Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  May 12. A letter I wrote May 10 to the German Embassy has been stolen. I am now greatly worried about the third set of plans. It seems safest to include the box containing them among the baggage of the American missionary, the Reverend Wilbour Carew; and, too, for me to seek shelter with him.

  As I am now afraid that an enemy may impersonate an official of the German Embassy, I have the missionary’s promise that he will retain and conceal the contents of my box until I instruct him otherwise. I am practically in hiding at his house, and in actual fear of my life.

  May 15. The missionary and his wife and baby travel to Gallipoli, where an American school for girls is about to be opened.

  Today, in a café, I noticed that the flies, swarming on the edge of my coffee cup, fell into the saucer dead. I did not taste my coffee.

  May 16. Last night a shot was fired through my door. I have decided to travel to Gallipoli with the missionary.

  May 18. My groom stole and ate an orange from my breakfast tray. He is dead.

  May 20. The Reverend Mr. Carew and his wife are most kind and sympathetic. They are good people, simple, kindly, brave, faithful, and fearlessly devoted to God’s service in this vile land of treachery and lies.

  May 21. I have confessed to the Reverend Mr. Carew as I would confess to a priest in holy orders. I have told him all under pledge of secrecy. I told him also that the sanctuary he offers might be violated with evil consequences to him; and that I would travel as far as Gallipoli with him and then leave. But the kind, courageous missionary and his wife insist that I remain under the protection which he says the flag of his country affords me. If I could only get my third set of plans out of the country!

  May 22. Today my coffee was again poisoned. I don’t know what prevented me from tasting it — some vague premonition. A pariah dog ate the bread I soaked in it, and died before he could yelp.

  It looks to me as though my end were inevitable. Today I gave my bronze figure of Erlik, the Yellow Devil, to Mrs. Carew to keep as a dowry for her little daughter, now a baby in arms. If it is hollow, as I feel sure, there are certain to be one or two jewels in it. And the figure itself might bring five hundred marks at an antiquary’s.

  May 30. Arrived at the Gallipoli mission. Three Turkish ironclads lying close inshore. A British cruiser, the Cobra, and an American cruiser, the Oneida, appeared about sunset and anchored near the ironclads. The bugles on deck were plainly audible. If a German warship appears I shall carry my box on board. My only chance to rehabilitate myself is to get the third set of plans to Berlin.

  June 1. In the middle of the religious exercises with which the new school is being inaugurated, cries of “Allah” come from a great crowd which has gathered. From my window where I am writing I can see how insolent the attitude of this Mohammedan riffraff is becoming. They spit upon the ground — a pebble is tossed at a convert — a sudden shout of “Allah” — pushing and jostling — a lighted torch blazes! I take my whip of rhinoceros hide and go down into the court to put a stop to this insolence ——

  Her father slowly closed the book.

  “Daddy! Is that where poor Herr Wilner died?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  After a silence his wife said thoughtfully:

  “I have always considered it very strange that the German Government did not send for Herr Wilner’s papers.”

  “Probably they did, Mary. And very probably Murad Bey told them that the papers had been destroyed.”

  “And you never believed it to be your duty to send the papers to the German Government?”

  “No. It was an unholy alliance that Germany sought with that monster Abdul. And when Enver Pasha seized the reins of government such an alliance would have been none the less unholy. You know and so do I that if Germany did not actually incite the Armenian massacres she at least was cognisant of preparations made to begin them. Germany is still hostile to all British or American missions, all Anglo-Saxon influence in Turkey.

  “No; I did not send Herr Wilner’s papers to Berlin; and the events of the last fifteen years have demonstrated that I was right in withholding them.”

  His wife nodded, laid aside her work basket, and rose.

  “Come, Ruhannah,” she said with decision; “put everything back into the wonder-box.”

  And, stooping, she lifted and laid away in it the scowling, menacing Yellow Devil.

