Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Oh, shut up!” said Quarren tranquilly. “If you’re a novelist you write to amuse people, and you ought to be thankful that you’ve succeeded.”

  “Confound it!” roared Westguard, “I write to instruct people! not to keep ’em from yawning!”

  “Then you’ve made a jolly fluke of it, that’s all — because you have accidentally written a corking good story — good enough and interesting enough to make people stand for the cold chunks of philosophical admonition with which you’ve spread your sandwich — thinly, Heaven be praised!”

  “I write,” said Westguard, furious, “because I’ve a message to deliv — —”

  “‘I write,’ said Westguard, furious, ‘because I have a message to deliv—’”

  “Help!” moaned Quarren. “You write because it’s in you to do it; because you’ve nothing more interesting to do; and because it enables you to make a decent and honourable living!”

  “Do those reasons prevent my having a message to deliver?” roared Westguard.

  “No, they exist in spite of it. You’d write anyway, whether or not you believed you had a message to deliver. You’ve written some fifteen novels, and fifteen times you have smothered your story with your message. This time, by accident, the story got its second breath, and romped home, with ‘Message’ a bad second, and that selling plater, ‘Philosophy,’ left at the post — —”

  “Go on! — you irreverent tout!” growled Westguard; “I want my novels read, of course. Any author does. But I wish to Heaven somebody would try to interpret the important lessons which I — —”

  “Oh, preciousness and splash! Tell your story as well as you can, and if it’s well done there’ll be latent lessons enough in it.”

  “Are you perhaps instructing me in my own profession?” asked the other, smiling.

  “Heaven knows I’m not venturing — —”

  “Heaven knows you are! Also there is something In what you say—” He sat smoking, thoughtfully, eyes narrowing in the fire— “if I only could manage that! — to arrest the public’s attention by the rather cheap medium of the story, and then, cleverly, shoot a few moral pills into ‘em.... That’s one way, of course — —”

  “Like the drums of the Salvation Army.”

  Westguard looked around at him, suspiciously, but Quarren seemed to be serious enough.

  “I suppose it doesn’t matter much how a fellow collects an audience, so that he does collect one.”

  “Exactly,” nodded Quarren. “Get your people, then keep ’em interested and unsuspecting while you inject ’em full of thinks.”

  Westguard smoked and pondered; but presently his lips became stern and compressed.

  “I don’t intend to trifle with my convictions or make any truce or any compromise with ‘em,” he announced. “I’m afraid that this last story of mine ran away with me.”

  “It sure did, old Ironsides. Heaven protected her own this time. And in ‘The Real Thing’ you have ridden farther out among the people with your Bible and your Sword than you ever have penetrated by brandishing both from the immemorial but immobile battlements of righteousness. Truth is a citadel, old fellow; but its garrison should be raiders, not defenders. And they should ride far afield to carry its message. For few journey to that far citadel; you must go to them. And does it make any difference what vehicle you employ in the cause of Truth — so that the message arrives somewhere before your vehicle breaks down of its own heaviness? Novel or poem, sermon or holy writ — it’s all one, Karl, so that they get there with their burden.”

  Westguard sat silent a moment, then thumped the table, emphatically.

  “If I had your wasted talents,” he said, “I could write anything!”

  “Rot!”

  “As you please. You use your ability rottenly — that’s true enough.”

  “My ability,” mimicked Quarren.

  “Yes, your many, many talents, Rix. God knows why He gave them to you; I don’t — for you use them ignobly, when you do not utterly neglect them — —”

  “I’ve a light and superficial talent for entertaining people; I’ve nimble legs, and possess a low order of intelligence known as ‘tact.’ What more have I?”

  “You’re the best amateur actor in New York, for example.”

  “An amateur,” sneered Quarren. “That is to say, a man who has the inclinations, but neither the courage, the self-respect, nor the ambition of the professional.... Well, I admit that. I lack something — courage, I think. I prefer what is easy. And I’m doing it.”

  “What’s your reward?” said Westguard bluntly.

