They lifted the long, slender glasses of iced Ceylon tea and regarded one another over the frosty rims — a long, curious glance from her; a straight gaze from him, which she decided not to sustain too long.
Later, when she gave the signal, they rose as though they had often dined together, and moved leisurely out through the dim, shrouded drawing-rooms where, in the golden dusk, the odor of camphor hung.
She had taken a great cluster of dewy Bride’s roses from the centerpiece, and as she walked forward, sedately youthful, beside him, her fresh, young face brooded over the fragrance of the massed petals.
“Sweet — how sweet!” she murmured to herself, and as they reached the end of the vista she half turned to face him, dreamily, listless, confident.
They looked at one another, she with chin brushing the roses.
“The strangest of all,” she said, “is that it seems all right — and — and we know that it is all quite wrong.... Had you better go?”
“Unless I ought to wait and make sure your maid does not fail you.... Shall I?” he asked evenly.
She did not answer. He drew a linen-swathed armchair toward her; she absently seated herself and lay back, caressing the roses with delicate lips and chin.
Twice she looked up at him, standing there by the boarded windows. Sunshine filtered through the latticework at the top — enough for them to see each other as in a dull afterglow.
“I wonder how soon my maid will come,” she mused, dropping the loose roses on her knees. “If she is going to be very long about it perhaps — perhaps you might care to find a chair — if you have decided to wait.”
He drew one from a corner and seated himself, pulses hammering his throat.
Through the stillness of the house sounded at intervals the clink of glass from the pantry. Other sounds from above indicated the plumber’s progress from floor to floor.
“Do you realize,” she said impulsively, “how very nice you have been to me? What a perfectly horrid position I might have been in, with poor Clarence on the back fence! And suppose I had dared follow him alone to the cellar? I — I might have been there yet — up to my neck in coal?”
She gazed into space with considerable emotion.
“And now,” she said, “I am safe here in my own home. I have lunched divinely, a maid is on the way to me, Clarence remains somewhere safe indoors, Mr. Quinn is flitting from faucet to faucet, the electric light and the telephone will be in working order before very long — and it is all due to you!”
“I — I did a few things I almost w-wish I hadn’t,” stammered Brown, “b-because I can’t, somehow, decently t-tell you how tremendously I — I—” He stuck fast.
“What?”
“It would look as though I were presuming on a t-trifling service rendered, and — oh, I can’t say it; I want to, but I can’t.”
“Say what? Please, I don’t mind what you are — are going to say.”
“It’s — it’s that I — —”
“Y-es?” in soft encouragement.
“W-want to know you most tremendously now. I don’t want to wait several years for chance and hazard.”
“O-h!” as though the information conveyed a gentle shock to her. Her low-breathed exclamation nearly finished Brown.
“I knew you’d think it unpardonable for me — at such a time — to venture to — to — ask — say — express — convey — —”
“Why do you — how can I — where could we—” She recovered herself resolutely. “I do not think we ought to take advantage of an accident like this.... Do you? Besides, probably, in the natural course of social events — —”
“But it may be years! months! weeks!” insisted Brown, losing control of himself.
“I should hope it would at least be a decently reasonable interval of several weeks — —”
“But I don’t know what to do if I never see you again for weeks! I c-care so much — for — you.”
She shrank back in her chair, and in her altered face he read that he had disgraced himself.
“I knew I was going to,” he said in despair. “I couldn’t keep it — I couldn’t stop it. And now that you see what sort of a man I am I’m going to tell you more.”
“You need not,” she said faintly.
“I must. Listen! I — I don’t even know your full name — all I know is that it is Betty, and that your cat’s name is Clarence and your plumber’s name is Quinn. But if I didn’t know anything at all concerning you it would have been the same. I suppose you will think me insane if I tell you that before the car, on which you rode, came into sight I knew you were on it. And I — cared — for — you — before I ever saw you.”
“I don’t understand — —”
“I know you don’t. I don’t. All I understand is that what you and I have done has been done by us before, sometime, somewhere — part only — down to — down to where you changed cars. Up to that moment, before you took the Lexington Avenue car, I recognized each incident as it occurred.... But when all this happened to us before I must have lost courage — for I did not recognize anything after that except that I cared for you.... Do you understand one single word of what I have been saying?”
The burning color in her face had faded slowly while he was speaking; her lifted eyes grew softer, serious, as he ended impetuously.
She looked at him in retrospective silence. There was no mistaking his astonishing sincerity, his painfully earnest endeavor to impart to her some rather unusual ideas in which he certainly believed. No man who looked that way at a woman could mean impertinence; her own intelligence satisfied her that he had not meant and could never mean offense to any woman.
“Tell me,” she said quietly, “just what you mean. It is not possible for you to — care — for — me.... Is it?”
He disclosed to her, beginning briefly with his own name, material and social circumstances, a pocket edition of his hitherto uneventful career, the advent that morning of the emissary from The Green Mouse, his discussion with Smith, the strange sensation which crept over him as he emerged from the tunnel at Forty-second Street, his subsequent altercation with Smith, and the events that ensued up to the eruption of Clarence.
