Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  * * * *

  When the morning sun peered over the wall of mist, and she saw it was the sun, and she saw him, flung on the sand at her feet, then she knew that he was a man, only a man, pallid as death and smeared with blood.

  And yet — miracle of miracles! — the divine wonder in her eyes deepened, and her body seemed to swoon, and fall a-trembling, and swoon again.

  For, although it was but a man who lay at her feet, it had been easier for her to look upon a god.

  He dreamed that he breathed fire — fire, that he craved as he had never craved water. Mad with delirium, he knelt before the flames, rubbing his torn hands, washing them in the crimson-scented flames. He had water, too, cool scented water, that sprayed his burning flesh, that washed in his eyes, his hair, his throat. After that came hunger, a fierce rending agony, that scorched and clutched and tore at his entrails; but that, too, died away, and he dreamed that he had eaten and all his flesh was warm. Then he dreamed that he slept; and when he slept he dreamed no more.

  One day he awoke and found her stretched beside him, soft palms tightly closed, smiling, asleep.

  V.

  Now the days began to run more swiftly than the tide along the tawny beach; and the nights, star-dusted and blue, came and vanished and returned, only to exhale at dawn like perfume from a violet.

  They counted hours as they counted the golden bubbles, winking with a million eyes along the foam-flecked shore; and the hours ended, and began, and glimmered, iridescent, and ended as bubbles end in a tiny rainbow haze.

  There was still fire in the world; it flashed up at her touch and where she chose. A bow strung with the silk of her own hair, an arrow winged like a sea bird and tipped with shell, a line from the silver tendon of a deer, a hook of polished bone — these were the mysteries he learned, and learned them laughing, her silken head bent close to his.

  The first night that the bow was wrought and the glossy string attuned, she stole into the moonlit forest to the brook; and there they stood, whispering, listening, and whispering, though neither understood the voice they loved.

  In the deeper woods, Kaug, the porcupine, scraped and snuffed. They heard Wabóse, the rabbit, pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, loping across dead leaves in the moonlight. Skeé-skah, the wood-duck, sailed past, noiseless, gorgeous as a floating blossom.

  Out on the ocean’s placid silver, Shinge-bis, the diver, shook the scented silence with his idle laughter, till Kay-óshk, the gray gull, stirred in his slumber. There came a sudden ripple in the stream, a mellow splash, a soft sound on the sand.

  “Ihó! Behold!”

  “I see nothing.”

  The beloved voice was only a wordless melody to her.

  “Ihó! Ta-hinca, the red deer! E-hó! The buck will follow!”

  “Ta-hinca,” he repeated, notching the arrow.

  “E-tó! Ta-mdóka!”

  So he drew the arrow to the head, and the gray gull feathers brushed his ear, and the darkness hummed with the harmony of the singing string.

  Thus died Ta-mdóka, the buck deer of seven prongs.

  VI.

  As an apple tossed spinning into the air, so spun the world above the hand that tossed it into space.

  And one day in early spring, Sé-só-Kah, the robin, awoke at dawn, and saw a girl at the foot of the blossoming tree holding a babe cradled in the silken sheets of her hair.

  At its feeble cry, Kaug, the porcupine, raised his quilled head. Wabóse, the rabbit, sat still with palpitating sides. Kay-óshk, the gray gull, tiptoed along the beach.

  Kent knelt with one bronzed arm around them both.

  “Ihó! Inâh!” whispered the girl, and held the babe up in the rosy flames of dawn.

  But Kent trembled as he looked, and his eyes filled. On the pale green moss their shadows lay — three shadows. But the shadow of the babe was white as froth.

  Because it was the firstborn son, they named it Chaské; and the girl sang as she cradled it there in the silken vestments of her hair; all day long in the sunshine she sang:

  Wâ-wa, wâ-wa, wâ-we — yeá;

  Kah-wéen, nee-zhéka Ke-diaus-âi,

  Ke-gâh nau-wâi, ne-mé-go S’weén,

  Ne-bâun, ne-bâun, ne-dâun-is âis.

  E-we wâ-wa, wâ-we — yeá;

  E-we wâ-wa, wâ-we — yeá.

