace, who simply stated what he had seen through his telescope, and then left it to others to identify the enormous birds he described as he had observed them stalking about on the snowy peaks of the Tasmanian Alps.

  My own knowledge of the ux was confined to a single circumstance. When, in 1897, I had gone to Tasmania with Professor Farrago, to make a report on the availability of the so-called “Tasmanian devil,” as a substitute for the mongoose in the West Indies, I of course heard a great deal of talk among the natives concerning the birds which they affirmed haunted the summits of the mountains.

  Our time in Tasmania was too limited to admit of an exploration then. But although we were perfectly aware that the summits of the Tasmanian Alps are inaccessible, we certainly should have attempted to gain them had not the time set for our departure arrived before we had completed the investigation for which we were sent.

  One relic, however, I carried away with me. It was a single greenish bronzed feather, found high up in the mountains by a native, and sold to me for a somewhat large sum of money.

  Darwin believed the ux to be covered with greenish plumage; Wallace was too far away to observe the color of the great birds; but all the natives of Tasmania unite in affirming that the plumage of the ux is green.

  It was not only the color of this feather that made me an eager purchaser, it was the extraordinary length and size. I knew of no living bird large enough to wear such a feather. As for the color, that might have been tampered with before I bought it, and, indeed, testing it later, I found on the fronds traces of sulphate of copper. But the same thing has been found in the feathers of certain birds whose color is metallic green, and it has been proven that such birds pick up and swallow shining bits of copper pyrites.

  Why should not the ux do the same thing?

  Still, my only reason for believing in the existence of the bird was this single feather. I had easily proved that it belonged to no known species of bird. I also proved it to be similar to the tail-feathers of the ux-skin in Antwerp. But the feathers on the Antwerp specimen were gray, and the longest of them was but three feet in length, while my huge, bronze-green feather measured eleven feet from tip to tip.

  One might account for it supposing the Antwerp skin to be that of a young bird, or of a moulting bird, or perhaps of a different sex from the bird whose feather I had secured.

  Still, these ideas were not proven. Nothing concerning the birds had been proven. I had but a single fact to lean on, and that was that the feather I possessed could not have belonged to any known species of bird. Nobody but myself knew of the existence of this feather. And now I meant to cable to Bronx Park for it, and to place this evidence at the disposal of the beautiful Countess d’Alzette.

  My cigar had gone out, as I sat musing, and I relighted it and resumed my reading of the type-written notes, lazily, even a trifle sceptically, for all the evidence that she had been able to collect to substantiate her theory of the existence of the ux was not half as important as the evidence I was to produce in the shape of that enormous green feather.

  I came to the last paragraph, smoking serenely, and leaning back comfortably, one leg crossed over the other. Then, suddenly, my attention became riveted on the words under my eyes. Could I have read them aright? Could I believe what I read in ever-growing astonishment which culminated in an excitement that stirred the very hair on my head?

  “The ux exists. There is no longer room for doubt. Ocular proof I can now offer in the shape of five living eggs of this gigantic bird. All measures have been taken to hatch these eggs; they are now in the vast incubator. It is my plan to have them hatch, one by one, under the very eyes of the International Congress. It will be the greatest triumph that science has witnessed since the discov
ery of the New World.

  [Signed] “Susanne d’Alzette.”

  “Either,” I cried out, in uncontrollable excitement— “either that girl is mad or she is the cleverest woman on earth.”

  After a moment I added:

  “In either event I am going to marry her.”

  XI

  That evening, a few minutes before nine o’clock, I descended from a cab in front of No. 8 Rue d’Alouette, and was ushered into a pretty reception-room by an irreproachable servant, who disappeared directly with my card.

  In a few moments the young Countess came in, exquisite in her silvery dinner-gown, eyes bright, white arms extended in a charming, impulsive welcome. The touch of her silky fingers thrilled me; I was dumb under the enchantment of her beauty; and I think she understood my silence, for her blue eyes became troubled and the happy parting of her lips changed to a pensive curve.

  Presently I began to tell her about my bronzed-green feather; at my first word she looked up brightly, almost gratefully, I fancied; and in another moment we were deep in eager discussion of the subject which had first drawn us together.

  What evidence I possessed to sustain our theory concerning the existence of the ux I hastened to reveal; then, heart beating excitedly, I asked her about the eggs and where they were at present, and whether she believed it possible to bring them to Paris — all these questions in the same breath — which brought a happy light into her eyes and a delicious ripple of laughter to her lips.

  “Why, of course it is possible to bring the eggs here,” she cried. “Am I sure? Parbleu! The eggs are already here, monsieur!”

  “Here!” I exclaimed. “In Paris?”

  “In Paris? Mais oui; and in my own house — this very house, monsieur. Come, you shall behold them with your own eyes!”