Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “I wish you would not speak so bitterly — please — —”

  “All right. It wasn’t bitterness; it was just whine. ... I’ll go, now. You will comprehend, after you think it over, that there is at least nothing of impertinence in my loving you — only a blind unreason — a deadly fear lest the other man in me, suddenly revealed, vanish before I could understand him. Because when I saw you, life’s meaning broke out suddenly — like a star — and that’s another stale simile. But one has to climb very far before one can touch even the nearest of the stars.... So forgive my one lucid interval.... I shall probably never have another.... May I take you to your carriage?”

  “Mrs. Lannis is calling for me.”

  “Then — I will take my leave — and the tatters of my reputation — any song can buy it, now — —”

  “Mr. Quarren!”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t want you to go — like this. I want you to go away knowing in your heart that you have been very — nice — agreeable — to a young girl who hasn’t perhaps had as much experience as you think — —”

  “Thank God,” he said, smiling.

  “I want you to like me, always,” she said. “Will you?”

  “I promise,” he replied so blithely that for a moment his light irony deceived her. Then something in his eyes left her silent, concerned, unresponsive — only her heart seemed to repeat persistently in childish reiteration, the endless question, Why? Why? Why? And she heard it but found no answer where love was not, and had never been.

  “I — am sorry,” she said in a low voice. “I — I try to understand you — but I don’t seem to.... I am so very sorry that you — care for me.”

  He took her gloved hand, and she let him.

  “I guess I’m nothing but a harlequin after all,” he said, “and they’re legitimate objects for pity. Good-bye, Mrs. Leeds. You’ve been very patient and sweet with a blithering lunatic.... I’ve committed only another harlequinade of a brand-new sort. But the fall from that balcony would have been less destructive.”

  She looked at him out of her gray eyes.

  “One thing,” she said, with a tremulous smile, “you may be certain that I am not going to forget you very easily.”

  “Another thing,” he said, “I shall never forget you as long as I live; and — you have my violets, I see. Are they to follow the gardenia?”

  “Only when their time comes,” she said, trying to laugh.

  So he wished her a happy trip and sojourn in the South, and went away into the city — downtown, by the way to drop into an office chair in an empty office and listen to the click of a typewriter in the outer room, and sit there hour after hour with his chin in his hand staring at nothing out of the clear blue eyes of a boy.

  And she went away to her luncheon at the Province Club with Susanne Lannis who wished her to meet some of the governors — very grand ladies — upon whose good will depended Strelsa’s election to the most aristocratic, comfortable, wisely managed, and thriftiest of all metropolitan clubs.

  After luncheon she, with Mrs. Lannis and Chrysos Lacy — a pretty red-haired edition of her brother — went to see “Sumurun.”

  And after they had tea at the redoubtable Mrs. Sprowl’s, where there were more footmen than guests, more magnificence than comfort, and more wickedness in the gossip than lemon in the tea or Irish in the more popular high-ball.

  The old lady, fat, pink, enormous, looked about her out of her little glittering green eyes with a pleased conviction that everybody on earth was mortally afraid of her. And everybody, who happened to be anybody in New York, was exactly that — with a few eccentric exceptions like her nephew, Karl Westguard, and half a dozen heavily upholstered matrons whose social altitude left them nothing to be afraid of except lack of deference and death.

  Mrs. Sprowl had a fat, wheezy, and misleading laugh; and it took time for Strelsa to understand that there was anything really venomous in the old lady; but the gossip there that afternoon, and the wheezy delight in driving a last nail into the coffin of some moribund reputation, made plain to her why her hostess was held in such respectful terror.

  The talk finally swerved from Molly Wycherly’s ball to the Irish Legation, and Mrs. Sprowl leaned toward Strelsa, and panted behind her fan:

  “A perfect scandal, child. The suppers those young men give there! Orgies, I understand! No pretty actress in town is kept sighing long for invitations. Even” — she whispered the name of a lovely and respectable prima-donna with a perfectly good husband and progeny — and nodded so violently that it set her coughing.

  “‘A perfect scandal, child. The suppers those young men give there!’”