  Out in the calm ocean, Shinge-bis, the diver, listened, preening his satin breast in silence. In the forest, Ta-hinca, the red deer, turned her delicate head to the wind.

  That night Kent thought of the dead, for the first time since he had come to the Key of Grief.

  “Aké-u! aké-u!” chirped Sé-só-Kah, the robin. But the dead never come again.

  “Beloved, sit close to us,” whispered the girl, watching his troubled eyes. “Ma-cânte maséca.”

  But he looked at the babe and its white shadow on the moss, and he only sighed: “Ma-cânte maséca, beloved! Death sits watching us across the sea.”

  Now for the first time he knew more than the fear of fear; he knew fear. And with fear came grief.

  He never before knew that grief lay hidden there in the forest. Now he knew it. Still, that happiness, eternally reborn when two small hands reached up around his neck, when feeble fingers clutched his hand — that happiness that Sé-só-Kah understood, chirping to his brooding mate — that Ta-mdóka knew, licking his dappled fawns — that happiness gave him heart to meet grief calmly, in dreams or in the forest depths, and it helped him to look into the hollow eyes of fear.

  He often thought of the camp now; of Bates, his blanket mate; of Dyce, whose wrist he had broken with a blow; of Tully, whose brother he had shot. He even seemed to hear the shot, the sudden report among the hemlocks; again he saw the haze of smoke, he caught a glimpse of a tall form falling through the bushes.

  He remembered every minute incident of the trial: Bates’s hand laid on his shoulder; Tully, red-bearded and wild-eyed, demanding his death; while Dyce spat and spat and smoked and kicked at the blackened log-ends projecting from the fire. He remembered, too, the verdict, and Tully’s terrible laugh; and the new jute rope that they stripped off the market-sealed gum packs.

  He thought of these things, sometimes wading out on the shoals, shell-tipped fish spear poised: at such times he would miss his fish. He thought of it sometimes when he knelt by the forest stream listening for Ta-hinca’s splash among the cresses: at such moments the feathered shaft whistled far from the mark, and Ta-mdóka stamped and snorted till even the white fisher, stretched on a rotting log, flattened his whiskers and stole away into the forest’s blackest depths.

  When the child was a year old, hour for hour notched at sunset and sunrise, it prattled with the birds, and called to Ne-Kâ, the wild goose, who called again to the child from the sky: “Northward! northward, beloved!”

  When winter came — there is no frost on the Island of Grief — Ne-Kâ, the wild goose, passing high in the clouds, called: “Southward! south ward, beloved!” And the child answered in a soft whisper of an unknown tongue, till the mother shivered, and covered it with her silken hair.

  “O beloved!” said the girl, “Chaské calls to all things living — to Kaug, the porcupine, to Wabóse, to Kay-óshk, the gray gull he calls, and they understand.”

  Kent bent and looked into her eyes.

  “Hush, beloved; it is not that I fear.”

  “Then what, beloved?”

  “His shadow. It is white as surf foam. And at night — I — I have seen — —”

  “Oh, what?”

  “The air about him aglow like a pale rose.”

  “Ma cânté maséca. The earth alone lasts. I speak as one dying — I know, beloved!”

  Her voice died away like a summer wind.

  “Beloved!” he cried.

  But there before him she was changing; the air grew misty, and her hair wavered like shreds of fog, and her slender form swayed, and faded, and swerved, like the mist above a pond.

  In her arms the babe was a figure of mist, rosy,
vague as a breath on a mirror.

  “The earth alone lasts. Inâh! It is the end, O beloved!”

  The words came from the mist — a mist as formless as the ether — a mist that drove in and crowded him, that came from the sea, from the clouds, from the earth at his feet. Faint with terror, he staggered forward calling, “ Beloved! And thou, Chaské, O beloved! Aké u! Aké u!”

  Far out at sea a rosy star glimmered an instant in the mist and went out.

  A sea bird screamed, soaring over the waste of fog-smothered waters. Again he saw the rosy star; it came nearer; its reflection glimmered in the water.

  “Chaské! he cried.

  He heard a voice, dull in the choking mist.

