Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  Through the heated stillness dragon flies darted; the mounting perfume of brake and fern, the almost imperceptible odor of earth and water, seemed to envelop him in a delicate spell, soothing, healing, while pulseless moments drifted away in the smooth flow of a summer hour.

  The rod slipped from his hand; his musing eyes rested on her. She was seated on a mossy log, head bent, slender stockinged feet trailing in the pool.

  “All this has happened before,” he said quietly. But there was no conviction in his voice.

  She raised her dreamy eyes, the color came and went in throat and cheeks; through her halfparted lips the breath scarcely stirred.

  He rose with a restless laugh, and stood a moment, his thin hand pressed across his forehead. Her eyes fell, were lifted to his, then fell again.

  “Can’t you help me?” he said wistfully.

  “Can you not remember?” she breathed.

  “Then we — we have known one another. Have we?”

  “I once knew a friend of yours — a close friend — named Escourt.”

  “Escourt,” he repeated blankly.

  And after a long silence he turned away with a gesture that seemed to frighten her. But into her face came a flash of determination, reddening her cheeks again.

  “It does not matter,” she said; “nothing matters on a summer day like this.... I did not mean to trouble you.”

  He turned in his steps and stood looking at her. “You say my friend’s name was Escourt? Is my friend dead?”

  “Please don’t let it matter.”

  “It does matter. I — it is a fancy, perhaps, but the name of Escourt was once familiar — and pleasant. It is not your name, is it?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  At last he began fretfully: “That is the strangest thing in the world. I have never before seen you, and yet I am perfectly conscious that your name has haunted me for years. Escourt — Escourt! — for years, I tell you,” he went on in a sort of impatient astonishment; “ever since I can remember anything I can remember that name.”

  “And my first name?” Flushed, voice scarcely steady, she avoided his troubled gaze.

  And as he did not answer, she said: “You once knew my husband. Can you not remember?” He shook his head, studying her intently.

  “No,” he said in a dull voice, “I have forgotten; I have been very ill. The name troubles me; it is strange how the name troubles me.”

  “If it troubles you, let us talk of other things, will you?” she asked, almost timidly. “I did not think to awaken the memory of anything sad.”

  “It is not sad,” resting his sunken, perplexed eyes on her; “it is something intimate — almost part of my life that I seem to have forgotten—” His hand sought the same spot over his right eye. “What were we doing when you interrupted everything?” His wandering glance fell on the canoe and the rod lying in the bottom, and his face cleared.

  “I ought to be worrying that trout again,” he said. “You won’t go away, will you?”

  “No; but I wish you would go,” she said, laughing; “I’d dress if you would give me half an hour.”

  “You won’t go — you will wait?” he repeated almost childishly.

  “Yes, I will wait.”

  She shook her head, watching him embark; standing there looking out across the water where the paddle bubbles marked his course long after the canoe had vanished around the curved shore of the Golden Pool.

  Suddenly her eyes filled; but she set her lips resolutely, groping with white hands for her knotted hair; the heavy shining twist, loosened, fell, veiling face and shoulders — a golden mask for sorrow and falling tears.

  It was high noon when his far hail brought her to the water’s edge, and she answered with a clear, prettily modulated call.

  “Do you observe?” she asked, as he climbed the bank; and she made a little gesture of invitation toward a white napkin spread upon the moss.

  A jug of milk, lettuce, bread, and a great bunch of hothouse grapes — and a hostess in a summer gown, smiling an invitation; what wonder that the haggard lines in his visage softened till something of the afterglow of youth lay like a ray of sun across his face.

  “This is perfectly charming,” he said, dropping to his knees beside her. “I — I am very happy that you waited for me.”

  She sat silent for a moment, with lowered eyes, then raised them shyly. “Let us eat bread and salt together, will you? — that nothing break our friendship.”

  “From your hands,” he said.

  She leaned over, took a tiny pinch of salt between her thumb and forefinger, and offered it to him on a bit of bread. He gravely broke the bread, returned half to her, and they ate, watching one another in silence.

  “By the bread and salt I have shared with you,” he said, half seriously, half smiling, “I promise to cherish this forest friendship. Let this day begin it.”

  “Let it,” she said.

  “Let pleasant years continue it.”

  “Yes — the coming years. So be it.”

  “Let nothing end it — nothing — not even—”

  “Nothing — and, amen,” she said faintly. Again, unbidden, the ghosts of the past stirred, whispering together within him; echoes of unquiet days awoke, blind consciousness of that somber year where darkness dwelt, where memory lay slain forever.

  She sat watching him there on the moss, supporting her weight on one arm.

  “I am striving,” he said, M to trace my thoughts.” There was dull apology in his voice. “All this is not accident — you and I here together. I am haunted by something long forgotten, something that I am almost conscious of.

  When your voice sounds I seem to be quivering on the verge of memory.... Do you know what it is I have forgotten?”

  She trembled to her lips. “Have you forgotten?”

  “Yes — a great deal. Is it you I have forgotten?”

  “Try to remember,” she said under her breath. “Remember? God knows I am trying. Begin with me, will you?”

  “Yes; let us begin together. You were hurt.”

