Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Good-bye,” she managed to say. The dizzy waves swayed her; she rested her cheeks between both hands and, leaning there heavily, closed her eyes to fight against it. She had been seated on the side of a lounge; and now, feeling blindly behind her, she moved the cushions aside, turned and dropped among them, burying her blazing face. Over her the scorching vertigo swept, subsided, rose, and swept again. Oh, the horror of it! — the shame, the agonised surprise. What was this dreadful thing that, for the second time, she had unwittingly done? And this time it was so much more terrible. How could such an accident have happened to her? How could she face her own soul in the disgrace of it?

  Fear, loathing, frightened incredulity that this could really be herself, stiffened her body and clinched her hands under her parted lips. On them her hot breath fell irregularly.

  Rigid, motionless, she lay, breathing faster and more feverishly. Tears came after a long while, and with them relaxation and lassitude. She felt that the dreadful thing which had seized and held her was letting go its hold, was freeing her body and mind; and as it slowly released her and passed on its terrible silent way, she awoke and sat up with a frightened cry — to find herself lying on her own bed in utter darkness.

  A moment later her bedroom door opened without a sound and the light from the hall streamed over Kathleen’s bare shoulders and braided hair.

  “Geraldine?”

  The girl scarcely recognised Kathleen’s altered voice. She lay listening, silent, motionless, staring at the white figure.

  “Dearest, I thought you called me. May I come in?”

  “I am not well.”

  But Kathleen entered and stood beside the bed, looking down at her in the dim light.

  “Dearest,” she began tremulously, “Duane told me you had a headache and had gone to your room to lie down, so I didn’t disturb you — —”

  “Duane,” faltered the girl, “is he here? What did he say?”

  “He was in the library before dinner when I came in, and he warned me not to waken you. Do you know what time it is?”

  “No.”

  “It is after midnight.... If you feel ill enough to lie here, you ought to be undressed. May I help you?”

  There was no answer. For a moment Kathleen stood looking down at the girl in silence; then a sudden shivering seized her; she strove to control it, but her knees seemed to give way under it and she dropped down beside the bed, throwing both arms around Geraldine’s neck.

  “Oh, the horror of it! — the shame, the agonised surprise.”

  “Oh, don’t, don’t!” she whimpered. “It is too terrible! It ruined your father and your grandfather! Darling, I couldn’t bear to tell you this before, but now I’ve got to tell you! It is in your blood. Seagraves die of it! Do you understand?”

  “W-what?” stammered the girl.

  “That all their lives they did what — what you have done to-day — that you have inherited their terrible inclinations. Even as a little child you frightened me. Have you forgotten what you and I talked over and cried over after your first party?”

  The girl said slowly: “I don’t know how — it — happened, Kathleen. Duane came in.... I tasted what he had in his glass.... I don’t know why I did it. I wish I were dead!”

  “There is only one thing to do — never to touch anything — anything — —”

  “Y-yes, I know that I must not. But how was I to know before? Will you tell me?”

  “You understand now, thank God!”

  “N-not exactly.... Other girls seem to do as they please without danger.... It is amazing that such a horrible thing should happen to me — —”

  “It is a shameful thing that it should happen to any woman. And the horror of it is that almost every hostess in town lets girls of your age run the risk. Darling, don’t you know that the only chance a woman has with the world is in her self-control? When that goes, her chances go, every one of them! Dear — we have latent in us much the same vices that men have. We have within us the same possibilities of temptations, the same capacity for excesses, the same capabilities for resistance. Because you are a girl, you are not immune from unworthy desires.”

  “I know it. The — the dreadful thing about it is that I do desire such things. Perhaps I had better not even nibble sugar scented with cologne — —”

  “Do you do that?” faltered Kathleen.

  “I did not know there was any danger in it,” sobbed the girl. “You have scared me terribly, Kathleen.”

  “Is that true about the cologne?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “You don’t do it now, do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t do it every day, do you?”

  “Yes, several times.”

  “How long” — Kathleen’s lips almost refused to move— “how long have you done this?”