  “O beloved, I am here!” he called again.

  There was a sound on the shoal, a flicker in the fog, the flare of a torch, a face white, livid, terrible — the face of the dead.

  He fell upon his knees; he closed his eyes and opened them. Tully stood beside him with a coil of rope.

  * * * *

  Ihó! Behold the end! The earth alone lasts. The sand, the opal wave on the golden beach, the sea of sapphire, the dusted starlight, the wind, and love, shall die. Death also shall die, and lie on the shores of the skies like the bleached skull there on the Key to Grief, polished, empty, with its teeth embedded in the sand.

  A MATTER OF INTEREST.

  He that knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool. Shun him.

  He that knows not, and knows that he knows not, is simple. Teach him.

  He that knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep. Wake him.

  He that knows, and knows that he knows, is wise. Follow him.

  Arabian Proverb.

  I.

  MUCH as I dislike it, I am obliged to include this story in a volume devoted to fiction: I have attempted to tell it as an absolutely true story, but until three months ago, when the indisputable proofs were placed before the British Association by Professor James Holroyd, I was regarded as an impostor. Now that the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, the Philadelphia Zoölogical Society, and the Natural History Museum of New York city, are convinced that the story is truthful and accurate in every particular, I prefer to tell it my own way. Professor Holroyd urges me to do this, although Professor Bruce Stoddard, of Columbia College, is now at work upon a pamphlet, to be published the latter part of next month, describing scientifically the extraordinary discovery which, to the shame of the United States, was first accepted and recognised in England.

  Now, having no technical ability concerning the affair in question, and having no knowledge of either comparative anatomy or zöology, I am perhaps unfitted to tell this story. But the story is true; the episode occurred under my own eyes here, within a few hours sail of the Battery. And as I was one of the first persons to verify what has long been a theory among scientists, and, moreover, as the result of Professor Holroyd’s discovery is to be placed on exhibition in Madison Square Garden on the twentieth of next month, I have decided to tell, as simply as I am able, exactly what occurred.

  I first wrote out the story on April 1, 1896. The North American Review, the Popular Science Monthly, the Scientific American, Nature, Forest and Stream, and the Fossiliferous Magazine in turn rejected it; some curtly informing me that fiction had no place in their columns. When I attempted to explain that it was not fiction, the editors of these periodicals either maintained a contemptuous silence, or bluntly notified me that my literary services and opinions were not desired. But finally, when several publishers offered to take the story as fiction, I cut short all negotiations and decided to publish it myself. Where I am known at all, it is my misfortune to be known as a writer of fiction. This makes it impossible for me to receive a hearing from a scientific audience. I regret it bitterly, because now, when it is too late, I am prepared to prove certain scientific matters of interest, and to produce the proofs. In this case, however, I am fortunate, for nobody can dispute the existence of a thing when the bodily proof is exhibited as evidence.

  This is the story; and if I write it as I write fiction, it is because I do not know how to write it otherwise.

  I was walking along the beach below Pine Inlet, on the south shore of Long Island. The railroad and telegraph station is at West Oyster Bay. Everybody who has travelled on the Long Island Railroad knows the station, but few, perhaps, know Pine Inlet. Duck shooters, of course, are familiar with it; but as there are no hotels there, and nothing to see except salt meadow, salt creek, and a strip of dune and sand, the summer-squatting public may probably be unaware of its existence. The local name for the place is Pine Inlet; the maps give its name as Sand Point, I believe, but anybody at West Oyster Bay can direct you to it. Captain McPeek, who keeps the West Oyster Bay House, drives duck shooters there in winter. It lies five miles southeast from West Oyster Bay.

  I had walked over that afternoon from Captain McPeek’s. There was a reason for my going to Pine Inlet it embarrasses me to explain it, but the truth is I meditated writing an ode to the ocean. It was out of the question to write it in West Oyster Bay, with the whistle of locomotives in my ears. I knew that Pine Inlet was one of the loneliest places on the Atlantic coast; it is out of sight of everything except leagues of gray ocean. Rarely one might make out fishing smacks drifting across the horizon. Summer squatters never visited it; sportsmen shunned it, except in winter. Therefore, as I was about to do a bit of poetry, I thought that Pine Inlet was the spot for the deed. So I went there.

