Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Dysart!” he said sharply.

  The masked figure swung gracefully around and stood still, searching the shadowy woodland inquiringly.

  “I want a word with you. Here — not in the light, if you please. You recognise my voice, don’t you?”

  “Is that you, Mallett?” asked Dysart coldly, as the former appeared in the light for an instant and turned back again with a curt gesture.

  “Yes. I want you to step over here among the trees, where nobody can interrupt us.”

  Dysart followed more slowly; came to a careless halt:

  “Well, what the devil do you want?” he demanded insolently.

  “I’ll tell you. I’ve had an encounter with a mask who mistook me for you.... And she has said — several things — under that impression. She still believes that I am you. I asked her to wait for me over there by those oaks. Do you see where I mean?” He pointed and Dysart nodded coolly. “Well, then, I want you to go back there — find her, and act as though it had been you who heard what she said, not I.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean exactly that. The girl ought never to know that what she said was heard and — and understood, Dysart, by any man in the world except the blackguard I’m telling this to. Now, do you understand?”

  He stepped nearer:

  “The girl is Sylvia Quest. Now, do you understand, damn you!”

  A stray glimmer from the distant lanterns fell across Dysart’s masked visage. The skin around the mouth was loose and ashy, the dry lips worked.

  “That was a dirty trick of yours,” he stammered; “a scoundrelly thing to do.”

  “Do you suppose that I dreamed for an instant that she was convicting herself and you?” said Duane in bitter contempt. “Go and manufacture some explanation of my conduct as though it were your own. Let her have that much peace of mind, anyway.”

  “You young sneak!” retorted Dysart. “I suppose you think that what you have heard will warrant your hanging around my wife. Try it and see.”

  “Good God, Dysart!” he said, “I never thought you were anything more vicious than what is called a ‘dancing man.’ What are you, anyhow?”

  “You’ll learn if you tamper with my affairs,” said Dysart. He whipped off his mask and turned a corpse-like visage on the younger man. Every feature of his face had altered: his good looks were gone, the youth in his eyes had disappeared, only a little evil lustre played over them; and out of the drawn pallor Duane saw an old man peering, an old man’s lips twitching back from uneven and yellowed teeth.

  “Mallett,” he said, “you listen to me. Keep your investigating muzzle out of my affairs; forget what you’ve ferreted out; steer clear of me and mine. I want no scandal, but if you raise a breath of it you’ll have enough concerning yourself to occupy you. Do you understand?”

  “No,” said Duane mechanically, staring at the man before him.

  “Well, then, to be more precise, if you lift one finger to injure me you’ll cut a figure in court.... And you can marry her later.”

  “Who?”

  “My wife. I don’t think Miss Seagrave will stand for what I’ll drag you through if you don’t keep clear of me!”

  Duane gazed at him curiously:

  “So that is what you are, Dysart,” he said aloud to himself.

  Dysart’s temples reddened.

  “Yes, and then some!... I understand that you have given yourself the privilege of discussing my financial affairs in public. Have you?”

  Duane said in a dull voice: “The Algonquin Trust was mentioned, I believe. I did say that you are a director.”

  “You said I was hard hit and that the Clearing House meant to weed out a certain element that I represented in New York.”

  “I did not happen to say that,” said Duane wearily, “but another man did.”

  “Oh. You didn’t say it?”

  “No. I don’t lie, Dysart.”

  “Then add to that negative virtue by keeping your mouth shut,” said Dysart between his teeth, “or you’ll have other sorts of suits on your hands. I warn you now to keep clear of me and mine.”

  “Just what is yours?” inquired Duane patiently.

  “You’ll find out if you touch it.”

  “Oh. Is — is Miss Quest included by any hazard? Because if the right chance falls my way, I shall certainly interfere.”

  “If you do, I shall begin suit for alienation within twenty-four hours.”

