Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Had I better tell you?”

  “You know better than I.”

  Siward, cheek crushed against his fist, his elbow on the desk, gazed at him steadily:

  “In March,” he said, “Miss Landis spoke to me. I’ve made a better fight since.”

  Plank’s serious face darkened. “Is she the only anchor you have?”

  “Plank, I am not even sure of her. I have made a better fight since then; that is all I dare say. I know what men think about a man like me; I knew they demand character, pride, self-denial. But, Plank, I am driving faster and faster toward the breakers, and these anchors are dragging. For it is not, in my case, the physical failure to obey the will; it is the will itself that has been attacked from the first. That is the horror of it. And what is there behind the will-power to strengthen it? Only the source of will-power — the mind. It is the mind that cannot help me. What am I to do?”

  “There is a spiritual strength,” said Plank timidly.

  “I have never dreamed of denying it,” said Siward. “I have tried to find it through the accepted sources — accepted by me, too. God has not helped me in the conventional way or through traditional methods; but that has not inclined me to doubt Him as the tribunal of last resort,” he added hastily. “I don’t for a moment waver in faith because I am ignorant of the proper manner to approach Him. The Arbiter of all knows that I desire to be decent. He must be aware, too, that all anchors save one have failed to hold me.”

  “You mean — Miss Landis?”

  “Yes. It may be weakness; it may be to my shame that the cables of pride and self-respect, even the spiritual respect for the Highest, cannot hold me when this one anchor holds. All I know is that it holds — so far. It held me at Shotover; it holds me again, now. And the rocks were close abeam, Plank — very close — when she spoke to me over the wires, through the rain, that dark day in March.”

  He moistened his lips feverishly.

  “She said that I might see her. I have waited a long time. I have taken my fighting chance again and I’ve won out, so far.”

  He looked up at Plank, curiously embarrassed:

  “Your body is normal; your intelligence wholesome, balanced, sane; and I want to ask you if you think that perhaps, without understanding how, I have found in her, or through her, in some way, the spiritual source that I think might help me to help myself?”

  And, as Plank made no reply:

  “Or am I talking sentimental cant? Don’t answer, if you think that. I can’t trust my own mind any more, anyway; and,” with an ugly laugh, “I’ll know it all some day — the sooner the better!”

  “Don’t say that!” growled Plank. “You were sane a moment ago.”

  Siward looked up sharply, but the other silenced him with a gesture.

  “Wait! You asked me a perfectly sane question — so wholesome, so normal, that I’m trying to frame an answer worthy of it! I intimated that after the physical, the mental, the ethical phenomena, there remained always the spiritual instinct. Like a wireless current, if a man can establish communication it is well for him, whatever the method. You assented, I think.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you ask me if I believe it possible that she can be the medium?”

  “Yes.”

  Plank said deliberately: “Yes, I do think so.”

  The silence was again broken by Plank: “Siward, you have asked me what I think. Now you must listen to the end. If you believed that through her — her love, marrying her — you stood the best chance in the world to win out, it would be cowardly to ask her to take the risk. As much as I care for you I had rather see you lose the fight than accept such a risk from her. Now you know what I think — but you don’t know all. Siward, I say to you that if you are man enough to take her, take her! And I say that of the two risks she is running to-day, the chance she might take with you is infinitely the lesser risk. For with you, if you continue slowly losing your fight, the mental suffering only will be hers. But if she closes this bargain with Quarrier, selling to him her body, the light will go out of her soul for ever.”

  He leaned heavily toward Siward, stretching out his powerful arm:

  “You marry her; and keep open your spiritual communication through her, if that is the way it has been established, and hang on to your God that way until your body is dead! I tell you, Siward, to marry her. I don’t care how you do it; I don’t care how you get her. Take her! Yours, of the two, is the stronger character, or she would not be where she is. Does she want what you cannot give her? Cure that desire — it is more contemptible than the craving that shatters you! I say, let the one-eyed lead the blind. Miracles are worked out by mathematics — if you have faith enough.”

