Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  Eventually he got up from the veranda rail, shouldered his gun, descended the steps, and came sauntering along the white road in her direction, his dog wagging madly at his heels.

  She saw him plainly without removing her blue eyes from her pad, saw him approaching, saw him turn slightly and look at her as he was passing, saw him suddenly halt, look very earnestly in her direction, hesitate, then swing out of the road and come swiftly across the phlox-starred lawn directly toward her.

  She looked up in all the flushed inquiry of displeasure as he strode up to her chair.

  “Do what I tell you,” he said very quietly. “Don’t move.”

  “What!”

  “Keep perfectly cool and don’t move.”

  The colour faded from her cheeks. But there was plenty of courage in Lucille.

  “W-what is it?” she asked. “A snake?”

  “No. I’ll show you in a moment—” He whisked from his pocket a pair of pliers, such as men use for extracting water-swollen cartridges from a breech when the ejector will not work.

  “Madam,” he said, looking very stern and determined, “have you plenty of moral courage?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “Very well, then; that white serge skirt of yours is slit up to your left knee, and only held together by buttons, isn’t it?”

  “What?’

  “Isn’t it!”

  “Y-yes—”

  “Unbutton those buttons — very carefully!”

  She froze with terror:

  “Is it a snake!”

  “No!”

  “Then I won’t!”

  “Madam,” he said sharply, “a senseless custom has for centuries inspired woman to conceal her legs — why, nobody knows. But there are moments when custom may properly be disregarded. This is one of those moments. And you’d better hurry!”

  “Tell me,” she said, very pale, “what is the matter with my l-legs!”

  “Come,” he said, “hurry!”

  “Is it necessary?”

  “Yes!”

  Cautiously, swiftly, and with steady hands she undid the buttons; the slitted skirt fell gently apart. Then a slight gasp escaped her.

  There, clinging to her white silk hose, just below the knee, crawled a scorpion — a huge one; and as the young man deftly seized him in the pliers the wicked tail curled up, darting furiously in every direction.

  But it was all over with the blackish-red poisoner; there came a crunch of chitine and steel; and Lucille, slightly faint, averted her pallid face and buttoned up her skirt again.

  Suddenly she heard him going as swiftly and quietly as he had come; the quick, hot colour whipped her cheeks, and she turned to express her thanks — to say something grateful — but he was already as far as the road, and walking fast. And she could not shout.

  After all, here was a delicacy and tact of which she had never imagined any man capable. What a fine sense of propriety, what consideration for her modesty had this young man! How absolutely he understood a woman! Why, his intuition seemed almost feminine — almost — finicky.... For, after all, it had been a necessary thing to do.... And her ultimate ends had been very beautifully shaped by her Creator.... As far as her limbs were concerned, she had nothing to be ashamed of.

  And her white silk stockings were innocent of a run and amazingly expensive.... After all, he could very properly have waited for her to thank him.... Perhaps his swift disappearance was calculated to make more of a deplorable but necessary situation than the situation had warranted.... His behaviour was, of course, praiseworthy, yet did it not suggest self-consciousness?... To go had been proper; to flee had been unnecessary.... Honi soit!... The story of Joseph had never particularly edified Lucille.

  That afternoon she wrote him a note in perfectly good taste, not too grateful, not too austere, in which she expressed her gratitude.

  No acknowledgment came until the next morning. He wrote:

  So glad I happened to see the brute crawling over your white shoe. They’re a bad lot, scorpions — lay you up for days. Sorry I startled you so suddenly.

  Very truly yours,

  JOHN KENT.

  P. S. — May I send you some quail?

  Evidently he had not waited for permission; a fluffy bunch of birds was delivered with the note. She didn’t know whether or not she cared for this attention — which meant she approved it.

  DEAR MR. KENT [she wrote]:

  It was very kind of you to send the quail. No, you did not startle me too much. I am very grateful.

  Sincerely yours,

  LUCILLE QUEST.

  Every day during the next week he passed down the white road with gun on shoulder and dog at heel, but he merely lifted his sun helmet; never presumed to speak on the strength of the recent incident and the notes exchanged in consequence.

  But he sent her a bunch of quail or a brace of wild ducks or a wild turkey every day or two. And Lucille didn’t know whether she liked his shyness and reticence or not. Which meant she didn’t.

  Also, she grew tired of thanking him by note for his feathered gifts — and receiving nothing in return except the salute of the lifted helmet as he passed on the white highroad.

  Therefore, she sent him a basket of sapodillas, after learning that none grew on his grounds.

  He wrote:

  — So awfully good of you. Quite a luxury, I assure you. With many thanks, Very truly yours, JOHN KENT.

  After reading this note several times with a subtle and absolutely inexplicable sense of disappointment, apropos of nothing, apparently, a sudden doubt assailed her: was this young man married?

  Why the thought assailed her, why she should care one way or the other, also remained inexplicable to her.

  He seemed to be like other men, and yet not quite like them, either. Any other man, by this time, would have been seated cross-legged on the ground beside her wicker chair, cheerfully ready for eventualities. And she would have snubbed him by this time.

