Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  The banisters were decorated with twisted ropes of evergreens; she descended slowly, cheeks burning, eyes fixed steadily on her husband, who stood motionless below to receive her. A tiny light here and there caught the thick tendrils of her heavy burnished hair and glimmered on her smooth, full neck and arms.

  At the foot of the stairs she paused, made him a low reverence, then, gathering her silken -train, she looked fearlessly into his face and laid her hand lightly in his.

  So, moving serenely side by side, they passed under holly and mistletoe and ropes of evergreen, through the long drawing-room, through the music room, slowly, more slowly, until the great velvet hangings barred their way.

  There they paused, turning face to face, her small hand scarcely touching his.

  “Can you forgive me?” he asked under his breath.

  “Forgive you?” she repeated tremulously; “I can do — more than that.... Ask me.”

  But there was no time, for the butler, bowing, had drawn the portières to the full length of the golden cords.

  CHAPTER VII

  THE GOLDEN POOL

  So the doctor, finding his patient’s quarters un tenanted for the first time in many months, hastened downstairs and out to the veranda, where he discovered a lean, soldierly looking young fellow clad in fishing coat fussing with rod and reel.

  “Oho, my enterprising friend!” he said. “What mischief are you hatching now?”

  “I’m going to try for your big trout in the Golden Pool,” said his patient calmly.

  This unlooked-for energy appeared to embarrass the doctor. His grim mouth tightened.

  “Don’t go now,” he said; “it’s too late in the morning.”

  “I’m going anyhow,” retorted his patient.

  “Don’t be obstinate; that fish won’t rise till evening.”

  “I know it, but I’m going.”

  “Against my orders!” demanded the exasperated doctor.

  “With pleasure,” replied the young man gayly.

  “And it’s your own doing, too. Do you remember what you said last night?”

  “I said I saw a big fish rising in that pool,” growled the doctor.

  “Exactly; and that has done more to brace me up than all your purple pills for peculiar people.”

  “Don’t go to the Golden Pool now!” said the doctor with emphasis. “I have a particular reason for making this request.”

  “What reason?”

  “I won’t tell you.”

  “You’re after that fish yourself! No, you don’t!”

  “That’s idiotic.”

  “Well, anyhow, good-by.”

  “You shan’t!” exclaimed the doctor wrathfully. “Give me that rod!”

  But his patient clung to the rod, laughing.

  “Now what the devil possesses you to make for the Golden Pool at this particular minute?” demanded the vexed doctor. “You’ve been an invalid for a year and more, and up to this moment you’ve done what I told you.”

  His patient continued to laugh — that same light-hearted, infectious laugh which the doctor had not heard in many a month, and he looked at him keenly.

  “All the same, you’re not well yet, and you know it,” he said.

  “My aversion to women?”

  “Partly.”

  “You mean my memory still fails me? Well, then, what do you think happened this morning?”

  “What?” inquired the doctor sulkily.

  “This: I went out to the stables and recognized Phelan and Riley! How’s that for a start? Then” — he glanced across the lawn where an old gardener pottered about among the petunias—” there’s Dawson, isn’t it? And this is my own place — Gleniris! Isn’t it? Besides,” he added, “my aversion to women is disappearing; I saw a girl on the lawn from my window this morning. Who is she?”

  “Was she dressed in white?” asked the doctor. “Don’t remember.”

  “You never before saw her?”

  “No — I don’t know. I didn’t see her face.”

  “So it seems you can’t recollect the back of a relative or a neighbor! Now what do you think of yourself?”

  “Relative? Nonsense,” he laughed; “I haven’t any. As for the neighbors, give me time, for Heaven’s sake! I’m doing beautifully. There are millions of things that set me thinking and worrying now — funny flashes of memory — hints of the past, vague glimpses that excite me to effort; but nothing — absolutely nothing — yet of that blank year. Was it a year?”

  “More; never mind that!”

  “How long was it?” asked his patient wistfully.