  He rose, striding the length of the room once or twice, turned, holding out his broad hand:

  “Good-bye,” he said. “Harrington is about due at my office; Quarrier will probably turn up to-night. I am not vindictive; I shall be just with them — as just as I know how, which is to be as merciful as I dare be. Good-bye, Siward. I — I believe you and she are going to get well.”

  When he had gone, Siward lay back in his chair, very still, eyes closed. A faint colour had mounted to his face and remained there.

  It was late in the afternoon when he went down-stairs, using his crutches lightly. Gumble handed him a straw hat and opened the door, and Siward cautiously descended the stoop, stood for a few moments on the sidewalk, looking up at the blue sky, then wheeled and slowly made his way toward Washington Square. The avenue was deserted; his own house appeared to be the only remaining house still open in all that old-fashioned but respectable quarter.

  He swung leisurely southward, a slim, well-built young fellow, strangely out of place on crutches. The poor always looked at him; beggars never importuned him, yet found him agreeable to watch. Children, who seldom look up into the air far enough to notice grown people, always became conscious of him when he passed; often smiled, sometimes spoke. As for stray curs and tramp cats, they were for ever making advances. As long as he could remember, there was scarcely a week in town but some homeless dog attached himself to Siward’s heels, sometimes trotting several blocks, sometimes following him home — where the outcast was always cared for, washed, fed, and ultimately shipped out to the farm, where scores of these “fresh-air” dogs resided on his bounty and rolled in luxury on his lawns.

  Cats, too, were prone to notice him, rising as he passed to hoist an interrogative tail and make tentative observations.

  In Washington Square, these, and the ragged children, knew him best of all. The children came from Minetta Lane and the purlieus south and west of it; the cats from the Mews, which Siward always thought most appropriate.

  And now, as he passed the marble arch and entered the square, glancing behind him he saw the inevitable cat trotting, and, at his left, a very dirty little girl pretending to trundle a hoop, but plainly enough keeping sociable pace with him.

  “Hello!” said Siward. The cat stopped; the child tossed her clustering curls, gave him a rapid but fearless sidelong glance, laughed, and ran on in the wake of her hoop. When she caught it she sat down on a bench opposite the fountain and looked around at Siward.

  “It’s pretty warm, isn’t it?” said Siward, coming up and seating himself on the same bench.

  “Are you lame?” asked the child.

  “Oh, a little.”

  “Is your leg broken?”

  “Oh, no, not now.”

  “Is that your cat?”

  Siward looked around; the cat was seated on the bench beside him. But he was accustomed to that sort of thing, and he caressed the creature with his gloved hand.

  “Are you rich?” asked the child, shaking her blond curls from her eyes and staring up solemnly at him.

  “Not very,” he answered, smiling. “Why do you ask?”

  “You look rich, somehow,” said the child shyly.

  “What! With these old and very faded clothes?”

  She shoo
k her head, swinging her plump legs: “You look it, somehow. It isn’t the clothes that matter.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” said Siward, laughing “I’m rich enough to buy all the hokey-pokey you can eat!” and he glanced meaningly at the pedlar of that staple who had taken station between a vender of peaches and a Greek flower-seller.

  The child looked, too, but made no comment.

  “How about it?” asked Siward.

  “I’d rather have something to remember you by,” said the girl innocently.

  “What?” he said, perplexed.

  “A rose. They are five cents, and hokey-pokey costs that much — I mean, for as much as you can eat.”

  “Do you really want a rose?” he said amused.

  But the child fell shy, and he beckoned the Greek and selected a dozen big, perfumed jacks.

  Then, as the child sat silent, her ragged arms piled with roses, he asked her jestingly what else she desired.

  “Nothing. I like to look at you,” she answered simply.

  “And I like to look at you. Will you tell me your name?”

  “Molly.”

  But that is all the information he could extract. Presently she said she was going, hesitated, looked a very earnest good-bye, and darted away across the park, her hoop over one arm, the crimson roses bobbing above her shoulders. Something in her flight attracted the errant cat, for she, too, jumped down and bounded after the little flying feet, but, catlike, halted half-way to scratch, and then forgetting what she was about, wandered off toward the Mews again, whence she had been lured by instinctive fascination.

