Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  Contents

  ONE MAN IN A MILLION

  I

  Do you desire me to marry him?” asked Miss Castle, quietly.

  “Let me finish,” said her uncle. “Jane,” he added, turning on his sister, “if you could avoid sneezing for a few moments, I should be indebted to you.”

  Miss Jane Garcide, a sallow lady of forty, who suffered with colds all winter and hay-fever all summer, meekly left the room.

  Miss Castle herself leaned on the piano, tearing the pink petals from a half-withered rose, while her guardian, the Hon. John Garcide, finished what he had to say and pulled out his cigar-case with decision.

  “I have only to add,” he said, “that James J. Crawford is one man in a million.”

  Her youthful adoration of Garcide had changed within a few years to a sweet-tempered indifference. He was aware of this; he was anxious to learn whether the change had also affected her inherited passion for truthfulness.

  “Do you remember a promise you once made?” he inquired, lighting his cigar with care.

  “Yes,” she said, calmly.

  “When was it?”

  “On my tenth birthday.”

  He looked out of the heavily curtained window.

  “Of course you could not be held to such a promise,” he remarked.

  “There is no need to hold me to it,” she answered, flushing up.

  Her delicate sense of honor amused him; he lay back in his arm-chair, enjoying his cigar.

  “It is curious,” he said, “that you cannot recall meeting Mr. Crawford last winter.”

  “A girl has an opportunity to forget hundreds of faces after her first season,” she said.

  There was another pause; then Garcide went on: “I am going to ask you to marry him.”

  Her face paled a trifle; she bent her head in acquiescence. Garcide smiled. It had always been that way with the Castles. Their word, once given, ended all matters. And now Garcide was gratified to learn the value of a promise made by a child of ten.

  “I wonder,” said Garcide, plaintively, “why you never open your heart to me, Hilda?”

  “I wonder, too,” she said; “my father did.”

  Garcide turned his flushed face to the window.

  Years before, when the firm of Garcide & Castle went to pieces, Peter Castle stood by the wreck to the end, patching it with his last dollar. But the wreck broke up, and he drifted piteously with the débris until a kindly current carried him into the last harbor of all — the port of human derelicts.

  Garcide, however, contrived to cling to some valuable flotsam and paddle into calm water, and anchor.

  After a few years he built a handsome house above Fiftieth Street; after a few more years he built a new wing for Saint Berold’s Hospital; and after a few more years he did other things equally edifying, but which, if mentioned, might identify him.

  Church work had always interested him. As a speculation in moral obligation, he adopted Peter Castle’s orphan, who turned to him in a passion of gratitude and blind devotion. And as she bade fair to rival her dead mother in beauty, and as rich men marry beauty when it is in the market, the Hon. John Garcide decided to control the child’s future. A promise at ten years is quickly made, but he had never forgotten it, and she could not forget.

  And now Garcide needed her as he needed mercy from Ophir Steel, which was slowly crushing his own steel syndicate to powder.

  The struggle between Steel Plank and James J. Crawford’s Ophir Steel is historical. The pure love of fighting was in Crawford; he fought Garcide to a standstill and then kicked him, filling Garcide with a mixture of terror and painful admiration.

  But sheer luck caught at Garcide’s coat-tails and hung there. Crawford, prowling in the purlieus of society, had seen Miss Castle.

  The next day Crawford came into Garcide’s office and accepted a chair with such a humble and uneasy smile that Garcide mistook his conciliatory demeanor and attempted to bully him. But when he found out what Crawford wanted, he nearly fainted in an attempt to conceal his astonishment and delight.

  “Do you think I’d buy you off with an innocent child?” he said, lashing himself into a good imitation of an insulted gentleman.

  Crawford looked out of the window, then rose and walked towards the door.

  “Do you think you can bribe me?” shouted Garcide after him. Crawford hesitated.

  “Come back here,” said Garcide, firmly; “I want you to explain yourself.”

  “I can’t,” muttered Crawford.

  “Well — try, anyway,” said Garcide, more amiably.

