Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “This is a beautiful place—” She dropped her pen with a shudder, closed her eyes, groped for it again, and forced herself to continue— “Mr. Portlaw is very kind. The superintendent’s house is large and comfortable. Louis begins his duties to-morrow. Everything promises to be most interesting and enjoyable—” She laid her head in her arms, remaining so, motionless until somewhere on the floor below a clock struck midnight.”

  At last she managed to go on:

  “Dad, dear; what you said to Louis about my part of your estate was very sweet and generous of you; but I do not want it. Louis and I have talked it over in the last fortnight and we came to the conclusion that you must make no provision for me at present. We wish to begin very simply and make our own way. Besides I know from something I heard Acton say that even very wealthy people are hard pressed for ready money; and so Phil Gatewood acted as our attorney and Mr. Cuyp’s firm as our brokers and now the Union Pacific and Government bonds have been transferred to Colonel Vetchen’s bank subject to your order — is that the term? — and the two blocks on Lexington Avenue now stand in your name, and Cuyp, Van Dine, and Siclen sold all those queer things for me — the Industrials, I think you call them — and I endorsed a sheaf of certified checks, making them all payable to your order.

  “Dad, dear — I cannot take anything of that kind from you.... I am very, very tired of the things that money buys. All I shall ever care for is the quiet of unsettled places, the silence of the hills, where I can study and read and live out the life I am fitted for. The rest is too complex, too tiresome to keep up with or even to watch from my windows.

  “Dear dad and dear mother, I am a little anxious about what Acton said to Gray — about money troubles that threaten wealthy people. And so it makes me very happy to know that the rather overwhelming fortune which you so long ago set aside for me to accumulate until my marriage is at last at your disposal again. Because Gray told me that Acton was forced to borrow such frightful sums at such ruinous rates. And now you need borrow no more, need you?

  “You have been so good to me — both of you. I am afraid you won’t believe how dearly I love you. I don’t very well see how you can believe it. But it is true.

  “The light in Mr. Hamil’s sick-room seems to be out. I am going to ask what it means.

  “Good-night, my darling two — I will write you every day.

  “SHIELA.”

  She was standing, looking out across the night at the darkened windows of the sick-room, her sealed letter in her hand, when she heard the lower door open and shut, steps on the stairs — and turned to face her husband.

  “W-what is it?” she faltered.

  “What is what?” he asked coolly.

  “The reason there is no light in Mr. Hamil’s windows?”

  “He’s asleep,” said Malcourt in a dull voice.

  “Louis! Are you telling me the truth?”

  “Yes.... I’d tell you if he were dead. He isn’t. Lansdale thinks there is a slight change for the better. So I came to tell you.”

  Every tense nerve and muscle in her body seemed to give way at the same instant as she dropped to the lounge. For a moment her mind was only a confused void, then the routine instinct of self-control asserted itself; she made the effort required of her, groping for composure and self-command.

  “He is better, you say?”

  “Lansdale said there was a change which might be slightly favourable.... I wish I could say more than that, Shiela.”

  “But — he is better, then?” — pitifully persistent.

  Malcourt looked at her a moment. “Yes, he is better. I believe it.”

  For a few moments they sat there in silence.

  “That is a pretty gown,” he said pleasantly.

  “What! Oh!” Young Mrs. Malcourt bent her head, gazing fixedly at the sealed letter in her hand. The faint red of annoyance touched her pallor — perhaps because her chamber-robe suggested an informality between them that was impossible.

  “I have written to my father and mother,” she said, “about the securities.”

  “Have you?” he said grimly.

  “Yes. And, Louis, I forgot to tell you that Mr. Cuyp telephoned me yesterday assuring me that everything had been transferred and recorded and that my father could use everything in an emergency — if it comes as you thought possible.... And I — I wish to say” — she went on in a curiously constrained voice— “that I appreciate what you have done — what you so willingly gave up—”

  An odd smile hovered on Malcourt’s lips:

  “Nonsense,” he said. “One couldn’t give up what one never had and never wanted.... And you say that it was all available yesterday?”

