Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  Some public service of modest nature they had performed, not seeking it, not shirking; accomplishing it cleanly when it was intrusted to them.

  His forefathers had been, as a rule, professional men — physicians and lawyers; his grandfather died under the walls of Chapultepec Castle while twisting a tourniquet for a cursing dragoon; an uncle remained indefinitely at Malvern Hill; an only brother at Montauk Point having sickened in the trenches before Santiago.

  His father’s services as division medical officer in Sheridan’s cavalry had been, perhaps, no more devoted, no more loyal than the services of thousands of officers and troopers; and his reward was a pension offer, declined. He practised until his wife died, then retired to his country home, from which house his daughter Nina was married to Austin Gerard.

  Mr. Selwyn, senior, continued to pay his taxes on his father’s house in Tenth Street, voted in that district, spent a month every year with the Gerards, read a Republican morning newspaper, and judiciously enlarged the family reservation in Greenwood — whither he retired, in due time, without other ostentation than half a column in the Evening Post, which paper he had, in life, avoided.

  The first gun off the Florida Keys sent Selwyn’s only brother from his law office in hot haste to San Antonio — the first étape on his first and last campaign with Wood’s cavalry.

  That same gun interrupted Selwyn’s connection with Neergard & Co., operators in Long Island real estate; and, a year later, the captaincy offered him in a Western volunteer regiment operating on the Island of Leyte, completed the rupture.

  And now he was back again, a chance career ended, with option of picking up the severed threads — his inheritance at the loom — and of retying them, warp and weft, and continuing the pattern according to the designs of the tufted, tinted pile-yarn, knotted in by his ancestors before him.

  There was nothing else to do; so he did it. Civil and certain social obligations were mechanically reassumed; he appeared in his sister’s pew for worship, he reënrolled in his clubs as a resident member once more; the directors of such charities as he meddled with he notified of his return; he remitted his dues to the various museums and municipal or private organisations which had always expected support from his family; he subscribed to the Sun.

  He was more conservative, however, in mending the purely social strands so long relaxed or severed. The various registers and blue-books recorded his residence under “dilatory domiciles”; he did not subscribe to the opera, preferring to chance it in case harmony-hunger attacked him; pre-Yuletide functions he dodged, considering that his sister’s days in January and attendance at other family formalities were sufficient.

  Meanwhile he was looking for two things — an apartment and a job — the first energetically combated by his immediate family.

  It was rather odd — the scarcity of jobs. Of course Austin offered him one which Selwyn declined at once, comfortably enraging his brother-in-law for nearly ten minutes.

  “But what do I know about the investment of trust funds?” demanded Selwyn; “you wouldn’t take me if I were not your wife’s brother — and that’s nepotism.”

  Austin’s harmless fury raged for nearly ten minutes, after which he cheered up, relighted his cigar, and resumed his discussion with Selwyn concerning the merits of various boys’ schools — the victim in prospective being Billy.

  A little later, reverting to the subject of his own enforced idleness, Selwyn said: “I’ve been on the point of going to see Neergard — but somehow I can’t quite bring myself to it — slinking into his office as a rank failure in one profession, to ask him if he has any use for me again.”

  “Stuff and fancy!” growled Gerard; “it’s all stuff and fancy about your being any kind of a failure. If you want to resume with that Dutchman, go to him and say so. If you want to invest anything in his Long Island schemes he’ll take you in fast enough. He took in Gerald and some twenty thousand.”

  “Isn’t he very prosperous, Austin?”

  “Very — on paper. Long Island farm lands and mortgages on Hampton hen-coops are not fragrant propositions to me. But there’s always one more way of making a living after you counted ’em all up on your fingers. If you’ve any capital to offer Neergard, he won’t shriek for help.”

