Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  His smiling serenity under the rebuke aroused in her a slight resentment as though he had taken something for granted.

  Besides, she had grown uneasy; she had wired Quarrier, saying she would meet him and drive him over. He had replied at once, naming his train. He was an exact man and expected method and precision in others. She didn’t exactly know how it might affect him if his reasonable demand was unsatisfied. She did not know him very well yet, only well enough to be aware that he was a gentleman so precisely, so judiciously constructed, that, contemplating his equitable perfections, her awe and admiration grew as one on whom dawns the exquisite adjustments of an almost human machine.

  And, thinking of him now, she again made up her mind to give him the answer which he now had every reason to expect from her. This decision appeared to lubricate her conscience; it ran more smoothly now, emitting fewer creaks.

  “You say that you know Mr. Quarrier?” she began thoughtfully.

  “Not well.”

  “I — hope you will like him, Mr. Siward.”

  “I do not think he likes me, Miss Landis. He has reasons not to.”

  She looked up, suddenly remembering: “Oh — since that scrape? What has Mr. Quarrier to do—” She did not finish the sentence. A troubled silence followed; she was trying to remember the details — something she had paid small attention to at the time — something so foreign to her, so distant from her comprehension that it had not touched her closely enough for her to remember exactly what this young man might have done to forfeit the good-will of Howard Quarrier.

  She looked at Siward; it was impossible that anything very bad could come from such a man. And, pursuing her reasoning aloud: “It couldn’t have been very awful,” she argued; “something foolish about an actress, was it not? And that could not concern Mr. Quarrier.”

  “I thought you did know; I thought you — remembered — while you were driving me over from the station — that I was dropped from my club.”

  She flushed up: “Oh! — but — what had Mr. Quarrier to do with that?”

  “He is a governor of that club.”

  “You mean that Mr. Quarrier had you — dropped?”

  “What else could he do? A man who is idiot enough to risk making his own club notorious, must take the consequences. And they say I took that risk. Therefore Mr. Quarrier, Major Belwether — all the governors did their duty. I — I naturally conclude that no governor of the Patroons Club feels very kindly toward me.”

  Miss Landis sat very still, her small head bent, a flush still brightening her fair face.

  She recalled a few of the details now — the scandal — something of the story. Which particular actress it was she could not remember; but some men who had dined too freely had made the wager, and this boy sitting beside her had accepted it — and won it, by bringing into the sacred precincts of the Patroons Club a foolish, shameless girl disguised in a man’s evening dress.

  That was bad enough; that somebody promptly discovered it was worse; but worst of all was the publicity, the club’s name smirched, the young man expelled from one of the two best clubs in the metropolis.

  To read of such things in the columns of a daily paper had meant little to her except to repell her; to hear it mentioned among people of her own sort had left her incurious and indifferent. But now she saw it in a new light, with the man who had figured in it seated beside her. Did such men as he — such attractive, well-bred, amusing men as he — do that sort of thing?

  There he sat, hat off, the sun touching his short, thick hair which waved a little at the temples — a boyish mould to head and shoulders, a cleanly outlined check and chin, a thoroughbred ear set close — a good face. What sort of a man, then, was a woman to feel at ease with? What eye, what mouth, what manner, what bearing was a woman to trust?

  “Is that the kind of man you are, Mr. Siward?” she said impulsively.

  “It appears that I was; I don’t know what I am — or may be.”

  “The pity of it!” she said, still swayed by impulse. “Why did you do — didn’t you know — realize what you were doing — bringing discredit on your own club?”

  “I was in no condition to know, Miss Landis.”

  The crude brutality of the expression might merely have hurt or disgusted her had she been less intelligent. Nor, as it was, did she fully understand why he chose to use it — unless that he meant it in self-punishment.

  “It’s rather shameful!” she said hotly.

  “Yes,” he assented; “it’s a bad beginning.”

  “A — beginning! Do you mean to go on?”