  Siward, intensely amused, sat there in the late sunlight which streamed through the park, casting long shadows from the elms and sycamores. It was that time of the day, just before sunset, when the old square looked to him as he remembered it as a child. Even the marble arch, pink in the evening sun, did not disturb the harmony of his memories. He saw his father once more, walking home from down town, tall, slim, laughingly stopping to watch him as he played there with the other children — the nurses, seated in a row, crocheting under the sycamores; he saw the old-fashioned carriage pass, Mockett on the box, Wands beside him, and his pretty mother leaning forward to wave her hand to him as the long-tailed, long-maned horses wheeled into Fifth Avenue. Little unimportant scenes, trivial episodes, grew in the spectral garden of memory: the first time he ever saw Marion Page, when, aged five, she was attempting to get into the fountain, pursued by a shrieking nurse; and a certain flight across the grass he had indulged in with Leila Mortimer, then Leila Egerton, aged six, in hot pursuit, because she found that it bored him horribly to be kissed, and she was bound to do it. He had a fight once, over by that gnarled, old, silver poplar-tree, with Kemp Ferrall — he could not remember what about, only that they ended by unanimously assaulting their nurses and were dragged howling homeward.

  He turned, looking across to where the gray towers of the University once stood. There had been an old stone church there, too; and, south of that, old, old houses with hip-roofs and dormers where now the high white cliffs of modern architecture rose, riddled with tiny windows, every vane glittering in the sun. South, the old houses still remained, now degraded to sordid uses. North, the square, red-brick mansions, with their white pillars and steps, still faced the sunset — the last practically unbroken rank of the old régime, the last of the old guard, standing fast and still confronting, still resisting the Inevitable looming in limestone and granite, story piled on story, aloft in the kindling, southern sky.

  A cab, driven smartly, passed through the park, the horses’ feet slapping the asphalt till the echoes rattled back from the marble arch. He followed it idly with his eyes up Fifth Avenue; saw it suddenly halt in the middle of the street; saw a woman spring out, stand for a moment talking to her companion, then turn and look toward the square.

  She stood so long, and she was so far away, that he presently grew tired of watching her. A dozen ragged urchins were prowling around the fountain, casting sidelong glances at a distant policeman. But it was not hot enough that evening to permit the children to splash in the water, and the policeman drove them off.

  “Poor little devils!” said Siward to himself; and he rose, adjusted his crutches, and started through the park with a vague idea of seeing what could be done.

  As he limped onward, the sun level in his eyes, he heard somebody speak behind him, but did not catch the words or apply the hail to himself. Then, “Mr. Siward!” came the low, breathless voice at his elbow.

  His heart stopped as he did. The sun had dazzled his eyes, and when he turned on his crutches he could not see clearly for a second. That past, he looked at Sylvia, looked at her outstretched hand, took it mechanically, still staring at her with only a dazed unbelief in his eyes.

  “I am in town for a day,” she said. “Leila Mortimer and I were driving up town from the bank when we saw you; and the next thing that happened was me, on Fifth Avenue, running after you — no, the next thing was my flying leap from the hansom, and my standing there looking down the street and across the square where you sat. Then Leila told me I was probably crazy, and I immediately confirmed her diagnosis by running after you!”

  She stood laughing, flushed, sunburned, and breathless, her left hand still in his, her right hand laid over it.

  “Oh,” she said, with a sudden change to anxiety, “does it tire you to stand?”

  “No. I was going to saunter along.”

  “May I saunter with you for a moment? I mean — I only mean, I am glad to see you.”

  “Do you think I am going to let you go now?” he asked, astonished.

  She looked at him, then her eyes evaded his: “Let us walk a little,” she said, withdrawing her hand, “if you think you are strong enough.”