  “Available!”

  “At the order of Cardross, Carrick & Co.?”

  “Mr. Cuyp said so.”

  “You made over all those checks to them?”

  “Yes. Mr. Cuyp took them away.”

  “And that Lexington Avenue stuff?”

  “Deeded and recorded.”

  “The bonds?”

  “Everything is father’s again.”

  “Was it yesterday?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “You are absolutely certain?”

  “Mr. Cuyp said so.”

  Malcourt slowly rolled a cigarette and held it, unlighted, in his nervous fingers. Young Mrs. Malcourt watched him, but her mind was on other things.

  Presently he rose, and she looked up as though startled painfully from her abstraction.

  “You ought to turn in,” he said quietly. “Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  He went out and started to descend the stairs; but somebody was banging at the lower door, entering clumsily, and in haste.

  “Louis!” panted Portlaw, “they say Hamil is dying—”

  “Damn you,” whispered Malcourt fiercely, “will you shut your cursed mouth!”

  Then slowly he turned, leaden-footed, head hanging, and ascended the stairs once more to the room where his wife had been. She was standing there, pale as a corpse, struggling into a heavy coat.

  “Did you — hear?”

  “Yes.”

  He aided her with her coat.

  “Do you think you had better go over?”

  “Yes, I must go.”

  She was trembling so that he could scarcely get her into the coat.

  “Probably,” he said, “Portlaw doesn’t know what he’s talking about.... Shiela, do you want me to go with you—”

  “No — no! Oh, hurry—”

  She was crying now; he saw that she was breaking down.

  “Wait till I find your shoes. You can’t go that way. Wait a moment—”

  “No — no!”

  He followed her to the stairs, but:

  “No — no!” she sobbed, pushing him back; “I want him to myself. Can’t they let me have him even when he is dying?”

  “You can’t go!” he said.

  She turned on him quivering, beside herself.

  “Not in this condition — for your own sake,” he repeated steadily. And again he said: “For the sake of your name in the years to come, Shiela, you cannot go to him like this. Control yourself.”

  She strove to pass him; all her strength was leaving her.

  “You coward!” she gasped.

  “I thought you would mistake me,” he said quietly. “People usually do.... Sit down.”

  For a while she lay sobbing in her arm-chair, white hands clinched, biting at her lips to choke back the terror and grief.

  “‘You can’t go!’ he said.”

  “As soon as your self-command returns my commands are void,” he said coolly. “Nobody here shall see you as you are. If you can’t protect yourself it’s my duty to do it for you.... Do you want Portlaw to see you? — Wayward? — these doctors and nurses and servants? How long would it take for gossip to reach your family!... And what you’ve done for their sakes would be a crime instead of a sacrifice!”

  She look
ed up; he continued his pacing to and fro but said no more.

  After a while she rose; an immense lassitude weighted her limbs and body.

  “I think I am fit to go now,” she said in a low voice.

  “Use a sponge and cold water and fix your hair and put on your shoes,” he said. “By the time you are ready I’ll be back with the truth.”

  She was blindly involved with her tangled hair when she heard him on the stairs again — a quick, active step that she mistook for haste; and hair and arms fell as she turned to confront him.

  “It was a sinking crisis; they got him through — both doctors. I tell you, Shiela, things look better,” he said cheerily.

  CHAPTER XXII

  THE ROLL CALL

  As in similar cases of the same disease Hamil’s progress toward recovery was scarcely appreciable for a fortnight or so, then, danger of reinfection practically over, convalescence began with the new moon of May.

  Other things also began about that time, including a lawsuit against Portlaw, the lilacs, jonquils, and appleblossoms in Shiela’s garden, and Malcourt’s capricious journeys to New York on business concerning which he offered no explanation to anybody.

