Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  For, under the carven fingers, the marble folds of the robe over the heart were faintly glowing from some inward radiance. And, as he reeled forward and dropped at the altar foot, lifting his burning eyes, he saw the child-like head bend toward him from the slender neck — saw that the eyes were faintly blue —

  “Mother of God!” he screamed, “my mind is dying — my mind is dying! ... We were boys, he and I.... Let God judge him.... Let him be judged... mercifully.... I am worse than he.... There is no hell. I have striven to fashion one — I have desired to send him thither — Mother of God — Cecile—”

  Under his fevered eyes he was confusing them, now, and he sank down close against the pedestal and laid his f ace against her small cold foot.

  “I am sick,” he rambled on— “and very tired.... We were boys together, Cecile.... When I am in my right mind I would not harm him.... He was so handsome and daring. There was nothing he dared not do.... So young, and straight, and daring.... I would not harm him. Or you, Cecile.... Only I am sick, burning out, with only a crippled mind left — from being badly hurt — It never got well. ... And now it is dying of its hurt — Cecile! — Mother of God! — before it dies I do forgive him — and ask forgiveness — for Christ’s sake—”

  Toward noon the janitor broke in the door.

  VII

  It was late in December before Drene opened his eyes in his right senses. He unclosed them languidly, gazed at the footboard of his bed, then, around at the four shabby walls of his room.

  “Cecile?” he said, distinctly.

  The girl who had been watching him laid aside her sewing, rose, and bent over him. Suddenly her pale face flushed and one hand flew to her throat.

  “Dearest?” he said, inquiringly.

  Then down on her knees fell the girl, and groped for his wasted hand and laid her cheek on it, crying silently.

  As for Drene, he lay there, his hollow eyes roaming from wall to wall. At last he turned his head on the pillow and looked down at her.

  The next day when he opened his eyes from a light sleep his skin was moist and cool and he managed to move his hand toward hers as she bent over him.

  “I want — Graylock,” he whispered. The girl flushed, bent nearer, gazing at him intently.

  “Graylock,” he repeated.

  “Not now,” she murmured, “not today. Rest for a while.”

  “Please,” he said, looking up at her trustfully— “Graylock. Now.”

  “When you are well—”

  “I am — well. Please, dear.”

  For a while she continued sitting there on the side of his bed, his limp hands in hers, her lips pressed against them. But he never took his eyes from her, and in them she saw only the same wistful expression, unchanging, trustful that she would do his bidding.

  So at last she went into the studio and wrote a note to Graylock. It was late. She went downstairs to the janitor’s quarters where there was a messenger call. But no messenger came probably Christmas day kept them busy. Perhaps, too, some portion of the holiday was permitted them, for it was long after dinner and the full tide of gaiety in town was doubtless at its flood.

  So she waited until it was plain that no messenger was coming; then she rose from the chair and stood gazing out into the wintry darkness through the dirty basement window. Clocks were striking eleven.

  As she turned to go her eye fell upon the telephone. She hesitated. But the memory of Drene’s eyes, their wistfulness and trust decided her.

  After a little waiting she got Graylock’s apartment. A servant asked her to hold the wire.

  After an interval she recognized Graylock’s voice at the telephone, pleasant, courteous, serenely wishing her the happiness of the season.

  “What are you doing this Christmas night?” she asked. “Surely you are not all alone there at home?”

  “I am rather too old for anything else,” he said.

  “But what are you doing? Reading?”

  “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I happened to be cleaning an automatic revolver when you called up.”

  “What a gay employment for Christmas night! Is that your idea of celebrating?”

  “There happens to be nothing else for me to do tonight.”

  “But there is. You are requested to make a call.”

  “On whom?” he asked, quietly.

  “On Mr. Drene.”

  For a full minute he remained silent, although she spoke to him twice, thinking the connection might have been interrupted. Then his voice came, curiously altered:

  “Who asked that of me?”

  “Mr. Drene.”

  “Mr. Drene is very ill, I hear.”

  “He is convalescent.”

  “Did he ask you to call me?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Then — you are with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “In his apartment. I came downstairs to the janitor’s rooms. I am telephoning from there what he wished me to ask you.”

  After a pause Graylock said: “Is his mind perfectly clear?”

  “Perfectly, now.”

  “He asked for me?”

  “Yes. Will you come?”

  “He asked for me? Tonight? At eleven o’clock?”

  She said: “I don’t think he knows even what month it is. He has only been conscious for a day or two. Had he known it was Christmas night perhaps he might not have disturbed you. But — will you come?”

  “I am afraid it is too late — to-night.”

  “Tomorrow, then? Shall I tell him?”

  There was a silence. She repeated the question. But Graylock’s reply was inaudible and she thought he said good-bye instead of good night.

  Somewhere in the rear of the basement the janitor and his family and probably all his relatives were celebrating. A fiddle squeaked in there; there was a steady tumult of voices and laughter.

