Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  Jones and Helen were looking across the fire at them in silence; Ellis unrolled some blankets, made a nest at the foot of the pine full in the fire-glow. Swathed to her smooth white throat, Molly sank into them.

  “Now,” she said, innocently, “we can talk. Helen! Ask Mr. Jones to make some coffee. Oh, thank you, Mr. Jones! Isn’t this perfectly delicious! So simple, so primitive, so sincere” — she looked at Ellis— “so jolly. If the simple life is only a state of mind I can understand how easy it is to follow it to sheerest happiness.” And in a low voice, to Ellis: “Can you find happiness in it, too?”

  Across the fire Helen called softly to them: “Do you want some toasted cheese, too? Mr. Jones knows how to make it.”

  A little later, Jones, toasting bread and cheese, heard a sweet voice softly begin the Swan-Song. It was Helen. Molly’s lovely, velvet voice joined in; Ellis cautiously tried his barytone; Jones wisely remained mute, and the cheese sizzled a discreet tremolo. It was indeed the swan-song of the heart-whole and fancy-free — the swan-song of the unawakened. For the old order of things was passing away — had passed. And with the moon mounting in silvered splendor over the forest, the newer order of life — the simpler, the sweeter — became so plain to them that they secretly wondered, as they ate their toast and cheese, how they could have lived so long, endured so long, the old and dull complexity of a life through the eventless days of which their hearts had never quickened to the oldest, the most primitive, the simplest of appeals.

  And so, there, under the burnished moon, soberly sharing their toasted cheese, the muffled swan-song of the incubating maiden thrilling their enraptured ears, began for them that state of mind in the inviolate mystery of which the passion for the simpler life is hatched.

  “If we only had a banjo!” sighed Helen.

  “I have a jew’s-harp,” ventured Jones. “I am not very musical, but every creature likes to emit some sort of melody.”

  Ellis laughed.

  “Why not?” asked Helen Gay, quickly; “after all, what simpler instrument can you wish for?” And she laughed at Jones in a way that left him light-headed.

  So there, in the moonlight and the shadows of the primeval pines, Jones — simplest of men with simplest of names — produced the simplest of all musical instruments, and, looking once into the beautiful eyes of Helen, quietly began the simplest of all melodies — the Spanish Fandango.

  And for these four the simple life began.

  I waited for a few moments, but Williams seemed to consider that there was nothing more to add. So I said:

  “Did they marry those two girls?”

  He glanced at me in a preoccupied manner without apparently understanding.

  “Did they marry ‘em?” I repeated, impatiently.

  “What? Oh, yes, of course.”

  “Then why didn’t you say so?”

  “I didn’t have to say so. Didn’t you notice the form in which I ended?”

  “What’s that got to do with it? You’re not telling me a short story, you’re telling me what really happened. And what really happens never ends artistically.”

  “It does when I tell it,” he said, with a self-satisfied smile. “Let Fate do its worst; let old man Destiny get in his work; let Chance fix up things to suit herself. I wait until that trio finishes, then I step in and tell the truth in my own way. And, by gad! when I get through, Fate, Chance, and Destiny set up a yell of impotent fury and Truth looks at herself in the mirror in delighted astonishment, amazed to discover in herself attractions which she never suspected.”

  “In other words,” said I, “Fate no longer has the final say-so.”

  “Not while the short-story writer exists,” he grinned. “It’s up to him. Fate slaps your face midway in a pretty romance. All right. But when I make a record of the matter I pick, choose, sort, re-assort my box of words, and when things are going too rapidly I wink at Fate with my tongue in my cheek and round up everybody so amiably that nobody knows exactly what did happen — and nobody even stops to think because everybody has already finished the matter in their own minds to their own satisfaction.”

  CHAPTER XVII

  SHOWING HOW IT IS POSSIBLE FOR ANY MAN TO MAKE OF HIMSELF A CHUMP

  After a while I repeated: “They did marry, didn’t they?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I’m perfectly certain they did.”