  “Sixteen months.”

  “You said I was shot, I think.”

  “No, I didn’t. You think you were, but it was done with a Malay kris. Now, what can you remember about it?”

  The young man stood silent, fumbling with his rod.

  “And you tell me you’re cured!” observed the doctor sarcastically, “and you can’t even recollect how you got swiped with a Malay kris!”

  “I might if I could see the Malay — or the kris.” The doctor, who had begun to pace the veranda, halted and glanced sharply at his patient.

  “The best way to remember things is to see ‘em? Is that your idea?”

  “I think so. It’s true I’ve seen Phelan many times without remembering him, but to-day I recognized him. Isn’t that good medicine?”

  The doctor thought a moment, fished out his watch from the fob pocket, regarded it absently, and came down the steps to the lawn, where his patient stood making practice casts with his light bamboo rod.

  “I’ll tell you why I didn’t want you to go to the Golden Pool,” he said.

  “Well, why?”

  “Poachers,” replied the doctor, watching him. “They fish in the pools, and they use your canoe, and they even have the impudence to go bathing in the Golden Pool.... I didn’t want you to worry.”

  “I think the poacher I catch will do the worrying,” said the young man, laughing. “Is that all?”

  “That is all. Go ahead if you want to. If you run across that girl invite her to dinner. She’s a friend of mine.” And the doctor walked off, shoving his hands deep into his capacious pockets.

  His patient reeled in the line, smiling to himself, and started off across the meadow at a good swinging pace. He entered the forest by the meadow bridge, where a lank yokel was mowing grass.

  “Mornin’!” ventured the native, with a doubtful grin of recognition.

  “Look here,” said the young man, halting in the path of the scythe, “ought I to know your name? Tell me the truth.”

  “I cal’late yew orter,” replied the yokel. “I’ve been chorin’ for yew close tew ten year.”

  A shadow fell over the master’s lean face, and he went on through the underbrush, muttering to himself, passing his thin hand again and again across his forehead.

  “Oh, well, I’ll stick to it,” he said aloud; “a man can’t dance on a broken leg nor think with a broken head; they’ve got to be mended first — well mended.”

  Walking on through the fragrant forest, the shadow of care slipped from his face again, leaving it placid once more. The scent of the June woods, the far, dull throbbing of a partridge drumming in leafy depths, the happy sighing of a woodland world astir, all these were gentle stimulants to that sanity toward the shadowy borders of which he had so long been struggling from the region of dreadful night.

  Spreading branches, dew-spangled, slapped his face as he passed; the moist rich odor of clean earth filled throat and lungs; a subdued, almost breathless expectancy brooded in the wake of the south wind.

  When he emerged from the forest and entered the long glade, mountain and thicket were swimming in crystalline light; ferns hung weighted with dew; the outrush of bird music was incessant.

  Far in the wet woods he could hear the river flowing — or was it the breeze freshening in the pines?

  Listening, enraptured, boyish recollections awoke, and he instinctivel
y took his bearings from the blue peak in the east. So the Ousel Pool lay to the west. He would fish that uncertain water later; but first the Golden Pool, where the great trout had been seen, rising as recklessly as a minnow in a meadow brook.

  Now, all excitement and expectancy, he waded on, knee-deep in drenched grasses, watching the soft mothlike flutter of the bluebirds among the iris. They had always hovered over this spot in June, he remembered now. Truly summer skies were healing him of his hurt; he recognized the belt of blue-beech saplings all crossbarred with sunlight, and he heard the familiar rush of waters below.

  Suddenly, beyond the sprayed undergrowth, he caught a glow of color, a glimpse of that rich sunny foliage which gave the Golden Pool its name; and now the familiar water lay glimmering before him through the trees, and he began the descent, stepping quietly as a deer entering a strange covert.

  At the water’s edge he paused, cautiously; but there was no canoe lying under the alders. Memory halted short, then began groping backward through the years.