  “Yes, I was hurt.”

  “In a battle.”

  “I was hurt in a skirmish.”

  “Where?” she whispered.

  “Why, on the Subig,” he answered, surprised; “I was in the Philippine scouts.”

  He sat bolt upright, electrified, and struck his knee sharply with the flat of his wasted hand.

  “Do you know,” he said excitedly, “that until this very instant I have not thought of the Philippine scouts. Isn’t that extraordinary?”

  She strove to speak; her breast rose and fell, and she closed her lips convulsively.

  He sat there, head drooping, passing his hand repeatedly across the scar over his right temple. She waited, whitening under the tension. His face became placid; he looked up at her; and a smile touched her wet lashes in response.

  The contentment of convalescence seemed to banish his restlessness; her voice broke the silence, and its low, even tones satisfied the half-aroused longing for dead echoes.

  So the ghost of happiness arose and sat between them; and she lay back, resting against a tree, smiling replies to his lazy badinage. And after a long while her laughter awoke to echo his, laughter as delicate as the breeze stirring her bright hair.

  And afterward, long afterward, when the sunshine painted orange patches on the westward tree trunks and a haze veiled the taller spires, she reminded him of the great trout; but he would not go without her; so together they descended to the stream’s edge.

  Floating in the canoe there through the mellow light, he remembered that he had left his rod ashore, but would not go back, and she laughed outright, through the thread of the song she had been humming:

  “Fate is a dragon,

  Faith the slim shape that braves it:

  Hope holds the stirrup-cup —

  Drain it who craves it.”

  She smiled, singing carelessly:

  “Who art thou, young
and brave?

  La vie est un sommeil; l’amour en est le rêve!”

  “There is more,” he said, watching her intently.

  “How do you know?”

  “I know that song. I remember it, and there is more to it!”

  “Is it this, then?” and she sang again:

  “Life is but slumber,

  Love the sad dream that haunts it,

  Death is thy waking gift;

  Take it who wants it!

  “Who art thou, young and brave?

  La vie est un sommeil; l’amour en est le rêve!”

  He sat for a long while, very still, head buried in his hands. A violet mist veiled water and trees; through it the setting sun sent fiery shafts through the mountain cleft. And when the last crimson shaft was sped and tree and water faded into darker harmony, the canoe had drifted far downstream, and now lay still in the shoreward sands; and they stood together on the water’s edge.

  Her fingers had become interlocked with his; she half withdrew them, eyes lowered.

  “It is strange that our names should be the same,” he said.

  “Is your name Escourt, too?” she faltered.

  “Yes; I know it now.... I have been ill — very ill. God alone knows what my hurt has done to me. There is a doctor at the house; he’s been with me for a long time — a long time. I — I wonder why? I wonder if it was because I had forgotten — even my own name.... Who are you who bear my name?”

  She swayed almost imperceptibly where she stood; he lifted both her hands and laid them against his lips, looking deep into her eyes.

  “Who are you, bearing my name?” he whispered. “Unclose your eyes.”

  In the twilight her dark eyes opened; she was in his arms now, her head fallen a little backward, yielding to his embrace crushing her.

  “Try — try to remember — before you kiss me,” she breathed. “I wish you to love me — I desire it — but not like this. Oh, try to remember before — before it is too late!”

  “I do remember! — Helen! Helen!”

  Her lips on his stifled the cry; a long sigh, a sob, and she lay quivering in her husband’s arms.

  CHAPTER VIII

  OUT OF THE DEPTHS

  DUST and wind had subsided; there seemed to be a hint of rain in the starless west.

  Because the August evening had become oppressive, the club windows stood wide open as though gaping for the outer air. Rugs and curtains had been removed; an incandescent light or two accentuated the emptiness of the rooms; here and there shadowy servants prowled, gilt buttons sparkling through the obscurity, their footsteps on the bare floor intensifying the heavy quiet.

  Into this week’s-end void wandered young Shannon, drifting aimlessly from library to corridor, finally entering the long room where the portraits of dead governors smirked through the windows at the deserted avenue.

  As his steps echoed on the rugless floor, a shadowy something detached itself from the depths of a padded armchair by the corner window, and a voice he recognized greeted him by name.

  “You here, Harrod!” he exclaimed. “Thought you were at Bar Harbor.”

  “I was. I had business in town.”

  “Do you stay here long?”

  “Not long,” said Harrod slowly.

  Shannon dropped into a chair with a yawn which ended in a groan.

  “Of all God-forsaken places,” he began, “a New York club in August.”

  Harrod touched an electric button, but no servant answered the call; and presently Shannon, sprawling in his chair, jabbed the button with the ferrule of his walking stick, and a servant took the order, repeating as though he had not understood: “Did you say two, sir?”

  “With olives, dry,” nodded Shannon irritably. They sat there in silence until the tinkle of ice aroused them, and —

  “Double luck to you,” muttered Shannon; then, with a scarcely audible sigh: “Bring two more and bring a dinner card.” And, turning to the older man: “You’re dining, Harrod?”

  “If you like.”

  A servant came and turned on an electric jet; Shannon scanned the card under the pale radiance, scribbled on the pad, and handed it to the servant.