  “For a long time. I’ve been ashamed of it. It’s — it’s the alcohol in it that I like, isn’t it? I never thought of it in that way till now.”

  Kathleen, on her knees by the bedside, was crying silently. The girl slipped from her arms, turned partly over, and lying on her back, stared upward through the darkness.

  So this was the secret reason that, unsuspected, had long been stirring her to instinctive uneasiness, which had made her half ashamed, half impatient with this silly habit which already inconvenienced her. Yet even now she could not feel any real alarm; she could not understand that the fangs of a habit can poison when plucked out. Of course there was now only one thing to do — keep aloof from everything. That would be easy. The tingling warmth of the perfume was certainly agreeable, but she must not risk even such a silly indulgence as that. Really, it was a very simple matter. She sat up, supporting her weight on one arm.

  “Kathleen, darling,” she whispered, bending forward and drawing the elder woman up onto the bed, “you mustn’t be frightened about me. I’ve learned some things I didn’t know. Do you think Duane—” In the darkness the blood scorched her face, the humiliation almost crushed her. But she went on: “Do you think Duane suspects that — that — —”

  “I don’t think Duane suspects anything,” said Kathleen, striving to steady her voice. “You came in here as soon as you felt — ill; didn’t you?”

  “I — yes — —”

  She could say no more. How she came to be on her bed in her own room she could not remember. It seemed to her as though she had fallen asleep on the lounge. Somehow, after Duane had gone, she must have waked and gone to her own room. But she could not recollect doing it.

  Now she realised that she was tired, wretched, feverish. She suffered Kathleen to undress her, comb her hair, bathe her, and dry the white, slender body and limbs in which the veins still burned and throbbed.

  When at length she lay between the cool sheets, silent, limp, heavy-lidded, Kathleen turned out the electric brackets and lighted the candle.

  “Dear,” she said, trying to speak cheerfully, “do you know what your brother has done?”

  “What?” asked Geraldine drowsily.

  “He has bought Roya-Neh, if you please, and he invites you to draw a check for half of it and to move there next week. As for me, I was furious with him. What do you think?”

  Her voice softened to a whisper; she bent over the girl, looking closely at the closed lids. Under them a faint bluish tint faded into the whiteness of the cheek.

  “Darling, darling!” whispered Kathleen, bending closer over the sleeping girl, “I love you so — I love you so!” And even as she said it, between the sleeper’s features and her own floated the vision of Scott’s youthfully earnest face; and she straightened suddenly to her full height and laid her hand on her breast in consternation. Under the fingers’ soft pressure her heart beat faster. Again, with new dismay, this incredible sensation was stealing upon her, threatening to transform itself into something real, something definite, something not to be stifled or ignored.

  She extinguished the candle; as she felt her way out of the darkness,
arms extended, far away in the house she heard a door open and shut, and she bent over the balustrade to listen.

  “Is that you, Scott?” she called softly.

  “Yes; Duane and I did some billiards at the club.” He looked up at her, the same slight pucker between his brows, boyishly slender in his evening dress. “You’re not going to bed at once, are you, Kathleen, dear?”

  “Yes, I am,” she said briefly, backing into her own room, but holding the door ajar so that she could look out at him.

  “Oh, come out and talk to a fellow,” he urged; “I’m quite excited about this Roya-Neh business — —”

  “You’re a perfect wretch, Scott. I don’t want to talk about your unholy extravagance.”

  The boy laughed and stood at ease looking at the pretty face partly disclosed between door and wall with darkness for a velvety background.

  “Just come out into the library while I smoke one cigarette,” he began in his wheedling way. “I’m dying to talk to you about the game-preserve — —”

  “I can’t; I’m not attired for a tête-à-tête with anything except my pillow.”

  “Then put on one of those fetching affairs you wear sometimes — —”

  “Oh, Scott, you are a nuisance!”

  When, a few moments later, she came into the library in a delicate shimmering thing and little slippers of the same elusive tint, Scott jumped up and dragged a big chair forward.

