Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “We caught no trout,” said Rosalie, sitting down on the arm of the chair that Duane drew forward. “I fussed about in that canoe until Duane came along, and then we went in swimming.”

  “Swimming?” repeated Geraldine, dumfounded.

  Rosalie balanced herself serenely on her chair-arm.

  “Oh, we often do that.”

  “Swim — where?”

  “Why across the Gray Water, child!”

  “But — there are no bath houses — —”

  Rosalie laughed outright.

  “Quite Arcadian, isn’t it? Duane has the forest on one side of the Gray Water for a dressing-room, and I the forest on the other side. Then we swim out and shake hands in the middle. Our bathing dresses are drying on Miller’s lawn. Please do tell me somebody is scandalised. I’ve done my best to brighten up this house party.”

  Dysart, really discountenanced, but not showing it, lighted a cigarette and asked pleasantly if the water was agreeable.

  “It’s magnificent,” said Duane; “it was like diving into a lake of iced Apollinaris. Geraldine, why on earth don’t you build some bath houses on the Gray Waters?”

  Perhaps she had not heard his question. She began to talk very animatedly to Rosalie about several matters of no consequence. Dysart rose, stretched his sunburned arms with over-elaborate ease, tossed away his cigarette, picked up his tennis bat, and said: “See you at luncheon. Are you coming, Rosalie?”

  “In a moment, Jack.” She went on talking inconsequences to Geraldine; her husband waited, exchanging a remark or two with Duane in his easy, self-possessed fashion.

  “Dear,” said Rosalie at last to Geraldine, “I must run away and dry my hair. How did we come out at tennis, Jack?”

  “All to the bad,” he replied serenely, and nodding to Geraldine and Duane he entered the house, his young wife strolling beside him and twisting up her wet hair.

  Duane seated himself and crossed his lank legs, ready for an amiable chat before he retired to dress for luncheon; but Geraldine did not even look toward him. She was lying deep in the chair, apparently relaxed and limp; but every nerve in her was at tension, every delicate muscle taut and rigid, and in her heart was anger unutterable, and close, very close to the lids which shadowed with their long fringe the brown eyes’ velvet, were tears.

  “What have you been up to all the morning?” he asked. “Did you try the fishing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anything doing?”

  “No.”

  “I thought they wouldn’t rise. It’s too clear and hot. That’s why I didn’t keep on with Kathleen and Scott. Two are enough on bright water. Don’t you think so?”

  She said nothing.

  “Besides,” he added, “I knew you had old Grandcourt running close at heel and that made four rods on Hurryon. So what was the use of my joining in?”

  She made no reply.

  “You didn’t mind, did you?” he asked carelessly.

  “No.”

  “Oh, all right,” he nodded, not feeling much relieved.

  The strange blind anger still possessed her. She lay there immobile, expressionless, enduring it, not trying even to think why; yet her anger was rising against him, and it surged, receded helplessly, flushed her veins again till they tingled. But her lids remained closed; the lashes rested softly on the curve of her cheeks; not a tremor touched her face.

  “I am wondering whether you are feeling all right,” he ventured uneasily, conscious of the tension between them.

  With an effort she took command of herself.

  “The sun was rather hot. It’s a headache; I walked back by the road.”

  “With the faithful one?”

  “No,” she said evenly, “Mr. Grandcourt remained to fish.”

  “He went to worship and remained to fish,” said Duane, laughing. The girl lifted her face to look at him — a white little face so strange that the humour died out in his eyes.

  “He’s a good deal of a man,” she said. “It’s one of my few pleasant memories of this year — Mr. Grandcourt’s niceness to me — and to all women.”

  She set her elbow on the chair’s edge and rested her cheek in her hollowed hand. Her gaze had become remote once more.

  “I didn’t know you took him so seriously,” he said in a low voice. “I’m sorry, Geraldine.”

  All her composure had returned. She lifted her eyes insolently.

  “Sorry for what?”

  “For speaking as I did.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind. I thought you might be sorry for yourself.”

