Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  Selwyn turned instinctively to the young girl beside him. Her face was in shadow, but she responded with the slightest movement toward him:

  “This dusk is satisfying — like sleep — this wide, quiet shadow over the world. Once — and not so very long ago — I thought it a pity that the sun should ever set. . . . I wonder if I am growing old — because I feel the least bit tired to-night. For the first time that I can remember a day has been a little too long for me.”

  She evidently did not ascribe her slight sense of fatigue to the scene on the veranda; perhaps she was too innocent to surmise that any physical effect could follow that temporary stress of emotion. A quiet sense of relief in relaxation from effort came over her as she leaned back, conscious that there was happiness in rest and silence and the soft envelopment of darkness.

  “If it would only last,” she murmured lazily.

  “What, Eileen?”

  “This heavenly darkness — and our drive, together. . . . You are quite right not to talk to me; I won’t, either. . . . Only I’ll drone on and on from time to time — so that you won’t forget that I am here beside you.”

  She lay so still for a while that at last Nina leaned forward to look at her; then laughed.

  “She’s asleep,” she said to Austin.

  “No, I’m not,” murmured the girl, unclosing her eyes; “Captain Selwyn knows; don’t you? . . . What is that sparkling — a fire-fly?”

  But it was the first paper lantern glimmering through the Hitherwood trees from the distant lawn.

  “Oh, dear,” sighed Eileen, sitting up with an effort, and looking sleepily at Selwyn. “J’ai sommeil — besoin — dormir—”

  But a few minutes later they were in the great hall of Hitherwood House, opened from end to end to the soft sea wind, and crowded with the gayest, noisiest throng that had gathered there in a twelvemonth.

  Everywhere the younger set were in evidence; slim, fresh, girlish figures passed and gathered and crowded the stairs and galleries with a flirt and flutter of winnowing skirts, delicate and light as powder-puffs.

  Mrs. Sanxon Orchil, a hard, highly coloured, tight-lipped little woman with electric-blue eyes, was receiving with her slim brunette daughter, Gladys.

  “A tight little craft,” was Austin’s invariable comment on the matron; and she looked it, always trim and trig and smooth of surface like a converted yacht cleared for action.

  Near her wandered her husband, orientally bland, invariably affable, and from time to time squinting sideways, as usual, in the ever-renewed expectation that he might catch a glimpse of his stiff, retroussé moustache.

  The Lawns were there, the Minsters, the Craigs from Wyossett, the Grays of Shadow Lake, the Draymores, Fanes, Mottlys, Cardwells — in fact, it seemed as though all Long Island had been drained from Cedarhurst to Islip and from Oyster Bay to Wyossett, to pour a stream of garrulous and animated youth and beauty into the halls and over the verandas and terraces and lawns of Hitherwood House.

  It was to be a lantern frolic and a lantern dance and supper, all most formally and impressively sans façon. And it began with a candle-race for a big silver gilt cup — won by Sandon Craig and his partner, Evelyn Cardwell, who triumphantly bore their lighted taper safely among the throngs of hostile contestants, through the wilderness of flitting lights, and across the lawn to the goal where they planted it, unextinguished, in the big red paper lantern.

  Selwyn and Eileen came up breathless and laughing with the others, she holding aloft their candle, which somebody had succeeded in blowing out; and everybody cheered the winners, significantly, for it was expected that Miss Cardwell’s engagement to young Craig would be announced before very long.

  Then rockets began to rush aloft, starring the black void with iridescent fire; and everybody went to the lawn’s edge where, below on the bay, a dozen motor-boats, dressed fore and aft with necklaces of electric lights, crossed the line at the crack of a cannon in a race for another trophy.

  Bets flew as the excitement grew, Eileen confining hers to gloves and bonbons, and Selwyn loyally taking any offers of any kind as he uncompromisingly backed Gerald and Boots in the new motor-boat — the Blue Streak — Austin’s contribution to the Silverside navy.

  And sure enough, at last a blue rocket soared aloft, bursting into azure magnificence in the zenith; and Gerald and Boots came climbing up to the lawn to receive prize and compliments, and hasten away to change their oilskins for attire more suitable.