  * * * * *

  And so, every month or two, the wonder-box was opened for the child to play with, the same story told, extracts from the diary read; but these ceremonies, after a while, began to recur at lengthening intervals as the years passed and the child grew older.

  And finally it was left to her to open the box when she desired, and to read for herself the pencilled translation of the diary, which her father had made during some of the idle and trying moments of his isolated and restricted life. And, when she had been going to school for some years, other and more vivid interests replaced her dolls and her wonder-box; but not her beloved case of water-colours and crayon pencils.

  CHAPTER II

  BROOKHOLLOW

  The mother, shading the candle with her work-worn hand, looked down at the child in silence. The subdued light fell on a freckled cheek where dark lashes rested, on a slim neck and thin shoulders framed by a mass of short, curly chestnut hair.

  Though it was still dark, the mill whistle was blowing for six o’clock. Like a goblin horn it sounded ominously through Ruhannah’s dream. She stirred in her sleep; her mother stole across the room, closed the window, and went away carrying the candle with her.

  At seven the whistle blew again; the child turned over and unclosed her eyes. A brassy light glimmered between leafless apple branches outside her window. Through the frosty radiance of sunrise a blue jay screamed.

  Ruhannah cuddled deeper among the blankets and buried the tip of her chilly nose. But the grey eyes remained wide open and, under the faded quilt, her little ears were listening intently.

  Presently from the floor below came the expected summons:

  “Ruhannah!”

  “Oh, please, mother!”

  “It’s after seven — —”

  “I know: I’ll be ready in time!”

  “It’s after seven, Rue!”

  “I’m so cold, mother dear!”

  “I closed your window. You may bathe and dress down here.”

  “B-r-r-r! I can see my own breath when I breathe!”

  “Come down and dress by the kitchen range,” repeated her mother. “I’ve warm water all ready for you.”

  The brassy light behind the trees was becoming golden; slim bluish shadows already stretched from the base of every tree across frozen fields dusted with snow.

  As usual, the lank black cat came walking into the room, its mysterious crystal-green eyes brilliant in the glowing light.

  Listening, the child heard her father moving heavily about in the adjoining room.

  Then, from below again:

  “Ruhannah!”

  “I’m going to get up, mother!”

  “Rue! Obey me!”

  “I’m up! I’m on my way!” She sprang out amid a tempest of bedclothes, hopped gingerly across the chilly carpet, seized her garments in one hand, comb and toothbrush in the other, ran into the hallway and pattered downstairs.

  The cat followed leisurely, twitching a coal-black tail.

  “Mother, could I have my breakfast first? I’m so hungry — —”

  Her mother turned from the range and kissed her as she huddled close to it. The sheet of zinc underneath warmed her bare feet delightfully. She sighed with satisfaction, looked wistfully at the coffeepot simmering, sniffed at the biscuits and sizzling ham.

  “Could I have one little taste before I — —”

  “Come, dear. There’s the basin. Bathe quickly, now.”

  Ruhannah frowned and cast a tragic glance upon the tin washtub on the kitchen floor. Presently she stole over, tested the water with her finger-tip, found it not un
reasonably cold, dropped the night-dress from her frail shoulders, and stepped into the tub with a perfunctory shiver — a thin, overgrown child of fifteen, with pipestem limbs and every rib anatomically apparent.

  Her hair, which had been cropped to shoulder length, seemed to turn from chestnut to bronze fire, gleaming and crackling under the comb which she hastily passed through it before twisting it up.

  “Quickly but thoroughly,” said her mother. “Hasten, Rue.”

  Ruhannah seized soap and sponge, gasped, shut her grey eyes tightly, and fell to scrubbing with the fury of despair.

  “Don’t splash, dear — —”

  “Did you warm my towel, mother?” — blindly stretching out one thin and dripping arm.

  Her mother wrapped her in a big crash towel from head to foot.

  Later, pulling on stockings and shoes by the range, she managed to achieve a buttered biscuit at the same time, and was already betraying further designs upon another one when her mother sent her to set the table in the sitting-room.