  “Oh, no, you won’t. You’re horribly afraid, Dysart. This grimacing of yours is fear. All you want is to be let alone, to burrow through the society that breeds your sort. Like a maggot in a chestnut you feed on what breeds you. I don’t care. Feed! What bred you is as rotten as you are. I’m done with it — done with all this,” turning his head toward the flare of light. “Go on and burrow. What nourishes you can look out for itself.... Only” — he wheeled around and looked into the darkness where, unseen, Sylvia Quest awaited him— “only, in this set, the young have less chance than the waifs of the East Side.”

  He walked slowly up to Dysart and struck him across the face with open palm.

  “Break with that girl or I’ll break your head,” he said.

  Dysart was down on the leaves, struggling up to his knees, then to his feet, the thin blood running across his chin. The next instant he sprang at Duane, who caught him by both arms and forced him savagely into quivering inertia.

  “Don’t,” he said. “You’re only a thing that dances. Don’t move, I tell you.... Wipe that blood off and go and set the silly girl’s heart at rest.... And keep away from her afterward. Do you hear?”

  He set his teeth and shook him so wickedly that Dysart’s head rolled and his wig fell off.

  “I know something of your sloppy record,” he continued, still shaking him; “I know about your lap-dog fawning around Miss Seagrave. It is generally understood that you’re as sexless as any other of your kind. I thought so, too. Now I know you. Keep clear of me and mine, Dysart.... And that will be about all.”

  He left him planted against a tree and walked toward the lights once more, breathing heavily and in an ugly mood.

  On the edge of the glade, just outside the lantern glow, he stood sombre, distrait, inspecting the torn lace on his sleeve, while all around him people were unmasking amid cries of surprise and shouts of laughter, and the orchestra was sounding a march, and multicoloured Bengal fires rolled in clouds from the water’s edge, turning the woods to a magic forest and the people to tinted wraiths.

  Behind him he heard Rosalie’s voice, caressing, tormenting by turns; and, glancing around for her victim, beheld Grandcourt at heel in calflike adoration.

  Kathleen’s laughter swung him the other way.

  “Oh, Duane,” she cried, the pink of excitement in her cheeks, “isn’t it all too heavenly! It looks like Paradise afire with all those rosy clouds rolling under foot. Have you ever seen anything quite as charming?”

  “It’s rotten,” said Duane brusquely, tearing the tattered lace free and tossing it aside.

  “Wh-what!” she exclaimed.

  “I say it’s all rotten,” he repeated, looking up at her. “All this — the whole thing — the stupidity of it — the society that’s driven to these kind of capers, dreading the only thing it ever dreads — ennui! Look at us all! For God’s sake, survey us damn fools, herded here in our pinchbeck mummery — forcing the sanctuary of these decent green woods, polluting them with smoke and noise and dirty little intrigues! I’m sick of it!”

  “Duane!”

  “Oh, yes; I’m one of ’em — dragging my idleness and viciousness and my stupidity and my money at my heels. I tell you, Kathleen, this is no good. There’s a stench of money everywhere; there’s a staler aroma in the air, too — the dubious perfume of decadence, of moral atrophy, of stupid recklessness, of the ennui that breeds intrigue! I’m deadly tired of it — of the sort of people I was born among; of their women folk, whose sole intellectual relaxation is in pirouettin
g along the danger mark without overstepping, and in concealing it when they do; of the overgroomed men who can do nothing except what can be done with money, who think nothing, know nothing, sweat nothing but money and what it can buy — like horses and yachts and prima donnas — —”

  She uttered a shocked exclamation, but he went on:

  “Yes, prima donnas. Which of our friends was it who bought that pretty one that sang in ‘La Esmeralda’?”

  “Duane!” she exclaimed in consternation; but he took her protesting hands in his and held her powerless.

  “You happen to be a darling,” he said; “but you were not born to this environment. Geraldine was — and she is a darling. God bless her. Outside of my sister, Naïda, and you two — with the exception of the newly fledged and as yet mercifully unregurgitated with vicious wisdom — who are all these people? Ciphers, save for their balances at their banks; nameless, save for the noisy reiteration of their hard-fisted forebears’ names; without any ambition, except financial and social; without any objective, save the escape from ennui — without any taste, culture, inspiration, except that of physical gratification! Oh, Lord, I’m one of them, but I resign to-night.”