  Yet he was like other men — he was tall, muscular, sunburnt, well-groomed, and forever busy with swizzles, guns, dogs, and other men. That was manlike, too. But she had had no opportunity to snub him — granted the inclination.... And, considering, she found herself entirely innocent of any such inclination.

  As bunches of game arrived from time to time, the formal formula of her acknowledgments varied scarcely at all, although their stilted reiteration made her nervous.

  Yet she did not know what else to say to him, or how to say it, or even how to convey to him the faintest and most delicate intimation that if he cared to speak to her in person she might find it in her heart to overlook the insolence.

  Now, had she suspected the real reason for his shyness, his aloofness, his offerings of game — why he continued to lay at her pretty feet the trophies of his bow and spear — had Lucille ever suspected the deep and abiding motive for all these manifestations, there is no knowing what she might have done — or whether she would have fled that spot or remained.

  For the main trouble with Kent was his shyness, his ignorance of women, and his profound reverence for them.

  Usually he blushed when one of them spoke to him, and partly because of that painful habit he had continued to remain aloof from them.

  Fancy, then, what it had cost him to capture that scorpion — to approach this young and modest and innocent girl, resolutely swallow his terror of her in the presence of the emergency, demand of her that she reveal to his gaze her beauteous limbs without any apparent rhyme or reason, and then pluck from that sacred environment a wriggling, twisting scorpion!

  What that act of sublime courage had cost him only he and his Maker knew. It had been easier for him to have swallowed the scorpion. No wonder he fled!

  That was what ailed that young man — the memory of that necessary desecration. That was why, in chivalrous atonement, he sent gifts to mitigate what now could never be effaced from his mind — that exquisitely revealed picture of loveliness and of symmetry immortal.
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  Alas, those legs must ever stand between himself and any hope he might have dared to cherish in those blameless days when he had ventured to look at her from his veranda over the rim of his swizzle glass!

  All that remained for him to do was to continue the offerings of his bow and spear as long as he remained there, and then go home and try to forget.

  And had Lucille suspected this! But why speculate?

  Anyway, she was becoming restless. Often she found herself, pencil in hand, pad on her knees, and with her mind wandering. Often a curious sense of impatience invaded her; sometimes she found herself sitting breathless as though listening. For what? She did not know. But the curious sense of expectancy continued to reoccur every day — several times a day — possessing her till her nerves protested and started her into motion.

  So she began to take walks — she was young and vigorous — and she walked several miles every day, sometimes along the lagoon; sometimes, cutting across the bayberry scrub, she came to the ocean and marched along the beach, sturdily determined that if violent exercise could steady her nerves they should be calmed.

  One day the beauty and wildness of the dunes lured her. Nobody had told her not to go into the tall, dead grass — not to ramble through sweet-bay and beech-grape tangles. So she rambled, now lingering over a sparkleberry bush alive with painted wings, now swinging onward, supple, free-limbed, the sea wind in her face, the sun crisping the burnished edges of her hair.

  That night, in bed, she was restless, and in her sleep vaguely uncomfortable. Which memory next morning decided her that what she needed was more exercise of the same sort. So she took it, crossing the fragrant forest by trail from lagoon to ocean, and then swinging out across the dunes.

  And very soon, what had been heretofore merely a vague discomfort became more pronounced. At first she scarcely paid it any attention, but a slight burning sensation became an itching, and the itching grew more unpleasant every moment, so that presently, to her astonishment and perplexity, it threatened to become almost unendurable. What under the sun was happening to her!

  She came to a dead halt at the edge of the dune, where the narrow, blue inlet runs between snowy sands from lagoon to ocean.

  Dismayed, not understanding, she stood on the sand for a moment, striving to surmise what on earth was the matter with her. The itching and burning was driving her almost frantic; her legs seemed to be on fire to her knees.

  Then the moment arrived when endurance became impossible. Tears started in her eyes; frightened, she sat down in the sand, pulled off her shoes, tore off the white stockings, and gazed at her limbs.

  Nothing seemed to be the matter with them, except that they were rather rosy instead of white.

  But the fiery torture never ceased; and with a frightened sob she stepped out into the sparkling water of the inlet, wading in the blue coolness to her knees.

  It seemed to help, yet as soon as she waded out again the fiery torture returned, scaring her, driving her back to the water as a fly-scourged doe is driven into a northern lake.

  What had happened to her! In the confusion of mind and stress of physical misery, dreadful ideas gathered. Had she contracted, somehow, some hideous tropical disease? Was it a horrible species of fever that first attacked and consumed the extremities? Would it be a swift and sudden end? — or would it be slow, lingering, insidious?

  Again and again she examined the smooth skin, but could see nothing except a deepening flush there. And the very absence of anything to alarm the eye began to terrify her.

  As her tragic, blue gaze was lifted toward the sky in mute and agonized appeal to a firmament that “as impotently rolls as you and I,” into the range of her vision walked a man.

  She was far too frightened to blush.

  “Please,” she called unsteadily, “something very dreadful has happened to me. Will you come here?”

  He came swiftly, straight down from the dunes, his gun barrels glistening, his heavy, leather puttees scraping through grass and brush and scrub.