  “Reward? Oh, I don’t know. The inner temple. I have the run of the premises. People like me, trust me, depend upon me more or less. The intrigues and politics of my little world amuse me; now and then I act as ambassador, as envoy of peace, as herald, as secret diplomatic agent.... Reward? Oh, yes — you didn’t suppose that my real-estate operations clothed and fed me, did you, Karl?”

  “What does?”

  “Diplomacy,” explained Quarren gaily. “A successful embassy is rewarded. How? Why, now and then a pretty woman’s husband makes an investment for me at his own risk; now and then, when my office is successfully accomplished, I have my fee as social attorney or arbiter elegantiarum.... There are, perhaps, fewer separations and divorces on account of me; fewer scandals.

  “I am sometimes called into consultation, in extremis; I listen, I advise — sometimes I plan and execute; even take the initiative and interfere — as when a foolish boy at the Cataract Club, last week, locked himself into the bath-room with an automatic revolver and a case of half-drunken fright. I had to be very careful; I expected to hear that drumming fusillade at any moment.

  “But I talked to him, through the keyhole: and at last he opened the door — to take a shot at me, first.”

  Quarren shrugged and lighted a cigarette.

  “Of course,” he added, “his father was only too glad to pay his debts. But boys don’t always see things in their true proportions. Neither do women.”

  Westguard, silent, scowling, pulled at his pipe for a while, then:

  “Why should you play surgeon and nurse in such a loathsome hospital?”

  “Somebody must. I seem better fitted to do it than the next man.”

  “Yes,” said Westguard with a wry face, “I fancy somebody must do unpleasant things — even among the lepers of Molokai. But I’d prefer real lepers.”

  “The social sort are sometimes sicker,” laughed Quarren.

  “I don’t agree with you.... By the way, it’s all off between my aunt and me.”

  “I’m sorry, Karl — —”

  “I’m not! I don’t want her money. She told me to go to the devil, and I said something similar. Do you know what she wants me to do?” he added angrily. “Give up writing, live on an allowance from her, and marry Chrysos Lacy! What do you think of that for a cold-blooded and impertinent proposition! We had a fearful family row,” he continued with satisfaction— “my aunt bellowing so that her footmen actually fled, and I doing the cool and haughty, and letting her bellow her bally head off.”

  “You and she have exchanged civilities before,” said Quarren, smiling.

  “Yes, but this is really serious. I’m damned if I give up writing.”

  “Or marry Chrysos Lacy?”

  “Or that, either. Do you think I want a red-headed wife? And I’ve never spoken a dozen words to her, either. And I’ll pick out my own wife. What does my aunt think I am? I wish I were in love with somebody’s parlour-maid. B’jinks! I’d marry her, just to see my aunt’s expression — —”

  “Oh, stop your fulminations,” said Quarren, laughing. “That’s the way with you artistic people; you’re a passionate pack of pups!”

  “I’m not as passionate as my aunt!” retorted Westguard wrathfully. “Do you consider her artistic? She’s a meddlesome, malicious, domineering, insolent, evil old woman, and I told her so.”

  Quarren managed to stifle
his laughter for a moment, but his sense of the ludicrous was keen, and the scene his fancy evoked sent him off into mirth uncontrollable.

  Westguard eyed him gloomily; ominous clouds poured from “The Weather-breeder.”

  “Perhaps it’s funny,” he said, “but she and I cannot stand each other, and this time it’s all off for keeps. I told her if she sent me another check I’d send it back. That settles it, doesn’t it?”

  “You’re foolish, Karl — —”

  “Never mind. If I can’t keep myself alive in an untrammelled and self-respecting exercise of my profession—” His voice ended in a gurgling growl. Then, as though the recollections of his injuries at the hands of his aunt still stung him, he reared up in his chair:

  “Chrysos Lacy,” he roared, “is a sweet, innocent girl — not a bale of fashionable merchandise! Besides,” he added in a modified tone, “I was rather taken by — by Mrs. Leeds.”

  Quarren slowly raised his eyes.

