Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Will you play, Miss Erroll?” inquired Selwyn.

  Miss Erroll would play.

  “Why do you always call her ‘Miss Erroll’?” asked Billy. “Why don’t you say ‘Eileen’?”

  Selwyn laughed. “I don’t know, Billy; ask her; perhaps she knows.”

  Eileen laughed, too, delicately embarrassed and aware of his teasing smile. But Drina, always impressed by formality, said: “Uncle Philip isn’t Eileen’s uncle. People who are not relations say Miss and Mrs.”

  “Are faver and muvver relations?” asked Josephine timidly.

  “Y-es — no! — I don’t know,” admitted Drina; “are they, Eileen?”

  “Why, yes — that is — that is to say—” And turning to Selwyn: “What dreadful questions. Are they relations, Captain Selwyn? Of course they are!”

  “They were not before they were married,” he said, laughing.

  “If you married Eileen,” began Billy, “you’d call her Eileen, I suppose.”

  “Certainly,” said Selwyn.

  “Why don’t you?”

  “That is another thing you must ask her, my son.”

  “Well, then, Eileen—”

  But Miss Erroll was already seated at the nursery piano, and his demands were drowned in a decisive chord which brought the children clustering around her, while their nurses ran among them untying bibs and scrubbing faces and fingers in fresh water.

  They sang like seraphs, grouped around the piano, fingers linked behind their backs. First it was “The Vicar of Bray.” Then — and the cat fled at the first chord— “Lochleven Castle”:

  “Put off, put off,

  And row with speed

  For now is the time and the hour of need.”

  Miss Erroll sang, too; her voice leading — a charmingly trained, but childlike voice, of no pretensions, as fresh and unspoiled as the girl herself.

  There was an interval after “Castles in the Air”; Eileen sat, with her marvellously white hands resting on the keys, awaiting further suggestion.

  “Sing that funny song, Uncle Philip!” pleaded Billy; “you know — the one about:

  “She hit him with a shingle

  Which made his breeches tingle

  Because he pinched his little baby brother;

  And he ran down the lane

  With his pants full of pain.

  Oh, a boy’s best friend is his mother!”

  “Billy!” gasped Miss Erroll.

  Selwyn, mortified, said severely: “That is a very dreadful song, Billy—”

  “But you taught it to me—”

  Eileen swung around on the piano stool, but Selwyn had seized Billy and was promising to bolo him as soon as he wished.

  And Eileen, surveying the scene from her perch, thought that Selwyn’s years seemed to depend entirely upon his occupation, for he looked very boyish down there on his knees among the children; and she had not yet forgotten the sunken pallor of his features in the Park — no, nor her own question to him, still unanswered. For she had asked him who that woman was who had been so direct in her smiling salute. And he had not yet replied; probably never would; for she did not expect to ask him again.

  Meanwhile the bolo-men were rushing the outposts to the outposts’ intense satisfaction.

  “Bang-bang!” repeated Winthrop; “I hit you, Uncle Philip. You are dead, you know!”

  “Yes, but here comes another! Fire!” shouted Billy. “Save the flag! Hurrah! Pound on the piano, Eileen, and pretend it’s cannon.”

  Chord after chord reverberated through the big sunny room, punctuated by all the cavalry music she had picked up from West Point and her friends in the squadron.

  “We can’t get ’em up!

  We can’t get ’em up!

  We can’t get ’em up

  In the morning!”

  she sang, calmly watching the progress of the battle, until Selwyn disengaged himself from the mêlée and sank breathlessly into a chair.

  “All over,” he said, declining further combat. “Play the ‘Star-spangled Banner,’ Miss Erroll.”

  “Boom!” crashed the chord for the sunset gun; then she played the anthem; Selwyn rose, and the children stood up at salute.

  The party was over.

  Selwyn and Miss Erroll, strolling together out of the nursery and down the stairs, fell unconsciously into the amiable exchange of badinage again; she taunting him with his undignified behaviour, he retorting in kind.

  “Anyway that was a perfectly dreadful verse you taught Billy,” she concluded.

  “Not as dreadful as the chorus,” he remarked, wincing.