  “Myself?”

  “And your neighbour’s wife,” she added.

  “Well, what about myself and my neighbour’s wife?”

  “I’m not familiar with such matters.” Her face did not change, but the burning anger suddenly welled up in her again. “I don’t know anything about such affairs, but if you think I ought to I might try to learn.” She laughed and leaned back into the depths of her chair. “You and I are such intimate friends it’s a shame I shouldn’t understand and sympathise with what most interests you.”

  He remained silent, gazing down at his shadow on the grass, hands clasped loosely between his knees. She strove to study him calmly; her mind was chaos; only the desire to hurt him persisted, rendered sterile by the confused tumult of her thoughts.

  Presently, looking up:

  “Do you doubt that things are not right between — my neighbour’s wife — and me?” he inquired.

  “The matter doesn’t interest me.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “Then I have misunderstood you. What is the matter that does interest you, Geraldine?”

  She made no reply.

  He said, carelessly good-humoured: “I like women. It’s curious that they know it instinctively, because when they’re bored or lonely they drift toward me.... Lonely women are always adrift, Geraldine. There seems to be some current that sets in toward me; it catches them and they drift in, linger, and drift on. I seem to be the first port they anchor in.... Then a day comes when they are gone — drifting on at hazard through the years — —”

  “Wiser for their experience at Port Mallett?”

  “Perhaps. But not sadder, I think.”

  “A woman adrift has no regrets,” she said with contempt.

  “Wrong. A woman who is in love has none.”

  “That is what I mean. The hospitality of Port Mallett ought to leave them with no regrets.”

  He laughed. “But they are not loved,” he said. “They know it. That’s why they drift on.”

  She turned on him white and tremulous.

  “Haven’t you even the excuse of caring for her?”

  “Who?”

  “A neighbour’s wife — who comes drifting into your hospitable haven!”

  “I don’t pretend to love her, if that is what you mean,” he said pleasantly.

  “Then you make her believe it — and that’s dastardly!”

  “Oh, no. Women don’t love unless made love to. You’ve only read that in books.”

  She said a little breathlessly: “You are right. I know men and women only through books. It’s time I learned for myself.”

  CHAPTER VII. TOGETHER

  The end of June and of the house party at Roya-Neh was now near at hand, and both were to close with a moonlight fête and dance in the forest, invitations having been sent to distant neighbours who had been entertaining similar gatherings at Iron Hill and Cloudy Mountain — the Grays, Beekmans, Ellises, and Grandcourts.

  Silks and satins, shoe buckles and powdered hair usually mark the high tide of imaginative originality among this sort of people. So it was to be the inevitable Louis XVI fête — or as near to it as attenuated, artistic intelligence could manage, and they altered Duane’s very clever and correct sketches to suit themselves, careless of anachronism, and sent the dainty water-colour drawings to town in order that those who sweat and sew in the perfumed
ateliers of Fifth Avenue might use them as models.

  “The fun — if there’s any in dressing up — ought to lie in making your own costumes,” observed Duane. But nobody displayed any inclination to do so. And now, on hurry orders, the sewers in the hot Fifth Avenue ateliers sewed faster. Silken and satin costumes, paste jewelry and property small-swords were arriving by express; maids flew about the house at Roya-Neh, trying on, fussing with lace and ribbon, bodice and flowered pannier, altering, retrimming, adjusting. Their mistresses met in one another’s bedrooms for mysterious confabs over head-dress and coiffure, lace scarf, and petticoat.

  As for the men, they surreptitiously tried on their embroidered coats and breeches, admired themselves in secrecy, and let it go at that, returning with embarrassed relief to cards, tennis, and the various forms of amiable idleness to which they were accustomed. Only Englishmen can masquerade seriously.

  Later, however, the men were compelled to pay some semblance of attention to the general preparations, assemble their foot-gear, head-gear, stars, orders, sashes, swords, and try them on for Duane Mallett — to that young man’s unconcealed dissatisfaction.

