Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “So I took my book to a rustic seat under the trees, and presently our little Shiela came by, leaning on Miss Lester’s arm; and Miss Lester walked on, leaving her seated beside me.

  “For quite five minutes she neither spoke nor even looked at me, and I was very careful to leave the quiet unbroken.

  “The noise of the birds — they were not singing, only chattering to each other about their trip — seemed to attract her notice, and she laid her hand on mine to direct my attention. Her hand remained there — she has the same soft little hands, as dazzlingly white as ever, only thinner.

  “She said, not looking at me: ‘I have been ill. You understand that.’

  “‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but it is all over now, isn’t it?’

  “She nodded listlessly: ‘I think so.’

  “Again, but not looking at me she spoke of her illness as dating from a shock received long ago. She is a little confused about the lapse of time, vague as to dates. You see it is four months since Louis — did what he did. She said nothing more, and in a few minutes Miss Lester came back for her.

  “Now as to her mental condition: I have had a thorough understanding with the physicians and one and all assure me that there is absolutely nothing the matter with her except the physical consequences of the shock; and those are wearing off.

  “What she did, what she lived through with him — the dreadful tension, the endless insomnia — all this — and then, when the searching party was out all night long in the rain and all the next day — and then, Garry, to have her stumble on him at dusk — that young girl, all alone, nerves strung to the breaking point — and to find him, that way! Was it not enough to account for this nervous demoralisation? The wonder is that it has not permanently injured her.

  “But it has not; she is certainly recovering. The dread of seeing a familiar face is less poignant; her father was here to-day with Gray and she saw them both.

  “Now, dear, as for your coming here, it will not do. I can see that. She has not yet spoken of you, nor have I ventured to. What her attitude toward you may be I cannot guess from her speech or manner.

  “Miss Lester told me that at first, in the complete nervous prostration, she seemed to have a morbid idea that you had been unkind to her, neglected and deserted her — left her to face some endless horror all alone. The shock to her mind had been terrible, Garry; everything was grotesquely twisted — she had some fever, you know — and Miss Lester told me that it was too pitiful to hear her talk of you and mix up everything with military jargon about outpost duty and the firing line, and some comrade who had deserted her under fire.

  “All of which I mention, dear, so that you may, in a measure, comprehend how very ill she has been; and that she is not yet well by any means, and perhaps will not be for a long time to come.

  “To-night I had a very straight talk with Mr. Cardross. One has to talk straight when one talks to him. There is not in my mind the slightest doubt that he knows exactly now what misguided impulse drove Shiela to that distressing sacrifice of herself and you. And at first I was afraid that what she had done from a mistaken sense of duty might have hastened poor Louis’ end; but Mr. Cardross told me that from the day of his father’s death he had determined to follow in the same fashion; and had told Mr. Cardross of his intention more than once.

  “So you see it was in him — in the blood. See what his own sister did to herself within a month of Louis’ death!

  “A strange family; an utterly incomprehensible race. And Mr. Cardross says that it happened to his father’s father; and his father before him died by his own hand!

  “Now there is little more news to write you — little more that could interest you because you care only to hear about Shiela, and that is perfectly reasonable.”

  “However, what there is of news I will write you as faithfully as I have done ever since I came here on your service under pretence of fighting gout which, Heaven be praised, has never yet waylaid me! — unberufen!”

  “So, to continue: the faithful three, Messieurs Classon, Cuyp, and Vetchen, do valiantly escort me on my mountain rides and drives. They are dears, all three, Garry, and it does not become you to shrug your shoulders. When I go to Palm Beach in January they, as usual, are going too. I don’t know what I should do without them, Virginia having decided to remain in Europe this winter.

  “Yes, to answer your question, Mr. Wayward expects to cruise as far South as Palm Beach in January. I happen to have a note from him here on my desk in which he asks me whether he may invite you to go with him. Isn’t it a tactful way of finding out whether you would care to be at Palm Beach this winter?