He spoke in his most careful attorney’s manner, frank, concise, convincing, free from any exaggeration of excitement or emotion. And she listened, alternately fascinated and appalled as, step by step, his story unfolded the links in an apparently inexorable sequence involving this young man and herself in a predestined string of episodes not yet ended — if she permitted herself to credit this astounding story.
Sensitively intelligent, there was no escaping the significance of the only possible deduction. She drew it and blushed furiously. For a moment, as the truth clamored in her brain, the self-evidence of it stunned her. But she was young, and the shamed recoil came automatically. Incredulous, almost exasperated, she raised her head to confront him; the red lips parted in outraged protest — parted and remained so, wordless, silent — the soundless, virginal cry dying unuttered on a mouth that had imperceptibly begun to tremble.
Her head sank slowly; she laid her white hands above the roses heaped in her lap.
For a long while she remained so. And he did not speak.
First the butler went away. Then Mr. Quinn followed. The maid had not yet arrived. The house was very still.
And after the silence had worn his self-control to the breaking point he rose and walked to the dining room and stood looking down into the yard. The grass out there was long and unkempt; roses bloomed on the fence; wistaria, in its deeper green of midsummer, ran riot over the trellis where Clarence had basely dodged his lovely mistress, and, after making a furry pin wheel of himself, had fled through the airhole into Stygian depths.
Somewhere above, in the silent house, Clarence was sulkily dissembling.
“I suppose,” said Brown, quietly coming back to where the girl was sitting in the golden dusk, “that I might as well find Clarence while we are waiting for y
our maid. May I go up and look about?”
And taking her silence as assent, he started upstairs.
He hunted carefully, thoroughly, opening doors, peeping under furniture, investigating clothespresses, listening at intervals, at intervals calling with misleading mildness. But, like him who died in malmsey, Clarence remained perjured and false to all sentiments of decency so often protested purringly to his fair young mistress.
Mechanically Brown opened doors of closets, knowing, if he had stopped to think, that cats don’t usually turn knobs and let themselves into tightly closed places.
In one big closet on the fifth floor, however, as soon as he opened the door there came a rustle, and he sprang forward to intercept the perfidious one; but it was only the air stirring the folds of garments hanging on the wall.
As he turned to step forth again the door gently closed with an ominous click, shutting him inside. And after five minutes’ frantic fussing he realized that he was imprisoned by a spring lock at the top of a strange house, inhabited only by a cat and a bewildered young girl, who might, at any moment now that the telephone was in order, call a cab and flee from a man who had tried to explain to her that they were irrevocably predestined for one another.
Calling and knocking were dignified and permissible, but they did no good. To kick violently at the door was not dignified, but he was obliged to do it. Evidently the closet was too remote for the sound to penetrate down four flights of stairs.
He tried to break down the door — they do it in all novels. He only rebounded painfully, ineffectively, which served him right for reading fiction.
It irked him to shout; he hesitated for a long while; then sudden misgiving lest she might flee the house seized him and he bellowed. It was no use.
The pitchy quality of the blackness in the closet aided him in bruising himself; he ran into a thousand things of all kinds of shapes and textures every time he moved. And at each fresh bruise he grew madder and madder, and, holding the cat responsible, applied language to Clarence of which he had never dreamed himself capable.
Then he sat down. He remained perfectly still for a long while, listening and delicately feeling his hurts. A curious drowsiness began to irritate him; later the irritation subsided and he felt a little sleepy.
His heart, however, thumped like an inexpensive clock; the cedar-tainted air in the closet grew heavier; he felt stupid, swaying as he rose. No wonder, for the closet was as near air-tight as it could be made. Fortunately he did not realize it.
And, meanwhile, downstairs, Betty was preparing for flight.
She did not know where she was going — how far away she could get in a rose-silk morning gown. But she had discovered, in a clothespress, an automobile duster, cap, and goggles; on the strength of these she tried the telephone, found it working, summoned a coupé, and was now awaiting its advent. But the maid from Dooley’s must first arrive to take charge of the house and Clarence until she, Betty, could summon her family to her assistance and defy The Green Mouse, Beekman Brown, and Destiny behind her mother’s skirts.
Flight was, therefore, imperative — it was absolutely indispensable that she put a number of miles between herself and this young man who had just informed her that Fate had designed them for one another.
She was no longer considering whether she owed this amazing young man any gratitude, or what sort of a man he might be, agreeable, well-bred, attractive; all she understood was that this man had suddenly stepped into her life, politely expressing his conviction that they could not, ultimately, hope to escape from each other. And, beginning to realize the awful import of his words, the only thing that restrained her from instant flight on foot was the hidden Clarence. She could not abandon her cat. She must wait for that maid. She waited. Meanwhile she hunted up Dooley’s Agency in the telephone book and called them up. They told her the maid was on the way — as though Dooley’s Agency could thwart Destiny with a whole regiment of its employees!
