Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  Suddenly she broke the thread off short, the whole fabric falling with a muffled shock.

  “Why did you do that?” I demanded wrathfully.

  “The rug is woven; the weaver is dead,” she said.

  “Oh, go on, Geraldine,” I insisted; “don’t stop half way in a thing like that. It’s the East — it’s the real East, I tell you. How you do it — you who have never seen the East — Heaven only knows!”

  “U Allah Aalem,” she murmured;”it’s in me.” Then she looked back at me, laughing. “Centuries ago you and I heard that music along the Arax — or I sang it among the Tcherkess roses for you, perhaps — perhaps in the gardens of Trebizond.”

  “That might explain it,” I said gravely. Lately she had found pleasure in a fancy that she and I had lived together in the East, centuries since, and that we were soon to return forever.

  “You and I,” she mused, touching the keys lightly— “and Jim, of course,” she added.

  “Of course,” I said.

  She dropped her head, striking chord on chord with nervous precision; and hanging in the wake of every ringing harmony a frail melody floated like the Chinese cloud band in a Kirman tapestry.

  “What’s that air?” I asked, fascinated.

  “I don’t know; it sounds pagan, doesn’t it? — like the wicked beauty of Babylon. Do you hear how it beats on and on like the rhythm of naked feet — little, delicate, naked feet ablaze with gems — the feet of Herodiade perhaps — thud — thud — tching! — don’t you hear them, Dick? And now listen to those silky, flowery trills! They’re Asiatic; ancient Cathay is awaking — camel bells in the hazar of the Golden Emperor! Hark! — now you hear trumpets, don’t you? Well, of course that must be the Mongols marching with the Prince of the Vanguard. Hark! How savagely the brutal Afghan theme breaks in with its fierce trampling and the staccato echo of Tekke drums! It’s frightening me out of the East. I think we had better come home, Dick,” she added, mischievously running into the latest popular street song.

  “How on earth could you do that!” I exclaimed wrathfully. “You’re a futile mixture of feather brain and genius!”

  But where was the genius hidden under that laughing and exquisite mask confronting me? Suddenly the delicate mask became grave.

  “Let me laugh when I can, Dick,” she said. “It is not often I laugh.”

  I was silent.

  “Of course you may be horrid if you choose,” she observed with a shrug, running a brilliantly inane series of trills from end to end of the keyboard. “But it’s no use scolding, for I won’t study, I won’t compose, I won’t ‘try to do something,’ and I won’t be serious. I’m shallow, I’m frivolous, I’ve the soul of a Trebizond dancing girl, and I like it. Now what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going out,” I said ungraciously.

  “Oh — alone?”

  “Not if you’ll come. It’s stopped raining. Will you come? Oh, get your hat, Geraldine, and stop that torment of idiotic trills!”

  “If Jim doesn’t mind, I think I’ll go and sit in the laboratory with him,” she observed carelessly. I looked at her without comment.

  “I have a curious idea,” she continued, “that he might like to have me around to-day while he is working.”

  I stared at her, but there was no bitterness in her tranquil smile as she leaned forward, resting her elbows on the polished rosewood case.

  “So I won’t go with you, Dick,” she said slowly. One of those intervals of restless silence, which within the year we had learned to dread, menaced us now. Mute, motionless, I watched the soft color deepening in her face, then, impatient, roused myself and walked over to the laboratory. Westover looked up as I pushed aside the screen.

  “Will you drive with us?” I asked. “The sun’s out.”

  He declined, peering at me through his glass mask.

  “Come on, Jim,” I urged. “You’ve inhaled enough poison for one day. Take off your mask and wash your hands and drive us out to High Bridge. I’ll telephone to the stable if you say the word, and they’ll hook up the new four. Is it a go?”

  “No,” he said coldly, and turned on his heel, lifting a test tube to the light.

  He was more taciturn and a trifle uglier than usual. I watched him for a moment warming the test tube over a burner, then without further parley replaced the screen, closed the double glass doors, and walked back to Geraldine.