  Thither sauntered Ruhannah, partly dressed, still dressing.

  By the nickel-trimmed stove she completed her toilet, then hastily laid the breakfast cloth and arranged the china and plated tableware, and filled the water pitcher.

  Her father came in on his crutches; she hurried from the table, syrup jug in one hand, cruet in the other, and lifted her face to be kissed; then she brought hot plates, coffeepot, and platters, and seated herself at the table where her father and mother were waiting in silence.

  When she was seated her father folded his large, pallid, bony hands; her mother clasped hers on the edge of the table, bowing her head; and Ruhannah imitated them. Between her fingers she could see the cat under the table, and she watched it arch its back and gently rub against her chair.

  “For what we are about to receive, make us grateful, Eternal Father. This day we should go hungry except for Thy bounty. Without presuming to importune Thee, may we ask Thee to remember all who awake hungry on this winter day.... Amen.”

  Ruhannah instantly became very busy with her breakfast. The cat beside her chair purred loudly and rose at intervals on its hind legs to twitch her dress; and Ruhannah occasionally bestowed alms and conversation upon it.

  “Rue,” said her mother, “you should try to do better with your algebra this week.”

  “Yes, I do really mean to.”

  “Have you had any more bad-conduct marks?”

  “Yes, mother.”

  Her father lifted his mild, dreamy eyes of an invalid. Her mother asked:

  “What for?”

  “For wasting my time in study hour,” said the girl truthfully.

  “Were you drawing?”

  “Yes, mother.”

  “Rue! Again! Why do you persist in drawing pictures in your copy books when you have an hour’s lesson in drawing every week? Besides, you may draw pictures at home whenever you wish.”

  “I don’t exactly know why,” replied the girl slowly. “It just happens before I notice what I am doing.... Of course,” she explained, “I do recollect that I oughtn’t to be drawing in study hour. But that’s after I’ve begun, and then it seems a pity not to finish.”

  Her mother looked across the table at her husband:

  “Speak to her seriously, Wilbour.”

  The Reverend Mr. Carew looked solemnly at his long-legged and rapidly growing daughter, whose grey eyes gazed back into her father’s sallow visage.

  “Rue,” he said in his colourless voice, “try to get all you can out of your school. I haven’t sufficient means to educate you in drawing and in similar accomplishments. So get all you can out of your school. Because, some day, you will have to help yourself, and perhaps help us a little.”

  He bent his head with a detached air and sat gazing mildly at vacancy — already, perhaps, forgetting what the conversation was about.

  “Mother?”

  “What, Rue?”

  “What am I going to do to earn my living?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you mean I must go into the mill like everybody else?”

  “There are other things. Girls work at many things in these days.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “They may learn to keep accounts, help in shops — —”

  “If father could afford it, couldn’t I learn to do something more interesting? What do girls work at whose fathers can afford to let them learn how to work?”

  “They may become teachers, learn stenography and typewriting; they can, of course, become dressmakers; they can nurse — —”

  “Mother!”

  “Yes?”

  “Could I choose the business of drawing pictures? I know how!”

  “Dear, I don’t believe it is practical to — —”

  “Couldn’t I draw pictures for books and magazines? Everybody says I draw very nicely. You say so, too. Couldn’t I earn enough money to live on and to take care of you and father?”

  Wilbour Carew looked up from his reverie:

  “To learn to draw correctly and with taste,” he said in his gentle, pedantic voice, “requires a special training which we cannot afford to give you, Ruhannah.”

  “Must I wait till I’m twenty-five before I can have my money?” she asked for the hundredth time. “I do so need it to educate myself. Why did grandma do such a thing, mother?”

  “Your grandmother never supposed you would need the money until you were a grown woman, dear. Your father and I were young, vigorous, full of energy; your father’s income was ample for us then.”

  “Have I got to marry a man before I can get enough money to take lessons in drawing with?”