She had discarded her roses with a shudder; cap, goggles, duster, lay in her lap. If the maid came before Brown returned she’d flee. If Brown came back before the maid arrived she’d tell him plainly what she had decided on, thank him, tell him kindly but with decision that, considering the incredible circumstances of their encounter, she must decline to encourage any hope he might entertain of ever again seeing her.
At this stern resolve her heart, being an automatic and independent affair, refused to approve, and began an unpleasantly irregular series of beats which annoyed her.
“It is true,” she admitted to herself, “that he is a gentleman, and I can scarcely be rude enough, after what he has done for me, to leave him without any explanation at all.... His clothes are ruined. I must remember that.”
Her heart seemed to approve such sentiments, and it beat more regularly as she seated herself at a desk, found in it a sheet of notepaper and a pencil, and wrote rapidly:
“Dear Mr. Brown:
“If my maid comes before you do I am going. I can’t help it. The maid will stay to look after Clarence until I can return with some of the family. I don’t mean to be rude, but I simply cannot stand what you told me about our — about what you told me.... I’m sorry you tore your clothes.
“Please believe my flight has nothing to do with you personally or your conduct, which was perfectly (‘charming’ scratched out) proper. It is only that to be suddenly told that one is predestined to (‘marry’ scratched out) become intimately acquainted (all this scratched out and a new line begun).
“It is unendurable for a girl to think that there is no freedom of choice in life left her — to be forced, by what you say are occult currents, into — friendship — with a perfectly strange man at the other end. So I don’t think we had better ever again attempt to find anybody to present us to each other. This doesn’t sound right, but you will surely understand.
“Please do not misjudge me. I must appear to you uncivil, ungrateful, and childish — but I am, somehow, a little frightened. I know you are perfectly nice — but all that has happened is almost, in a way, terrifying to me. Not that I am cowardly; but you must understand. You will — won’t you?.... But what is the use of my asking you, as I shall never see you again.
“So I am only going to thank you, and say (‘with all my heart’ crossed out) very cordially, that you have been most kind, most generous and considerate — most — most — —”
Her pencil faltered; she looked into space, and the image of Beekman Brown, pleasant-eyed, attractive, floated unbidden out of vacancy and looked at her.
She stared back at the vision curiously, more curiously as her mind evoked the agreeable details of his features, resting there, chin on the back of her hand, from which, presently, the pencil fell unheeded.
What could he be doing upstairs all this while. She had not heard him for many minutes now. Why was he so still?
She straightened up at her desk and glanced uneasily across her shoulder, listening.
Not a sound from above; she rose and walked to the foot of the stairs.
Why was he so still? Had he found Clarence? Had anything gone wrong? Had Clarence become suddenly rabid and attacked him. Cats can’t annihilate big, strong young men. But where was he? Had he, pursuing his quest, emerged through the scuttle on to the roof — and — and — fallen off?
Scarcely knowing what she did she mounted on tiptoe to the second floor, listening. The silence troubled her; she went from room to room, opening doors and clothespresses. Then she mounted to the third floor, searching more quickly. On the fourth floor she called to him in a voice not quite steady. There was no reply.
Alarmed now, she hurriedly flung open doors everywhere, then, picking up her rose-silk skirts, she ran to the top floor and called tremulously.
A faint sound answered; bewildered, she turned to the first closet at hand, and her cheeks suddenly blanched as she sprang to the door of the cedar press and tore it wide open.
He was lying on his face amid a heap of rolle
d rugs, clothes hangers and furs, quite motionless.
She knew enough to run into the servants’ rooms, fling open the windows and, with all the strength in her young body, drag the inanimate youth across the floor and into the fresh air.
“O-h!” she said, and said it only once. Then, ashy of lip and cheek, she took hold of Brown and, lashing her memory to help her in the emergency, performed for that inanimate gentleman the rudiments of an exercise which, if done properly, is supposed to induce artificial respiration.
It certainly induced something resembling it in Brown. After a while he made unlovely and inarticulate sounds; after a while the sounds became articulate. He said: “Betty!” several times, more or less distinctly. He opened one eye, then the other; then his hands closed on the hands that were holding his wrists; he looked up at her from where he lay on the floor. She, crouched beside him, eyes still dilated with the awful fear of death, looked back, breathless, trembling.
“That is a devil of a place, that closet,” he said faintly.
She tried to smile, tried wearily to free her hands, watched them, dazed, being drawn toward him, drawn tight against his lips — felt his lips on them.
Then, without warning, an incredible thrill shot through her to the heart, stilling it — silencing pulse and breath — nay, thought itself. She heard him speaking; his words came to her like distant sounds in a dream:
“I cared for you. You give me life — and I adore you.... Let me. It will not harm you. The problem of life is solved for me; I have solved it; but unless some day you will prove it for me — Betty — the problem of life is but a sorry sum — a total of ciphers without end.... No other two people in all the world could be what we are and what we have been to each other. No other two people could dare to face what we dare face.” He paused: “Dare we, Betty?”
Her eyes turned from his. He rose unsteadily, supported on one arm; she sprang to her feet, looked at him, and, as he made an awkward effort to rise, suddenly bent forward and gave him both hands in aid.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 472