Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  The young man reddened again, but she smiled at him, saying:

  “What could New York offer us in exchange for the sunny tranquillity of this spot?”

  “You see,” said Darrel, “we are contented. A quiet conscience, a peaceful mind, enough to live on, sunshine, solitude — few can hope for as much as that in life.” And turning to the big, lazy negro: “Mose, take Mr. Burke’s luggage to the spare room. Now, Burke, if you care to wash—”

  “Thanks — I will.”

  Lizards frisked among the chinks of his log-walled chamber, playing hide-and-seek in the Spanish moss with which the chinks were stuffed.

  Being harmless and rather pretty reptiles, Burke found them amusing, and paused in his ablutions to watch them catch flies and tiny winged things on the ceiling.

  A bat hanging to his blinds like a velvety, withered leaf, did not disturb him either, and, while shaving, he made frequent trips to look at the grotesque and devillike little creature which hung pendant, sound asleep.

  “Lord!” he muttered, “if I could only sleep like that! And, somehow, I believe I shall.”

  And that night, for the first time in months, he ceased to dream of daring financial combinations; and in the morning Jessie Darrel noticed the absence of the deep lines in his face. The nervous expression of the mouth, too, seemed softened; and his hand was certainly steadier when he took his morning cup of coffee from her.

  He had brought with him a dozen or so of the more recent novels, and Darrel, who had finished his breakfast, sat poring over them.

  “I suppose they’re rot,” he said, “but they’re a godsend to us.” He glanced whimsically at Burke, who was eating vigorously of waffles and honey. “It’s an odd feeling to want trifles and not be able to afford them. Not that we really care, but you know even in these five years I cannot seem to get used to the sensation.”

  “Squandering money for trifles,” remarked Jessie, “is hard to break away from — like any other bad habit.”

  “As for me,” added Darrel, “I was never so happy in all my life as I am now.”

  “And I,” said Jessie quietly.

  Darrel said, leaning forward and tapping the book he held:

  “I tell you, Burke, when the crash came all that worried me was my daughter. I was afraid she would miss all that she had been accustomed to — miss her friends, her little luxuries and extravagances — miss the city, the life and movement of the streets, the excitement and gaiety. But, do you know, she has never foil one moment felt the lack of all these things. It’s odd, isn’t it, that a young girl should be so thoroughly happy and contented in a place like this?”

  “It is — fortunate,” said Burke slowly; and he looked out across the sunny yard toward the orange grove, where golden fruit hung amid a mound of snowy, scented blossoms.

  That night he slept as soundly as he had slept when a boy; and all day long he lounged on the veranda, soaking in sunshine, basking in the perfumed silence, conscious of a balm invading mind and body, realizing that a healing process was beginning.

  He became aware, too — and it profoundly surprised him — that he was no longer worrying about his business — not even thinking of it half the time.

  And by the end of the week he had ceased to think about it at all, except sporadically. And then the very idea of it bored him.

  It was the stillest, calmest, sunniest, and most tranquil week in all his life. Nobody made demands on his attention; his bruised nerves and mind no longer shrank from sound; voices and movement he no longer dreaded.

  Darrel read most of the time; Jessie remained noiselessly busy about her housework until noon, then chatted unconcernedly with both men or picked up a book or her sewing.

  In the afternoon she usually went off somewhere, sometimes on horseback, followed by three nondescript dogs. After such absences they usually had game for dinner, quail or wild duck — once a wild turkey, once venison.

  But the girl made so little of her success, deprecating any wonder or praise from Burke, that he never could learn the incidents of the chase — incidents dear to the average man — precious as memories, doubly precious as material for such hunting yams as the best of us spin — our chiefest glory and our chiefest sin.

  “You killed that turkey on the wing?” repeated Burke.

  “Yes.”

  “With a rifle!”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s wonderful! Tell me exactly how—”

  “He flew over me. That is all.”

  “But wasn’t it a proud and thrilling moment for you when that great and magnificent wild bird came tumbling earthward out of a sapphire sky—”

  “He looked like a tame turkey,” she said, laughing; “and anybody could have shot him. Will you have some more com pone, Mr. Burke?”

  The Sea Cow was due in a day or two, and Burke had decided to go home. When he told Jessie she merely nodded and smiled, which worried Burke enormously.

  “Darrel,” he said, that same day, after Jessie had ridden off without either rifle or dogs, presumably on a quest for wild orange stock, “what is land worth around here?”

  Darrel laughed and told him.

  “How many acres have you?”

  Darrel told him.

  “I suppose,” said the younger man thoughtfully, “I could pick up enough around here for a fruit ranch.”

  “I suppose you could, without the slightest difficulty,” replied the other, smiling; “but I imagine it’s about the last thing in the world you would ever think of doing, or care to do if you ever did think of it.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re not that sort. You belong in town. You’d never be happy away from New York.”

  After a moment’s silence Burke turned and looked Darrel straight in the eyes.

  “You are not happy here, either,” he said calmly. Darrel flushed, sustaining his cool scrutiny. Then, like a good sportsman who knows he has lost, he said very quietly:

  “No, I am not happy.”

