Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  But the words halted; she bowed her head in her hands, quivering, scarcely conscious that he was on his knees again at her feet, scarcely hearing his broken words of repentance and shame for the sorry and contemptible rôle he had been playing.

  No tears came to help her even then, only a dry, still agony possessed her. But the crisis passed and wore away; sight and hearing and the sense of touch returned to her. She saw his head bowed in contrition on her knees, heard his voice, bitter in self-accusation, felt his hands crisping over hers, crushing them till her new rings cut her.

  For a while she looked down at him as though dazed; then the real pain from her wedding ring aroused her and she gently withdrew that hand and rested it on his thick, short, curly hair.

  For a long while they remained so

  . He had ceased to speak; her brooding gaze rested on him, unchanged save for the subtle tenderness of the lips, which still quivered at moments.

  Clocks somewhere in the house were striking midnight. A little later a log fell from the dying fire, breaking in ashes.

  He felt her stir, change her position slightly; and he lifted his head. After a moment she laid her hand on his arm, and he aided her to rise.

  As they moved slowly, side by side, through the house, they saw that it was filled with flowers everywhere, twisted ropes of them on the banisters, too, where they ascended.

  Her own maid, who had arrived by train, rose from a seat in the upper corridor to meet her. The two rooms, which were connected by a sitting room, disclosed themselves, almost smothered in flowers.

  Jacqueline stood in the sitting room for a moment, gazing vaguely around her at the flowers and steadying herself by one hand on the centre-table, which a great bowlful of white carnations almost covered.

  Then, as her maid reappeared at the door of her room, she turned and looked at Desboro.

  There was a silence; his face was very white, hers was deathly.

  He said: “Shall we say good-night?”

  “It is — for you — to say.”

  “Then — good-night, Jacqueline.”

  “Good-night.”

  “She turned ... looked back, hesitated”

  She turned, took a step or two — looked back, hesitated, then slowly retraced her steps to where he was standing by the flower-covered table.

  From the mass of blossoms she drew a white carnation, touched it to her lips, and, eyes still lowered, offered it to him. In her palm, beside it, lay a key. But he took only the blossom, touching it to his lips as she had done.

  She looked at the key, lying in her trembling hand, then lifted her confused eyes to his once more, whispering:

  “Good-night — and thank you.”

  “Good-night,” he said, “until to-morrow.”

  And they went their separate ways.

  CHAPTER XV

  Une nuit blanche — and the young seem less able to withstand its corroding alchemy than the old. It had left its terrible and pallid mark on Desboro; and on Jacqueline it had set its phantom sign. That youthfully flushed and bright-eyed loveliness which always characterised the girl had whitened to ashes over night.

  And now, as she entered the sunny breakfast room in her delicate Chinese morning robes, the change in her was startlingly apparent; for the dead-gold lustre of her hair accented the pallor of a new and strange and transparent beauty; the eyes, tinted by the deeper shadows under them, looked larger and more violet; and she seemed smaller and more slender; and there was a snowy quality to the skin that made the vivid lips appear painted.

  Desboro came forward from the recess of the window; and whether in his haggard and altered features she read of his long night’s vigil, or whether in his eyes she learned again how she herself had changed, was not plain to either of them; but her eyes suddenly filled and she turned sharply and stood with the back of one slender hand across her eyes.

  Neither had spoken; neither spoke for a full minute. Then she walked to the window and looked out. The mating sparrows were very noisy.

  Not a tear fell; she touched her eyes with a bit of lace, drew a long, deep, steady breath and turned toward him.

  “It is all over — forgive me, Jim. I did not mean to greet you this way. I won’t do it again — —”

  She offered her hand with a faint smile, and he lifted it and touched it to his lips.

  “It’s all over, all ended,” she repeated. “Such a curious phenomenon happened to me at sunrise this morning.”

  “What?”

  “I was born,” she said, laughing. “Isn’t it odd to be born at my age? So as soon as I realised what had happened, I went and looked out of the window; and there was the world, Jim — a big, round, wonderful planet, all over hills and trees and valleys and brooks! I don’t know how I recognised it, having just been born into it, but somehow I did. And I knew the sun, too, the minute I saw it shining on my window and felt it on my face and throat. Isn’t that a wonderful way to begin life?”

  There was not a tremor in her voice, nothing tremulous in the sweet humour of the lips; and, to his surprise, in her eyes little demons of gaiety seemed to be dancing all at once till they sparkled almost mockingly.

  “Dear,” he said, under his breath, “I wondered whether you would ever speak to me again.”

  “Speak to you! You silly boy, I expect to do little else for the rest of my life! I intend to converse and argue and importune and insist and nag and nag. Oh, Jim! Please ring for breakfast. I had no luncheon yesterday and less dinner.”

  A slight colour glowed under the white skin of her cheeks as Farris entered with the fruit; she lifted a translucent cluster of grapes from the dish, snipped it in half with the silver scissors, glanced at her husband and laughed.

  “‘That’s how hungry I am, Jim. I warned you’”

  “That’s how hungry I am, Jim. I warned you. Of what are you thinking — with that slight and rather fascinating smile crinkling your eyes?”