  The summons bidding William Van Beuren Portlaw of Camp Chickadee, town of Pride’s Fall, Horican County, New York, to defend a suit for damages arising from trespass, tree-felling, the malicious diversion of the waters of Painted Creek, the wilful and deliberate killing of game, the flooding of wild meadow lands in contemptuous disregard of riparian rights and the drowning of certain sheep thereby, had been impending since the return from Florida to her pretty residence at Pride’s Fall of Mrs. Alida Ascott.

  Trouble had begun the previous autumn with a lively exchange of notes between them concerning the shooting of woodcock on Mrs. Ascott’s side of the boundary. Then Portlaw stupidly built a dam and diverted the waters of Painted Creek. Having been planned, designed, and constructed according to Portlaw’s own calculations, the dam presently burst and the escaping flood drowned some of Mrs. Ascott’s sheep. Then somebody cut some pine timber on her side of the line and Mrs. Ascott’s smouldering indignation flamed.

  Personally she and Portlaw had been rather fond of one another; and to avoid trouble incident on hot temper Alida Ascott decamped, intending to cool off in the Palm Beach surf and think it over; but she met Portlaw at Palm Beach that winter, and Portlaw dodged the olive branch and neglected her so selfishly that she determined then and there upon his punishment, now long overdue.

  “My Lord!” said Portlaw plaintively to Malcourt, “I had no idea she’d do such a thing to me; had you?”

  “Didn’t I tell you she would?” said Malcourt. “I know women better than you do, though you don’t believe it.”

  “But I thought she was rather fond of me!” protested Portlaw indignantly.

  “That may be the reason she’s going to chasten you, friend. Don’t come bleating to me; I advised you to be attentive to her at Palm Beach, but you sulked and stood about like a baby-hippopotamus and pouted and shot your cuffs. I warned you to be agreeable to her, but you preferred the Beach Club and pigeon shooting. It’s easy enough to amuse yourself and be decent to a nice woman too. Even I can combine those things.”

  “Didn’t I go to that lawn party?”

  “Yes, and scarcely spoke to her. And never went near her afterward. Now she’s mad all through.”

  “Well, I can get mad, too—”

  “No, you’re too plump to ever become angry—”

  “Do you think I’m going to submit to—”

  “You’ll submit all right when they’ve dragged you twenty-eight miles to the county court house once or twice.”

  “Louis! Are you against me too?” — in a voice vibrating with reproach and self-pity.

  “Now, look here, William Van Beuren; your guests did shoot woodcock on Mrs. Ascott’s land—”

  “They’re migratory birds, confound it!”

  “ — And,” continued Malcourt, paying no attention to the interruption, “you did build that fool dam regardless of my advice; and you first left her cattle waterless, then drowned her sheep—”

  “That was a cloud-burst — an act of God—”

  “It was a dam-burst, and the act of an obstinate chump!”

  “Louis, I won’t let anybody talk to me like that!”

  “But you’ve just done it, William.”

  Portlaw, in a miniature fury, began to run around in little circles, puffing threats which, however, he was cautious enough to make obscure; winding up with:

  “And I might as well take this opportunity to ask you what you mean by calmly going off to town every ten days or so and absenting yourself without a word of—”

  “Oh, bosh,” said Malcourt; “if you don’t want me here, Billy, say so and be done with it.”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want you—”

  “Well, then, let me alone. I don’t neglect your business and I don’t intend to neglect my own. If the time comes when I can’t attend to both I’ll let you know soon enough — perhaps sooner than you expect.”

  “You’re perfectly welcome to go to town,” insisted Portlaw, alarmed.

  “I know it,” nodded Malcourt coolly. “Now, if you’ll take my advice you’ll behave less like a pig in this Ascott matter.”

  “I’m going to fight that suit—”

  “Certainly fight it. But not the way you’re planning.”

  “Well — how, then?”

  “Go and see the little lady.”

  “See her? She wouldn’t receive me.”

  “Probably not. That’s unimportant. For heaven’s sake, Portlaw, you’re becoming chuckle-headed with all your feeding and inertia and pampered self-indulgence. You’re the limit! — with your thirty-eight-inch girth and your twin chins and baby wrists! You know, it’s pitiable when I think what a clean-cut, decent-looking, decently set-up fellow you were only two years ago! — it’s enough to make a cat sick!”