  Where was the canoe? There had always been one here — in his boyhood and ever since — up to that obscured and cloudy space of time —

  He dropped to his knees and parted the leafy thicket with his hands. There was no canoe there, nothing except a book lying on a luncheon basket; and — what was this? — and this?

  He stared stupidly for a moment, then rose and stepped through the thicket to the edge of the water. A canoe glittered out there, pulled up on a flat, sunny rock in midstream, and upon the rock lay a girl in a dripping bathing dress drying her hair in the sun.

  Instantly an odd sense of it all having happened before seized him — the sun on the water, the canoe, the slim figure lying there. And when she indolently raised her hand, stifling a dainty yawn, and stretched her arms luxuriously, it seemed to him the repetition of a forgotten scene too familiar to surprise him.

  Then, as she sat up, leisurely twisting her sun-bronzed hair, a chance turn of her head brought him into direct line of vision. They stared at one another across the sunny water.

  For one second the thought flashed on him that he knew her; then in the same moment all that had seemed familiar in the situation faded into strangeness and apprehension, and he was aware that he had never before looked upon her face.

  Yet, curiously enough, his long and melancholy aversion to women had not returned at sight of her. She had risen in surprise, wide dark eyes on him; and he spoke immediately, saying he had not meant to disturb her, and that she was quite welcome to use the canoe.

  Her first stammered words annoyed him. “Did the doctor — come with you? Are you — are you alone?”

  “I suppose the entire countryside knows I have been ill,” he said; “but I’m perfectly able to be about without a doctor.” He began to laugh. “But those are not the questions. The questions are what are people doing in these woods with luncheon baskets and summer novels, and how am I to fish this pool if people swim in it; and how am I to fish at all if an attractive stranger takes possession of my canoe?”

  “I — I had no idea you were coming here,” she faltered. “I bathe here every morning, and then I lunch here and read.”

  He laughed outright at her innocent acknowledgment of the trespass.

  “I have a clear case against you,” he said. “Haven’t you read all my notices nailed up on trees? ‘Warning! All trespassers will be dealt with to the full extent of the law’ — and much more to similar effect? And do you know what a very dreadful thing it is to be dealt with to the full extent of the law?”

  “But — I am not — not trespassing,” she said. “Can you not remember?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t,” he replied, smiling; “I’m afraid I have a clear case against you. The doctor warned me that trespassers were about.”

  “Did he know you were coming here?” she asked incredulously.

  “He did. And I’m afraid somebody has been caught in flagrant délit! What do you think?” He stood there, amused, curiously noting the play of emotions over her delicate features. Consternation, dismay, had given place to quick resentment; that in turn died out, leaving something of comprehension in her perplexed face.

  “So he sent you to catch a trespasser?” she said.

  “I was coming to fish. Well, yes; he said I might find one.”

  “A trespasser? A stranger?” She hesitated; there was hurt astonishment in her voice. Suddenly her face took a deeper flush, as though she had come to an unexpected decision; her entire manner changed to serene self-possession. “What are you going to do with me?” she asked curiously.

  “I’m afraid I can’t put you in jail,” he admitted. “You see, there’s no punishment for swimming in favorite trout pools and spoiling a man’s morning sport. Now, if you had only thought of catching one of my trout I could arrange to have you imprisoned.”

  “Please arrange it immediately, then,” she said, lifting an enormous trout from the canoe and holding it up by the gills with both hands.

  “Good Lord,” he gasped, “it’s the big one!” And he sat down suddenly on a log.

  Her smiling defiance softened a trifle. “Did you really wish to catch this fish very much?” she asked. “I — I never supposed you would come here — to-day.”

  “The enormity of your crime stuns me,” he said. “First you invade my domain, then you abstract my canoe, then you swim in my favorite pool, then you catch the biggest fish that ever came out of it.”

  “No,” she said, “I was not such a goose as to swim first. I caught the fish first.”

  “Recount to me the battle,” he said with a groan. “Fish like that only rise once in a lifetime. Tell me how you — but that’s useless. It was the usual case of a twig and a bent pin, I suppose?”

