Hamil lay back in his chair and studied the forest through the leaded casement. Sometimes he thought of Portlaw’s perverse determination to spoil the magnificent simplicity of the place with exotic effects lugged in by the ears; sometimes he wondered what Mr. Cardross could have to say to Malcourt — what matter of such urgent importance could possibly concern those two men.
And, thinking, he thought of Shiela — and of their last moments together; thought of her as he had left her, crouched there on her knees beside the bed, her face and head buried in her crossed arms.
Portlaw was nodding drowsily over his cigar; the April sunshine streamed into the room through every leaded pane, inlaying the floor with glowing diamonds; dogs barked from the distant kennels; cocks were crowing from the farm. Outside the window he saw how the lilac’s dully varnished buds had swollen and where the prophecy of snow-drop and crocus under the buckthorn hedge might be fulfilled on the morrow. Already over the green-brown, soaking grass one or two pioneer grackle were walking busily about; and somewhere in a near tree the first robin chirked and chirped and fussed in its loud and familiar fashion, only partly pleased to find himself in the gray thaw of the scarcely comfortable North once more.
Portlaw looked up dully: “Those robins come up here and fatten on our fruit, and a fool law forbids us to shoot ‘em. Robin pie,” he added, “is not to be despised, but a sentimental legislature is the limit.... Sentiment always did bore me.... How do you feel after your luncheon?”
“All right,” said Hamil, smiling. “I’d like to start out as soon as Malcourt comes back.”
“Oh, don’t begin that sort of thing the moment you get here!” protested Portlaw. “My heavens, man! there’s no hurry. Can’t you smoke a cigar and play a card or two—”
“You know I’ve other commissions—”
“Oh, of course; but I hoped you’d have time to take it easy. I’ve looked forward to having you here — so has Malcourt; he thinks you’re about right, you know. And he makes damn few friends among men—”
The door opened and Malcourt entered slowly, almost noiselessly. There was not a vestige of colour in his face, nor of expression as he crossed the room for a match and relighted his cigarette.
“Well?” inquired Portlaw, “did you get Cardross on the wire?”
“Yes.”
Malcourt stood motionless, hands in his pockets, the cigarette smoke curling up blue in the sunshine.
“I’ve got to go,” he said.
“What for?” demanded Portlaw, then sulkily begged pardon and pouted his dissatisfaction in silence.
“When do you go, Malcourt?” asked Hamil, still wondering.
“Now.” He lifted his head but looked across at Portlaw. “I’ve telephoned the stable, and called up Pride’s Fall to flag the five-thirty express,” he said.
Portlaw was growing madder and madder.
“Would you mind telling me when you expect to be back?” he inquired ill-temperedly.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Don’t know!” burst out Portlaw; “hell’s bells!”
Malcourt shook his head.
Portlaw profanely requested information as to how the place was to be kept going. Malcourt was patient with him to the verge of indifference.
“There’s nothing to blow up about. Hastings is competent to manage things—”
“That conceited pup!”
“Hastings understands,” repeated Malcourt, in a listless voice. “I’ve always counted on Alexander Hastings for any emergency. He knows things, and he’s capable.... Only don’t be brusque. He doesn’t understand you as I do ... and he’s fully your equal — fully — in every way — and then some—” The weariness in his tone was close to a sneer; he dropped his cigarette into the fire and began to roll another.
“Louis,” said Portlaw, frightened.
“Well?”
“What the devil is the meaning of all this? You are coming back, aren’t you?”
Malcourt continued to roll his cigarette, but after a while he spoiled it and began to construct another.
“Are you, Louis?”
“What?”
“Coming back here — soon?”
“If I — if it’s the thing to do. I don’t know yet. You mustn’t press the matter now.”
“You think there’s a chance that you won’t come back at all!” exclaimed Portlaw, aghast.
Malcourt’s cigarette fell to pieces in his fingers.
“I’ll come if I can, Billy. I tell you to let me alone.... I don’t know where I am coming out — yet.”