  “It’s — it’s my legs again,” she faltered, standing there knee-deep in the blue water. “Would you — k-kindly — look at them?”

  “Yes,” he said with an effort. And turned a delicate brick colour.

  Slowly she waded toward him, and halted ankle-deep.

  “They’re burning up,” she said simply, but her mouth quivered pitifully and the tears glimmered in her eyes. “Is — is it some terrible tropical disease?”

  “No,” he said, “it’s red-bugs.”

  “What!”

  “Red-bugs. Have you been walking in the tall grass?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s what it is. You shouldn’t have done it. I wear leather leggins, you see.”

  “W-what are red-bugs?” she asked, shuddering.

  “Insects.”

  “But — but I can’t see any on my skin!”

  “They’re too small to see.”

  “How perfectly horrid!” she exclaimed, scarlet with shame and indignation. “What a horrible country! And Oh, how m-miserable I am!... Thank you — I shall go home; I—” she glanced around her, apparently searching for something.

  “Where are my shoes and stockings!” she exclaimed. “Where did you place them?” he asked uneasily. “Why — I placed them — there was a little sand-spit here just now — just a few minutes ago—”

  “It’s the tide,” he said. “It’s rising.”

  “But — but — where are my shoes and stockings, Mr. Kent!” she exclaimed, wringing her pretty hands in consternation.

  “Floating somewhere in the lagoon by this time,” he said calmly.

  There is a kind of courage that comes to the timid when too long badgered and driven into a hopeless corner. Such courage now welled up and possessed John Kent.

  “There’s only one thing to do,” he said— “get you home and put ointment on you.”

  “I — I can put it on myself—”

  “Certainly! I didn’t mean that. I merely mean that you have got to be taken home.”

  “How? I can’t walk in bare feet.”

  “I know it. I shall — carry you.”

  There was a silence; she stood ankle-deep in the water, drying her eyes with a bit of lace. Presently she glanced at him. It was a comprehensive glance, including his entire six feet and sturdy shoulders.

  “Can you?” she asked innocently.

  “Yes, I can. Are you ready?”

  She stepped gingerly upon the snowy sand. It was no whiter than her pretty feet.

  His gun had a strap: he unloaded it, slung it at his back: she folded her skirts, then looked up at him.

  “Would you mind putting your arms around my neck?” he asked, blushing vividly.

  It seemed that she could muster courage sufficient to do that. So he swung her up into his arms, whistled to his dog, turned, and strode away straight across the thorny brush and bay scrub.

  They said nothing; but his thoughts were very busy. Fate was hustling him into the whither — a relentless fate that had now pursued him for weeks. It is true that he did not run away very fast.

  Twice he was obliged to rest, the second time in the woods. She slid from his arms to the log which he selected and sat there, pale and silent, her little, bare feet drawn up under her skirt.

  “Are you suffering very much?” he asked.

  “It burns like fire.”

  “I know.... I’ve had ‘em.”

  “C-can they be cured?”

  “Certainly. I have an ointment. I’ll send it to you.”

  “You are so good.”

  He blushed:

  “Are you ready?”

  “Oh, please wait. You are not rested!” she exclaimed. “I’m all right.”

  “No — please! I am very heavy—”

  She was heavy, despite the slender allure of her pretty figure and delicately moulded limbs. She was young, healthy, and sturdy, and weighed to an ounce exactly what she should have weighed. N
o wonder his shoulders and arms were perfectly aware of it.

  But Kent was absorbed in a very different problem — a deep, intricate matter which taxed his intellect.

  It was a good intellect for a business man, but rather sensitively inclined to chivalrous instincts.

  One of these instincts had seized him. He faced the problem with the courage characteristic of a bashful, timid, but conscientious man driven into a corner and at bay.

  “I am ready,” he said, rising.

  She supposed he was only ready to lift her, never dreaming what other resolution he had come to.

  He said:

  “When I pick you up and start to walk with you, I am going to tell you something.”

  As he swung her up in his strong arms, she turned her golden head and looked up at him inquiringly.

  “It’s this,” he said, blushing scarlet. “I’d like to marry you, if you don’t mind.”

  “What!”

  “I’d like to marry you,” he repeated doggedly.

  “Put me down, Mr. Kent!”

  He found a log, strode over to it, deposited her, and stood before her.

  “Why did you say such a thing to me?” she asked in a low, unsteady voice. And as she spoke she realized for the first time that this tall, young fellow was only a great big boy.

  “Because you have a right to ask it of me,” he said.

  “What!!!”

  “A modest woman can demand that right when a man — has — so frequently — invaded her — modesty.”

  At first she did not comprehend, and sat there staring at the painful colour in his face. There could be no doubt concerning his modesty or his sincerity — whatever was in his mind. And suddenly, intuitively, she knew what was in his mind — what curious, chivalrous, ridiculous twist his brain had taken. A desire to laugh, almost hysterical, seized her.

  “You — you think you ought to give me a chance to marry you because you’ve seen — more than is conventional — of my — my l-legs!” she asked.

  He couldn’t turn any redder; he looked at her in a distressed, boyish way.