  “Duane, you’re quite mad,” she said, wrenching her hands free and gazing at him rather fearfully.

  “I think he’s dead sensible,” said a calm voice at her elbow; and Scott Seagrave appeared, twirling his mask and blinking at them through his spectacles.

  Duane laughed: “Of course I am, you old reptile-hunting, butterfly-chasing antediluvian! But, come on; Byzantium is gorging its diamond-swathed girth yonder with salad and champagne; and I’m hungry, even if Kathleen isn’t — —”

  “I am!” she exclaimed indignantly. “Scott, can’t you find Naïda and Geraldine? Duane and I will keep a table until you return — —”

  “I’ll find them,” said Duane; and he walked off among the noisy, laughing groups, his progress greeted uproariously from table to table. He found Naïda and Bunbury Gray, and they at once departed for the rendezvous indicated.

  “Geraldine was here a little while ago,” said Gray, “but she walked to the lake with Jack Dysart. My, but she’s hitting it up,” he added admiringly.

  “Hitting it up?” repeated Duane.

  “For a girl who never does, I mean. I imagine that she’s a novice with champagne. Champagne and Geraldine make a very fetching combination, I can tell you.”

  “She took no more than I,” observed Naïda with a shrug; “one solitary glass. If a girl happens to be high strung and ventures to laugh a little, some wretched man is sure to misunderstand! Bunny, you’re a gadabout!”

  She made her way out from the maze of tables, Bunny following, somewhat abashed; and Duane walked toward the shore, where dozens of lantern-hung canoes bobbed, and the pasteboard cylinders of Bengal fire had burned to smouldering sparks.

  In the dim light he came on the people he was looking for, seated on the rocks. Dysart, at her feet, was speaking in an undertone; Geraldine, partly turned away from him, hands clasped around her knees, was staring steadily across the water.

  Neither rose as he came up; Dysart merely became mute; Geraldine looked around with a start; her lips parted in a soundless, mechanical greeting, then the flush in her cheeks brightened; and as she rose, Dysart got onto his feet and stood silently facing the new arrival.

  “I said after the third dance, you know,” she observed with an assumed lightness that did not deceive him. And, as he made no answer, he saw the faint flicker of fright in her eyes and the lower lip quiver.

  He said pleasantly, controlling his voice: “Isn’t this after the third dance? You are to be my partner for supper, I think.”

  “A long time after; and I’ve already sat at Belshazzar’s feast, thank you. I couldn’t very well starve waiting for you, could I?” And she forced a smile.

  “Nevertheless, I must claim your promise,” he said.

  There was a silence; she stood for a moment gazing at nothing, with the same bright, fixed smile, then turned and glanced at Dysart. The glance was his dismissal and he knew it.

  “If I must give you up,” he said cheerfully, at his ease, “please pronounce sentence.”

  “I am afraid you really must, Mr. Dysart.”

  There was another interval of constraint; then Dysart spoke. His self-possession was admirable, his words perfectly chosen, his exit in faultless taste.

  They looked after him until he was lost to view in the throngs beyond, then the girl slowly reseated herself, eyes again fixed on the water, hands clasped tightly upon her knee, and Duane found a place at her elbow. So they began a duet of silence.

  The little wavelets came dancing shoreward out of the darkness, breaking with a thin, splashing sound against the shale at their feet. Somewhere in the night a restless heron croaked and croaked among the willows.

  “Well, little girl?” he asked at last.

  “Well?” she inquired, with a calmness that did not mislead him.

  “I couldn’t come to you after the third dance,” he said.

  “Why?”

  He evaded the question: “When I came back to the glade the dancing was already over; so I got Kathleen and Naïda to save a table.”

  “Where had you been all the while?”

  “If you really wish to know,” he said pleasantly, “I was talking to Jack Dysart on some rather important matters. I did not realise how the time went.”

  She sat mute, head lowered, staring out across the dark water. Presently he laid one hand over hers, and she straightened up with a tiny shock, turned and looked him full in the eyes.