  “You’re exactly like a bad small boy, Captain Selwyn; you look like one now — so sheepish! I’ve seen Gerald attempt to avoid admonition in exactly that fashion.”

  “How about a jolly brisk walk?” he inquired blandly; “unless you’ve something on. I suppose you have.”

  “Yes, I have; a tea at the Fanes, a function at the Grays. . . . Do you know Sudbury Gray? It’s his mother.”

  They had strolled into the living room — a big, square, sunny place, in golden greens and browns, where a bay-window overlooked the Park.

  Kneeling on the cushions of the deep window seat she flattened her delicate nose against the glass, peering out through the lace hangings.

  “Everybody and his family are driving,” she said over her shoulder. “The rich and great are cornering the fresh-air supply. It’s interesting, isn’t it, merely to sit here and count coteries! There is Mrs. Vendenning and Gladys Orchil of the Black Fells set; there is that pretty Mrs. Delmour-Carnes; Newport! Here come some Cedarhurst people — the Fleetwoods. It always surprises one to see them out of the saddle. There is Evelyn Cardwell; she came out when I did; and there comes Sandon Craig with a very old lady — there, in that old-fashioned coach — oh, it is Mrs. Jan Van Elten, senior. What a very, very quaint old lady! I have been presented at court,” she added, with a little laugh, “and now all the law has been fulfilled.”

  For a while she kneeled there, silently intent on the passing pageant with all the unconscious curiosity of a child. Presently, without turning: “They speak of the younger set — but what is its limit? So many, so many people! The hunting crowd — the silly crowd — the wealthy sets — the dreadful yellow set — then all those others made out of metals — copper and coal and iron and—” She shrugged her youthful shoulders, still intent on the passing show.

  “Then there are the intellectuals — the artistic, the illuminated, the musical sorts. I — I wish I knew more of them. They were my father’s friends — some of them.” She looked over her shoulder to see where Selwyn was, and whether he was listening; smiled at him, and turned, resting one hand on the window seat. “So many kinds of people,” she said, with a shrug.

  “Yes,” said Selwyn lazily, “there are all kinds of kinds. You remember that beautiful nature-poem:

  “‘The sea-gull

  And the eagul

  And the dipper-dapper-duck

  And the Jew-fish

  And the blue-fish

  And the turtle in the muck;

  And the squir’l

  And the girl

  And the flippy floppy bat

  Are differ-ent

  As gent from gent.

  So let it go at that!’”

  “What hideous nonsense,” she laughed, in open encouragement; but he could recall nothing more — or pretended he couldn’t.

  “You asked me,” he said, “whether I know Sudbury Gray. I do, slightly. What about him?” And he waited, remembering Nina’s suggestion as to that wealthy young man’s eligibility.

  “He’s one of the nicest men I know,” she replied frankly.

  “Yes, but you don’t know ‘Boots’ Lansing.”

  “The gentleman who was bucked out of his footwear? Is he attractive?”

  “Rather. Shrieks rent the air when ‘Boots’ left Manila.”

  “Feminine shrieks?”

  “Exclusively. The men
were glad enough. He has three months’ leave this winter, so you’ll see him soon.”

  She thanked him mockingly for the promise, watching him from amused eyes. After a moment she said:

  “I ought to arise and go forth with timbrels and with dances; but, do you know, I am not inclined to revels? There has been a little — just a very little bit too much festivity so far. . . . Not that I don’t adore dinners and gossip and dances; not that I do not love to pervade bright and glittering places. Oh, no. Only — I—”

  She looked shyly a moment at Selwyn: “I sometimes feel a curious desire for other things. I have been feeling it all day.”

  “What things?”

  “I — don’t know — exactly; substantial things. I’d like to learn about things. My father was the head of the American School of Archæology in Crete. My mother was his intellectual equal, I believe—”

  Her voice had fallen as she spoke. “Do you wonder that physical pleasure palls a little at times? I inherit something besides a capacity for dancing.”

  He nodded, watching her with an interest and curiosity totally new.