  “Well, then, what more do you want?” he laughed.

  “Another of your reminiscences disguised as fiction,” I said, tinkling my spoon on the edge of my tumbler to attract the waiter.

  “Two more,” I said, lighting a caporal cigarette, the penetrating aroma of which drifted lazily through forgotten years, drawing memory with it in its fragrant back-draught.

  “Do you remember Seabury’s brother?” he asked.

  “Beaux Arts? Certainly. Architect, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, but he came into a lot of money and started for home to hit a siding.”

  “Little chump,” I said; “I remember him. There was a promising architect spoiled.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. He is doing a lot to his money.”

  “Good?”

  “Of course. Otherwise I should have said that his money is doing a lot to him.”

  “Cut out these fine shades and go back to galley-proof,” I said, sullenly. “What about him, anyway?”

  Williams said, slowly: “A thing happened to that man which had no right to happen anywhere except in a musical comedy. But,” he shrugged his shoulders, “everybody’s lives are really full of equally grotesque episodes. The trouble is that the world is too serious to discover any absurdity in itself. We writers have to do that for it. For example, there was Seabury’s brother. Trouble began the moment he saw her.”

  “Saw who?” I interrupted.

  “Saw her! Shut up!”

  I did so. He continued:

  They encountered one another under the electric lights in the wooden labyrinth which forms the ferry terminal of the Sixth Avenue Elevated Railroad, she hastening one way, he hurrying the opposite. There was ample room for them to pass each other; it may have been because she was unusually pretty, it may have been his absent-mindedness, but he made one of those mistakes which everybody makes once in a lifetime: he turned to the left, realised what he was doing, wheeled hastily to the right — as she, too, turned — only to meet her face to face, politely dodge, meet again, lose his head and begin a heart-breaking contra-dance, until, vexed and bewildered, she stood perfectly still, and he, redder than she, took the opportunity to slink past her and escape.

  “Hey!” said a sarcastic voice, as, blinded with chagrin, he found himself attempting to force a locked wooden gate. “You want to go the other way, unless you’re hunting for the third rail.”

  “No, I don’t,” he said, wrathfully; “I want to go uptown.”

  “That’s what I said; you want to go the other way, even if you don’t know where you want to go,” yawned the gateman disdainfully.

  Seabury collected his scattered wits and gazed about him. Being a New Yorker, and acquainted with the terminal labyrinth, he very quickly discovered his error, and, gripping suit-case and golf-bag more firmly, he turned and retraced his steps at the natural speed of a good New Yorker, which is a sort of a meaningless lope.

  Jammed into the familiar ticket line, he peered ahead through the yellow glare of light and saw the charming girl with whom he had danced his foolish contra-dance just receiving her ticket from the boxed automaton. Also, to his satisfaction, he observed her disappear through the turnstile into the crush surging forward alongside of the cars, and, when he presently deposited his own ticket in the chopper’s box, he had no more expectation of ever again seeing her than he had of doing something again to annoy and embarrass her.

  But even in Manhattan Destiny works overtime, and Fate gets busy in a manner that no man knoweth; and so, personally though invisibly conducted, Seabury lugged his suit-case and golf-bag aboard a tr
ain, threaded his way into a stuffy car and took the only empty seat remaining; and a few seconds later, glancing casually at his right-hand neighbour, he blushed to find himself squeezed into a seat beside his unusually attractive partner in the recent contra-dance.

  That she had already seen him, the calm indifference in her blue eyes, the poise of her flushed face, were evidence conclusive.

  He shrank back, giving her all the room he could, set his bag of golf-clubs between his knees, and looked innocent. First, as all New Yorkers do, he read the line of advertisements opposite with the usual personal sense of resentment; then he carelessly scanned the people across the aisle. As usual, they resembled everybody he had never particularly noticed; he fished out the evening paper, remembered that he had read it on the ferryboat, stuck it into his golf-bag, and contemplated the battered ends of his golf-clubs.