  “Oh,” cried Strelsa, distressed, “surely you have been misinformed!”

  “Not in the least,” wheezed the old lady. “She is no better than the rest of ‘em! And I sent for my nephew Karl, and I brought him up roundly. ‘Karl!’ said I, ‘what the devil do you mean! Do you want that husband of hers dragging you all into court?’ And, do you know, my dear, he appeared perfectly astounded — said it wasn’t so — just as you said a moment ago. But I can put two and two together, yet; I’m not too old and witless to do that! And I warrant you I gave him a tongue trouncing which he won’t forget. ... Probably he retailed it to that O’Hara man, and to young Quarren, too. If he did it won’t hurt ‘em, either.”

  She was speaking now so generally that everybody heard her, and Cyrille Caldera said:

  “Ricky is certainly innocuous, anyway.”

  “Oh, is he!” said Mrs. Sprowl with another wheezy laugh. “I fancy I know that boy. Did you say ‘harmless,’ Susanne? Well, you ought to know, of course — —”

  Cyrille Caldera blushed brightly although her affair with Quarren had been of the most innocent description.

  “There’s probably as much ground for indicting Ricky as there is for indicting me,” she protested. “He’s merely a nice, useful boy — —”

  “Rather vapid, don’t you think?” observed a thin young woman in sables and an abundance of front teeth.

  “Who expects anything serious from Ricky? He possesses good manners, and a sweet alacrity,” said Chrysos Lacy, “and that’s a rare combination.”

  “He’s clever enough to be wicked, anyway,” said Mrs. Sprowl. “Don’t tell me that every one of his sentimental affairs have been perfectly harmless.”

  “Has he had many?” asked Strelsa before she meant to.

  “Thousands, child. There was Betty Clyde — whose husband must have been an idiot — and Cynthia Challis — she married Prince Sarnoff, you remember — —”

  “The Sarnoffs are coming in February,” observed Chrysos Lacy.

  “I wonder if the Prince has had a tub since he left,” said Mrs. Sprowl. “How on earth Cynthia can endure that dried up yellow Tartar — —”

  “Cynthia was in love with Ricky I think,” said Susanne Lannis.

  “Most girls are when they come out, but their mothers won’t let ’em marry him. Poor Ricky.”

  “Poor Ricky,” sighed Chrysos; “he is so nice, and nobody is likely to marry him.”

  “Why?” asked Strelsa.

  “Because he’s — why he’s just Ricky. He has no money, you know. Didn’t you know it?”

  “No,” said Strelsa.

  “That’s the trouble — partly. Then there’s no social advantage for any girl in this set marrying him. He’ll have to take a lame duck or go out of his circle for a wife. And that means good-bye Ricky — unless he marries a lame duck.”

  “Some unattractive person of uncertain age and a million,” explained Mrs. Lannis as Strelsa turned to her, perplexed.

  “Ricky,” said the lady with abundant teeth, “is a lightweight.”

  “The lightness, I think, is in his heels,” said Strelsa. “He’s intelligent otherwise I fancy.”

  “Yes, but not intellectual.”

  “I think you are possibly mistaken.”

  The profusely dentate lady looked sh
arply at Strelsa; Susanne Lannis laughed.

  “Are you his champion, Strelsa? I thought you had met him last night for the first time.”

  “Mrs. Leeds is probably going the way of all women when they first meet Dicky Quarren,” observed Mrs. Sprowl with malicious satisfaction. “But you must hurry and get over it, child, before Sir Charles Mallison arrives.” At which sally everybody laughed.

  Strelsa’s colour was high, but she merely smiled, not only at the coupling of her name with Quarren’s but at the hint of the British officer’s arrival.

  Major Sir Charles Mallison had been over before, why, nobody knew, because he was one of the wealthiest bachelors in England. Now it was understood that he was coming again; and a great many well-meaning people saw that agreeable gentleman’s fate in the new beauty, Strelsa Leeds; and did not hesitate to tell her so with the freedom of fashionable banter.

  “Yes,” sighed Chrysos Lacy, sentimentally, “when you see Sir Charles you’ll forget Ricky.”