  The girl stood a while listening, a slight smile on her lips. Blessed happiness had come to her in time for Christmas — a strange and heavenly happiness, more wonderful than when a life is spared to one who loves, for it had been more than the mere life of this man she had asked of God: it had been his mind.

  He lay asleep when she entered and stood by the shaded lamp, looking down at him.

  After a while she seated herself and took up her sewing. But laid it aside again as there came a low knocking at the door.

  Drene opened his eyes as Graylock entered all alone and stood still beside the bed looking down at him. In the studio Cecile moved about singing under her breath. They both heard her.

  Drene nodded weakly. After a moment he made the effort to speak:

  “I am trying to get well — to start again — better — live more — nobly. ... Take your chance, too.”

  “If you wish, Drene.”

  “Yes. I was not — very — well. I had been ill — very — a long while ... And you are not to clean the automatic.... Only your own-soul.... Ask help.... You’ll get it..... I did.... And — all that is true — what we believed — as boys.... I know. I’ve seen. And it’s all true — all true — what we believed — as little boys.”

  He looked up at Graylock, then closed his eyes with the shadow of a smile in them.

  “Good-bye — Jack,” he whispered.

  Graylock’s mouth quivered, his lips moved in speech; and perhaps Drene heard and understood, for he opened his eyes and looked once more at his boyhood friend.

  “Somewhere — somebody will straighten out — all this,” he murmured, closing his eyes again: “We can’t; we can only try — to straighten out — ourselves.”

  Graylock looked down at him in silence, then, tall and heavily erect, he turned away.

  Cecile met him from the studio.

  “Good night,” she said, offering her hand.... “And a happy Christmas.... I hope you will not be lonely.”

  He took her hand, gravely, thanked her, and went his way forever.

  For a few minute
s she lingered in the doorway connecting Drene’s bedroom with the studio. She held a sprig of holly.

  After a little while he opened his eyes and looked at her, and, smiling, she came forward to the bedside.

  “It was a terrible dream,” he whispered— “all those years. But it was a dream.”

  “You must dream no more.”

  “No. Come nearer.”

  She rested on the bed’s edge beside him and laid one hand on his. The other held the holly, but he did not notice it until she offered it.

  “Dear,” she whispered, “it is Christmas night. And you did not even know it.”

  Suddenly the tears he had not known for years burned in his eyes, and he closed them, trembling, awed by the mercy of God that had been vouchsafed to him at the eleventh hour, else he had slain his soul.

  After a while he felt her lips touching his brow. And now silent in the spell of the dream that invaded her — the exquisite vision of wifehood — she sat motionless with childlike eyes lost in thought.

  Once more he turned his head and looked at her. Then her slender neck bent, and he saw that her eyes were divinely blue —

  “Cecile!” — he faltered— “Madonna inviolate!... The woman — between — friends—”

  THE END

  WHO GOES THERE!

  CONTENTS

  PREFACE

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CHAPTER XXIV

  CHAPTER XXV

  CHAPTER XXVI

  WHO GOES THERE!

  Not with indifferent or with flippant hand

  Draw the curtain’s corner to disclose

  A rose, a leaf, a path through this sad land

  Untrampled yet by foes.

  Out of the Past — the Heart’s last Hermitage —

  A wistful Phantom glides to me again

  Here where I pace that solitary cage

  They call, The World of Men.

  In vain she mirrors me the Golden Age;

  Vain is her Voice of Spring in wood and glen;

  The winter sunlight falls across my page

  Gilding a broken pen.

  Withered the magic gardens which were mine;

  Eden, in embers, blackens in the sun;

  Rooting amid crushed roses the Wild Swine

  Still root, and spare not one.

  Village and spire and scented forest path,

  Pastures and brooks, meadows and hills and fens

  Heard not the secret whispering in Gath

  There where the Gray Boar dens,

  Till burst his dreadful clamour on the Rhine

  And all the World shrank deafened by the roar

  Aghast before the out-rush of Wild Swine

  Led by the great Gray Boar.

  Fallen the cloud-capped castles which were mine;

  Cities in ashes whiten in the sun;

  Rending the ruined shrines, the Rhenish Swine

  Still rend, and spare not one.

  PREFACE

  The Crown Prince is partly right; the majority in the world is against him and what he stands for; but not against Germany and the Germans.

  He professes surprise at the attitude of the United States. That attitude is the natural result of various causes among which are the following:

  Distrust of any aggressor by a nation inclined toward peace.

  Disgust at the “scrap of paper” episode.

  Resentment at the invasion of Belgium.

  Contempt for the Imperial Government which is industriously screwing the last penny of “indemnity” out of a ruined nation, which the people of the United States are taxing their private means to keep from starvation.

  Further back there are other reasons.

  For thirty years the press of Germany has seldom missed an opportunity to express its contempt for Americans. Any American who has ever lived in Germany or who has read German newspapers during the last thirty years is aware of the tone of the German press concerning America and Americans. No innuendoes have been too vulgar, no sneers too brutal for the editors of these papers, and, presumably for the readers.