  “I was,” insisted Westguard sulkily; “and I proved myself an ass by saying so to my aunt. Why in Heaven’s name I was idiot enough to go and tell her, I don’t know. Perhaps I had a vague idea that she would be so delighted that she’d give me several tons of helpful advice.”

  “Did she?”

  “Did she! She came back at me with Chrysos Lacy, I tell you! And when I merely smiled and attempted to waive away the suggestion, she flew into a passion, called me down, cursed me out — you know her language isn’t always in good taste — and then she ordered me to keep away from Mrs. Leeds — as though I ever hung around any woman’s skirts! I’m no Squire of Dames. I tell you, Rix, I was mad clear through. So I told her that I’d marry Mrs. Leeds the first chance I got — —”

  “Don’t talk about her that way,” remonstrated Quarren pleasantly.

  “About who? My aunt?”

  “I didn’t mean your aunt?”

  “Oh. About Mrs. Leeds. Why not? She’s the most attractive woman I ever met — —”

  “Very well. But don’t talk about marrying her — as though you had merely to suggest it to her. You know, after all, Mrs. Leeds may have ideas of her own.”

  “Probably she has,” admitted Westguard, sulkily. “I don’t imagine she’d care for a man of my sort. Why do you suppose she went off on that cruise with Langly Sprowl?”

  Quarren said, gravely: “I have no idea what reasons Mrs. Leeds has for doing anything.”

  “You correspond.”

  “Who said so?”

  “My aunt.”

  Quarren flushed up, but said nothing.

  Westguard, oblivious of his annoyance, and enveloped in a spreading cloud of tobacco, went on:

  “Of course if you don’t know, I don’t. But, by the same token, my aunt was in a towering rage when she heard that Langly had Mrs. Leeds aboard the Yulan.”

  “What!” said the other, sharply.

  “She swore like a trooper, and called Langly all kinds of impolite names. Said she’d trim him if he ever tried any of his tricks around Mrs. Leeds — —”

  “What tricks? What does she mean by tricks?”

  “Oh, I suppose she meant any of his blackguardly philandering. There isn’t a woman living on whom he is afraid to try his hatchet-faced blandishments.”

  Quarren dropped back into the depths of his arm-chair. Presently his rigid muscles relaxed. He said coolly:

  “I don’t think Langly Sprowl is likely to misunderstand Mrs. Leeds.”

  “That depends,” said Westguard. “He’s a rotten specimen, even if he is my cousin. And he knows I think so.”

  A few minutes later O’Hara sauntered in. He had been riding in the Park and his boots and spurs were shockingly muddy.

  “Who is this Sir Charles Mallison, anyway?” he asked, using the decanter and then squirting his glass full of carbonic. “Is it true that he’s goin’ to marry that charmin’ Mrs. Leeds? I’ll break his bally Sassenach head for him! I’ll — —”

  “The rumour was contradicted in this morning’s paper,” said Quarren coldly.

  O’Hara drank pensively: “I see that Langly Sprowl is messin’ about, too. Mrs. Ledwith had better hurry up out there in Reno — or wherever she’s gettin’ her divorce. I saw Chet Ledwith ridin’ in the Park. Dankmere was with him. Funny he doesn’t seem to lose any caste by sellin’ his wife to Sprowl.”

  “The whole thing is a filthy mess,” growled Westguard; “let it alone.”

  “Why don’t you make a novel about it?” inquired O’Hara.

  “Because, you dub! I don’t use real episodes or living people!” roared Westguard; “newspapers and a few chumps to the contrary!”

  “So! — so-o!” said O’Hara, soothingly— “whoa — steady, boy!” And he pretended to rub down Westguard, hissing the while as do grooms when currying.

  “Anybody who tells the truth about social conditions in any section of human society is always regarded as a liar,” said Westguard. “Not that I have any desire to do it, but if I should ever write a novel dealing with social conditions in any fashionable set, I’d be disbelieved.”

  “You would be if you devoted your attention to fashionable scandals only,” said Quarren.

  “Why? Aren’t there plenty of scandalous — —”

  “Plenty. But no more than in any other set or coterie; not as many as there are among more ignorant people. Virtue far outbalances vice among us: a novel, properly proportioned, ought to show that. If it doesn’t, it’s misleading.”