“If it’s money you need, you know perfectly well—”
But Malcourt shook his head. From the moment of his entrance he had kept his face carefully averted from Hamil’s view; had neither looked at him nor spoken except in monosyllabic answer to a single question.
The rattle of the buckboard on the wet gravel drive brought Portlaw to his feet. A servant appeared with Malcourt’s suit-case and overcoat.
“There’s a trunk to follow; Williams is to pack what I need.... Good-bye, Billy. I wouldn’t go if I didn’t have to.”
Portlaw took his offered hand as though dazed.
“You’ll come back, of course,” he said, “in a couple of days — or a week if you like — but you’ll be back, of course. You know if there’s anything the matter with your salary just say so. I always meant you should feel perfectly free to fix your salary to suit yourself. Only be sure to come back in a week, won’t you?”
“Good-bye,” said Malcourt in a low voice. “I’d like to talk to Hamil — if he can give me a few moments.”
Bareheaded, Hamil stepped out into the clear, crisp, April sunshine where the buckboard stood on the gravel.
The strong outdoor light emphasized Malcourt’s excessive pallor, and the hand he offered Hamil was icy. Then his nervous grasp relaxed; he drew on his dog-pelt driving gloves and buttoned the fur coat to the throat.
“I want you — to — to remember — remember that I always liked you,” he said with an effort, in curious contrast to his habitual fluency. “You won’t believe it — some day. But it is true.... Perhaps I’ll prove it, yet.... My father used to say that everything except death had been proven; and there remained, therefore, only one event of any sporting interest to the world.... He was a very interesting man — my father. He did not believe in death.... And I do not.... This sloughing off of the material integument seems to me purely a matter of the mechanical routine of evolution, a natural process in further and inevitable development, not a finality to individualism!... Fertilisation, gestation, the hatching, growth, the episodic deliverance from encasing matter which is called death, seem to me only the first few basic steps in the sequences of an endless metamorphosis.... My father thought so. His was a very fine mind — is a finer mind still.... Will you understand me if I say that we often communicate with each other — my father and I?”
“Communicate?” repeated Hamil.
“Often.”
Hamil said slowly: “I don’t think I understand.”
Malcourt looked at him, the ever-latent mockery flickering in his eyes; then, by degrees, his head bent forward in the old half-cunning, half-wistful attitude as though listening. A vague smile touched the pallor of his face, and he presently looked up with something of his old debonair impudence.
“The truly good are always so interested in creating hell for the wicked,” he said, “that sometimes the good get into the pit themselves just to see how hot it really is. And find the wicked have never been there.... Hamil, the hopelessly wicked — and there are few of them who are not mentally irresponsible — never go to hell because they wouldn’t mind it if they did. It’s the good who are hell’s architects and often its tenants.... I’m speaking of all prisoners of conscience. The wicked have none.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“There’s always an exit from one of these temporary little pits of torment,” he said; “when one finds it too oppress
ive in the shade.... When one obtains a proper perspective, and retains one’s sense of humour, and enough of conscience to understand the crime of losing time.... And when, in correct perspective, one realises the fictitious value of that temporary phase called the human unit, and when one cuts free from the absurd dogma concerning the dignity and the sanctity of that human unit.... I’m keeping you from your cigar and arm-chair and from Portlaw.... A good, kindly gossip, who fed my belly and filled my purse and loved me for the cards I played. I’m a yellow pup to mock him. I’m a pup anyhow.... But, Hamil, there is, in the worst pup, one streak not all yellow. And the very worst are capable of one friendship. You may not believe this some day. But it is true.... Good-bye.”
“Is there anything, Malcourt—”
“Nothing you can do for me. Perhaps something I can do for you—” And, laughing, “I’ll consult my father; he’s not very definite on that point yet.”
So Malcourt swung aboard the wagon, nodded again to Hamil, waved a pleasant adieu to Portlaw at the window, and was gone in a shower of wet gravel and mud.