  Eileen, turning to Selwyn, held up her booking list in laughing dismay: “I’ve won about a ton of bonbons,” she said, “and too many pairs of gloves to feel quite comfortable.”

  “You needn’t wear them all at once, you know,” he assured her.

  “Nonsense! I mean that I don’t care to win things. Oh!” — and she laid her hand impulsively on his arm as a huge sheaf of rockets roared skyward, apparently from the water.

  Then, suddenly, Neergard’s yacht sprang into view, outlined in electricity from stem to stern, every spar and funnel and contour of hull and superstructure twinkling in jewelled brilliancy.

  On a great improvised open pavilion set up in the Hither Woods, garlanded and hung thick with multi-coloured paper lanterns, dancing had already begun; but Selwyn and Eileen lingered on the lawn for a while, fascinated by the beauty of the fireworks pouring skyward from the Niobrara.

  “They seem to be very gay aboard her,” murmured the girl. “Once you said that you did not like Mr. Neergard. Do you remember saying it?”

  He replied simply, “I don’t like him; and I remember saying so.”

  “It is strange,” she said, “that Gerald does.”

  Selwyn looked at the illuminated yacht. . . . “I wonder whether any of Neergard’s crowd is expected ashore here. Do you happen to know?”

  She did not know. A moment later, to his annoyance, Edgerton Lawn came up and asked her to dance; and she went with a smile and a whispered: “Wait for me — if you don’t mind. I’ll come back to you.”

  It was all very well to wait for her — and even to dance with her after that; but there appeared to be no peace for him in prospect, for Scott Innis came and took her away, and Gladys Orchil offered herself to him very prettily, and took him away; and after that, to his perplexity and consternation, a perfect furor for him seemed to set in and grow among the younger set, and the Minster twins had him, and Hilda Innis appropriated him, and Evelyn Cardwell, and even Mrs. Delmour-Carnes took a hand in the badgering.

  At intervals he caught glimpses of Eileen through the gay crush around him; he danced with Nina, and suggested to her it was time to leave, but that young matron had tasted just enough to want more; and Eileen, too, was evidently having a most delightful time. So he settled into the harness of pleasure and was good to the pink-and-white ones; and they told each other what a “dear” he was, and adored him more inconveniently than ever.

  Truly enough, as he had often said, these younger ones were the charmingly wholesome and refreshing antidote to the occasional misbehaviour of the mature. They were, as he also asserted, the hope and promise of the social fabric of a nation — this younger set — always a little better, a little higher-minded than their predecessors as the wheel of the years slowly turned them out in gay, eager, fearless throngs to teach a cynical generation the rudiments of that wisdom which blossoms most perfectly in the hearts of the unawakened.

  Yes, he had frequently told himself all this; told it to others, too. But, now, the younger set, en masse and in detail, had become a little bit cramponné — a trifle too all-pervading. And it was because his regard for them, in the abstract, had become centred in a single concrete example that he began to find the younger set a nuisance. But others, it seemed, were quite as mad about Eileen Erroll as he was; and there seemed to be small chance for him to possess himself of her, unless he were prepared to make the matter of possession a pointed episode. This he knew he had no right to do; she had conferred no such privilege upon him; and he was obliged t
o be careful of what he did and said lest half a thousand bright unwinking eyes wink too knowingly — lest frivolous tongues go clip-clap, and idle brains infer that which, alas! did not exist except in his vision of desire.

  The Hither Woods had been hung with myriads of lanterns. From every branch they swung in clusters or stretched away into perspective, turning the wooded aisles to brilliant vistas. Under them the more romantic and the dance-worn strolled in animated groups or quieter twos; an army of servants flitted hither and thither, serving the acre or so of small tables over each of which an electric cluster shed yellow light.

  Supper, and then the Woodland cotillon was the programme; and almost all the tables were filled before Selwyn had an opportunity to collect Nina and Austin and capture Eileen from a very rosy-cheeked and indignant boy who had quite lost his head and heart and appeared to be on the verge of a headlong declaration.