  “You certainly resemble a scratch opera chorus,” he observed after passing in review the sheepish line-up in his room. “Delancy, you’re the limit as a Black Mousquetier — and, by the way, there weren’t any in the reign of Louis XVI, so perhaps that evens up matters. Dysart is the only man who looks the real thing — or would if he’d remove that monocle. As for Bunny and the Pink ‘un, they ought to be in vaudeville singing la-la-la.”

  “That’s really a compliment to our legs,” observed Reggie Wye to Bunbury Gray, flourishing his property sword and gracefully performing a pas seul à la Gênée.

  Dysart, who had been sullen all day, regarded them morosely.

  Scott Seagrave, in his conventional abbé’s costume of black and white, excessively bored, stood by the window trying to catch a glimpse of the lake to see whether any decent fish were breaking, while Scott walked around him critically, not much edified by his costume or the way he wore it.

  “You’re a sad and self-conscious-looking bunch,” he concluded. “Scott, I suppose you’ll insist on wearing your mustache and eyeglasses.”

  “You bet,” said Scott simply.

  “All right. And kindly beat it. I want to try on my own plumage in peace.”

  So the costumed ones trooped off to their own quarters with the half-ashamed smirk usually worn by the American male who has persuaded himself to frivolity. Delancy Grandcourt tramped away down the hall banging his big sword, jingling his spurs, and flapping his loose boots. The Pink ‘un and Bunbury Gray slunk off into obscurity, and Scott wandered back through the long hall until a black-and-red tiger moth attracted his attention, and he forgot his annoying appearance in frantic efforts to capture the brilliant moth.

  Dysart, who had been left alone with Duane in the latter’s room, contemplated himself sullenly in the mirror while Duane, seated on the window sill, waited for him to go.

  “You think I ought to eliminate my eye-glass?” asked Dysart, still inspecting himself.

  “Yes, in deference to the conventional prejudice of the times. Nobody wore ’em at that period.”

  “You seem to be a stickler for convention — of the Louis XVI sort more than for the XIX century variety,” remarked Dysart with a sneer.

  Duane looked up from his bored contemplation of the rug.

  “You think I’m unconventional?” he asked with a smile.

  “I believe I suggested something of the sort to my wife the other day.”

  “Ah,” said Duane blandly, “does she agree with you, Dysart?”

  “No doubt she does, because your tendencies toward the unconventional have been the subject of unpleasant comment recently.”

  “By some of your débutante conquests? You mustn’t believe all they tell you.”

  “My own eyes and ears are competent witnesses. Do you understand me now?”

  “No. Neither do you. Don’t rely on such witnesses, Dysart; they lack character to corroborate them. Ask your wife to confirm me — if you ever find time enough to ask her anything.”

  “That’s a damned impudent thing to say,” returned Dysart, staring at him. A dull red stained his face, then faded.

  Duane’s eyebrows went up — just a shade — yet so insolently that the other stepped forward, the corners of his mouth white and twitching.

  “I can speak more plainly,” he said. “If you can’t appreciate a pleasant hint I can easily accommodate you with the alternative.”

  There was silence for a moment.

  “Dysart,” said Duane, “what chance do you think you’d have in landing the — alternative?”

  “That concerns me,” said Dysart; and the pinched muscles around the mouth grew whiter and the man looked suddenly older. Duane had never before noticed how gray his temples were growing.

  He said in a voice under perfect control: “You’re right; the chances you care to take with me concern yourself. As for your ill-humour, I suppose I have earned it by being attentive to your wife. What is it you wish; that my hitherto very harmless attentions should cease?”

  “Yes,” said Dysart, and his square jaw quivered.

  “Well, they won’t. It takes the sort of man you are to strike classical attitudes. And, absurd as the paradox appears — and even taking into consideration your notorious indifference to your wife and your rather silly reputation as a débutante chaser — I do believe, Dysart, that, deep inside of you somewhere, there is enough latent decency to have inspired this resentment toward me — a resentment perfectly natural in any man who acts squarely toward his wife — but rather far fetched in your case.”