  He did not reply; his head was partly turned from her. She sat silent for a while. The dog had returned to lie at Siward’s feet, its brown eyes tirelessly watching the man it had chosen for its friend; and the man, without turning his eyes, dropped one hand on the dog’s head, caressing the silky ears.

  Some sentimentalist had once said that no man who cared for animals could be wholly bad. Inexperience inclined her to believe it. Then too, she had that inclination for overlooking offences committed against precept, which appears to be one of those edifying human traits peculiar to neither sex and common to both. Besides, her knowledge of such matters was as vague as her mind was healthy and body wholesome. Men who dined incautiously were not remarkable for their rarity; the actress habit, being incomprehensible to her, meant nothing; and she said, innocently: “What men like you can find attractive in a common woman I do not understand; there are plenty of pretty women of your own sort. The actress cult is beyond my comprehension; I only know it is generally condoned. But it is not for such things that we drop men, Mr. Siward. You know that, of course.”

  “For what do you drop men?”

  “For falsehood, deception, any dishonesty.”

  “And you don’t drop a man when you read in the papers that one of the two best clubs in town has expelled him?”

  She gave him a troubled glance; and, naively: “But you are still a member of the other, are you not?” Then hardening: “It was common! common! — thoroughly disgraceful and incomprehensible!” — and with every word uttered insensibly warming in her heart toward him whom she was chastening; “it was not even bad — it was worse than being simply bad; it was stupid!”

  He nodded, one hand slowly caressing the dog’s head where it lay across his knees.

  She watched him a moment, hesitated, then smiling a little: “So now I know the worst about you; do I not?” she concluded.

  He did not answer; she waited, the smile still curving her red mouth. Had she been too severe? She wondered. “You may help me to my feet,” she said sweetly. She was very young.

  He rose at once, holding out his hands to aid her in that pleasantly impersonal manner so suited to him; and now they stood together in the purple dusk of the uplands — two people young enough to take one another seriously.

  “Let me tell you something,” she said, facing him, white hands loosely linked behind her. “I don’t exactly understand how it has happened, but you know as well as I do that we have formed a — an acquaintance — the sort that under normal conditions requires a long time and several conventional and preliminary chapters.... I should like to know what you think of our performance.”

  “I think,” he said laughing, “that it is charming.”

  “Oh, yes; men usually find the unconventional agreeable. What I want to know is why I find it so, too?”

  “Do you?” A dull colour stained his cheek-bones.

  “Certainly I do. Is it because I’ve had a delightful chance to admonish a sinner — and be — just a little sorry — that he had made such a silly spectacle of himself?”

  He laughed, wincing a trifle.

  “Hence this agreeably righteous glow suffusing me,” she concluded. “So now that I have answered my own question, I think that we had better go. ...Don’t you?”

  They walked for a while, subdued, soberly picking their path through the dusk. After a few moments she began to feel
doubtful, a little uneasy, partly from a reaction which was natural, partly because she was not at all sure what either Quarrier or Major Belwether would think of the terms she was already on with Siward. Suppose they objected? She had never thwarted either of these gentlemen. Besides she already had a temporary interest in Siward — the interest that women always cherish, quite unconsciously, for the man whose shortcomings they have consented to overlook.

  As they crossed the headland, through the deepening dusk the acetylene lamps on a cluster of motor cars spread a blinding light across the scrub. The windows of Shotover House were brilliantly illuminated.

  “Our shooting-party has returned,” she said.

  They crossed the drive through the white glare of the motor lamps; people were passing, grooms with dogs and guns and fluffy bunches of game-birds, several women in motor costumes, veils afloat, a man or two in shooting-tweeds or khaki.

  As they entered the hall together, she turned to him, an indefinable smile curving her lips; then, with a little nod, friendly and sweet, she left him standing at the open door of the gun-room.

  CHAPTER III SHOTOVER

  The first person he encountered in the gun-room was Quarrier, who favoured him with an expressionless stare, then with a bow, quite perfunctory and non-committal. It was plain enough that he had not expected to meet Siward at Shotover House.