And all that day Portlaw fussed and fumed and pouted about the house, tormenting Hamil with questions and speculations concerning the going of Malcourt, which for a while struck Hamil merely as selfish ebullitions; but later it came to him by degrees that this rich, selfish, over-fed, over-pampered, and revoltingly idle landowner, whose sole mental and physical resources were confined to the dinner and card tables, had been capable of a genuine friendship for Malcourt. Self-centred, cautious to the verge of meanness in everything which did not directly concern his own comfort and well-being, he, nevertheless, was totally dependent upon his friends for a full enjoyment of his two amusements; for he hated to dine alone and he loathed solitaire.
Therefore, in spending money to make his house and grounds attractive to his friends, he was ministering, as always, to himself; and when he first took Malcourt for his superintendent he did so from purely selfish motives and at a beggarly stipend.
And now, in the two years of his official tenure, Malcourt already completely dominated him, often bullied him, criticised him to his face, betrayed no illusions concerning the absolute self-interest which dictated Portlaw’s policy in all things, coolly fixed and regulated all salaries, including his own, and, in short, matched Portlaw’s undisguised selfishness with a cynicism so sparkling and so frankly ruthless that Portlaw gradually formed for him a real attachment.
There was no indiscriminate generosity in that attachment; he never voluntarily increased Malcourt’s salary or decreased his responsibilities; he got out of his superintendent every bit of labour and every bit of amusement he could at the lowest price Malcourt would take; yet, in spite of that he really cared for Malcourt; he secretly admired his intellectual equipment; feared it, too; and the younger man’s capacity for dissipation made him an invaluable companion when Portlaw emerged from his camp in November and waddled forth upon his annual hunt for happiness.
Something of this Hamil learned through the indiscriminate volubility of his host who, when his feelings had been injured, was amusingly naive for such a self-centred person.
“That damn Louis,” he confided to Hamil over their after-dinner cigars, “has kept me guessing ever since he took command here. Half the time I don’t understand what he’s talking about even when I know he’s making fun of me; but, Hamil, you have no idea how I miss him.”
And on another occasion a week later, while laboriously poring over some rough plans laid out for him by Hamil:
“Louis agrees with you about this improvement business. He’s dead against my building Rhine-castle ruins on the crags, and he had the impudence to inform me that I had a cheap mind. By God, Hamil, I can’t see anything cheap in trying to spend a quarter of a million in decorating this infernal monotony of trees; can you?”
And Hamil, for the first time in many a day, lay back in his arm-chair and laughed with all his heart.
He had hard work in weaning Portlaw from his Rhine castles, for the other invariably met his objections by quoting in awful German:
“Hast du das Schloss gesehen — Das hohe Schloss am Meer?”
— pronounced precisely as though the words were English. Which laudable effort toward intellectual and artistic uplift Hamil never laughed at; and there ensued always the most astonishing causerie concerning art that two men in a wilderness ever engaged in.
Young Hastings, a Yale academic and forestry graduate, did fairly well in Malcourt’s place, and was doing better every day. For one thing he knew much more about practical forestry and the fish and game problems than did Malcourt, who was a better organiser than executive.
He began by dumping out into a worthless and landlocked bass-pond every brown trout in the hatchery. He then drew off the water in the brown-trout ponds, sent in men with seines and shotguns, and finally, with dynamite, purged the free waters of the brown danger for good and all.
“When Malcourt comes back,” observed Portlaw, “you’ll have to answer for all this.”
“I won’t be questioned,” said Hastings, smiling.
“Oh! And what do you propose to do next?”
“If I had the money you think of spending on ruined castles “ — very respectfully— “I’d build a wall in place of that mesh-wire fence.”
“Why?” asked Portlaw.
“The wire deceives the grouse when they come driving headlong through the woods. My men pick up dozens of dead grouse and woodcock along the fence. If it were a wall they’d go over it. As it is, if I had my way, I’d restock with Western ruffed-grouse; cut out that pheasantry altogether, and try to breed our own native game-bird—”
“What! You can’t breed ruffed-grouse in captivity!”