  She bit into grape after grape, watching him across the table.

  “Share with me whatever amuses you, please!” she insisted. “Never with my consent shall you ever again laugh alone.”

  “You haven’t seen last evening’s and this morning’s papers,” he said, amused.

  “Have they arrived? Oh, Jim! I wish to see them, please!”

  He went into his room and brought out a sheaf of clippings.

  “Isn’t this all of the papers that you cared to see, Jacqueline?”

  “Of course! What do they say about us? Are they brief or redundant, laconic or diffuse? And are they nice to us?”

  She was already immersed in a quarter column account of “A Romantic Wedding” at “old St. George’s”; and she read with dilated eyes all about the “wealthy, fashionable, and well-known clubman,” which she understood must mean her youthful husband, and all about Silverwood and the celebrated collections, and about his lineage and his social activities. And by and by she read about herself, and her charm and beauty and personal accomplishments, and was amazed to learn that she, too, was not only wealthy and fashionable, but that she was a descendant of an ancient and noble family in France, entirely extinguished by the guillotine during the Revolution, except for her immediate progenitors.

  Clipping after clipping she read to the end; then the simple notices under “Weddings.” Then she looked at Desboro.

  “I — I didn’t realise what a very grand young man I had married,” she said, with a shy smile. “But I am very willing to admit it. Why do they say such foolish and untrue things about me?”

  “They meant to honour you by lying about you when the truth about you is far more noble and more wonderful,” he said.

  “Do you think so?”

  “Do you doubt it?”

  She remained silent, turning over the clippings in her hand; then, glancing up, found him smiling again.

  “Please share with me — because I know your thoughts are pleasant.”

  “It was seeing you in these pretty Chinese
robes,” he smiled, “which made me think of that evening in the armoury.”

  “Oh — when I sat under the dragon, with my lute, and said for your guests some legends of old Cathay?”

  “Yes. Seeing you here — in your Chinese robes — made me think of their astonishment when you first dawned on their mental and social horizon. They are worthy people,” he added, with a shrug.

  “They are as God made them,” she said, demurely.

  “Only they have always forgotten, as I have, that God merely begins us — and we are expected to do the rest. For, once made, He merely winds us up, sets our hearts ticking, and places us on top of the world. Where we walk to, and how, is our own funeral henceforward. Is that your idea of divine responsibility?”

  “I think He continues to protect us after we start to toddle; and after that, too, if we ask Him,” she answered, in a low voice.

  “Do you believe in prayer, dear?”

  “Yes — in unselfish prayer. Not in the acquisitive variety. Such petitions seem ignoble to me.”

  “I understand.”

  She said, gravely: “To pray — not for one’s self — except that one cause no sorrow — that seems to me a logical petition. But I don’t know. And after all, what one does, not what one talks about, counts.”

  She was occupied with her grapes, glancing up at him from moment to moment with sweet, sincere eyes, sometimes curious, sometimes shy, but always intent on this tall, boyish young fellow who, she vainly tried to realise, belonged to her.

  In his morning jacket, somehow, he had become entirely another person; his thick, closely brushed hair, the occult air of freshness from ablutions that left a faint fragrance about him, accented their new intimacy, the strangeness of which threatened at moments to silence her. Nor could she realise that she belonged there at all — there, in her frail morning draperies, at breakfast with him in a house which belonged to him.

  Yet, one thing she was becoming vaguely aware of; this tall, young fellow, in his man’s intimate attire, was quietly and unvaryingly considerate of her; had entirely changed from the man she seemed to have known; had suddenly changed yesterday at midnight. And now she was aware that he still remained what he had been when he took the white blossom from her hand the night before, and left in her trembling palm, untouched, the symbol of authority which now was his forever.

  Even in the fatigue of body and the deadlier mental weariness — in the confused chaos of her very soul, that moment was clearly imprinted on her mind — must remain forever recorded while life lasted.

  She divided another grape; there were no seeds; the skin melted in her mouth.

  “Men,” she said absently, “are good.” When he laughed, she came to herself and looked at him with shy, humourous eyes. “They are good, Jim. Even the Chinese knew it thousands of years ago. Have you never heard me recite the three-word-classic of San Tzu Ching? Then listen, white man!

  “Jen chih ch’u

  Hsing pen shan

  Hsing hsiang chin

  Hsi hsiang yuan

  Kou pu chiao

  Hsing nai ch’ien

  Chiao chih tao

  Kuei i chuan — —”

  She sat swaying slightly to the rhythm, like a smiling child who recites a rhyme of the nursery, accenting the termination of every line by softly striking her palms together; and the silken Chinese sleeves slipped back, revealing her white arms to the shoulder.

  Softly she smote her smooth little palms together, gracefully she swayed; her silks rustled like the sound of slender reeds in a summer wind, and her cadenced voice was softer. Never had he seen her so exquisite.

  She stopped capriciously.

  “All that is Chinese to me,” he said. “You make me feel solitary and ignorant.”

  And she laughed and tossed the lustrous hair from her cheeks.

  “This is all it means, dear:

  “Men at their birth

  Are naturally good.

  Their natures are much the same;

  Their habits become widely different.