  “When I was ten years old I was taken abroad for the winter. I saw the excavations in Crete for the buried city which father discovered near Præsos. We lived for a while with Professor Flanders in the Fayum district; I saw the ruins of Kahun, built nearly three thousand years before the coming of Christ; I myself picked up a scarab as old as the ruins! . . . Captain Selwyn — I was only a child of ten; I could understand very little of what I saw and heard, but I have never, never forgotten the happiness of that winter! . . . And that is why, at times, pleasures tire me a little; and a little discontent creeps in. It is ungrateful and ungracious of me to say so, but I did wish so much to go to college — to have something to care for — as mother cared for father’s work. Why, do you know that my mother accidentally discovered the thirty-seventh sign in the Karian Signary?”

  “No,” said Selwyn, “I did not know that.” He forbore to add that he did not know what a Signary resembled or where Karia might be.

  Miss Erroll’s elbow was on her knee, her chin resting within her open palm.

  “Do you know about my parents?” she asked. “They were lost in the Argolis off Cyprus. You have heard. I think they meant that I should go to college — as well as Gerald; I don’t know. Perhaps after all it is better for me to do what other young girls do. Besides, I enjoy it; and my mother did, too, when she was my age, they say. She was very much gayer than I am; my mother was a beauty and a brilliant woman. . . . But there were other qualities. I — have her letters to father when Gerald and I were very little; and her letters to us from London. . . . I have missed her more, this winter, it seems to me, than even in that dreadful time—”

  She sat silent, chin in hand, delicate fingers restlessly worrying her red lips; then, in quick impulse:

  “You will not mistake me, Captain Selwyn! Nina and Austin have been perfectly sweet to me and to Gerald.”

  “I am not mistaking a word you utter,” he said.

  “No, of course not. . . . Only there are times . . . moments . . .”

  Her voice died; her clear eyes looked out into space while the silent seconds lengthened into minutes. One slender finger had slipped between her lips and teeth; the burnished strand of hair which Nina dreaded lay neglected against her cheek.

  “I should like to know,” she began, as though to herself, “something about everything. That being out of the question, I should like to know everything about something. That also being out of the question, for third choice I should like to know something about something. I am not too ambitious, am I?”

  Selwyn did not offer to answer.

  “Am I?” she repeated, looking directly at him.

  “I thought you were asking yourself.”

  “But you need not reply; there is no sense in my question.”

  She stood up, indifferent, absent-eyed, half turning toward the window; and, raising her hand, she carelessly brought the rebel strand of hair under discipline.

  “You said you were going to look up Gerald,” she observed.

  “I am; now. What are you going to do?”

  “I? Oh, dress, I suppose. Nina ought to be back now, and she expects me to go out with her.”

  She nodded a smiling termination of their duet, and moved toward the door. Then, on impulse, she turned, a question on her lips — left unuttered through instinct. It had to do with the identity of the pretty woman who had so directly saluted him in the Park — a perfectly friendly, simple, and natural question. Yet it remained unuttered.

  She turned again to the doorway; a maid stood there holding a note on a salver.

  “For Captain Selwyn, please,” murmured the maid.

  Miss Erroll passed out.

  Selwyn took the note and broke the seal:

  “MY DEAR SELWYN: I’m in a beastly fix — an I.O.U. due to-night and pas de quoi! Obviously I don’t want Neergard to know, being associated as I am with him in business. As for Austin, he’s a peppery old boy, bless his heart, and I’m not very secure in his good graces at present. Fact is I got into a rather stiff game last night — and it’s a matter of honour. So can you help me to tide it over? I’ll square it on the first of the month.

  “Yours sincerely,

  “GERALD ERROLL.

  “P.S. — I’ve meant to look you up for ever so long, and will the first moment I have free.”

  Below this was pencilled the amount due; and Selwyn’s face grew very serious.

  The letter he wrote in return ran:

  “DEAR GERALD: Check enclosed to your order. By the way, can’t you lunch with me at the Lenox Club some day this week? Write, wire, or telephone when.

  “Yours,

  “SELWYN.”