  And now this was the result of that explanation, at least one of the results; and Miss Castle had promised to wed a gentleman in Ophir Steel named Crawford, at the convenience of the Hon. John Garcide.

  The early morning sunshine fell across the rugs in the music-room, filling the gloom with golden lights. It touched a strand of hair on Miss Castle’s bent head.

  “You’ll like him,” said Garcide, guiltily.

  Her hand hung heavily on the piano keys.

  “You have no other man in mind?” he asked.

  “No, … no man.”

  Garcide chewed the end of his cigar.

  “Crawford’s a bashful man. Don’t make it hard for him,” he said.

  She swung around on the gilded music-stool, one white hand lying among the ivory keys.

  “I shall spare us both,” she said; “I shall tell him that it is settled.”

  Garcide rose; she received his caress with composure. He made another grateful peck at her chin.

  “Why don’t you take a quiet week or two in the country?” he suggested, cheerfully, “Go up to the Sagamore Club; Jane will go with you. You can have the whole place to yourselves. You always liked nature and — er — all that, eh?”

  “Oh yes,” she said, indifferently.

  That afternoon the Hon. John Garcide sent a messenger to James J. Crawford with the following letter:

  “My dear Crawford, — Your manly and straightforward request for permission to address my ward, Miss Castle, has profoundly touched me.

  “I have considered the matter, I may say earnestly considered it.

  “Honor and the sacred duties of guardianship forbid that I should interfere in any way with my dear child’s happiness if she desires to place it in your keeping. On the other hand, honor and decency prevent me from attempting to influence her to any decision which might prove acceptable to myself.

  “I can therefore only grant you the permission you desire to address my ward. The rest lies with a propitious Providence.

  “Cordially yours, John Garcide.

  “P.S. — My sister, Miss Garcide, and Miss Castle are going to the Sagamore Club to-night. I’ll take you up there whenever you can get away.”

  To which came answer by messenger:

  “Hon. John Garcide:

  “My dear Garcide, — Can’t go for two weeks. My fool nephew Jim is on his vacation, and I don’t know where he is prowling.

  Hastily yours,

  “James J. Crawford.

  “P. S. — There’s a director’s meeting at three. Come down and we’ll settle all quarrels.”

  To this the Hon. John Garcide telegraphed: “All right,” and hurriedly prepared to escort his sister and Miss Castle to the mid-day express for Sagamore Hills.

  II

  Miss Castle usually rose with the robins, when there were any in the neighborhood. There were plenty on the lawn around the Sagamore Club that dewy June morning, chirping, chirking, trilling, repeating their endless arias from tree and gate-post. And through the outcry of the robins, the dry cackle of the purple grackles, and the cat-bird’s whine floated earthward the melody of the golden orioles.

  Miss Castle, fresh from the bath, breakfasted in her own rooms with an appetite that astonished her.

  She was a wholesome, fresh-skinned girl, with a superb body, limbs a trifle heavy in the strict classical sense, straight-browed, blue-eyed, and very
lovely and Greek.

  Pensively she ate her toast, tossing a few crumbs at the robins; pensively she disposed of two eggs, a trout, and all the chocolate, and looked into the pitcher for more cream.

  The swelling bird-music only intensified the deep, sweet country silence which brooded just beyond the lawn’s wet limits; she saw the flat river tumbling in the sunlight; she saw the sky over all, its blue mystery untroubled by a cloud.

  “I love all that,” she said, dreamily, to her maid behind her. “Never mind my hair now; I want the wind to blow it.”

  The happy little winds of June, loitering among the lilacs, heard; and they came and blew her bright hair across her eyes, puff after puff of perfumed balm, and stirred the delicate stuff that clung to her, and she felt their caress on her bare feet.

  “I mean to go and wade in that river,” she said to her maid. “Dress me very quickly.”

  But when she was dressed the desire for childish things had passed away, and she raised her grave eyes to the reflected eyes in the mirror, studying them in silence.