  Kemp Ferrall, a dark, stocky, active man of forty, was in the act of draining a glass, when, though the bottom he caught sight of Siward. He finished in a gulp, and advanced, one muscular hand outstretched: “Hello, Stephen! Heard you’d arrived, tried the Scotch, and bolted with Sylvia Landis! That’s all right, too, but you should have come for the opening day. Lots of native woodcock — eh, Blinky?” turning to Lord Alderdene; and again to Siward: “You know all these fellows — Mortimer yonder—” There was the slightest ring in his voice; and Leroy Mortimer, red-necked, bulky, and heavy eyed, emptied his glass and came over, followed by Lord Alderdene blinking madly though his shooting-goggles and showing all his teeth like a pointer with a “tic.” Captain Voucher, a gentleman with the vivid colouring of a healthy groom on a cold day, came up, followed by the Page boys, Willis and Gordon, who shook hands shyly, enchanted to be on easy terms with the notorious Mr. Siward. And last of all Tom O’Hara arrived, reeking of the saddle and clinking a pair of trooper’s spurs over the floor — relics of his bloodless Porto Rico campaign with Squadron A.

  It was patent to every man present that the Kemp Ferralls had determined to ignore Siward’s recent foolishness, which indicated that he might reasonably expect the continued good-will of several sets, the orbits of which intersected in the social system of his native city. Indeed, the few qualified to snub him cared nothing about the matter, and it was not likely that anybody else would take the initiative in being disagreeable to a young man, the fortunes and misfortunes of whose race were part of the history of Manhattan Island. Siwards, good or bad, were a matter of course in New York.

  So everybody in the gun-room was civil enough, and he chose Scotch and found a seat beside Alderdene, who sat biting at a smoky pipe and fingering a tumbler of smokier Scotch, blinking away like mad through his shooting-goggles at everybody.

  “These little brown snipe you call woodcock,” he began; “we bagged nine brace, d’you see? But of all the damnable bogs and covers—”

  “Rotten,” said Mortimer thickly; “Ferrall, you’re all calf and biceps, and it’s well enough for you to go floundering into bogs—”

  “Where do you expect to find native woodcock?” demanded Ferrall, laughing.

  “On the table hereafter,” growled Mortimer.

  “Oh, go and pot Beverly Plank’s tame pheasants,” retorted Ferrall amiably; “Captain Voucher had a blank day, but he isn’t kicking.”

  “Not I,” said Voucher; “the sport is capital — if one can manage to hit the beggars—”

  “Oh, everybody misses in snap-shooting,” observed Ferrall; “that is, everybody except Stephen Siward with his unholy left barrel. Crack! and,” turning to Alderdene, “it’s like taking money from you, Blinky — which reminds me that we’ve time for a little Preference before dressing.”

  His squinting lordship declined and took an easier position in his chair, extending a pair of little bandy legs draped in baggy tweed knickerbockers and heather-spats. Mortimer, industriously distending his skin with whiskey, reached for the decanter. The aromatic perfume of the spirits aroused Siward, and he instinctively nodded his desire to a servant.

  “This salt air keeps one thirsty,” he observed to Ferrall; then something in his host’s expression arrested the glass at his lips. He had already been using the decanter a good deal; except Mortimer, nobody was doing that sort of thing as freely as he.

  He set his glass on the table thoughtfully; a tinge of colour had crept into his lean checks.

  Ferrall, too, suddenly uncomfortable, stood up saying something about dressing; several men arose a trifle stiffly, feeling in every joint the result of the first day’s shooting after all those idle months. Mortimer got up with an unfeigned groan; Siward followed, leaving his glass untouched.

  One or two other men came in from the billiard-room. All greeted Siward amiably — all excepting one who may not have seen him — an elderly, pink, soft gentleman with white downy chop-whiskers and the profile of a benevolent buck rabbit.

  “How do you do, Major Belwether?” said Siward in a low voice without offering his hand.