  “You certainly are stunning, Kathleen,” he said frankly; “you look twenty with all the charm of thirty. Sit here; I’ve a map of the Roya-Neh forest to show you.”

  He drew up a chair for himself, lifted a big map from the table, and, unrolling it, laid it across her knees. Then he began to talk enthusiastically about lake and stream and mountain, and about wild boar and deer and keepers and lodges; and she bent her pretty head over the map, following his moving pencil with her eyes, sometimes asking a question, sometimes tracing a road with her own delicate finger.

  Once or twice it happened that their hands touched en passant; and at the light contact, she was vaguely aware that somewhere, deep within her, the same faint dismay awoke; that in her, buried in depths unsuspected, something incredible existed, stirred, threatened.

  “Scott, dear,” she said quietly, “I am glad you are happy over Roya-Neh forest, but it was too expensive, and it troubles me; so I’m going to sleep to dream over it.”

  “You sweet little goose!” laughed the boy impulsively, passing his arm around her. He had done it so often to this nurse and mother.

  They both rose abruptly; the map dropped; his arm fell away from her warm, yielding body.

  He gazed at her flushed face rather stupidly, not realising yet that the mother and nurse and elder sister had vanished like a tinted bubble in that strange instant — that Kathleen was gone — that, in her calm, sweet, familiar guise stood a woman — a stranger, exquisite, youthful, with troubled violet eyes and vivid lips, looking at him as though for the first time she had met his gaze across the world.

  She recovered her composure instantly.

  “I’m sorry, Scott, but I’m too sleepy to talk any more. Besides, Geraldine isn’t very well, and I’m going to doze with one eye open. Good-night, dear.”

  “Good-night,” said the boy vacantly, not offering the dutiful embrace to which he and she had so long and so lightly been accustomed.

  CHAPTER V. ROYA-NEH

  Late on a fragrant mid-June afternoon young Seagrave stood on the Long Terrace to welcome a guest whose advent completed a small house-party of twelve at Roya-Neh.

  “Hello, Duane!” cried the youthful landowner in all the pride of new possession, as Mallett emerged from the motor; “frightfully glad to see you, old fellow! How is it in town? Did you bring your own rods? There are plenty here. What do you think of my view? Isn’t that rather fine?” — looking down through the trees at the lake below. “There are bass in it. Those things standing around under the oaks are only silly English fallow deer. Sorry I got ‘em. What do you think of my house? It’s merely a modern affair worked up to look old and colonial.... Yes, it certainly does resemble the real thing, but it isn’t. No Seagraves fit and bled here. Those are Geraldine’s quarters up there behind the leaded windows. Those are Kathleen’s where the dinky woodbine twineth. Mine face the east, and yours are next. Come on out into the park — —”

  “Not much!” returned young Mallett. “I want a bath!”

  “The park,” interrupted Scott excitedly, “is the largest fenced game-preserve in America! It’s only ten minutes to the Sachem’s Gate, if we walk fast.”

  “I want a bath and fresh linen.”

  “Don’t you care to see the trout? Don’t you want to try to catch a glimpse of a wild boar? I should think you’d be crazy to see — —”

  “I’m crazy about almost any old thing when I’m well scrubbed; otherwise, I’m merely crazy. That was a wild trip up. I’m all over cinders.”

  A woman came quietly out onto the terrace, and Duane instantly divined it, though his back was toward her and her skirts made no sound.

  “Oh, is that you, Kathleen?” he cried, pivoting. “How d’ye do?” with a vigorous handshake. “Every time I see you you’re three times as pretty as I thought you were when I last saw you.”

  “Neat but involved,” said Kathleen Severn. “You have a streak of cinder across that otherwise fascinating nose.”

  “I don’t doubt it! I’m going. Where’s Geraldine?”

  “Having her hair done in your honour; return the compliment by washing your face. There’s a maid inside to show you.”

  “Show me how to wash my face!” exclaimed Duane, delighted. “This is luxury — —”

  “I want him to see the Gray Water before it’s too late, with the sunlight on the trees and the big trout jumping,” protested Scott.