  “Doesn’t Jim care to come?” she asked.

  I said that her husband appeared to be absorbed in his work.

  “Very well,” she said, with airy composure; “trot along, Dicky — and if you see a bunch of jonquils growing on Fifth Avenue, you may pick them for me — or for that pretty girl you met at Lakewood—”

  “I’ll send you a bunch as big as a bushel.”

  “A bushel of flowers is as compromising as a declaration,” she said. “Send them to her.”

  “There’s only one way to settle it,” I said; “I’ll send them to the loveliest girl in the world — shall I?”

  She assented, laughing uncertainly.

  “I think I’ll pay Jim a little call,” she said, rising from the piano and walking slowly toward the laboratory.

  A few moments later as I passed down the broad stairway I heard Westover’s penetrating voice: “Let that glass tube alone, Geraldine! Why the devil can’t you keep your hands off things when you come in here?”

  I lingered for a while in the hallway, thinking that she might change her mind and come down, for she had left the laboratory to her husband, and I heard her moving about in her own apartment. She did not come, and after a little while I left the house, a sense of apprehension depressing me.

  The asphalt of Fifth Avenue was still wet with the first warm rain of April, but the sun glittered on window and pavement and flashed along the polished panels of carriages crowding the avenue from curb to curb. A breath of spring had set the sparrows chattering and chirping; the movement of the throng, the bright gowns, the fresh faces of young girls, and the endless façades of glass reflecting it — all were pleasant to me, a man sensitive to impressions.

  And so in the pale sunshine I sauntered on through the throng, now idling curiously by some shop window whither a display of jewels or curios attracted me, now strolling on again content with the soft color in sky and sunlight.

  I found a florist whose shop windows were filled with thickets of fragrant, fragile spring flowers; and every little scented blossom that I touched, choosing the freshest, nodded to the voiceless cadence of a name repeated — and: “Geraldine! Geraldine!” they nodded, so confidently, so sweetly, that what was I to do but send them to her?

  And so I sauntered on again, threading the throng, half-minded to turn back, yet ever tempted on by idleness, until above me the twin spires of the cathedral glimmered, all silvered in the shimmering blue.

  Halting, undecided, I presently became aware of an old man, his withered hands crossed before him, standing quite patiently under the cathedral terrace. Before him on the sidewalk rested a basket draped with a brilliant rug or two and heaped with tawdry rubbish — scarlet fezzes, slippers of spangled leather, tasseled charms of gilt, flimsy striped fabrics — all the worthless flummery known as “Oriental” to the good peoples of the West.

  Few stopped to look; no one bought. As I passed him his dimmed gaze met mine; all the wistfulness of the very poor, all the mystery of the very, very old, was in his eyes. Moved by impulse, perhaps, I spoke to him in a low voice, using the Turkish language.

  A dull animation came into his misty eyes.

  “Allahou Ekber,” he muttered, in a trembling voice; “it is sweet to hear your words, my son.”

  “Mussulman,” I said, “who are you who recite the Tekbir here under the spires of a Roman church?”

  “Is there harm in bearing witness to the glory of God here under the minarets of your cathedral?” he asked humbly.

  “Spire and minaret are one to Him,” I said. “Who are you, Mussulman
?”

  “My name is Khassar,” he said; “my nation Eighur; my fort is the Issig-Kul; Baïon-Aoul my clan. I am an Eighur Turk, a Khodja; and I am able to write the Turkish language in Arabic and in Eighur-Mongol characters.”

  “Reverend father,” I said, full of astonishment and pity, “how should a Khodja of the Baïon-Aoul come to this? Even the Tekrin horseman halts at the sea.”

  “It is written,” he said feebly, “that we belong to God and we return to Him.”

  Troubled, I stood there on the sidewalk, oblivious of the knot of idlers around us, curious to hear two men so different conversing in a common tongue.

  I wished to give him something, yet did not venture to humiliate him without pretense of buying.