  “Doubtless,” said Strelsa, still laughing. “But tell me, Mrs. Sprowl, why does everybody wish to marry me to somebody? I’m very happy.”

  “It’s our feminine sense of fitness and proportion that protests. In the eternal balance of things material you ought to be as wealthy as you are pretty.”

  “I have enough — almost — —”

  “Ah! the ‘almost’ betrays the canker feeding on that damask cheek!” laughed Mrs. Lannis. “No, you must marry millions, Strelsa — you’ll need them.”

  “You are mistaken. I have enough. I’d like to be happy for a while.”

  The naïve inference concerning the incompatibility of marriage and happiness made them laugh again, forgetting perhaps the tragic shadow of the past which had unconsciously evoked it.

  After Strelsa and Mrs. Lannis had gone, a pair of old cats dropped in, one in ermine, the other in sea-otter; and the inevitable discussion of Strelsa Leeds began with a brutality and frankness paralleled only in kennel parlance.

  To a criticism of the girl’s slenderness of physique Mrs. Sprowl laughed loud and long.

  “That’s what’s setting all the men crazy. The world’s as full of curves as I am; plumpness to the verge of redundancy is supposed to be popular among men; a well-filled stocking behind the footlights sets the gaby agape. But your man of the world has other tastes.”

  “Jaded tastes,” said somebody.

  “Maybe they’re jaded and vicious — but they’re his. And maybe that girl has a body and limbs which are little more accented than a boy’s. But it’s the last shriek among people who know.”

  “Not such a late one, either,” said somebody. “Who was the French sculptor who did the Merode?”

  “Before that Lippo fixed the type,” observed somebody else.

  “Personally,” remarked a third, “I don’t fancy pipe-stems. Mrs. Leeds needs padding — to suit my notions.”

  “Wait a year,” said Mrs. Sprowl, significantly. “The beauty of that girl will be scandalous when she fills out a little more.... If she only had the wits to match what she is going to be! — But there’s a streak of something silly in her — I suspect latent sentiment — which is likely to finish her if she doesn’t look sharp. Fancy her taking up the cudgels for Ricky, now! — a boy whose wits would be of no earthly account except in doing what he is doing. And he’s apparently persuaded that little minx that he’s intellectual! I’ll have to talk to Ricky.”

  “You’d better talk to your nephew, too,” said somebody, laughing.

  “Who? Karl!” exclaimed the old lady, her little green eyes mere sparks in the broad expanse of face. “Let me catch him mooning around that girl! Let me catch Ricky philandering in earnest! I’ve made up my mind about Strelsa Leeds, and” — she glared around her, fanning vigorously— “I think nobody is likely to interfere.”

  That evening, at the opera, Westguard came into her box, and she laid down the law of limits to him so decisively that, taken aback, astonished and chagrined, he found nothing to say for the moment.

  When he did recover his voice and temper he informed her very decidedly that he’d follow his own fancy as far as any woman was concerned.

  But she only laughed derisively and sent him off to bring Quarren who had entered the Vernons’ box and was bending over Strelsa’s shoulders.

  When Quarren obeyed, which he did not do with the alacrity she had taught him, she informed him with a brevity almost contemptuous that his conduct with Strelsa at the Wycherlys had displeased her.

  He said, surprised: “Why does it concern you? Mrs. Wycherly is standing sponsor for Mrs. Leeds — —”

  “I shall relieve Molly Wycherly of any responsibility,” said the old lady. “I like that girl. Can Molly do as much as I can for her?”

  He remained silent, disturbed, looking out across the glitter at Strelsa.

  Men crowded the Vernons’ box, arriving in shoals and departing with very bad grace when it became necessary to give place to new arrivals.

  “Do you see?” said the old lady, tendering him her opera glass.

  “What?” he asked sullenly.

  “A new planet. Use your telescope, Rix — and also amass a little common-sense. Yonder sits a future duchess, or a countess, if I care to start things for her. Which I shan’t — in that direction.”

  “There are no poor duchesses or countesses, of course,” he remarked with an unpleasant laugh.