  “So I shall write him that I think you would like to be asked. Because, Garry, I do believe that it is all turning out naturally, inevitably, as it was meant to turn out from the first, and that, some time this winter, there can be no reason why you should not see Shiela again.

  “I know this, that Mr. Cardross is very fond of you — that Mrs. Cardross is also — that every member of that most wholesome family cares a great deal about you.

  “As for their not being very fashionable people, their amiable freedom from social pretension, their very simple origin — all that, in their case, affects me not at all — where any happiness of yours is concerned.

  “I do like old-time folk, and lineage smacking of New Amsterdam; but even my harmless snobbishness is now so completely out of fashion that nobody cares. You are modern enough to laugh at it; I am not; and I still continue faithful to my Classons and Cuyps and Vetchens and Suydams; and to all that they stand for in Manhattan — the rusty vestiges of by-gone pomp and fussy circumstance — the memories that cling to the early lords of the manors, the old Patroons, and titled refugees — all this I still cling to — even to their shabbiness and stupidity and bad manners.

  “Don’t be too bitter in your amusement, for after all, you are kin to us; don’t be too severe on us; for we are passing, Garry, the descendants of Patroon and refugee alike — the Cuyps, the Classons, the Van Diemans, the Vetchens, the Suydams — and James Wayward is the last of his race, and I am the last of the French refugees, and the Malcourts are already ended. Pax!

  “True it begins to look as if the gentleman adventurer stock which terminates in the Ascotts and Portlaws might be revived to struggle on for another generation; but, Garry, we all, who intermarry, are doomed.

  “Louis Malcourt was right; we are destined to perish; Still we have left our marks on the nation I care for no other epitaph than the names of counties, cities, streets which we have named with our names.

  “But you, dear, you are wise in your generation and fortunate to love as you love. For, God willing, your race will begin the welding of the old and new, the youngest and best of the nation. And at the feet of such a race the whole world lies.”

  These letters from Constance Palliser to her nephew continued during the autumn and early winter while he was at work on that series of public parks provided for by the metropolis on Long Island.

  Once he was obliged to return to Pride’s Hall to inspect the progress of work for Mrs. Ascott; and it happened during his brief stay there that her engagement was announced.

  “I tell you what, Hamil,” said Portlaw confidentailly over their cigars, “I never thought I could win her, never in the world. Besides poor Louis was opposed to it; but you know when I make up my mind—”

  “I know,” said Hamil.

  “That’s it! First, a man must have a mind to make up; then he must have enough intelligence to make it up.”

  “Certainly,” nodded Hamil.

  “I’m glad you understand me,” said Portlaw, gratified. “Alida understands me; why, do you know that, somehow, everything I think of she seems to agree to; in fact, sometimes — on one or two unimportant matters, I actually believe that Mrs. Ascott thought of what I thought of, a few seconds before I thought of it,” he ended generously; “but,” and his expression became slyly portentous, “it would never do to have her susp
ect it. I intend to be Caesar in my own house!”

  “Exactly,” said Hamil solemnly; “and Caesar’s wife must have no suspicions.”

  It was early November before he returned to town. His new suite of offices in Broad Street hummed with activity, although the lingering aftermath of the business depression prevented for the time being any hope of new commissions from private sources.

  But fortunately he had enough public work to keep the office busy, and his dogged personal supervision of it during the racking suspense of Shiela’s illness was his salvation.

  Twice a week his aunt wrote him from Sapphire Springs; every day he went to his outdoor work on Long Island and forced himself to a minute personal supervision of every detail, never allowing himself a moment’s brooding, never permitting himself to become panic-stricken at the outlook which varied from one letter to another. For as yet, according to these same letters, the woman he loved had never once mentioned his name.

  He found little leisure for amusement, even had he been inclined that way. Night found him very tired; morning brought a hundred self-imposed and complicated tasks to be accomplished before the advent of another night.