  She smiled uncertainly, and lifted a rod from the canoe.

  “By Jove, that looks like one of my rods!” he exclaimed. “Where did you get it?”

  Her eyes were bright with excitement; she shook her head, laughing.

  “Are you in league with my doctor? Who are you?” he insisted.

  “Only a poacher,” she admitted. “I creep about and lurk outside windows where doctors talk in loud voices about big trout they have seen. Then — I go and catch them.”

  They were both laughing now; she standing beside the canoe, rod in hand, he balanced on a rock opposite.

  Yet, even while laughing, his thin face sobered, darkening as though a gray shadow had crept across it.

  “Are you a neighbor of mine?” he asked. “If you are, you will know why I ask it. If you are not, never mind,” he added wearily.

  She shook her head. His face cleared.

  “I thought you were not a neighbor; I was certain that I had never seen you — as certain as a man can be awakening from — from illness, with his mind — his memory — shaky — almost blank.” He bent his head, gazing into the water. Then he looked up. “You know the doctor? I think I saw you on the lawn this morning.”

  “Are you sure you have never before seen me?” she asked, with a ghost of a smile.

  “I thought at first — for an instant — the canoe on the rock, and the sunshine, and you—” He fell silent, groping through the darkened corridors of thought for the key to memory.

  In the sunlit hush a rippling noise sounded far out across the pool; then up out of the glassy water shot a sinuous shape, dark against the sun — a fish in silhouette, curving over with a flapping splash. Widening circles spread from a center where a few bubbles floated; the pool became placid once more — a mirror for the tapestry of golden thickets set with the heavenly hue above.

  The long-dormant passion which sleeps but never dies awoke in him; the flush on his lean cheeks deepened as he turned and looked across the pool where the pretty intruder stood watching him, an eager question dancing in her eyes.

  “I’d like to try,” he said. “Do you mind?”

  “Tell me what to do.”

  “Paddle very quietly over here — very carefully and
without a splash. Can you do it?”

  She loosened the canoe noiselessly, a lithe figure in her wet brown skirt and stockings. The mellow glow enveloped her as she moved into the shadows; and she seemed, in the soft forest light, part of the woodland harmony, blending with it as tawny-tinted shadows blend.

  The canoe slipped into the pool; she knelt in the stern; then, with one silent push, sent it like an arrow across the water. He caught and steadied the frail craft; she stepped from it and sprang without a sound into the green shadows beside him.

  He was muttering to himself: “I’ve forgotten some things — but not how to throw a fly, I think. Let us see — let us see.”

  She stood motionless as he embarked, watching him raise his rod and send the tiny brightly colored flies out over the water. The delicate accuracy seemed to fascinate her; her dark eyes followed the long upward loop of the back cast, the whistling flight of the silken line, the instant’s suspense as the leader curved, straightened out, and fell, dropping three flies softly on the still surface of the pool.

  As the canoe drifted nearer, nearer to the spot where the trout had leaped, the sharp dry click of the reel, the windlike whistle of the line, grew fainter. Suddenly, far ahead of the floating flies, a dark lump broke the water; there came a spatter of spray, a flash of pink and silver, and that was all — all, though for two hours the silken line darted out across the water, and many feathered flies of many hues fell vainly across the glassy mirror of the Golden Pool.

  She was still standing in the same place when he returned. He drew a long deep breath of disappointment as he stepped ashore, and she echoed his sigh. The tension had ended.

  “Showed color, but wouldn’t fight,” he said in a low voice. “Biggest trout I ever saw.”

  “Can’t you possibly do something?” she asked tremulously.

  “Not now; I must rest him. You can’t force a fish like that by persistent worry. There’s a chance he may come again; he’s not serious yet. I dare not bother him for an hour or two.”

  He looked into her sensitive face; then, suddenly conscious of its youthful beauty, he fell silent, reeling in his wet line inch by inch.