  Station after station flashed yellow lamps along the line of car windows; passengers went and passengers took their places; in one of the streets below he caught a glimpse of a fire engine vomiting sparks and black smoke; in another an ambulance with a squalid assemblage crowded around a policeman who was emerging from a drug store.

  He had pretty nearly succeeded in forgetting the girl and his mortification; he cast a calmly casual glance over his well-fitting trousers and shoes. The edge of a shoe-lace lay exposed, and he leisurely remedied this untidy accident, leaning over and tying the lace securely with a double knot.

  Fourteenth, Eighteenth, Twenty-third, ran the stations. He gathered his golf-bag instinctively and sat alert, prepared to rise and leave the car with dignity.

  “Twenty-eighth!” It was his station. Just as he rose the attractive girl beside him sprang up, and at the same instant his right leg was jerked from under him and he sat down in his seat with violence. Before he comprehended what had happened, the girl, with a startled exclamation, fell back into her seat, and he felt a spasmodic wrench at his foot again.

  Astonished, he struggled to rise once more, but something held him — his foot seemed to be caught; and as he turned he encountered her bewildered face and felt another desperate tug which brought him abruptly into his seat again.

  “What on earth is the matter?” he asked.

  “‘I — I don’t know,’ she stammered; ‘my shoe seems tied to yours.’”

  “I — I don’t know,” she stammered; “my shoe seems to be tied to yours.”

  “Tied!” he cried, bending down in a panic, “wasn’t that my shoe-lace?” His golf-bag fell, he seized it and set it against the seat between them. “Hold it a moment,” he groaned. “I tied your shoe-lace to mine!”

  “You tied it!” she repeated, furiously.

  “I saw a shoe-lace — I thought it was mine — I tied it fast — in a d-d-double knot — —”

  “Untie it at once!” she said, crimson to the roots of her hair.

  “Great Heavens, madam! I didn’t mean to do it! I’ll fix it in a moment — —”

  “Don’t,” she whispered, fiercely; “the people opposite are looking at us! Do you wish to hold us both up to ridicule?” He straightened up, thoroughly flurried.

  “But — this is my station—” he began.

  “It is mine, too. I’d rather sit here all night than have those people see you untie your shoe from mine! How — how could you — —”

  “I’ve explained that I didn’t mean to do it,” he returned, dropping into the breathless undertone in which she spoke. “Happening to glance down, I saw a shoe-lace end and thought my shoe was untied — —”

  She looked at him scornfully.

  “And I tied it tight, that’s all. I’m horribly mortified; this is the second time I’ve appeared to disadvantage — —”

  “People in New York usually turn to the right; even horses — —”

  “I doubt,” he said, “that you can make me feel much worse than I feel now, but it’s a sort of a horrible relief to know what a fool you think me.”

  She said nothing, sitting there, cooling her hot face in the breeze from the forward door; he, numb with chagrin, stole an apprehensive glance at the passengers opposite. Nobody appeared to have observed their plight, and he ventured to say so in a low voice.

  “Are you certain?” she asked, her own voice not quite steady.

  “Perfectly. Look! Nobody is eying our feet.”

  Her own small feet were well tucked up under her gown; she instinctively drew them further in; he felt a little tug; they both coloured furiously.

  “This is simply unspeakable,” she said, looking straight ahead of her through two bright tears of mortification.

  “Suppose,” he whispered, “you edge your foot a trifle this way — I think I can cut the knot with my penknife—” He glanced about him stealthily. “Shall I try?”

  “Not now. Wait until those people go.”

  “But some of them may live in Harlem.”

  “I — I can’t help it. Do you suppose I’m going to let you lean over before all those people and try to untie our shoes?”

  “Do you mean to sit here until they’re all gone?” he asked, appalled.

  “I do. Terrible as the situation is, we’ve got to conceal it.”

  “Even if some of them go to the end of the line?”

