Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “What a devil of a mess!” he said to a petty officer near him. A young doctor smoking a cigarette surveyed his own life-suit and the clumsy apparel of his neighbours with unfeigned curiosity!

  “How long do these things keep one afloat?” he inquired.

  “Long enough to freeze solid,” replied an ambulance driver.

  “Did we get the Hun?” asked McKay of the petty officer.

  “Naw,” he replied in disgust, “but the destroyers ought to nail him.

  Look out, sir — you’ll go sliding down that slippery toboggan!”

  “How long’ll she float?” asked the young ambulance driver.

  “This ship? SHE’S all right,” remarked the petty officer absently.

  She went down, nose first. Those in the starboard boats saw her stand on end for full five minutes, screws spinning, before a muffled detonation blew the bowels out of her and sucked her down like a plunging arrow.

  Destroyers and launches from some of the cruisers were busy amid the wreckage where here, on a spar, some stunned form clung like a limpet, and there, a-bob in the curling seas, a swimmer in his life-suit tossed under the wintry sky.

  There were men on rafts, too, and several clinging to hatches; there was not much loss of life, considering.

  Toward midday a sea-plane which had been releasing depth-bombs and hovering eagerly above the wide iridescent and spreading stain, sheered shoreward and shot along the coast.

  There was a dead man afloat in a cave, rocking there rather peacefully in his life-suit — or at least they supposed him to be dead.

  But on a chance they signalled the discovery to a distant trawler, then soared upward for a general coup de l’oeil, turned there aloft like a seahawk for a while, sheering in widening spirals, and finally, high in the grey sky, set a steady course for parts unknown.

  Meanwhile a boat from the trawler fished out McKay, wrapped him in red-hot blankets, pried open his blue lips, and tried to fill him full of boiling rum. Then he came to life. But those honest fishermen knew he had gone stark mad because he struck at the pannikin of steaming rum and cursed them vigorously for their kindness. And only a madman could so conduct himself toward a pannikin of steaming rum. They understood that perfectly. And, understanding it, they piled more hot blankets upon the struggling form of Kay McKay and roped him to his bunk.

  Toward evening, becoming not only coherent but frightfully emphatic, they released McKay.

  “What’s this damn place?” he shouted.

  “Strathlone Firth,” they said.

  “That’s my country!” he raged. “I want to go ashore!”

  They were quite ready to be rid of the cracked Yankee, and told him so.

  “And the boats? How about them?” he demanded.

  “All in the Firth, sir.”

  “Any women lost?”

  “None, sir.”

  At that, struggling into his clothes, he began to shed gold sovereigns from his ripped money-belt all over the cabin. Weatherbeaten fingers groped to restore the money to him. But it was quite evident that the young man was mad. He wouldn’t take it. And in his crazy way he seemed very happy, telling them what fine lads they were and that not only Scotland but the world ought to be proud of them, and that he was about to begin to live the most wonderful life that any man had ever lived as soon as he got ashore.

  “Because,” he explained, as he swung off and dropped into the small boat alongside, “I’ve taken a look into hell and I’ve had a glimpse of heaven, but the earth has got them both stung to death, and I like it and I’m going to settle down on it and live awhile. You don’t get me, do you?” They did not.

  “It doesn’t matter. You’re a fine lot of lads. Good luck!”

  And so they were rid of their Yankee lunatic.

  On the Firth Quay and along the docks all the inhabitants of Glenark and Strathlone were gathered to watch the boats come in with living, with dead, or merely the news of the seafight off the grey head of Strathlone.

  At the foot of the slippery waterstairs, green with slime, McKay, grasping the worn rail, lifted his head and looked up into the faces of the waiting crowd. And saw the face of her he was looking for among them.

  He went up slowly. She pushed through the throng, descended the steps, and placed one arm around him.

  “Thanks, Eve,” he said cheerfully. “Are you all right?”

  “All right, Kay. Are you hurt?”

  “No…. I know this place. There’s an inn … if you’ll give me your arm — it’s just across the street.”