  Dysart, pallid, menacing, laid his hand on a chair.

  The other laughed.

  “As bad as that?” he asked contemptuously. “Don’t do it, Dysart; it isn’t in your line. You’re only a good-looking, popular, dancing man; all your deviltry is in your legs, and I’d be obliged if they’d presently waft you out of my room.”

  “I suppose,” said Dysart unsteadily, “that you would make yourself noisily ridiculous if I knocked your blackguard head off.”

  “It’s only in novels that people are knocked down successfully and artistically,” admitted the other. “In everyday life they resent it. Yes — if you do anything hysterical there will be some sort of a disgraceful noise, I suppose. It’s shoot or suit in these unromantic days, Dysart, otherwise the newspapers laugh at you.”

  Dysart’s well-shaped fists relaxed, the chair dropped, but even when he let it go murder danced in his eyes.

  “Yes,” he said, “it’s shoot or a suit in these days; you’re perfectly right, Mallett. And we’ll let it go at that for the present.”

  He stood a moment, straight, handsome, his clearly stencilled eyebrows knitted, watching Duane. Whatever in the man’s face and figure was usually colourless, unaccented, irresolute, disappeared as he glared rigidly at the other.

  For there is no resentment like the resentment of the neglectful, no jealousy like the jealousy of the faithless.

  “To resume, in plain English,” he said, “keep away from my wife, Mallett. You comprehend that, don’t you?”

  “Perfectly. Now get out!”

  Dysart hesitated for the fraction of a second longer, as though perhaps expecting further reply, then turned on his heel and walked out.

  Later, while Duane was examining his own costume preparatory to trying it on, Scott Seagrave’s spectacled and freckled visage protruded into the room. He knocked as an after-thought.

  “Rosalie sent me. She’s dressed in all her gimcracks and wants your expert opinion. I’ve got to go — —”

  “Where is she?”

  “In her room. I’m going out to the hatchery with Kathleen — —”

  “Come and see Rosalie with me, first,” said Duane, passing his arm through Scott’s and steering him down the sunny corridor.

  When they knocke
d, Mrs. Dysart admitted them, revealing herself in full costume, painted and powdered, the blinds pulled down, and the electric lights burning behind their rosy shades.

  “It’s my final dress rehearsal,” she explained. “Mr. Mallett, is my hair sufficiently à la Lamballe to suit you?”

  “Yes, it is. You’re a perfect little porcelain figurette! There’s not an anachronism in you or your make-up. How did you do it?”

  “I merely stuck like grim death to your sketches,” she said demurely.

  Scott eyed her without particular interest. “Very corking,” he said vaguely, “but I’ve got to go down to the hatchery with Kathleen, so you won’t mind if I leave — —”

  He closed the door behind him before anybody could speak. Duane moved toward the door.

  “It’s a charming costume,” he said, “and most charmingly worn; your hair is exactly right — not too much powder, you know — —”

  “Where shall I put my patch? Here?”

  “Higher.”

  “Here?”

  He came back to the centre of the room where she stood.

  “Here,” he said, indenting the firm, cool ivory skin with one finger, “and here. Wear two.”

  “And my rings — do you think that my fingers are overloaded?” She held out her fascinating smooth little hands. He supported them on his upturned palms and examined the gems critically.

  They talked for a few moments about the rings, then: “Thank you so much,” she said, with a carelessly friendly pressure. “How about my shoes? Are the buckles of the period?”

  One of her hands encountered his at hazard, lingered, dropped, the fingers still linked lightly in his. She bent over, knees straight, and lifted the hem of her petticoat, displaying her Louis XVI footwear.

  “Shoes and buckles are all right,” he said; “faultless, true to the period — very fascinating.... I’ve got to go — one or two things to do — —”

  They examined the shoes for some time in silence; still bending over she turned her dainty head and looked around and up at him. There was a moment’s pause, then he kissed her.