  “Supposing,” said Westguard, “that I were indecent enough to show up my aunt in fiction. Nobody would believe her possible.”

  “I sometimes doubt her even now,” observed O’Hara, grinning.

  Quarren said: “Count up the unpleasant characters in your own social vicinity, Karl — just to prove to yourself that there are really very few.”

  “There is Langly — and my aunt — and the Lester Calderas — and the Ledwiths — —”

  “Go on!”

  Westguard laughed: “I guess that ends the list,” he said.

  “It does. Also I dispute the list,” said Quarren.

  “Cyrille Caldera is a pippin,” remarked O’Hara, sentimentally.

  “What about Mary Ledwith? Is anybody here inclined to sit in judgment?”

  “I,” said Westguard grimly.

  “Why?”

  “Divorce is a dirty business.”

  “Oh. You’d rather she put up with Chester? — the sort of man who was weak enough to let her go?”

  “Yes!”

  “Get out, you old Roundhead!” said Quarren, laughing. He rose, laid his hand lightly on Westguard’s shoulder in passing, and went upstairs to his room, where he wrote a long letter to Strelsa; and then destroyed it. Then he lay down, covering his boyish head with his arms.

  When Lacy came in he saw him lying on the bed, and thought he was asleep.

  CHAPTER V

  Toward the end of March Strelsa, with the Wycherlys, returned to New York, dead tired. She had been flattered, run after, courted from Palm Beach to Havana; the perpetual social activity, the unbroken fever of change and excitement had already made firmer the soft lineaments of the girl’s features, had slightly altered the expression of the mouth.

  By daylight the fatigues of pleasure were faintly visible — that unmistakable imprint which may perhaps leave the eyes clear and calm, but which edges the hardened contour of the cheek under them with deeper violet shadow.

  Not that hers was as yet the battered beauty of exhaustion; she had merely lived every minute to the full all winter long, and had overtaxed her capacity; and the fire had consumed something of her freshness.

  Not yet inured, not yet crystallised to that experienced hardness which withstands the fierce flame of living too fast in a world where every minute is demanded and where sleep becomes a forgotten art, the girl was completely tired out, and while she herself did not realise it, her features showed it.

  But nervous exhaustion alone could not account
for the subtle change in her expression. Eyes and lips were still sweet, even in repose, but there was now a jaded charm about them — something unspoiled had disappeared from them — something of that fearlessness which vanishes after too close and too constant contact with the world of men.

  Evidently her mind was quite as weary as her body, though even to herself she had not admitted fatigue; and a tired mind no longer defends itself. Hers had not; and the defence had been, day by day, imperceptibly weakening. So that things to which once she had been able at will to close her mind, and, mentally deaf, let pass unheard, she had heard, and had even thought about. And the effort to defend her ears and mind became less vigorous, less instinctive — partly through sheer weariness.

  The wisdom of woman and of man, and of what is called the world, the girl was now learning — unconsciously in the beginning and then with a kind of shamed indifference — but the creation of an artificial interest in anything is a subtle matter; and the ceaseless repetition of things unworthy at last awake that ignoble curiosity always latent in man. Because intelligence was born with it; and unwearied intelligence alone completely suppresses it.

  At first she had kept her head fairly level in the whirlwind of adulation. To glimpses of laxity she closed her eyes. Sir Charles was always refreshing to her; but she could see little more of him than of other men — less than she saw of Langly Sprowl, however that happened — and it probably happened through the cleverness of Langly Sprowl.

  Again and again she found herself with him separated from the others — sometimes alone with him on deck — and never quite understood how it came about so constantly.

  As for Sprowl he made love to her from the first; and he was a trim, carefully groomed and volubly animated young man, full of information, and with a restless, ceaseless range of intelligence which at first dazzled with its false brilliancy.

  But it was only a kind of flash-light intelligence. It seemed to miss, occasionally; some cog, some screw somewhere was either absent or badly adjusted or over-strained.