  Mrs. Sprowl looked at him, ironically.

  “I understand the Earl of Dankmere, perfectly,” she said— “also other people, including young, and sulky boys. So if you clearly understand my wishes, and the girl doesn’t make a fool of herself over you or any other callow ineligible, her future will give me something agreeable to occupy me.”

  The blood stung his face as he stood up — a tall graceful figure among the others in the box — a clean-cut, wholesome boy to all appearances, with that easy and amiable presence which is not distinction but which sometimes is even more agreeable.

  Lips compressed, the flush still hot on his face, he stood silent, tasting all the bitterness that his career had stored up for him — sick with contempt for a self that could accept and swallow such things. For he had been well schooled, but scarcely to that contemptible point.

  “Of course,” he said, pleasantly, “you understand that I shall do as I please.”

  Mrs. Sprowl laughed:

  “I’ll see to that, too, Ricky.”

  Chrysos Lacy leaned forward and began to talk to him, and his training reacted mechanically, for he seemed at once to become his gay and engaging self.

  He did not return to the Vernons’ box nor did he see Strelsa again before she went South.

  The next night a note was delivered to him, written from the Wycherlys’ car, “Wind-Flower.”

  “My dear Mr. Quarren:

  “Why did you not come back to say good-bye? You spoke of doing so. I’m afraid Chrysos Lacy is responsible.

  “The dance at the Van Dynes was very jolly. I am exceedingly sorry you were not there. Thank you for the flowers and bon-bons that were delivered to me in my state-room. My violets are not yet entirely faded, so they have not yet joined your gardenia in the limbo of useless things.

  “Mr. Westguard came to the train. He is nice.

  “Mr. O’Hara and Chrysos and Jack Lacy were there, so in spite of your conspicuous absence the Legation maintained its gay reputation and covered itself with immortal blarney.

  “This letter was started as a note to thank you for your gifts, but it is becoming a serial as Molly and Jim and I sit here watching the North Carolina landscape fly past our windows like streaks of brown lightened only by the occasional delicious and sunny green of some long-leafed pine.

  “There’s nothing to see from horizon to horizon except the monotonous repetition of mules and niggers and evil-looking cypress swamps and a few razor-backs and a buzzard flying very high in the blue.

  “Thank you again for my flowers.... I wonder if yo
u understand that my instinct is to be friends with you?

  “It was from the very beginning.

  “And please don’t be absurd enough to think that I am going to forget you — or our jolly escapade at the Wycherly ball. You behaved very handsomely once. I know I can count on your kindness to me.

  “Good-bye, and many many thanks — as Jack Lacy says— ‘f’r the manny booggy-rides, an’ th’ goom-candy, an’ the boonches av malagy grrapes’!

  “Sincerely your friend, “Strelsa Leeds.”

  That same day Sir Charles Mallison arrived in New York and went directly to Mrs. Sprowl’s house. Their interview was rather brief but loudly cordial on the old lady’s part:

  “How’s my sister and Foxy?” she asked — meaning Sir Renard and Lady Spinney.

  Sir Charles regretted he had not seen them.

  “And you?”

  “Quite fit, thanks.” And he gravely trusted that her own health was satisfactory.

  “You haven’t changed your mind?” she asked with a smile which the profane might consider more like a grin.

  Sir Charles said he had not, and a healthy colour showed under the tan.

  “All these years,” commented the old lady, ironically.

  “Four,” said Sir Charles.

  “Was it four years ago when you saw her in Egypt?”

  “Four years — last month — the tenth.”

  “And never saw her again?”

  “Never.”

  Mrs. Sprowl shook with asthmatic mirth:

  “Such story-book constancy! Why didn’t you ask your friend the late Sirdar to have Leeds pitched into the Nile. It would have saved you those four years’ waiting? You know you haven’t many years to waste, Sir Charles.”

  “I’m forty-five,” he said, colouring painfully.

  “Four years gone to hell,” said the old lady with that delicate candour which sometimes characterised her.... “And now what do you propose to do with the rest of ‘em? Dawdle away your time?”