  “I’ll tell you why you failed me — failed to keep the first appointment I ever asked of you. It was because you were so preoccupied with a mask in flame colour.”

  He thought a moment:

  “Did you believe you saw me with somebody in a vermilion costume?”

  “Yes; I did see you. It was too late for me to retire without attracting your attention. I was not a willing eavesdropper.”

  “Who was the girl you thought you saw me with?”

  “Sylvia Quest. She unmasked. There is no mistake.”

  So he was obliged to lie, after all.

  “It must have been Dysart you saw. His costume is very like mine, you know — —”

  “Does Jack Dysart stand for minutes holding Sylvia’s hands — and is she accustomed to place her hands on his shoulders, as though expecting to be kissed? And does he kiss her?”

  So he had to lie again: “No, of course not,” he said, smiling. “So it could not have been Dysart.”

  “There are only two costumes like yours and Mr. Dysart’s. Do you wish me to believe that Sylvia is common and depraved enough to put her arms around the neck of a man who is married?”

  There was no other way: “No,” he said, “Sylvia isn’t that sort, of course.”

  “It was either Mr. Dysart or you.”

  He said nothing.

  “Then it was you!” in hot contempt.

  Still he said nothing.

  “Was it?” with a break in her voice.

  “Men can’t admit things of that kind,” he managed to say.

  The angry colour surged up to her cheeks, the angry tears started, but her quivering lips were not under command and she could only stare at him through the blur of grief, while her white hands clinched and relaxed, and her fast-beating heart seemed to be driving the very breath from her body.

  “Geraldine, dear — —”

  “It wasn’t fair!” she broke out fiercely; “there is no honour in you — no loyalty! Oh, Duane! Duane! How could you — at the very moment we were nearer together than we had ever been! It isn’t jealousy that is crying out in me; it is nothing common or ignoble in me that resents what you have done! It is the treachery of it! How could you, Duane?”

  The utter hopelessness of clearing himself left him silent. How much was to be asked of him as sacrifice to code? How far was he expected to go to shield Sylv
ia Quest — this unhappy, demoralised girl, whose reputation was already at the mercy of two men?

  “Geraldine,” he said, “it was nothing but a carnival flirtation — a chance encounter that meant nothing — the idlest kind of — —”

  “Is it idle to do what you did — and what she did? Oh, if I had only not seen it — if I only didn’t know! I never dreamed of such a thing in you. Bunny Gray and I were taking a short cut to the Gray Water to sit out the rest of his dance — and he saw it, too — and he was furious — he must have been — because he’s devoted to Sylvia.” She made a hopeless gesture and dropped her hand to her side: “What a miserable night it has been for me! It’s all spoiled — it’s ended.... And I — my courage went.... I’ve done what I never thought to do again — what I was fighting down to make myself safe enough for you to marry — you to marry!” She laughed, but the mirth rang shockingly false.

  “You mean that you had one glass of champagne,” he said.

  “Yes, and another with Jack Dysart. I’ll have some more presently. Does it concern you?”

  “I think so, Geraldine.”

  “You are wrong. Neither does what you’ve been doing concern me — the kind of man you’ve been — the various phases of degradation you have accomplished — —”

  “What particular species of degradation?” he asked wearily, knowing that Dysart was now bent on his destruction. “Never mind; don’t answer, Geraldine,” he added, “because there’s no use in trying to set myself right; there’s no way of doing it. All I can say is that I care absolutely nothing for Sylvia Quest, nor she for me; that I love you; that if I have ever been unworthy of you — as God knows I have — it is a bitterer memory to me than it could ever be to you.”

  “Shall we go back?” she said evenly.

  “Yes, if you wish.”

  They walked back together in silence; a jolly company claimed them for their table; Geraldine laughingly accepted a glass of champagne, turning her back squarely on Duane.

  Naïda and Kathleen came across.

  “We waited for you as long as we could,” said his pretty sister, smothering a yawn. “I’m horribly sleepy. Duane, it’s three o’clock. Would you mind taking me across to the house?”