  “Did you put down my name?” asked Harrod curiously.

  “No; you’ll dine with me — if you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind — for this last time.”

  “Going away again?”

  “Yes.”

  Shannon signed the blank and glanced up at his friend. “Are you well?” he asked abruptly. Harrod, lying deep in his leather chair, nodded. “Oh, you’re rather white around the gills! We’ll have another.”

  “I thought you had cut that out, Shannon.”

  “Cut what out?”

  “Drinking.”

  “Well, I haven’t,” said Shannon sulkily, lifting his glass and throwing one knee over the other.

  “The last time I saw you, you said you would cut it,” observed Harrod.

  “Well, what of it?”

  “But you haven’t?”

  “No, my friend.”

  “Can’t you stop?”

  “I could — now. To-morrow — I don’t know; but I know well enough I couldn’t day after tomorrow. And day after to-morrow I shall not care.”

  A short silence and Harrod said: “That’s why I came back here.”

  “What?”

  “To stop you.”

  Shannon regarded him in sullen amazement.

  A servant announcing dinner brought them to their feet; together they walked out into the empty dining room and seated themselves by an open window.

  Presently Shannon looked up with an impatient laugh.

  “For Heaven’s sake let’s be cheerful, Harrod. If you knew how the damned town had got on my nerves.”

  “That’s what I came back for, too,” said Harrod with his strange white smile. “I knew the world was fighting you to the ropes.”

  “It is; here I stay on, day after day, on the faint chance of something doing.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Business is worse than dead; I can’t hold on much longer. You’re right; the world has hammered me to the ropes, and it will be down and out for me unless—”

  “Unless you can borrow on your own terms?”

  “Yes, but I can’t.”

  “You are mistaken.”

  “Mistaken? Who will—”

  “I will.”

  “You! Why, man, do you know how much I need? Do you know for how long I shall need it? Do you know what the chances are of my making good? You! Why, Harrod, I’d swamp you! You can’t afford—”

  “I can afford anything — now.”

  Shannon stared. “You have struck something?”

  “Something that puts me beyond want.” He fumbled in his breast pocket, drew out a portfolio, and from the flat leather case he produced a numbered check bearing his signature, but not filled out.

  “Tell them to bring pen and ink,” he said.

  Shannon, perplexed, signed to a waiter. When the ink was brought, Harrod motioned Shannon to take the pen. “Before I went to Bar Harbor,” he said, “I had a certain sum—” He hesitated, mentioned the sum in a low voice, and asked Shannon to fill in the check for that amount. “Now blot it, pocket it, and use it,” he added listlessly, looking out into the lamp-lighted street.

  Shannon, whiter than his friend, stared at the bit of perforated yellow paper.

  “I can’t take it,” he stammered; “my security is rotten, I tell you—”

  “I want no security; I — I am beyond want,” said Harrod. “Take it; I came back here for this — partly for this.”

  “Came back here to — to — help me!”

  “To help you. Shannon, I had been a lonely man in life; I think you never realized how much your friendship has been to me. I had nobody — no intimacies. You never understood — you with all your friends — that I cared more for our casual companionship than for anything in the world.”

  Shannon bent his head.
“I did not know it,” he said.

  Harrod raised his eyes and looked up at the starless sky; Shannon ate in silence; into his young face, already marred by dissipation, a strange light had come. And little by little order began to emerge from his whirling senses; he saw across an abyss a bridge glittering, and beyond that, beckoning to him through a white glory, all that his heart desired.

  “I was at the ropes,” he muttered; “how could you know it, Harrod? I — I never whined—”

  “I know more than I did — yesterday,” said Harrod, resting his pale face on one thin hand.

  Shannon, nerves on edge, all aquiver, the blood racing through every vein, began to speak excitedly: “It’s like a dream — one of the blessed sort — Harrod! Harrod! — the dreams I’ve had this last year! And I try — I try to understand what has happened — what you have done for me. I can’t — I’m shaking all over, and I suppose I’m sitting here eating and drinking, but—”

  He touched his glass blindly; it tipped and crashed to the floor, the breaking froth of the wine hissing on the cloth.

  “Harrod! Harrod! What sort of a man am I to deserve this of you? What can I do—”

  “Keep your nerve — for one thing.”

  “I will! — you mean that!” touching the stem of the new glass, which the waiter had brought and was filling. He struck the glass till it rang out a clear, thrilling, crystalline note, then struck it more sharply. It splintered with a soft splashing crash. “Is that all?” he laughed.

  “No, not all.”

  “What more will you let me do?”

  “One thing more. Tell them to serve coffee below.”

  So they passed out of the dining room, through the deserted corridors, and descended the stairway to the lounging room.. It was unlighted and empty; Shannon stepped back and the elder man passed him and took the corner chair by the window — the same seat where Shannon had first seen him sitting ten years before, and where he always looked to find him after the ending of a business day. And continuing his thoughts, the younger man spoke aloud impulsively: “I remember perfectly well how we met. Do you? You had just come back to town from Bar Harbor, and I saw you stroll in and seat yourself in that corner, and, because I was sitting next you, you asked if you might include me in your order — do you remember?”