  They went very leisurely, her arm under his — and his face, suddenly colourless, half-resting against her shoulder.

  CHAPTER V

  ISLA WATER

  Earlier in the evening there had been a young moon on Isla Water. Under it spectres of the mist floated in the pale lustre; a painted moorhen steered through ghostly pools leaving fan-shaped wakes of crinkled silver behind her; heavy fish splashed, swirling again to drown the ephemera.

  But there was no moonlight now; not a star; only fog on Isla Water, smothering ripples and long still reaches, bank and upland, wall and house.

  The last light had gone out in the stable; the windows of Isla were darkened; there was a faint scent of heather in the night; a fainter taint of peat smoke. The world had grown very still by Isla Water.

  Toward midnight a dog-otter, swimming leisurely by the Bridge of Isla, suddenly dived and sped away under water; and a stoat, prowling in the garden, also took fright and scurried through the wicket. Then in the dead of night the iron bell hanging inside the court began to clang. McKay heard it first in his restless sleep. Finally the clangour broke his sombre dream and he awoke and sat up in bed, listening.

  Neither of the two servants answered the alarm. He swung out of bed and into slippers and dressing-gown and picked up a service pistol. As he entered the stone corridor he heard Miss Erith’s door creak on its ancient hinges.

  “Did the bell wake you?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Yes. What is it?”

  “I haven’t any idea.”

  She opened her door a little wider. Her yellow hair covered her shoulders like a mantilla. “Who could it be at this hour?” she repeated uneasily.

  McKay peered at the phosphorescent dial of his wrist-watch:

  “I don’t know,” he repeated. “I can’t imagine who would come here at this hour.”

  “Don’t strike a light!” she whispered.

  “No, I think I won’t.” He continued on down the stone stairs, and

  Miss Erith ran to the rail and looked over.

  “Are you armed?” she called through the darkness.

  “Yes.”

  He went on toward the rear of the silent house and through the servants’ hall, then around by the kitchen garden, then felt his way along a hedge to a hutchlike lodge where a fixed iron bell hung quivering under the slow blows of the clapper.

  “What the devil’s the matter?” demanded McKay in a calm voice.

  The bell still hummed with the melancholy vibrations, but the clapper now hung motionless. Through the brooding rumour of metallic sound came a voice out of the mist:

  “The hours of life are numbered. Is it true?”

  “It is,” said McKay coolly; “and the hairs of our head are numbered too!”

  “So teach us to number our days,” rejoined the voice from the fog, “that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”

  “The days of our years are three-score years and ten,” said McKay.

  “Have you a name?”

  “A number.”

  “And what number will that be?”

  “Sixty-seven. And yours?”

  “You should know that, too.”

  “It’s the reverse; seventy-six.”

  “It is that,” said McKay. “Come in.”

  He made his way to the foggy gate, drew bolt and chain from the left wicket. A young man stepped through.

  “Losh, mon,” he remarked with a
Yankee accent, “it’s a fearful nicht to be abroad.”

  “Come on in,” said McKay, re-locking the wicket. “This way; follow me.”

  They went by the kitchen garden and servants’ hall, and so through to the staircase hall, where McKay struck a match and Sixty-seven instantly blew it out.

  “Better not,” he said. “There are vermin about.”

  McKay stood silent, probably surprised. Then he called softly in the darkness:

  “Seventy-seven!”

  “Je suis la!” came her voice from the stairs.

  “It’s all right,” he said, “it’s one of our men. No use sittin’ up if you’re sleepy.” He listened but did not hear Miss Erith stir.

  “Better return to bed,” he said again, and guided Sixty-seven into the room on the left.

  For a few moments he prowled around; a glass tinkled against a decanter. When he returned to the shadow-shape seated motionless by the casement window he carried only one glass.

  “Don’t you?” inquired Sixty-seven. “And you a Scot!”

  “I’m a Yankee; and I’m through.”

  “With the stuff?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Oh, very well. But a Yankee laird — tiens c’est assez drole!” He smacked his lips over the smoky draught, set the half-empty glass on the deep sill. Then he began breezily:

  “Well, Seventy-six, what’s all this I hear about your misfortunes?”