  “Can I help what I look like!” bellowed Portlaw wrathfully.

  “What an idiot question!” said Malcourt with weary patience. “All you’ve got to do is to cuddle yourself less, and go out into the fresh air on your ridiculous legs—”

  “Ridiculous!” gasped the other. “Well, I’m damned if I stand that — !”

  “You won’t be able to stand at all if you continue eating and sitting in arm-chairs. You don’t like what I say, do you?” with easy impudence. “Well, I said it to sting you — if there’s any sensation left under your hide. And I’ll say something else: if you’d care for somebody beside yourself for a change and give the overworked Ego a vacation, you’d get along with your pretty neighbour yonder. Oh, yes, you would; she was quite inclined to like you before you began to turn, physically, into a stall-fed prize winner. You’re only thirty-seven or eight; you’ve a reasonable chance yet to exchange obesity for perspicacity before it smothers what intellect remains. And if you’re anything except what you’re beginning to resemble you’ll stop sharp, behave yourself, go to see your neighbour, and” — with a shrug— “marry her. Marriage — as easy a way out of trouble as it is in.”

  He swung carelessly on his heel, supple, erect, graceful as always.

  “But,” he threw back over his shoulder, “you’d better acquire the rudiments of a figure before you go a-courting Alida Ascott.” And left Portlaw sitting petrified in his wadded chair.

  Malcourt strolled on, a humorously malicious smile hovering near his eyes, but his face grew serious as he glanced up at Hamil’s window. He had not seen Hamil during his illness or his convalescence — had made no attempt to, evading lightly the casual suggestions of Portlaw that he and his young wife pay Hamil a visit; nor did he appear to take anything more than a politely perfunctory interest in the sick man’s progress; yet Constance Palliser had often seen him pacing the lawn under Hamil’s window long after midnight during those desperate hours when the life-flame scarcely flickered — those ominous moments when so many s
ouls go out to meet the impending dawn.

  But now, in the later stages of Hamil’s rapid convalescence which is characteristic of a healthy recovery from that unpleasant malady, Malcourt avoided the cottage, even ceased to inquire; and Hamil had never asked to see him, although, for appearance’ sake, he knew that he must do so very soon.

  Wayward and Constance Palliser were visiting Mrs. Ascott at Pride’s Fall; young Mrs. Malcourt had been there for a few days, but was returning to prepare for the series of house-parties arranged by Portlaw who had included Cecile Cardross and Philip Gatewood in the first relay.

  As for Malcourt there was no counting on him; he was likely to remain for several days at any of the five distant gate-keepers’ lodges across the mountains or to be mousing about the woods with wardens and foresters, camping where convenient; or to start for New York without explanation. All of which activity annoyed Portlaw, who missed his manager at table and at cards — missed his nimble humour, his impudence, his casual malice — missed even the paternal toleration which this younger man bestowed upon him — a sort of half-tolerant, half-contemptuous supervision.

  And now that Malcourt was so often absent Portlaw was surprised to find how much he missed the veiled authority exercised — how dependent on it he had become, how secretly agreeable had been the half-mocking discipline which relieved him of any responsibility except as over-lord of the culinary régime.

  Like a spoiled school-lad, badly brought up, he sometimes defied Malcourt’s authority — as in the matter of the dam — enjoying his own perversity. But he always got into hot water and was glad enough to return to safety.

  Even now, though his truancy had landed him in a very lively lawsuit, he was glad enough to slink back through the stinging comments to the security of authority; and his bellows of exasperation under reproof were half pretence. He expected Malcourt to get him out of it if he could not extract himself; he had no idea of defending the suit. Besides there was sufficient vanity in him to rely on a personal meeting with Mrs. Ascott. But he laughed in his sleeve at the idea of the necessity of making love to her.

  And one day when Hamil was out for the third or fourth time, walking about the drives and lawns in the sunshine, and Malcourt was not in sight, Portlaw called for his riding-breeches and boots.