  “After all,” she said, aloud, “I am young enough to have found happiness — if they had let me.… The sunshine is full of it, out-doors.… I could have found it.… I was not meant for men.… Still … it is all in the future yet. I will learn not to be afraid.”

  She made a little effort to smile at herself in the mirror, but her courage could not carry her as far as that. So, with a quick, quaint gesture of adieu, she turned and walked rapidly out into the hallway.

  Miss Garcide was in bed, sneezing patiently. “I won’t be out for weeks,” said the poor lady, “so you will have to amuse yourself alone.”

  Miss Castle kissed her and went away lightly down the polished stairs to the great hall.

  The steward came up to wish her good-morning, and to place the resources of the club at her disposal.

  “I don’t know,” she said, hesitating at the veranda door; “I think a sun-bath is all I care for. You may hang a hammock under the maples, if you will. I suppose,” she added, “that I am quite alone at the club?”

  “One gentleman arrived this morning,” said the steward— “Mr. Crawford.”

  She looked back, poised lightly in the doorway through which the morning sunshine poured. All the color had left her face. “Mr. Crawford,” she said, in a dull voice.

  “He has gone out after trout,” continued the steward, briskly; “he is a rare rod, ma’am, is Mr. Crawford. He caught the eight-pound fish — perhaps you noticed it on the panel in the billiard-room.”

  Miss Castle came into the hall again, and stepped over to the register. Under her signature, “Miss Castle and maid,” she saw “J. Crawford, New York.” The ink was still blue and faint.

  She turned and walked out into the sunshine.

  The future was no longer a gray, menacing future; it had become suddenly the terrifying present, and its shadow fell sharply around her in the sunshine.

  Now all the courage of her race must be summoned, and must respond to the summons. The end of all was at hand; but when had a Castle ever flinched at the face of fate under any mask?

  She raised her resolute head; her eyes matched the sky — clear, unclouded, fathomless.

  In hours of deep distress the sound of her own voice had always helped her to endure; and now, as she walked across the lawn bareheaded, she told herself not to grieve over a just debt to be paid, not to quail because life held for her nothing of what she had dreamed.

  If there was a tremor now and then in her low voice, none but the robins heard it; if she lay flung face downward in the grasses, under the screen of alders by the water, there was no one but the striped chipmunk to jeer and mock.

  “Now listen, you silly girl,” she whispered; “he cannot take away the sky and the sunshine from you! He cannot blind and deafen you, silly! Cry if you must, you little coward! — you will marry him all the same.”

  Suddenly sitting up, alert, she heard something singing. It was the river flowing close beside her.

  She pushed away the screen of leaves and stretched out full length, looking down into the water.

  A trout lay there; his eyes were shining with an opal tint, his scarlet spots blazed like jewels.

  And as she lay there, her bright hair tumbled about her face, she heard, above the river’s monotone, a sharp, whiplike sound — swis-s-sh — and a silvery thread flashed out across her vision. It was a fishing-line and leader, and the fisherman who had cast it was standing fifty feet away up-stream, hip-deep in the sunlit water.

  Swish! swish! and the long line flew back, straightened far behind him, and again lengthened out, the single yellow-and-gilt fly settling on the water just above the motionless trout, who simply backed off down-stream.

  But there were further troubles for the optimistic angler; a tough alder stem, just under water, became entangled in the line; the fisherman gave a cautious jerk; the hook sank into the water-soaked wood, buried to the barb.

  “Oh, the deuce!” said the fisherman, calmly.

  Before she could realize what he was about, he had waded across the shallows and seized the alder branch. A dash of water showered her as he shook the hook free; she stood up with an involuntary gasp and met the astonished eyes of the fisherman.

  He was a tall, sunburned young fellow, with powerful shoulders and an easy, free-limbed carriage; he was also soaking wet and streaked with mud.

  “Upon my word,” he said, “I never saw you! Awf’lly sorry; hope I haven’t spoiled your sport — but I have. You were fishing, of course?”

  “No, I was only looking,” she said. “Of course I’ve spoiled your sport.”