  “I’ll do my own jumping if you’ll furnish the tub,” observed Duane. “Where’s that agreeable maid who washes your guests’ faces?”

  Kathleen nodded an amused dismissal to them. Arm in arm they entered the house, which was built out of squared blocks of field stone. Scott motioned the servants aside and did the piloting himself up a broad stone stairs, east along a wide sunny corridor full of nooks and angles and antique sofas and potted flowers.

  “Not that way,” he said; “Dysart is in there taking a nap. Turn to the left.”

  “Dysart?” repeated Duane. “I didn’t know there was to be anybody else here.”

  “I asked Jack Dysart because he’s a good rod. Kathleen raised the deuce about it when I told her, but it was too late. Anyway, I didn’t know she had no use for him. He’s certainly clever at dry-fly casting. He uses pneumatic bodies, not cork or paraffine.”

  “Is his wife here?” asked Duane carelessly.

  “Yes. Geraldine asked her as soon as she heard I’d written to Jack. But when I told her the next day that I expected you, too, she got mad all over, and we had a lively talk-fest. What was there wrong in my having you and the Dysarts here at the same time? Don’t you get on?”

  “Charmingly,” replied Duane airily.... “It will be very interesting, I think. Is there anybody else here?”

  “Delancy Grandcourt. Isn’t he the dead one? But Geraldine wanted him. And there’s that stick of a Quest girl, and Bunbury Gray. Naïda came over this afternoon from the Tappans’ at Iron Hill — thank goodness — —”

  “I didn’t know my sister was to be here.”

  “Yes; and you make twelve, counting Geraldine and me and the Pink ‘uns.”

  “You didn’t tell me it was to be a round-up,” repeated Duane, absently surveying his chintz-hung quarters. “This is a pretty place you’ve given me. Where do you get all your electric lights? Where do you get fancy plumbing in this wilderness?”

  “Our own plant,” explained the boy proudly. “Isn’t that corking water? Look at it — heavenly cold and clear, or hot as hell, whichever way you’re inclined—” turning on a silver spigot chiselled like a ch
erub. “That water comes from Cloudy Lake, up there on that dome-shaped mountain. Here, stand here beside me, Duane, and you can see it from your window. That’s the Gilded Dome — that big peak. It’s in our park. There are a few elk on it, not many, because they’d starve out the deer. As it is, we have to cut browse in winter. For Heaven’s sake, hurry, man! Get into your bath and out again, or we’ll miss the trout jumping along Gray Water and Hurryon Brook.”

  “Let ’em jump!” retorted Duane, forcibly ejecting his host from the room and locking the door. Then, lighting a cigarette, he strolled into the bath room and started the water running into the porcelain tub.

  He was in excellent spirits, quite undisturbed by the unexpected proximity of Rosalie Dysart or the possible renewal of their hitherto slightly hazardous friendship. He laid his cigarette aside for the express purpose of whistling while undressing.

  Half an hour later, bathed, shaved, and sartorially freshened, he selected a blue corn-flower from the rural bouquet on his dresser, drew it through his buttonhole, gave a last alluring twist to his tie, surveyed himself in the mirror, whistled a few bars, was perfectly satisfied with himself, then, unlocking the door, strolled out into the corridor. Having no memory for direction, he took the wrong turn.

  A distractingly pretty maid laid aside her sewing and rose from her chair to set him right; he bestowed upon her his most courtly thanks. She was unusually pretty, so he thanked her again, and she dimpled, one hand fingering her apron’s edge.

  “My child,” said he gravely, “are you by any fortunate chance as good as you are ornamental?”

  She replied that she thought she was.

  “In that case,” he said, “this is one of those rare occasions in a thankless world where goodness is amply and instantly rewarded.”

  She made a perfunctory resistance, but looked after him, smiling, as he sauntered off down the hallway, rearranging the blue corn-flower in his button-hole. At the turn by the window, where potted posies stood, he encountered Rosalie Dysart in canoe costume — sleeves rolled up, hair loosened, becomingly tanned, and entirely captivating in her thoughtfully arranged disarray.