  “But isn’t suburban property—”

  “On the jump? Yes — both ways. Oh, I suppose that Neergard is all right — if he wasn’t I wouldn’t have permitted Gerald to go into it. Neergard sticks to his commissions and doesn’t back his fancy in certified checks. I don’t know exactly how he operates; I only know that we find nothing in that sort of thing for our own account. But Fane, Harmon & Co. do. That’s their affair, too; it’s all a matter of taste, I tell you.”

  Selwyn reflected: “I believe I’d go and see Neergard if I were perfectly sure of my personal sentiments toward him. . . . He’s been civil enough to me, of course, but I have always had a curious feeling about Neergard — that he’s for ever on the edge of doing something — doubtful—”

  “His business reputation is all right. He shaves the dead line like a safety razor, but he’s never yet cut through it. On principle, however, look out for an apple-faced Dutchman with a thin nose and no lips. Neither Jew, Yankee, nor American stands any chance in a deal with that type of financier. Personally my feeling is this: if I’ve got to play games with Julius Neergard, I’d prefer to be his partner. And so I told Gerald. By the way—”

  Austin checked himself, looked down at his cigar, turned it over and over several times, then continued quietly:

  — “By the way, I suppose Gerald is like other young men of his age and times — immersed in his own affairs — thoughtless perhaps, perhaps a trifle selfish in the cross-country gallop after pleasure. . . . I was rather severe with him about his neglect of his sister. He ought to have come here to pay his respects to you, too—”

  “Oh, don’t put such notions into his head—”

  “Yes, I will!” insisted Austin; “however indifferent and thoughtless and selfish he is to other people, he’s got to be considerate toward his own family. And I told him so. Have you seen him lately?”

  “N-o,” admitted Selwyn.

  “Not since that first time when he came to do the civil by you?”

  “No; but don’t—”

  “Yes, I will,” repeated his brother-in-law; “and I’m going to have a thorough explanation with him and learn what he’s up to. He’s got to be decent to his sister; he ought to report to me occasionally; that’s all there is to it. He has entirely too much liberty with his bachelor quarters and his junior whipper-snapper club, and his house parties and his cruises on Neergard’s boat!”

  He got up, casting his cigar from him, and moved about bulkily, muttering of matters to be regulated, and firmly, too. But Selwyn, looking out of the window across the Park, knew perfectly well that young Erroll, now of age, with a small portion of his handsome income at his mercy, was past the regulating stage and beyond the authority of Austin. There was no harm in him; he was simply a joyous, pleasure-loving cub, chock full of energetic instincts, good and bad, right and wrong, out of which, formed from the acts which become habits, character matures. This was his estimate of Gerald.

  The next morning, riding in the Park with Eileen, he found a chance to speak cordially of her brother.

  “I’ve meant to look up Gerald,” he said, as though the neglect were his own fault, “but every time something happens to switch me on to another track.”

  “I’m afraid that I do a great deal of the switching,” she said; “don’t I? But you’ve been so nice to me and to the children that—”

  Miss Erroll’s horse was behaving badly, and for a few moments she became too thoroughly occupied with her mount to finish her sentence.

  The belted groom galloped up, prepared for emergencies, and he and Selwyn sat their saddles watching a pretty battle for mastery between a beautiful horse determined to be bad and a very determined young girl who had decided he was
going to be good.

  Once or twice the excitement of solicitude sent the colour flying into Selwyn’s temples; the bridle-path was narrow and stiff with freezing sand, and the trees were too near for such lively manoeuvres; but Miss Erroll had made up her mind — and Selwyn already had a humorous idea that this was no light matter. The horse found it serious enough, too, and suddenly concluded to be good. And the pretty scene ended so abruptly that Selwyn laughed aloud as he rejoined her:

  “There was a man— ‘Boots’ Lansing — in Bannard’s command. One night on Samar the bolo-men rushed us, and Lansing got into the six-foot major’s boots by mistake — seven-leaguers, you know — and his horse bucked him clean out of them.”

  “Hence his Christian name, I suppose,” said the girl; “but why such a story, Captain Selwyn? I believe I stuck to my saddle?”