  “What do you hear?” inquired McKay guilelessly.

  The other man laughed.

  “I hear that you and Seventy-seven have entered the Service; that you are detailed to Switzerland and for a certain object unknown to myself; that your transport was torpedoed a week ago off the Head of Strathlone, that you wired London from this house of yours called Isla, and that you and Seventy-seven went to London last week to replenish the wardrobe you had lost.”

  “Is that all you heard?”

  “It is.”

  “Well, what more do you wish to hear?”

  “I want to know whether anything has happened to worry you. And I’ll tell you why. There was a Hun caught near Banff! Can you beat it? The beggar wore kilts! — and the McKay tartan — and, by jinks, if his gillie wasn’t rigged in shepherd’s plaid! — and him with his Yankee passport and his gillie with a bag of ready-made rods. Yellow trout, is it? Sea-trout, is it! Ho, me bucko, says I when I lamped what he did with his first trout o’ the burn this side the park — by Godfrey! thinks I to myself, you’re no white man at all! — you’re Boche. And it was so, McKay.”

  “Seventy-six,” corrected McKay gently.

  “That’s better. It should become a habit.”

  “Excuse me, Seventy-six; I’m Scotch-Irish way back. You’re straight Scotch — somewhere back. We Yankees don’t use rods and flies and net and gaff as these Scotch people use ‘em. But we’re white, Seventy-six, and we use ’em RIGHT in our own fashion.” He moistened his throat, shoved aside the glass:

  “But this kilted Boche! Oh, la-la! What he did with his rod and flies and his fish and himself! AND his gillie! Sure YOU’RE not white at all, thinks I. And at that I go after them.”

  “You got them?”

  “Certainly — at the inn — gobbling a trout, blaue gesotten — having gone into the kitchen to show a decent Scotch lassie how to concoct the Hunnish dish. I nailed them then and there — took the chance that the swine weren’t right. And won out.”

  “Good! But what has it to do with me?” asked McKay.

  “Well, I’ll be telling you. I took the Boche to London and I’ve come all the way back to tell you this, Seventy-six; the Huns are on to you and what you’re up to. That Boche laird called himself Stanley Brown, but his name is — or was — Schwartz. His gillie proved to be a Swede.”

  “Have they been executed?”

  “You bet. Tower style! We got another chum of theirs, too, who set up a holler like he saw a pan of hogwash. We’re holding him. And what we’ve learned is this: The Huns made a special set at your transport in order to get YOU and Seventy-seven!

  “Now they know you are here and their orders are to get you before you reach France. The hog that hollered put us next. He’s a Milwaukee Boche; name Zimmerman. He’s so scared that he tells all he knows and a lot that he doesn’t. That’s the trouble with a Milwaukee Boche. Anyway, London sent me back to find you and warn you. Keep your eye skinned. And when you’re ready for France wire Edinburgh. You know where. There’ll be a car and an escort for you and Seventy-seven.”

  McKay laughed: “You know,” he said, “there’s no chance of trouble here. Glenark is too small a village—”

  “Didn’t I land a brace of Boches at Banff?”

  “That’s true. Well, anyway, I’ll be off, I expect, in a day or so.”

  He rose; “and now I’ll show you a bed—”

  “No; I’ve a dog-cart tied out yonder and a chaser lying at Glenark.

  By Godfrey, I’m not finished with these Boche-jocks yet!”

  “You’re going?”

  “You bet. I’ve a date to keep with a suspicious character — on a trawler. Can you beat it? These vermin creep in everywhere. Yes, by Godfrey! They crawl aboard ship in sight of Strathlone Head! Here’s hoping it may be a yard-arm jig he’ll dance!”

  He emptied his glass, refused more. McKay took him to the wicket and let him loose.

  “Well, over the top, old scout!” said Sixty-seven cheerily, exchanging a quick handclasp with McKay. And so the fog took him.