  “Here is my card,” I said, “on which is written my name and where I live. Bring me these rugs to-night, ata. I wish to buy.”

  “You do not desire them,” he said, shaking his head. “You know the East; you understand these rugs; you know they are worthless, acid-washed, singed, rubbed with pumice, smoked — every vile Armenian practice used! You know the dyes are aniline; that they are loosely tied, hastily and flimsily woven by Armenian dogs and sons of dogs. You mean kindness; you have done me enough by speaking to me.”

  He passed his trembling hand over his ragged beard.

  “You who know carpets and love them,” he quavered; “listen attentively. I have a strip to show — not here — but I could bring it.”

  “Bring it,” I said gently.

  He fumbled in the pocket of his tattered coat and presently brought to light a scrap of paper on which was scrawled some Persian characters.

  “It is such a carpet as I have never seen,” he said; “there is nothing in our history or our traditions to teach us the meaning of this carpet — nothing save that it is an Eighur rug inscribed in Persian and in an unknown script. I have traced the characters in a single cartouche. Read, my son.”

  And I read, translating freely:

  “Ten thousand thousand stars shine down on Babylon. The desert well reflects but one.”

  “I will bring the carpet,” he said, after a silence. “I do not know its value; it has no beauty any longer; only the ghost of ancient splendor remains in the thin knots clinging to warp and weft. And it is old, my son, older than tradition. Upon it there is not one sign to teach us the mystery of its meaning.”

  He peered at me with his old, sad eyes, earnestly.

  “I will bring it,” he said. “Go with Ali, thou fair comrade of Hassan.”

  “May the Blessed Companions intervene for you,” I said.

  And so we parted, gravely and with circumstance, I to stroll homeward, touched, musing curiously upon this carpet of which a nomad Mussulman could make nothing. The Persian verse from the cartouche interested me, too, the refrain lingering persistently in my memory:

  “Ten thousand thousand stars shine down on Babylon. The desert well reflects but one.”

  Never before, save on the imperial carpet known as Belshazzar’s Rug, had I encountered any inscription mentioning Babylon. So, at the first glance, the nomad’s rug should have some value. But speculation was futile — surely I ought to have learned that if unnumbered disappointments could teach me anything.

  Thinking of these things, I passed along the noble avenue, retracing my steps to the big dusky house standing alone, with two old trees to guard it — relics, like the mansion, of the great city’s infancy — the last old dwelling left marooned amid the arid wastes of commerce. Here my cousin and his wife lived with me in winter; I with them at their Lenox home in summer.

  A brougham or two at the curb before the house warned me of clients waiting or of visitors for Geraldine — doubtless the latter, for it was now past five.

  Under the circumstances I went in to second Geraldine — for Westover never troubled himself to be civil to her friends.

  There were people there, and tea — and a pretty, wordless welcome from Geraldine.

  The violet-tinted April dusk brought candlelight; people went away and others came; then, one by one, they left, and we were alone, Geraldine and I — and the new moon shining through the frail curtains. For a long time we talked together, aimlessly, of this and that which mattered nothing to anybody. A maid entered to draw the curtains. When she left, Geraldine laughed and picked up a cluster of yellow jonquils.

  “Your courage failed you, after all,” she said; “the loveliest woman in the world must go without my flowers to-night.”

  “She has them,” I retorted.

  “Do you mean me, Dick?” she said under her breath.

  “Did you doubt it?” She bowed her head. Silence, ever waiting to ensnare us, crept like a shadow in between us. And I would not have it.

  “An old man is to bring a rug to-night,” I said abruptly.

  Geraldine stirred in her armchair, repeating in a low voice:

  “Ten thousand thousand stars shine down on Babylon. The desert well reflects but one. Abaddon none.”

  Bolt upright in my chair I listened, incredulous of my own ears.

  “Where on earth did you hear that?” I demanded.

  “I read it on Belshazzar’s Rug in cuneiform with the Kufic key,” she answered, watching me.

  “You — all alone — interpreted that?” I asked, astounded.