  Then Major Belwether saw him, bless you! yes indeed! And though Siward continued not to offer his hand, Major Belwether meant to have it, bless your heart! And he fussed and fussed and beamed cordiality until he secured it in his plump white fingers and pressed it effusively.

  There was something about his soft, warm hands which had always reminded Siward of the temperature and texture of a newly hatched bird. It had been some time since he had shaken hands with Major Belwether; it was apparent that the bird had not aged any.

  “And now for the shooting!” said the Major with an arch smile. “Now for the stag at bay and the winding horn —

  ‘Where sleeps the moon On Mona’s rill—’

  Eh, Siward?

  ‘And here’s to the hound With his nose upon the ground—’

  Eh, my boy? That reminds me of a story—” He chuckled and chuckled, his lambent eyes suffused with mirth; and slipping his arm through the pivot-sleeve of Lord Alderdene’s shooting-jacket, hooking the other in Siward’s reluctant elbow, and driving Mortimer ahead of him, he went garrulously away up the stairs, his lordship’s bandy little legs trotting beside him, the soaking gaiters and shoes slopping at every step.

  Mortimer, his mottled skin now sufficiently distended, greeted the story with a yawn from ear to ear; his lordship, blinking madly, burst into that remarkable laugh which seemed to reveal the absence of certain vocal cords requisite to perfect harmony; and Siward smiled in his listless, pleasant way, and turned off down his corridor, unaware that the Sagamore pup was following close at his heels until he heard Quarrier’s even, colourless voice: “Ferrall, would you be good enough to send Sagamore to your kennels?”

  “Oh — he’s your dog! I forgot,” said Siward turning around.

  Quarrier looked at him, pausing a moment.

  “Yes,” he said coldly, “he’s my dog.”

  For a fraction of a second the two men’s eyes encountered; then Siward glanced at the dog, and turned on his heel with the slightest shrug. And that is all there was to the incident — an anxious, perplexed puppy lugged off by a servant, turning, jerking, twisting, resisting, looking piteously back as his unwilling feet slid over the polished floor.

  So Siward walked on alone through the long eastern wing to his room overlooking the sea. He sat down on the edge of his bed, glancing at the clothing laid out for him. He felt tired and disinclined for the exertion of undressing. The shades were up; night quicksilvered the window-panes so that they were like a dark mirror reflecting his face. He inspected his
darkened features curiously; the blurred and sombre-tinted visage returned the stare.

  “Not a man at all — the shadow of a man,” he said aloud— “with no will, no courage — always putting off the battle, always avoiding conclusions, always skulking. What chance is there for a man like that?”

  As one who raises a glass to drink wine and unexpectedly finds water, he shrugged his shoulders disgustedly and got up. A bath followed; he dressed leisurely, and was pacing the room, fussing with his collar, when Ferrall knocked and entered, finding a seat on the bed.

  “Stephen,” he said bluntly, “I haven’t seen you since that break of yours at the club.”

  “Rotten, wasn’t it?” commented Siward, tying his tie.

  “Perfectly. Of course it doesn’t make any difference to Grace or to me, but I fancy you’ve already heard from it.”

  “Oh, yes. All I care about is how my mother took it.”

  “Of course; she was cut up I suppose?”

  “Yes, you know how she would look at a thing of that sort; not that any of the nine and seventy jarring sets would care, but those few thousands invading the edges, butting in — half or three-quarters inside — are the people who can’t afford to overlook the victim of a fashionable club’s displeasure — those, and a woman like my mother, and several other decent-minded people who happen to count in town.”

  Ferrall, his legs swinging busily, thought again; then: “Who was the girl, Stephen?”

  “I don’t think the papers mentioned her name,” said Siward gravely.

  “Oh — I beg your pardon; I thought she was some notorious actress — everybody said so.... Who were those callow fools who put you up to it?... Never mind if you don’t care to tell. But it strikes me they are candidates for club discipline as well as you. It was up to them to face the governors I think—”

  “No, I think not.”

  Ferrall, legs swinging busily, considered him.

  “Too bad,” he mused; “they need not have dropped you—”