  Her mother’s drawn smile was not very genuine. When a child asks such questions no mother finds it easy to smile.

  “If you marry, dear, it is not likely you’ll marry in order to take lessons in drawing. Twenty-five is not old. If you still desire to study art you will be able to do so.”

  “Twenty-five!” repeated Rue, aghast. “I’ll be an old woman.”

  “Many begin their life’s work at an older age — —”

  “Mother! I’d rather marry somebody and begin to study art. Oh, don’t you think that even now I could support myself by making pictures for magazines? Don’t you, mother dear?”

  “Rue, as your father explained, a special course of instruction is necessary before one can become an artist — —”

  “But I do draw very nicely!” She slipped from her chair, ran to the old secretary where the accumulated masterpieces of her brief career were treasured, and brought them for her parents’ inspection, as she had brought them many times before.

  Her father looked at them listlessly; he did not understand such things. Her mother took them one by one from Ruhannah’s eager hands and examined these grimy Records of her daughter’s childhood.

  There were drawings of every description in pencil, in crayon, in mussy water-colours, done on scraps of paper of every shape and size. The mother knew them all by heart, every single one, but she examined each with a devotion and an interest forever new.

  There were many pictures of the cat; many of her parents, too — odd, shaky, smeared portraits all out of proportion, but usually recognisable.

  A few landscapes varied the collection — a view or two of the stone bridge opposite, a careful drawing of the ruined paper mill. But the majority of the subjects were purely imaginary; pictures of demons and angels, of damsels and fairy princes — paragons of beauty — with castles on adjacent crags and swans adorning convenient ponds.

  Her mother rose after a few moments, laid aside the pile of drawings, went to the kitchen and returned with her daughter’s schoolbooks and lunch basket.

  “Rue, you’ll be late again. Get on your rubbers immediately.”

  The child’s shabby winter coat was already too short in skirt and sleeve, and could be lengthened no further. She pulled the blue toboggan cap over her head, took a hasty osculatory leave of her f
ather, seized books and lunch basket, and followed her mother to the door.

  Below the house the Brookhollow road ran south across an old stone bridge and around a hill to Gayfield, half a mile away.

  Rue, drawing on her woollen gloves, looked up at her mother. Her lip trembled very slightly. She said:

  “I shouldn’t know what to do if I couldn’t draw pictures.... When I draw a princess I mean her for myself.... It is pleasant — to pretend to live with swans.”

  She opened the door, paused on the step; the frosty breath drifted from her lips. Then she looked back over her shoulder; her mother kissed her, held her tightly for a moment.

  “If I’m to be forbidden to draw pictures,” repeated the girl, “I don’t know what will become of me. Because I really live there — in the pictures I make.”

  “We’ll talk it over this evening, darling. Don’t draw in study hour any more, will you?”

  “I’ll try to remember, mother.”

  * * * * *

  When the spindle-limbed, boyish figure had sped away beyond sight, Mrs. Carew shut the door, drew her wool shawl closer, and returned slowly to the sitting-room. Her husband, deep in a padded rocking-chair by the window, was already absorbed in the volume which lay open on his knees — the life of the Reverend Adoniram Judson — one of the world’s good men. Ruhannah had named her cat after him.

  His wife seated herself. She had dishes to do, two bedrooms, preparations for noonday dinner — the usual and unchangeable routine. She turned and looked out of the window across brown fields thinly powdered with snow. Along a brawling, wintry-dark stream, fringed with grey alders, ran the Brookhollow road. Clumps of pines and elms bordered it. There was nothing else to see except a distant crow in a ten-acre lot, walking solemnly about all by himself.

  ... Like the vultures that wandered through the compound that dreadful day in May ... she thought involuntarily.

  But it was a far cry from Trebizond to Brookhollow. And her husband had been obliged to give up after the last massacre, when every convert had been dragged out and killed in the floating shadow of the Stars and Stripes, languidly brilliant overhead.