  As I was strolling along the beach, biting my pencil reflectively, tremendously impressed by the solitude and the solemn thunder of the surf, a thought occurred to me: how unpleasant it would be if I suddenly stumbled on a summer boarder. As this joyless impossibility flitted across my mind, I rounded a bleak sand dune.

  A summer girl stood directly in my path.

  If I jumped, I think the young lady has pardoned me by this time. She ought to, because she also started, and said something in a very faint voice. What she said was “Oh!”

  She stared at me as though I had just crawled up out of the sea to bite her. I don’t know what my own expression resembled, but I have been given to understand it was idiotic.

  Now I perceived, after a few moments, that the young lady was frightened, and I knew I ought to say something civil. So I said, “Are there any mosquitoes here?”

  “No,” she replied, with a slight quiver in her voice; “I have only seen one, and it was biting somebody else.”

  I looked foolish; the conversation seemed so futile, and the young lady appeared to be more nervous than before. I had an impulse to say, “Do not run; I have breakfasted,” for she seemed to be meditating a plunge into the breakers. What I did say was: “I did not know anybody was here. I do not intend to intrude. I come from Captain McPeek’s, and I am writing an ode to the ocean.” After I had said this it seemed to ring in my ears like, “I come from Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James.”

  I glanced timidly at her.

  “She’s thinking of the same thing,” said I to myself. “What an ass I must appear!”

  However, the young lady seemed to be a trifle reassured. I noticed she drew a sigh of relief and looked at my shoes. She looked so long that it made me suspicious, and I also examined my shoes. They seemed to be fairly respectable.

  “I — I am sorry,” she said, “but would you mind not walking on the beach?”

  This was sudden. I had intended to retire and leave the beach to her, but I did not fancy being driven away so abruptly.

  “I was about to withdraw, madam,” said I, bowing stiffly; “I beg you will pardon any inconvenience — —”

  “Dear me!” she cried, “you don’t understand. I do not — I would not think for a moment of asking you to leave Pine Inlet. I merely ventured to request you to walk on the dunes. I am so afraid that your footprints may obliterate the impressions that my father is studying.”

  “Oh!” said I, looking about me as though I had been caught in the
middle of a flower bed; “really I did not notice any impressions. Impressions of what — if I may be permitted?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, smiling a little at my awkward pose. “If you step this way in a straight line you can do no damage.”

  I did as she bade me. I suppose my movements resembled the gait of a wet peacock. Possibly they recalled the delicate manœuvres of the kangaroo. Anyway, she laughed.

  This seriously annoyed me. I had been at a disadvantage; I walk well enough when let alone.

  “You can scarcely expect,” said I, “that a man absorbed in his own ideas could notice impressions on the sand. I trust I have obliterated nothing.”

  As I said this I looked back at the long line of footprints stretching away in prospective across the sand. They were my own. How large they looked! Was that what she was laughing at?

  “I wish to explain,” she said gravely, looking at the point of her parasol. “I am very sorry to be obliged to warn you — to ask you to forego the pleasure of strolling on a beach that does not belong to me. Perhaps,” she continued, in sudden alarm, “perhaps this beach belongs to you?”

  “The beach? Oh, no,” I said.

  “But — but you were going to write poems about it?”

  “Only one — and that does not necessitate owning the beach. I have observed,” said I frankly, “that the people who own nothing write many poems about it.”

  She looked at me seriously.

  “I write many poems,” I added.

  She laughed doubtfully.

  “Would you rather I went away?” I asked politely.

  “I? Why, no — I mean that you may do as you please — except please do not walk on the beach.”

  “Then I do not alarm you by my presence?” I inquired. My clothes were a bit ancient. I wore them shooting, sometimes. “My family is respectable,” I added; and I told her my name.

  “Oh! Then you wrote ‘Culled Cowslips’ and ‘Faded Fig-Leaves,’ and you imitate Maeterlinck, and you —— Oh, I know lots of people that you know; “she cried with every symptom of relief; “and you know my brother.”