  “Not at all,” he said, laughing; “that alder twig did for me.”

  “But there was a trout lying there — I saw him; and the trout saw me, so of course he wouldn’t rise to your cast. And I’m exceedingly sorry,” she ended, smiling in spite of herself.

  Her hair was badly rumpled; she had been crying, and he could see it, but he had never looked upon such tear-stained, smiling, and dishevelled loveliness.

  As he looked and marvelled, her smile died out; it came to her with a distinct shock that this water-logged specimen of sun-tanned manhood must be Crawford.

  “Are you?” she said, scarcely aware that she spoke.

  “What?” he asked, puzzled.

  “Mr. Crawford?”

  “Why, yes — and, of course, you are Miss Castle,” he replied, smiling easily. “I saw your name in the guest-book this morning. Awf’lly glad you came, Miss Castle; hope you’ll let me show you where the big fellows lie.”

  “You mean the fish,” she said, with composure.

  The shock of suddenly realizing that this man was the man she had to marry confused her; she made an effort to get things back into proper perspective, for the river was swimming before her eyes, and in her ears rang a strangely pleasant voice — Crawford’s — saying all sorts of good-humored things, which she heard but scarcely comprehended.

  Instinctively she raised her hands to touch her disordered hair; she stood there naïvely twisting it into shape again, her eyes constantly reverting to the sun-tanned face before her.

  “And I have the pleasure of knowing your guardian, Mr. Garcide, very slightly — in a business way,” he was saying, politely.

  “Ophir Steel,” she said.

  He laughed.

  “Oh, we are making a great battle,” he said. “I’m only hoping we may come to an understanding with Mr. Garcide.”

  “I thought you had already come to an understanding,” she observed, calmly.

  “Have we? I hope so; I had not heard that,” he said, quickly. “How did you hear?”

  Without warning she flushed scarlet to her neck; and she was as amazed as he at the surging color staining her white skin.

  She could not endure that — she could not face him — so she bent her head a little in recognition of his presence and stepped past him, out along the river-bank.

  He looked a
fter her, wondering what he could have said.

  She wondered, too, and her wonder grew that instead of self-pity, repugnance, and deep dread, she should feel such a divine relief from the terror that had possessed her.

  Now at least she knew the worst. This was the man!

  She strove to place him, to recall his face. She could not. All along she had pictured Crawford as an older man. And this broad-shouldered, tanned young fellow was Crawford, after all! Where could her eyes have been? How absurd that her indifference should have so utterly blinded her!

  She stood a moment on the lawn, closing her eyes.

  Oh, now she had no difficulty in recalling his face — in fact the difficulty was to shut it out, for it was before her eyes, open or shut — it was before her when she entered her bedroom and sank into a cushioned chair by the breezy window. And she took her burning cheeks in both hands and rested her elbows on her knees.

  Truly terror had fled. It shamed her to find herself thanking God that her fate was to lie in the keeping of this young man. Yet it was natural, too, for the child had nigh died of horror, though the courage of the Castles had held her head high in the presence of the inevitable. And now suddenly into her gray and hopeless future, peopled by the phantoms of an old man, stepped a living, smiling young fellow, with gentle manners and honest speech, and a quick courtesy which there was no mistaking.

  She had no mother — nobody to talk to — so she had long ago made a confidante of her own reflection in the looking-glass. And to the mirror she now went, meeting the reflected eyes shyly, yet smiling with friendly sympathy:

  “Silly! to frighten yourself! It is all over now. He’s young and tall and sunburned. I don’t think he knows a great deal — but don’t be frightened, he is not a bit dreadful, … only … it is a pity, … but I suppose he was in love with me, … and, after all, it doesn’t matter, … only I am … sorry … for him.… If he had only cared for a girl who could love him!… I don’t suppose I could, … ever!… But I will be very kind to him, … to make up.”

  III

  She saw him every day; she dined at the club table now.

  Miss Garcide’s hay-fever increased with the ripening summer, and she lay in her room with all the windows closed, sneezing and reading Anthony Trollope.