  If they are not taught,

  Their natures will deteriorate.

  The right way in teaching

  Is to attach the utmost importance to thoroughness ——

  “And so forth, and so forth,” she ended gaily.

  “Where on earth did you learn Chinese?” he remonstrated. “You know enough without that to scare me to death! Slowly but surely you are overwhelming me, Jacqueline, and some day I shall leave the house, dig a woodchuck hole out on the hill, and crawl into it permanently.”

  “Then I’ll have to crawl in, too, won’t I? But, alas, Jim! The three-word-classic is my limit. When father took me to Shanghai, I learned it — three hundred and fifty-six lines of it! But it’s all the Chinese I know — except a stray phrase or two. Cheer up, dear; we won’t have to look for our shadows on that hill.”

  Breakfast was soon accomplished; she looked shyly across at him; he nodded, and they rose.

  “The question is,” she said, “when am I going to find time to read the remainder of the morning paper, and keep myself properly informed from day to day, if you make breakfast so agreeable for me?”

  “Have I done that?”

  “You know you have,” she said lightly. “Suppose you read the paper aloud to me, while I stroll about for the sake of my figure.”

  They laughed; he picked up the paper and began to read the headlines, and she walked about the room, her hands bracketed on her hips, listening sometimes, sometimes absorbed in her own reflections, now and then glancing out of the window or pausing to rearrange a bowl of flowers.

  Little by little, however, her leisurely progress from one point of interest to another became more haphazard, and she moved restlessly, with a tendency to drift in his direction.

  Perhaps she realised that, for she halted suddenly.

  “Jim, I have enough of politics, thank you. And it’s almost time to put on more conventional apparel, isn’t it? I have a long and hard day before me at the office.”

  “As hard as yesterday?” he asked, unthinkingly; then reddened.

  She had moved to the window as she spoke; but he had seen the quick, unconscious gesture of pain as her hand flew to her breast; and her smiling courage when she turned toward him did not deceive him.

  “That was a hard day, Jim. But I think the worst is over. And you may read your paper if you wish until I am ready. You have only to put on your business coat, haven’t you?”

  So he tried to fix his mind on the paper, and, failing, laid it aside and went to his room to make ready.

  When he was prepared, he returned to their sitting room. She was not there, and the door of her bedroom was open and the window-curtains fluttering.

  So he descended to the library, where he found her playing with his assortment of animals, a cat tucked under either arm and a yellow pup on her knees.

  “They all came to say good-morning,” she explained, “and how could I think of my clothing? Would you ask Farris to fetch a whisk-broom?”

  Desboro rang: “A whisk-broom for — for Mrs. Desboro,” he said.

  Mrs. Desboro!

  She had looked up startled; it was the first time she had heard it from his lips, and even the reiteration of her maid had not accustomed her to hear herself so named.

  Both had blushed before Farris, both had thrilled as the words had fallen from Desboro’s unaccustomed lips; but both attempted to appear perfectly tranquil and undisturbed by what had shocked them as no bomb explosion possibly could. And the old man came back with the whisk-broom, and Desboro dusted the cat fur and puppy hairs from Jacqueline’s brand-new gown.

  They were going to town by train, not having time to spare.

  “It will be full of commuters,” he said, teasingly. “You don’t know what a godsend a bride is to commuters. I pity you.”

  “I shall point my nose particularly high, monsieur. Do you suppose I’ll know anybody aboard?”

  “What if you do
n’t! They’ll know who you are! And they’ll all read their papers and stare at you from time to time, comparing you with what the papers say about you — —”

  “Jim! Stop tormenting me. Do I look sallow and horrid? I believe I’ll run up to my room and do a little friction on my cheeks — —”

  “With nail polish?”

  “How do you know? Please, Jim, it isn’t nice to know so much about the makeshifts indulged in by my sex.”

  She stood pinching her cheeks and the tiny lobes of her close-set ears, regarding him with beautiful but hostile eyes.

  “You know too much, young man. You don’t wish to make me afraid of you, do you? Anyway, you are no expert! Once you thought my hair was painted, and my lips, too. If I’d known what you were thinking I’d have made short work of you that rainy afternoon — —”

  “You did.”

  She laughed: “You can say nice things, too. Did you really begin to — to care for me that actual afternoon?”

  “That actual afternoon.”

  “A — about what time — if you happen to remember,” she asked carelessly.

  “About the same second that I first set eyes on you.”

  “Oh, Jim, you couldn’t!”

  “Couldn’t what?”

  “Care for me the actual second you first set eyes on me. Could you?”

  “I did.”

  “Was it that very second?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You didn’t show it.”

  “Well, you know I couldn’t very well kneel down and make you a declaration before I knew your name, could I, dear?”

  “You did it altogether too soon as it was. Jim, what did you think of me?”

  “You ought to know by this time.”

  “I don’t. I suppose you took one look at me and decided that I was all ready to fall into your arms. Didn’t you?”

  “You haven’t done it yet,” he said lightly.

  There was a pause; the colour came into her face, and his own reddened. But she pretended to be pleasantly unconscious of the significance, and only interested in reminiscence.