  “I don’t care!” She turned on him with a hint of that pretty fierceness again. “Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve affronted and mortified me and humiliated me beyond endurance. I have a guest to dine with me: I shall not arrive before midnight!”

  “Do you suppose,” he said miserably, “that anything you say can add to my degradation? Can’t you imagine how a man must feel who first of all makes a four-footed fool of himself before the most attractive girl he — —”

  “Don’t say that!” she cried, hotly.

  “Yes, I will! You are! And I dodged and tumbled about like a headless chicken and ran into the wrong gate. I wish I’d climbed out on the third rail! And then, when I hoped I’d never see you again, I found myself beside you, and — Good Heavens! I lost no time in beginning my capers again and doing the most abandoned deed a man ever accomplished on earth!”

  She appeared to be absorbed in contemplation of a breakfast-food advertisement; her color was still high; at times she worried her under lip with her white teeth, but her breath rose and fell under the fluffy bosom of her gown with more regularity, and the two bright tears in her eyes had dried unshed. Wrath may have dried them.

  “I wish it were possible,” he said very humbly, “for you to see the humour — —”

  “Humour!” she repeated, menacingly.

  “No — I didn’t mean that, I meant the — the — —”

  “You did! You meant the humour of the situation. I will answer you. I do not see the humour of it!”

  “You are quite right,” he admitted, looking furtively at the edge of her gown which concealed his right foot. “It is, as you say, simply ghastly to be tied together by the feet. Don’t you suppose I could — without awakening suspicion — cut the — the laces with a penknife?”

  “I beg you will attempt nothing whatever until this car is empty.”

  “Certainly,” he said. “I will do anything in the world I can to spare you.”

  She did not reply, and he sat there nervously balanced on the edge of his seat, watching the lights of Harlem flash into view below. He had been hungry; he was no longer. Appetite had been succeeded by a gnawing anxiety. Again and again warm waves of shame overwhelmed him, alternating with a sort of wild-eyed pity for the young girl who sat so rigidly beside him, face averted. Once a mad desire to laugh seized him; he wondered whether it might be a premonition of hysteria, and shuddered. It did not seem as though he could possibly endure it another second to be tied by the foot to this silently suffering and lovely companion.

  “Do you think,” he said, hoarsely, “at the next station that if we rose together — and kept step — —”

  She shook her head.

  “A — a sort of lock-step,” he
explained, timidly.

  “I would if I thought it possible,” she replied under her breath; “but I dare not. Suppose you should miss step! You are likely to do anything if it’s only sufficiently foolish.”

  “You could take my arm and pretend you are my lame sister,” he ventured.

  “Suppose the train started. Suppose, by any one of a thousand possible accidents, you should become panic-stricken. What sort of a spectacle would we furnish the passengers of this car? No! No! No! The worst of it is almost over. My guest is there — astounded at my absence. Before I am even half-way back to Twenty-eighth Street she will have become sufficiently affronted to leave the house. I might as well go on to the end of the road.” She turned toward him hastily: “Where is the end of this road?”

  “Somewhere in the Bronx, I believe,” he said, vaguely.

  “That is hours from Twenty-eighth Street, isn’t it?”

  “I believe so.”

  The train whirled on; stations were far between, now. He sat so silent, so utterly broken and downcast, that after a long while she turned to him with a hint of softness in her stern reserve.

  “Of course,” she said, “I do not suppose you deliberately intended to tie our feet together. I am not absurd. But the astonishment, the horror of finding what you had done exasperated me for a moment. I’m cool enough now; besides, it is perfectly plain that you are the sort of man one is — is accustomed to know.”

  “I hope not!” he said, devoutly.

  “Oh, I mean—” She hesitated, and the glimmer of a smile touched her eyes, instantly extinguished, however.

  “I understand,” he said. “You mean that it’s lucky your shoe-laces are tied to the shoe-lace of a man of your own sort. I hope to Heaven you may find a little comfort in that.”