  “With both hands,” he said cordially, always alert to plague her. For she was adorable when teased — especially in the beginning of their acquaintance, before she had found out that it was a habit of his — and her bright confusion always delighted him into further mischief.

  “But I wasn’t a bit worried,” he continued; “you had him so firmly around the neck. Besides, what horse or man could resist such a pleading pair of arms around the neck?”

  “What you saw,” she said, flushing up, “is exactly the way I shall do any pleading with the two animals you mention.”

  “Spur and curb and thrash us? Oh, my!”

  “Not if you’re bridle-wise, Captain Selwyn,” she returned sweetly. “And you know you always are. And sometimes” — she crossed her crop and looked around at him reflectively— “sometimes, do you know, I am almost afraid that you are so very, very good, that perhaps you are becoming almost goody-good.”

  “What!” he exclaimed indignantly; but his only answer was her head thrown back and a ripple of enchanting laughter.

  Later she remarked: “It’s just as Nina says, after all, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so,” he replied suspiciously; “what?”

  “That Gerald isn’t really very wicked, but he likes to have us think so. It’s a sign of extreme self-consciousness, isn’t it,” she added innocently, “when a man is afraid that a woman thinks he is very, very good?”

  “That,” he said, “is the limit. I’m going to ride by myself.”

  Her pleasure in Selwyn’s society had gradually become such genuine pleasure, her confidence in his kindness so unaffectedly sincere, that, insensibly, she had fallen into something of his manner of badinage — especially since she realised how much amusement he found in her own smiling confusion when unexpectedly assailed. Also, to her surprise, she found that he could be plagued very easily, though she did not quite dare to at first, in view of his impressive years and experience.

  But once goaded to it, she was astonished to find how suddenly it seemed to readjust their personal relations — years and experience falling from his shoulders like a cloak which had concealed a man very nearly her own age; years and experience adding themselves to her, and at least an inch to her stature to redress the balance between them.

  It had amused him immensely as he realised the subtle change; and it pleased him, too, because no man of thirty-five cares to be treated en grandpère by a girl of nineteen, even if she has not yet worn the polish from her first pair of high-heeled shoes.

  “It’s astonishing,” he said, “how little respect infirmity and age command in these days.”

  “I do respect you,” she insisted, “especially your infirmity of purpose. You said you were going to ride by yourself. But, do you know, I don’t believe you are of a particularly solitary disposition; are you?”

  He laughed at first, then suddenly his face fell.

  “Not from choice,” he said, under his breath. Her quick ear heard, and she turned, semi-serious, questioning him with raised eyebrows.

  “Nothing; I was just muttering. I’ve a villainous habit of muttering mushy nothings—”

  “You did say something!”

  “No; only ghoulish gabble; the mere murky mouthings of a meagre mind.”

  “You did. It’s rude not to repeat it when I ask you.”

  “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  “Then repeat what you said to yourself.”

  “Do you wish me to?” he asked, raising his eyes so gravely that the smile faded from lip and voice when she answered: “I beg your pardon, Captain Selwyn. I did not know you were serious.”

  “Oh, I’m not,” he returned lightly, “I’m never serious. No man who soliloquises can be taken seriously. Don’t you know, Miss Erroll, that the crowning absurdity of all tragedy is the soliloquy?”

  Her smile became delightfully uncertain; she did not quite understand him — though her instinct warned her that, for a second, something had menaced their understanding.

  Riding forward with him through the crisp sunshine of mid-December, the word “tragedy” still sounding in her ears, her thoughts reverted naturally to the only tragedy besides her own which had ever come very near to her — his own.

  Could he have meant that? Did people mention such things after they had happened? Did they not rather conceal them, hide them deeper and deeper with the aid of time and the kindly years for a burial past all recollection?

  Troubled, uncomfortably intent on evading every thought or train of ideas evoked, she put her mount to a gallop. But thought kept pace with her.