“I’ve done it, sir,” said young Hastings modestly.
That night, over the plans, Portlaw voiced his distrust of Hastings and mourned aloud for Malcourt.
“That infernal Louis,” he complained, waving his fat cigar, “hasn’t written one line to me in a week! What the deuce is he doing down there in town? I won’t stand it! The ice is out and Wayward and Cuyp and Vetchen are coming up for the fishing; and Mrs. Ascott, perhaps, is coming, and Miss Palliser, and, I hope, Miss Suydam; that makes our eight for Bridge, you see, with you and me. If Louis were here I’d have three others — but I can’t ask anybody else until I know.”
“Perhaps you’ll get a telegram when the buckboard returns from Pride’s Fall,” said Hamil quietly. He, too, had been waiting for a letter that had not come. Days were lengthening into weeks since his departure from the South; and the letter he taught himself to expect had never come.
That she would write sooner or later he had dared believe at first; and then, as day after day passed, belief faded into hope; and now the colours of hope were fading into the gray tension of suspense.
He had written her every day, cheerful, amusing letters of current commonplaces which now made up his life. In them was not one hint of love — no echo of former intimacy, nothing of sadness, or regret, only a friendly sequence of messages, of inquiries, of details recounting the events of the days as they dawned and faded through the silvery promise of spring in the chill of the Northern hills.
Every morning and evening the fleet little Morgans came tearing in from Pride’s Fall with the big leather mail-bag, which bore Portlaw’s initials in metal, bulging with letters, newspapers, magazines for Portlaw; and now and then a slim envelope for him from his aunt, or letters, bearing the Palm Beach post-mark, from contractors on the Cardross estate, or from his own superintendent. But that was all.
His days were passed afoot in the forested hills, along lonely little lakes, following dashing trout-brooks or studying the United States Geological Survey maps which were not always accurate in minor details of contour, and sometimes made a mockery of the lesser water-courses, involving him and his surveyors in endless complications.
Sometimes, toward evening, if the weather was mild, he and Portlaw took their rods for a cas
t on Painted Creek — a noble trout stream which took its name from the dropping autumn glory of the sugar-bush where the water passed close to the house. There lithe, wild trout struck tigerishly at the flies and fought like demons, boring Portlaw intensely, who preferred to haul in a prospective dinner without waste of energy, and be about the matter of a new sauce with his cook.
CHAPTER XX
A NEW ENEMY
One evening in April, returning with a few brace of trout, they found the mail-bag awaiting them on the hall table; and Portlaw distributed the contents, proclaiming, as usual, his expectation of a letter from Malcourt.
There was none. And, too peevish and disappointed to even open the heterogeneous mass of letters and newspapers, he slumped sulkily in his chair, feet on the fender, biting into his extinct cigar.
“That devilish Louis,” he said, “has been away for several of the most accursedly lonely weeks I ever spent.... No reflection on you, Hamil — Oh, I beg your pardon; I didn’t see you were busy—”
Hamil had not even heard him. He was busy — very busy with a letter — dozens of sheets of a single letter, closely written, smeared in places — the letter that had come at last!
In the fading light he bent low over the pages. Later a servant lighted the lamps; later still Portlaw went into the library, drew out a book bound in crushed levant, pushed an electric button, and sat down. The book bound so admirably in crushed levant was a cook-book; the bell he rang summoned his cook.
In the lamplit living-room the younger man bent over the letter that had come at last. It was dated early in April; had been written at Palm Beach, carried to New York, but had only been consigned to the mails within thirty-six hours:
“I have had all your letters — but no courage to answer. Now you will write no more.
“Dear — this, my first letter to you, is also my last. I know now what the condemned feel who write in the hour of death.
“When you went away on Thursday I could not leave my room to say good-bye to you. Gray came and knocked, but I was not fit to be seen. If I hadn’t looked so dreadfully I wouldn’t have minded being ill. You know that a little illness would not have kept me from coming to say good-bye to you.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 393