  “Strong! Look, Sylvia!” and he stood unsupported by his crutches, then walked a little way, slowly, but quite firmly. “I am rather a coward about my foot, that is all. I shall not lug these things about after to-day.”

  “Did the doctor say you might?”

  “Yes, after to-day. I could walk home now without them. I could do a good many things I couldn’t do a few minutes ago. Isn’t that curious?”

  “Very,” she said, avoiding his eyes.

  He laughed. She dared not look at him. The excitement and impetus of sheer impulse had carried her this far; now all the sadness of it was clutching hard at her throat and for awhile she could not speak — walking there in her dainty, summer gown beside him, the very incarnation of youth and health, with the sea-tan on wrist and throat, and he, white, hollow-eyed, crippled, limping, at her elbow!

  Yet at that very moment his whole frame seemed to glow and his heart clamour with the courage in it, for he was thinking of Plank’s words and he knew Plank had spoken the truth. She could not give herself to Quarrier, if he stood firm. His was the stronger will after all; his was the right to interfere, to stop her, to check her, to take her, draw her back — as he had once drawn her from the fascination of destruction when she had swayed out too far over the cliffs at Shotover.

  “Do you remember that?” he asked, and spoke of the incident.

  “Yes, I remember,” she replied, smiling.

  “Doctors say” he continued, “that there is a weak streak in people who are affected by great heights, or who find a dizzy fascination drawing them toward the brink of precipices.”

  “Do you mean me?” she asked, amused.

  But he continued serenely: “You have seen those pigeons called ‘tumbler pigeons’ suddenly turn a cart-wheel in mid-air? Scientists say it’s not for pleasure they do it; it’s because they get dizzy. In other words, they are not perfectly normal.”

  She said, laughing: “Well, you never saw me turn a cart-wheel!”

  “Only a moral one,” he replied airily.

  “Stephen, what on earth do you mean? You’re not going to be disagreeable, are you?”

  “I am going to be so agreeable,” he said, laughing, “that you wil
l find it very difficult to tear yourself away.”

  “I have no doubt of it, but I must, and very soon.”

  “I’m not going to let you.”

  “It can’t be helped,” she said, looking up at him. “I came in with Leila. We’re asked to Lenox for the week’s end. We go to Stockbridge on the early train to-morrow morning.

  “I don’t care,” he said doggedly; “I’m not going to let you go yet.”

  “If I took to my heels here in the park would you chase me, Stephen?” she asked with mock anxiety.

  “Yes; and if I couldn’t run fast enough I’d call that policeman. Now do you begin to understand?”

  “Oh, I’ve always understood that you were spoiled. I’m partly guilty of the spoiling process, too. Listen: I’ll walk with you a little way” — she looked at him— “a little way,” she continued gently; “then I must go. There is only a caretaker in our house and Leila will be furious if I leave her all alone. Besides, we’re going to dine there and it won’t be very gay if I don’t give a few orders first.”

  “But you brought your maid?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Then telephone her that you and Leila are dining out.”

  “Where, silly? Do you want us to dine somewhere with you?”

  “Want you! You’ve got to!”

  “Stephen, it isn’t best.”

  “It is best.”

  She turned to him impulsively: “Oh, I do want to so much! Do you think I might? It is perfectly delicious to see you again. I — you have no idea—”

  “Yes, I have,” he said sternly.

  They turned, walking past the fountain toward Fifth Avenue again. Furtively she glanced at his hands with the city pallor on them as they grasped the cross-bars of the crutches, then looked up at his worn face. He was much thinner, but now in the softly fading light the shadows under the eyes and cheek-bones seemed less sharp, his face fuller and more boyish; the contour of head and shoulders, the short, crisp hair were as she remembered — and the old charm held her, the old fascination grew, tightening her throat, stealing through every vein, stirring her pulses, awakening imperceptibly once more the best in her. The twilight of a thousand years seemed to slip from the world as she looked out at it through eyes opening from a long, long sleep; the marble arch burned rosy in the evening glow; a fairy haze hung over the enchanted avenue, stretching away, away into the blue magic of the city of dreams.