  He lived at his club and wrote to his aunt from there. Sundays were more difficult to negotiate; he went to St. George’s in the morning, read in the club library until afternoon permitted him to maintain some semblance of those social duties which no man has a right to entirely neglect.

  Now and then he dined out; once he went to the opera with the O’Haras; but it nearly did for him, for they sang “Madame Butterfly,” and Farrar’s matchless voice and acting tore him to shreds. Only the happy can endure such tragedy.

  And one Sunday, having pondered long that afternoon over the last letter Malcourt had ever written him, he put on hat and overcoat and went to Greenlawn Cemetery — a tedious journey through strange avenues and unknown suburbs, under a wet sky from which occasionally a flake or two of snow fell through the fine-spun drizzle.

  In the cemetery the oaks still bore leaves which were growing while Malcourt was alive; here and there a beech-tree remained in full autumn foliage and the grass on the graves was intensely green; but the few flowers that lifted their stalks were discoloured and shabby; bare branches interlaced overhead; dead leaves, wet and flattened, stuck to slab and headstone or left their stained imprints on the tarnished marble.

  He had bought some flowers — violets and lilies — at a florist’s near the cemetery gates. These he laid, awkwardly, at the base of the white slab from which Malcourt’s newly cut name stared at him.

  Louis Malcourt lay, as he had wished, next to his father. Also, as he had desired, a freshly planted tree, bereft now of foliage, rose, spindling, to balance an older one on the other corner of the plot. His sister’s recently shaped grave lay just beyond. As yet, Bertie had provided no headstone for the late Lady Tressilvain.

  Hamil stood inspecting Malcourt’s name, finding it impossible to realise that he was dead — or for that matter, unable to comprehend death at all. The newly chiselled letters seemed vaguely instinct with something of Malcourt’s own clean-cut irony; they appeared to challenge him with their mocking legend of death, daring him, with sly malice, to credit the inscription.

  To look at them became almost an effort, so white and clear they stared back at him — as though the pallid face of the dead himself, set for ever in raillery, was on the watch to detect false sentiment and delight in it. And Hamil’s eyes fell uneasily upon the flowers, then lifted. And he said aloud, unconsciously:

  “You are right; it’s too late, Malcourt.”

  There was a shabby, neglected grave in the adjoining plot; he bent over, gathered up his flowers, and laid them on the slab of somebody aged ninety-three whose name was blotted out by wet dead leaves. Then he slowly returned to face Malcourt, and stood musing, gloved hands deep in his overcoat pockets.

  “If I could have understood you—” he began, under his breath, then fell silent. A few moments later he uncovered.

  It was snowing heavily when he turned to leave; and he stood back and aside, hat in hand, to permit a young woman to pass the iron gateway — a slim figure in black, heavy veil drawn, arms piled high with lilies. He knew her at once and she knew him.

  “I think you are Mr. Hamil,” she said timidly.

  “You are Miss Wilming?” he said in his naturally pleasant voice, which brought old memories crowding upon her and a pale flush to her cheeks.

  There was a moment’s silence; she dropped some flowers and he recovered them for her. Then she knelt down in the sleet, unconscious of it, and laid the flowers on the mound, arranging them with great care, while the thickening snow pelted her and began to veil the white blossoms on the grave.

  Hamil hesitated after the girl had risen, and, presently, as she did not stir, he quietly asked if he might be of any use to her.

  At first she made no reply, and her gaze remained remote; then, turning:

  “Was he your friend?” she asked wistfully.

  “I think he meant to be.”

  “You quarrelled — down there — in the South” — she made a vague gesture toward the gray horizon. “Do you remember that night, Mr. Hamil?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ever become friends again?”

  “No.... I think he meant to be.... The fault was probably mine. I misunderstood.”

  She said: “I know he cared a great deal for you.”

  The man was silent.

  She turned directly toward him, pale, clear-eyed, and in the poise of her head a faint touch of pride.