  “It’s only Percy Draymore’s kid brother,” she explained, passing her arm through his with a little sigh of satisfaction. “Where have you been all the while? — and with whom have you danced, please? — and who is the pretty girl you paid court to during that last dance? What? Didn’t pay court to her? Do you expect me to believe that? . . . Oh, here comes Nina and Austin. . . . How pretty the tables look, all lighted up among the trees! And such an uproar!” — as they came into the jolly tumult and passed in among a labyrinth of tables, greeted laughingly from every side.

  Under a vigorous young oak-tree thickly festooned with lanterns Austin found an unoccupied table. There was a great deal of racket and laughter from the groups surrounding them, but this seemed to be the only available spot; besides, Austin was hungry, and he said so.

  Nina, with Selwyn on her left, looked around for Gerald and Lansing. When the latter came sauntering up, Austin questioned him, but he replied carelessly that Gerald had gone to join some people whom he, Lansing, did not know very well.

  “Why, there he is now!” exclaimed Eileen, catching sight of her brother seated among a very noisy group on the outer edge of the illuminated zone. “Who are those people, Nina? Oh! Rosamund Fane is there, too; and — and—”

  She ceased speaking so abruptly that Selwyn turned around; and Nina bit her lip in vexation and glanced at her husband. For, among the overanimated and almost boisterous group which was attracting the attention of everybody in the vicinity sat Mrs. Jack Ruthven. And Selwyn saw her.

  For a moment he looked at her — looked at Gerald beside her, and Neergard on the other side, and Rosamund opposite; and at the others, whom he had never before seen. Then quietly, but with heightened colour, he turned his attention to the glass which the servant had just filled for him, and, resting his hand on the stem, stared at the bubbles crowding upward through it to the foamy brim.

  Nina and Boots had begun, ostentatiously, an exceedingly animated conversation; and they became almost aggressive, appealing to Austin, who sat back with a frown on his heavy face — and to Eileen, who was sipping her mineral water and staring thoughtfully at a big, round, orange-tinted lantern which hung like the harvest moon behind Gerald, throwing his curly head into silhouette.

  “Gerald beside her, and Neergard on the other side.”

  What conversation there was to carry, Boots and Nina carried. Austin silently satisfied his hunger, eating and drinking with a sullen determination to make no pretence of ignoring a situation that plainly angered him deeply. And from minute to minute he raised his head to glare across at Gerald, who evidently was unconscious of the presence of his own party.

  When Nina spoke to Eileen, the girl answered briefly but with perfect composure. Selwyn, too, added a quiet word at intervals, speaking in a voice that sounded a little tired and strained.

  It was that note of fatigue in his voice which aroused Eileen to effort — the instinctive move to protect — to sustain him. Conscious of Austin’s suppressed but increasing anger at her brother, amazed and distressed at what Gerald had done — for the boy’s very presence there was an affront to them all — she was still more sensitive to Selwyn’s voice; and in her heart she responded passionately.

  Nina looked up, surprised at the sudden transformation in the girl, who had turned on Boots with a sudden flow of spirits and the gayest of challenges; and their laughter and badinage became so genuine and so persistent that, combining with Nina, they fairly swept Austin from his surly abstraction into their toils; and Selwyn’s subdued laugh, if forced, sounded pleasantly, now, and his drawn face seemed to relax a little for the time being.

  Once she turned, under cover of the general conversation which she had set going, and looked straight into Selwyn’s eyes, flashing to him a message of purest loyalty; and his silent gaze in response sent the colour flying to her cheeks.

  It was all very well for a while — a brave, sweet effort; but ears could not remain deaf to the increasing noise and laughter — to familiar voices, half-caught phrases, indiscreet even in the fragments understood. Besides, Gerald had seen them, and the boy’s face had become almost ghastly.

  Alixe, unusually flushed, was conducting herself without restraint; Neergard’s snickering laugh grew more significant and persistent; even Rosamund spoke too loudly at moments; and once she looked around at Nina and Selwyn while her pretty, accentless laughter, rippling with its undertone of malice, became more frequent in the increasing tumult.