  When he had sent the note away by the messenger he walked back to the bay-window, hands in his pockets, a worried expression in his gray eyes. This sort of thing must not be repeated; the boy must halt in his tracks and face sharply the other way. Besides, his own income was limited — much too limited to admit of many more loans of that sort.

  He ought to see Gerald at once, but somehow he could not in decency appear personally on the heels of his loan. A certain interval must elapse between the loan and the lecture; in fact he didn’t see very well how he could admonish and instruct until the loan had been cancelled — that is, until the first of the New Year.

  Pacing the floor, disturbed, uncertain as to the course he should pursue, he looked up presently to see Miss Erroll descending the stairs, fresh and sweet in her radiant plumage. As she caught his eye she waved a silvery chinchilla muff at him — a marching salute — and passed on, calling back to him: “Don’t forget Gerald!”

  “No,” he said, “I won’t forget Gerald.” He stood a moment at the window watching the brougham below where Nina awaited Miss Erroll. Then, abruptly, he turned back into the room and picked up the telephone receiver, muttering: “This is no time to mince matters for the sake of appearances.” And he called up Gerald at the offices of Neergard & Co.

  “Is it you, Gerald?” he asked pleasantly. “It’s all right about that matter; I’ve sent you a note by your messenger. But I want to talk to you about another matter — something concerning myself — I want to ask your advice, in a way. Can you be at the Lenox by six? . . . You have an engagement at eight? Oh, that’s all right; I won’t keep you. . . . It’s understood, then; the Lenox at six. . . . Good-bye.”

  There was the usual early evening influx of men at the Lenox who dropped in for a glance at the ticker, or for a cocktail or a game of billiards or a bit of gossip before going home to dress.

  Selwyn sauntered over to the basket, inspected a yard or two of tape, then strolled toward the window, nodding to Bradley Harmon and Sandon Craig.

  As he turned his face to the window and his back to the room, Harmon came up rather effusively, offering an unusually thin flat hand and further hospitality, pleasantly declined by Selwyn.

  �
�Horrible thing, a cocktail,” observed Harmon, after giving his own order and seating himself opposite Selwyn. “I don’t usually do it. Here comes the man who persuades me! — my own partner—”

  Selwyn looked up to see Fane approaching; and instantly a dark flush overspread his face.

  “You know George Fane, don’t you?” continued Harmon easily; “well, that’s odd; I thought, of course — Captain Selwyn, Mr. Fane. It’s not usual — but it’s done.”

  They exchanged formalities — dry and brief on Selwyn’s part, gracefully urbane on Fane’s.

  “I’ve heard so pleasantly of you from Gerald Erroll,” he said, “and of course our people have always been on cordial terms. Neither Mrs. Fane nor I was fortunate enough to meet you last Tuesday at the Gerards — such a crush, you know. Are you not joining us, Captain Selwyn?” as the servant appeared to take orders.

  Selwyn declined again, glancing at Harmon — a large-framed, bony young man with blond, closely trimmed and pointed beard, and the fair colour of a Swede. He had the high, flat cheek-bones of one, too; and a thicket of corn-tinted hair, which was usually damp at the ends, and curled flat against his forehead. He seemed to be always in a slight perspiration — he had been, anyway, every time Selwyn met him anywhere.

  Sandon Craig and Billy Fleetwood came wandering up and joined them; one or two other men, drifting by, adhered to the group.

  Selwyn, involved in small talk, glanced sideways at the great clock, and gathered himself together for departure.

  Fleetwood was saying to Craig: “Certainly it was a stiff game — Bradley, myself, Gerald Erroll, Mrs. Delmour-Carnes, and the Ruthvens.”

  “Were you hit?” asked Craig, interested.

  “No; about even. Gerald got it good and plenty, though. The Ruthvens were ahead as usual—”

  Selwyn, apparently hearing nothing, quietly rose and stepped out of the circle, paused to set fire to a cigarette, and then strolled off toward the visitors’ room, where Gerald was now due.

  Fane stretched his neck, looking curiously after him. Then he said to Fleetwood: “Why begin to talk about Mrs. Ruthven when our friend yonder is about? Rotten judgment you show, Billy.”