  A week later they found his dead horse and wrecked dog-cart five miles this side of Glenark Burn, lying in a gully entirely concealed by whinn and broom. It was the noise the flies made that attracted attention. As for the man himself, he floated casually into the Firth one sunny day with five bullets in him and his throat cut very horridly.

  But, before that, other things happened on Isla Water — long before anybody missed No. 67. Besides, the horse and dog-cart had been hired for a week; and nobody was anxious except the captain of the trawler, held under mysterious orders to await the coming of a man who never came.

  So McKay went back through the fog to his quaint, whitewashed inheritance — this legacy from a Scotch grandfather to a Yankee grandson — and when he came into the dark waist of the house he called up very gently: “Are you awake, Miss Yellow-hair?”

  “Yes. Is all well?”

  “All’s well,” he said, mounting the stairs.

  “Then — good night to you Kay of Isla!” she said.

  “Don’t you want to hear—”

  “To-morrow, please.”

  “But—”

  “As long as you say that all is well I refuse to lose any more sleep!”

  “Are you sleepy, Yellow-hair?”

  “I am.”

  “Aren’t you going to sit up and chat for a few—”

  “I am not!”

  “Have you no curiosity?” he demanded, laughingly.

  “Not a bit. You say everything is all right. Then it is all right — when Kay of Isla says so! Good night!”

  What she had said seemed to thrill him with a novel and delicious sense of responsibility. He heard her door close; he stood there in the stone corridor a moment before entering his room, experiencing an odd, indefinite pleasure in the words this girl had uttered — words which seemed to reinstate him among his kind, words which no woman would utter except to a man in whom she believed.

  And yet this girl knew him — knew what he had been — had seen him in the depths — had looked upon the wreck of him.

  Out of those depths she had dragged what remained of him — not for his own sake perhaps — not for his beaux-yeux — but to save him for the service which his country demanded of him.

  She had fought for him — endured, struggled spiritually, mentally, bodily to wrench him out of the coma where drink had left him with a stunned brain and crippled will.

  And now, believing in her work, trusting, confident, she had just said to him that what he tol
d her was sufficient security for her. And on his word that all was well she had calmly composed herself for sleep as though all the dead chieftains of Isla stood on guard with naked claymores! Nothing in all his life had ever so thrilled him as this girl’s confidence.

  And, as he entered his room, he knew that within him the accursed thing that had been, lay dead forever.

  He was standing in the walled garden switching a limber trout-rod when Miss Erith came upon him next morning, — a tall straight young man in his kilts, supple and elegant as the lancewood rod he was testing.

  Conscious of a presence behind him he turned, came toward her in the sunlight, the sun crisping his short hair. And in his pleasant level eyes the girl saw what had happened — what she had wrought — that this young man had come into his own again — into his right mind and his manhood — and that he had resumed his place among his fellow men and peers.

  He greeted her seriously, almost formally; and the girl, excited and a little upset by the sudden realisation of his victory and hers, laughed when he called her “Miss Erith.”

  “You called me Yellow-hair last night,” she said. “I called you Kay.

  Don’t you want it so?”

  “Yes,” he said reddening, understanding that it was her final recognition of a man who had definitely “come back.”

  Miss Erith was very lovely as she stood there in the garden whither breakfast was fetched immediately and laid out on a sturdy green garden-table — porridge, coffee, scones, jam, and an egg.

  Chipping the latter she let her golden-hazel eyes rest at moments upon the young fellow seated opposite. At other moments, sipping her coffee or buttering a scone, she glanced about her at the new grass starred with daisies, at the daffodils, the slim young fruit-trees, — and up at the old white facade of the ancient abode of the Lairds of Isla.

  “Why the white flag up there, Kay?” she inquired, glancing aloft.

  He laughed, but flushed a little. “Yankee that I am,” he admitted, “I seem to be Scot enough to observe the prejudices and folk-ways of my forebears.”

  “Is it your clan flag?”

  “Bratach Bhan Chlaun Aoidh,” he said smilingly. “The White Banner of the McKays.”