  She was, of course, aware of the situation regarding Selwyn’s domestic affairs; she could not very well have been kept long in ignorance of the facts; so Nina had told her carefully, leaving in the young girl’s mind only a bewildered sympathy for man and wife whom a dreadful and incomprehensible catastrophe had overtaken; only an impression of something new and fearsome which she had hitherto been unaware of in the world, and which was to be added to her small but, unhappily, growing list of sad and incredible things.

  The finality of the affair, according to Nina, was what had seemed to her the most distressing — as though those two were already dead people. She was unable to understand it. Could no glimmer of hope remain that, in that magic “some day” of all young minds, the evil mystery might dissolve? Could there be no living “happily ever after” in the wake of such a storm? She had managed to hope for that, and believe in it.

  Then, in some way, the news of Alixe’s marriage to Ruthven filtered through the family silence. She had gone straight to Nina, horrified, unbelieving. And, when the long, tender, intimate interview was over, another unhappy truth, very gently revealed, was added to the growing list already learned by this young girl.

  Then Selwyn came. She had already learned something of the world’s customs and manners before his advent; she had learned more since his advent; and she was learning something else, too — to understand how happily ignorant of many matters she had been, had better be, and had best remain. And she harboured no malsane desire to know more than was necessary, and every innocent instinct to preserve her ignorance intact as long as the world permitted.

  As for the man riding there at her side, his problem was simple enough as he summed it up: to face the world, however it might chance to spin, that small, ridiculous, haphazard world rattling like a rickety roulette ball among the numbered nights and days where he had no longer any vital stake at hazard — no longer any chance to win or lose.

  This was an unstable state of mind, particularly as he had not yet destroyed the photograph which he kept locked in his despatch box. He had not returned it, either; it was too late by several months to do that, but he was still fool enough to consider the idea at moments — sometimes after a nursery romp with the children, or after a good-night kiss from Drina on the lamp-lit landing, or when some commonplace episode of the domesticity around him hurt him, cutting him to the quick with its very simplicity, as when Nina’s hand fell naturally into Austin’s on their way to “lean over” the children at bedtime, or their frank absorption in conjugal discussion to his own exclusio
n as he sat brooding by the embers in the library.

  “I’m like a dead man at times,” he said to himself; “nothing to expect of a man who is done for; and worst of all, I no longer expect anything of myself.”

  This was sufficiently morbid, and he usually proved it by going early to his own quarters, where dawn sometimes surprised him asleep in his chair, white and worn, all the youth in his hollow face extinct, his wife’s picture fallen face downward on the floor.

  But he always picked it up again when he awoke, and carefully dusted it, too, even when half stupefied with sleep.

  Returning from their gallop, Miss Erroll had very little to say. Selwyn, too, was silent and absent-minded. The girl glanced furtively at him from time to time, not at all enlightened. Man, naturally, was to her an unknown quantity. In fact she had no reason to suspect him of being anything more intricate than the platitudinous dance or dinner partner in black and white, or any frock-coated entity in the afternoon, or any flannelled individual at the nets or on the links or cantering about the veranda of club, casino, or cottage, in evident anxiety to be considerate and agreeable.

  This one, however, appeared to have individual peculiarities; he differed from his brother Caucasians, who should all resemble one another to any normal girl. For one thing he was subject to illogical moods — apparently not caring whether she noticed them or not. For another, he permitted himself the liberty of long and unreasonable silences whenever he pleased. This she had accepted unquestioningly in the early days when she was a little in awe of him, when the discrepancy of their ages and experiences had not been dissipated by her first presumptuous laughter at his expense.

  Now it puzzled her, appearing as a specific trait differentiating him from Man in the abstract.

  He had another trick, too, of retiring within himself, even when smiling at her sallies or banteringly evading her challenge to a duel of wits. At such times he no longer looked very young; she had noticed that more than once. He looked old, and ill-tempered.