  Also Americans do not forget the attitude of the Imperial Government during the Spanish war. The bad manners of a German Admiral are bearing fruit.

  Imperialism we Americans do not understand, but it need not make us unfriendly to empires.

  But we do understand when manners are bad, or when a military caste, which maintains its traditions of personal honour by violence, becomes arrogant to the point of brutality.

  A false notion of personal honour is alone enough to prevent a sympathetic understanding between two peoples.

  America is not an enemy to Germany, only is it inexorably opposed to any Government which breaks faith; and which enthrones above all other gods the god of violence.

  For the German soldiers who are dying in this Hohenzollern-Hapsburg war we have only sympathy and pity. We know they are as brave as any soldiers; that cruelty in the German Army is in no greater proportion than it is in any army.

  But also we know that the cause of Imperial Germany is wrong; her civilization is founded on propositions impossible for any American to accept; her aims, ambitions, and ideals antagonistic to the progress to communal and individual liberty as we understand the terms. And that settles the matter for us.

  CHAPTER I

  IN THE MIST

  They had selected for their business the outer face of an old garden wall. There were red tiles on the coping; dusty roadside vines half covered the base. Where plaster had peeled off a few weather-beaten bricks showed. Bees hummed in the trampled herbage.

  Against this wall they backed the first six men. One, a mere boy, was crying, wiping his frightened eyes on his shirt-sleeve.

  The dry crash of the volley ended the matter; all the men against the wall collapsed. Presently one of them, the boy who had been crying, moved his arm in the grass. A rifle spoke instantly, and he moved no more.

  There came a low-spoken word of command, the firing squad shouldered rifles, wheeled, and moved off; and out of the sea-grey masses of infantry another squad of execution came marching up, smartly.

  A dozen men, some in sabots, trousers, and dirty collarless shirts, some in well-cut business suits and straw hats, and all with their wrists tied behind them, stood silently awaiting their turns. One among them, a young man wearing a golf-cap, knickerbockers, heather-spats, and an absolutely colourless face, stood staring at the tumbled heaps of clothing along the foot of the wall as though stupified.

  Six peasants went first; the men more smartly attired were to wait a little longer it appeared.

  The emotionless and methodical preparations, the brisk precision of the operation, the cheerful celerity of the firing squad made it the more terrifying, stunning the victims to immobility.

  The young man in the golf-cap and knickerbockers clenched his tied hands. Not an atom of colour remained in cheeks or lips, and he stood with face averted while the squad of execution was busy with its business.

  There seemed to be some slight disorder along the wall — a defiant voice was raised hoarsely cursing all Germans; another, thin and hysterical, cheered for Belgium and the young King. Also this firing squad must have aimed badly, for bayonet and rifle-butt were used afterward and some delay occurred; and an officer, revolver swinging, prowled along the foot of the wall, kicking inquiringly at the dead heaps of heavy flesh that had collapsed
there.

  Houses lining the single village street began to leak smoke; smoke writhed and curled behind closed window-panes. Here and there a mounted Uhlan forced his big horse up on the sidewalk and drove his lance butt through the window glass.

  Already the street was swimming in thin strata of smoke; the sea-grey uniforms of the German infantry seemed part of the haze; only the faces of the soldiery were visible — faces without bodies, thousands of flat, detached faces, thousands of little pig eyes set in a blank and foggy void. And over everything in the close, heavy air brooded the sour stench of a sweat-soaked, unwashed army.

  A third squad of execution came swinging up, apparently out of nowhere, their heavy half-boots clumping in unison on the stony street.

  The young man in the golf-cap and knickerbockers heard them coming and bit his bloodless lip.

  After a moment the rhythm of the heavy boots ceased. The street became very silent, save where window glass continually fell tinkling to the sidewalk and the feathery whisper of flames became more audible from within the row of empty houses.

  The young man lifted his eyes to the sombre and sunless sky. High up there above the mist and heavy bands of smoke he saw the feathery tops of tall trees, motionless.

  Presently through the silence came the clatter of hoofs; Uhlans cantered past, pennons whipping from lance heads; then a soft two-toned bugle-call announced an automobile; and presently it loomed up, huge, through the parted ranks of the infantry, a great grey, low-purring bulk, slowing, halting, still purring.

  A grey-clad general officer sat in the tonneau, a grey-uniformed hussar was seated beside the grey-liveried chauffeur.

  As the car stopped several officers were already beside the running-board, halted stiffly at attention. The general officer, his cigar between his gloved fingers, leaned over the edge of the tonneau and said something in a very quiet voice.

  Instantly a slim, stiff infantry captain saluted, wheeled sharply, and walked straight to the little file of prisoners who stood with their wrists tied behind their backs, looking vacantly at the automobile.

  “Which is the prisoner-hostage who says he is American?” he snapped out in his nasal Prussian voice.

  The young man who wore a golf-cap took a short step forward, hesitated.