  “Yes. It is the cuneiform inscription in the gold cartouche.”

  Profound astonishment left me silent. She lay back in her chair with a little laugh of pure excitement.

  “After you went out,” she said, “I was horribly lonely, and I thought of you, and then I thought about the work you loved — the cuneiforms — and — as Jim did not seem to need me in the laboratory — I thought to myself: ‘Suppose — suppose by luck I could unravel the inscription on the gold cartouche! Dick would be the happiest man in the world.’ And then — your — your flowers came, and I sat for a while alone with them. Then, on impulse, I jumped up and took the Kufic tables and all the combinations that you and I had tried together, and I slipped upstairs to the marble room and knelt down before Belshazzar’s Rug. O Dick! the Tree of Heaven seemed to quiver in every jeweled branch and leaf! — it was only the draught from the closing door that moved the rug, but the mystic tree swayed there as the folds of the carpet moved, and I seemed to feel the mystery of the Prophet’s Paradise stealing into me, penetrating me like the incense of forbidden wine — and I — I felt very Eastern and very pagan, kneeling there.

  “It was strange, too; the intricate Kufic key seemed to be falling into place of its own impulse, symbol after symbol promising a linked symmetry of sense, until, almost before I was conscious of the miracle, it had been wrought there in the marble room; and my eyes were opened; and I, kneeling before the Tree of Heaven, read quite clearly what is written in the gold cartouche on the great carpet of Belshazzar. Dick! I prayed so hard that I might read it. And I have read it — for you!”

  In the eloquence of her emotion she had risen, holding out both hands to me; I caught them, crushing them to my lips.

  Ominous pulsating silence grew between us; her fingers relaxed and her hands fell from my lips. The stillness, intense, absolute, became a tension, a growing resistless force pressing us apart, slowly, inexorably driving me back step by step against the silk-hung wall, which I reached for, groping, steadying myself.

  Never before had we been so swayed, so thrilled; never before had we been so reckless of the peril. Over us a magic snare had fallen, and we had evaded it — an unseen and delicate web, enmeshing us, drawing us together limb to limb, body to body, soul to soul, there on the kindling edges of destruction.

  She sank back into the deep seat by the window, her white hands tightening on the gilded foliation of the chair’s carved arms. And I saw how pale her face was and how her dark eyes were fixed steadily upon the floor as though destruction was a pit whose edge lay at her feet.

  Presently I became aware that the world outside the curtained windows was moving still — had perhaps neve
r halted on its way to wait upon our fate. And, crossing the room, I raised the shade and saw the new moon, low in the sky, kneeling amid the watching stars. Yellow rays from a street lamp illuminated the old trees’ foliage, edging with palest fire the tracery of newborn leaves, tufting each stem and twig, exquisite, delicately formal as the leafy labyrinths of the Tree of Heaven spreading above the flowery field of Belshazzar’s Rug.

  Khassar the nomad had come and gone, and his rug hung in the marble room, pale as the tinted shadow cast by the great carpet of Belshazzar.

  The nomad’s rug was clean but very ancient, and so worn, so time-eaten to the very warp, that the Kherdeh was all but obliterated in the metnih. But outside of that, between the outside band and the ara, or central line, there were traces of ancient glory and dimmed outlines of design; and I saw the twelve cartouches inscribed alternately in Persian and in cuneiform characters. There, too, were the worn remains of floral thickets haunted of beast and bird, intricate allegories, chronicles in color and symbol, every leaf, every blossom, every creature fraught with mystic meaning; and there also, still faintly to be made out, the shadowy foliage of the Tree of Heaven.

  “How much did you pay for that ghost of a rug?” demanded Westover, who had followed me upstairs after dressing for dinner.

  When I told him he shrugged his shoulders, but made no comment. A moment later Geraldine entered, and his small eyes, no longer furtive, became fixed and dull.

  “They say in the East,” I remarked, “that when all color is gone from an Eighur rug a lost soul takes it for its abode. Eighur women are supposed to have souls occasionally, and to lose them now and then.”