  There was no use in making a pretence of further gaiety. Austin had begun to scowl again; Nina, with one shocked glance at Alixe, leaned over toward her brother:

  “It is incredible!” she murmured; “she must be perfectly mad to make such an exhibition of herself. Can’t anybody stop her? Can’t anybody send her home?”

  Austin said sullenly but distinctly: “The thing for us to do is to get out. . . . Nina — if you are ready—”

  “But — but what about Gerald?” faltered Eileen, turning piteously to Selwyn. “We can’t leave him — there!”

  The man straightened up and turned his drawn face toward her:

  “Do you wish me to get him?”

  “Y-you can’t do that — can you?”

  “Yes, I can; if you wish it. Do you think there is anything in the world I can’t do, if you wish it?”

  As he rose she laid her hand on his arm:

  “I — I don’t ask it—” she began.

  “You do not have to ask it,” he said with a smile almost genuine. “Austin, I’m going to get Gerald — and Nina will explain to you that he’s to be left to me if any sermon is required. I’ll go back with him in the motor-boat. Boots, you’ll drive home in my place.”

  As he turned, still smiling and self-possessed, Eileen whispered rapidly: “Don’t go. I care for you too much to ask it.”

  He said under his breath: “Dearest, you cannot understand.”

  “Yes — I do! Don’t go. Philip — don’t go near — her—”

  “I must.”

  “If you do — if you go — h-how can you c-care for me as you say you do? — when I ask you not to — when I cannot endure — to—”

  She turned swiftly and stared across at Alixe; and Alixe, unsteady in the flushed brilliancy of her youthful beauty, half rose in her seat and stared back.

  Instinctively the young girl’s hand tightened on Selwyn’s arm: “She — she is beautiful!” she faltered; but he turned and led her from the table, following Austin, his sister, and Lansing; and she clung to him almost convulsively when he halted on the edge of the lawn.

  “I must go back,” he whispered— “dearest — dearest — I must.”

  “T-to Gerald? Or — her?”

  But he only muttered: “They don’t know what they’re doing. Let me go, Eileen” — gently detaching her fingers, which left her hands lying in both of his.

  She said, looking up at him: “If you go — if you go — whatever time you return — no matter what hour — knock at my door. Do you promise? I shall be awake. Do you promise?”

  “Yes,” he said with a trace of impatience — t
he only hint of his anger at the prospect of the duty before him.

  So she went away with Nina and Austin and Boots; and Selwyn turned back, sauntering quietly toward the table where already the occupants had apparently forgotten him and the episode in the riotous gaiety increasing with the accession of half a dozen more men.

  When Selwyn approached, Neergard saw him first, stared at him, and snickered; but he greeted everybody with smiling composure, nodding to those he knew — a trifle more formally to Mrs. Ruthven — and, coolly pulling up a chair, seated himself beside Gerald.

  “Boots has driven home with the others,” he said in a low voice; “I’m going back in the motor-boat with you. Don’t worry about Austin. Are you ready?”

  The boy had evidently let the wine alone, or else fright had sobered him, for he looked terribly white and tired: “Yes,” he said, “I’ll go when you wish. I suppose they’ll never forgive me for this. Come on.”

  “One moment, then,” nodded Selwyn; “I want to speak to Mrs. Ruthven.” And, quietly turning to Alixe, and dropping his voice to a tone too low for Neergard to hear — for he was plainly attempting to listen:

  “You are making a mistake; do you understand? Whoever is your hostess — wherever you are staying — find her and go there before it is too late.”

  She inclined her pretty head thoughtfully, eyes on the wine-glass which she was turning round and round between her slender fingers. “What do you mean by ‘too late’?” she asked. “Don’t you know that everything is too late for me now?”

  “What do you mean, Alixe?” he returned, watching her intently.

  “What I say. I have not seen Jack Ruthven for two months. Do you know what that means? I have not heard from him for two months. Do you know what that means? No? Well, I’ll tell you, Philip; it means that when I do hear from him it will be through his attorneys.”

  He turned slightly paler: “Why”?”