  “Please do not misunderstand his friendship for me, then. If you were his friend I would not need to say this. He was very kind to me, Mr. Hamil.”

  “I do not doubt it,” said Hamil gravely.

  “And you do not mistake, what I say?”

  He looked her in the eyes, curious — and, in a moment, convinced.

  “No,” he said gently.... And, offering his hand: “Men are very ignorant concerning one another. Women are wiser, I think.”

  He took the slender black-gloved hand in his.

  “Can I be of the least use to you?” he asked.

  “You have been,” she sighed, “if what I said has taught you to know him a little better.”

  A week later when the curtain fell on the second act of the new musical comedy, “The Inca,” critics preparing to leave questioned each other with considerable curiosity concerning this newcomer, Dorothy Wilming, who had sung so intelligently and made so much out of a subordinate part.

  Nobody seemed to know very much about her; several nice-looking young girls and exceedingly respectable young men sent her flowers. Afterward they gathered at the stage entrance, evidently expecting to meet and congratulate her; but she had slipped away. And while they hunted high and low, and the last figurante had trotted off under the lamp-lights, Dolly lay in her own dark room, face among the pillows, sobbing her heart out for a dead man who had been kind to her for nothing.

  And, at the same hour, across an ocean, another woman awoke to take up the ravelled threadings of her life again and, through another day, remember Louis Malcourt and all that he had left undone for kindness’ sake.

  There were others, too, who were not likely to forget him, particularly those who had received, with some astonishment, a legacy apiece of one small Chinese gilded idol — images all of the Pa-hsien or of Kwan-Yin, who rescues souls from hell with the mystic lotus-prayer, “Om mane padme hum.”

  But the true Catholicism, which perplexed the eighteen legatees lay in the paradox of the Mohammedan inscriptions across each lotus written in Malcourt’s hand:

  “I direct my face unto Him who hath created.

  “Who maketh His messengers with two and three and four pairs of wings.

  “And thou shall see them going in procession.

  “This is what ye are promised: ‘For the last hour will surely come; there is no doubt thereof; but the greater part of men believe it not.�
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  “Thus, facing the stars, I go out among them into darkness.

  “Say not for me the Sobhat with the ninety-nine; for the hundredth pearl is the Iman — pearl beyond praise, pearl of the five-score names in one, more precious than mercy, more priceless than compassion — Iman! Iman! thy splendid name is Death!”

  So lingered the living memory of Malcourt among men — a little while — longer among women — then faded as shadows die at dusk when the mala is told for the soul that waits the Rosary of a Thousand Beads.

  In January the Ariani sailed with her owner aboard; but Hamil was not with him.

  In February Constance Palliser wrote Hamil from Palm Beach:

  “It is too beautiful here and you must come.

  “As for Shiela, I do not even pretend to understand her. I see her every day; to-day I lunched with Mrs. Cardross, and Shiela was there, apparently perfectly well and entirely her former lovely self. Yet she has never yet spoken of you to me; and, I learn from Mrs. Cardross, never to anybody as far as she knows.

  “She seems to be in splendid health; I have seen her swimming, galloping, playing tennis madly. The usual swarm of devoted youth and smitten middle-age is in attendance. She wears neither black nor colours; only white; nor does she go to any sort of functions. At times, to me, she resembles a scarcely grown girl just freed from school and playing hard every minute with every atom of heart and soul in her play.

  “Gray has an apology for a polo field and a string of ponies, and Shiela plays with the men — a crazy, reckless, headlong game, in which every minute my heart is in my mouth for fear somebody will cannon into her, or some dreadful swing of a mallet will injure her for life.

  “But everybody is so sweet to her — and it is delightful to see her with her own family — their pride and tenderness for her, and her devotion to them.

  “Mrs. Cardross asked me to-day what I thought might be the effect on Shiela if you came. And, dear, I could not answer. Mr. Cardross joined us, divining the subject of our furtive confab in the patio, and he seemed to think that you ought to come.