  “You’re homesick.”

  “I think I am.”

  “For New York.”

  Darrel nodded.

  “I knew it was a bluff,” said Burke. “You pretend to be happy on your daughter’s account.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you really think she’s contented here?” Darrel’s flush deepened; he looked at Burke in a startled, distressed way:

  “She says she is contented. Have you any reason to believe otherwise?”

  “She is eating her heart out. And so are you, Darrel. What’s bred in the bone remains until the bones are buried. Don’t tell me; I know. Medicine may help the sick, but it sickens the well. This place is medicine — good medicine. I’m enjoying it. When I get well I’ll want to go. You and your daughter have had your treatment. You’re well; she never was ill. You want to go and you can’t. And this overdosing with silence and sunshine and God’s own country is killing you both by inches. Am I right, Darrel?”

  The elder man made no answer.

  “What I want to do is this,” continued Burke. “I want you to put in your acreage with as much more that I shall buy, and make out of this place a fruit ranch second to none in the country.

  “I’ll finance it: we’ll find the proper people to run it. Then let us come here in the winter and enjoy it and play with it until we’re tired; and then let us go back to town in God’s name!”

  Darrel sat trembling in his chair, looking down, picking aimlessly at the light shawl that lay across his knees.

  “It’s a cinch,” said Burke. “Are you in?”

  No answer.

  “Is it a go?”

  “I can’t take — your money.”

  “I guess I took yours, five years ago — and never knew it — never gave it a thought. Besides — with God’s help — I’m going to take everything you have left in the world — if I can.”

  Darrel lifted his eyes and looked steadily at the younger man.

  “Do you think there’s a
ny chance for me?” asked Burke. “I never before loved a woman.... Do you think there’s any chance?”

  “You might try,” said Darrel quietly.

  Late that afternoon, Burke, still speaking of Jessie, mentioned the brace of heavy pistols she wore; and Darrel said gravely:

  “White women need such safeguards down here.” Which gave Burke a sickly internal shock: and a few minutes later he looked at his watch: and repeated the inspection a little later.

  Darrel was now dozing in his big chair: Jessie had not yet returned: and Burke, restless, and scarcely knowing why, took his shotgun and went out to the barn.

  The three dogs came up, wagging and sniffling; he turned, looked out into the park-like expanse of flat-woods, then, seized with sudden nervousness, he called to Mose to saddle a horse for him and do it quickly. Mose grinned from ear to ear, but hastened not at all.

  “Which Way did Miss Darrel ride?” asked Burke, as the horse was at last brought around in shabby accoutrements and trappings.

  “Miss Jessie ‘low she gwine ride de flat-woods, sah. Das whar de wil’ orange grow, yaas, sah. An’ I ‘spec’ she-all done tuk an’ rid to Owl Branch.”

  “How far is it, Mose?”

  “Fo’ mile, sah.”

  “East?”

  “Yaas, sah.”

  “Trail?”

  “Burnt grass trail, sah. Ef yo’ keeps de burnt grass aige on de p’int uv yo’ right shoulder, you is sholy gwine fotch up at Owl Branch, sah.”

  Burke nodded from his saddle, half turned to whistle the dogs, shoved his shotgun into the worn leather boot, and shook out his bridle.

  At a long, swinging lope, he rode into the flat-woods, where a turpentine orchard edged the cultivated land — groves of tall, scarred pines all but girdled — a pitiful, mutilated company.

  Then in a few minutes the wilderness began — the beautiful flat-woods, where splendid trees dotted the park-like plain as though they had been set out there by some landscape gardener.

  Eastward he cantered, the declining sun at his back, his horse’s long, blue shadow leading, until the velvet-black edge of the burnt grass appeared on his right.

  Already, amid the ashes, tender new grass sprouts were springing up in tufts intensely green; bevy after bevy of quail whirred up and spread out across the horizon, steadily dwindling dots against the sky.

  The hounds ran them; ran rabbits too, now and then, but, however far circling, they kept the cantering horse in view until a streak of brier and maple thicket, tall cypress tops, and a glimmer of silvery water revealed the course of Owl Branch. —

  He rode along it, first north, then south, finding no sign of Jessie Darrel. He had now become exceedingly nervous; the low-hanging sun began to scare him; and he drove his horse at a gallop through the open “hammock,” looking anxiously in every direction.

  There was a narrow crossing, but he had already overrun it; and it was only when he missed the hounds, drew bridle, and looked back, that he saw them huddling on the edge of the briers, snuffing the ground.

  So he wheeled his horse and came galloping back. There was a narrow lane, no wider than a game trail, leading down through the bushes.

  “Go on!” he cried huskily to the dogs. “Hie on! Forward! Get around there, you pups!” And, as he waved them on and followed, he saw in the mud her horse’s tracks.

  Through a clear, shallow branch, swarming with bream and tiny pike, thrashed the dogs; after them splashed his horse, breasting the rough hammock and mounting it in a dozen bounds.

  And here Burke whipped out his shotgun and fired both barrels in quick succession, then sat his saddle, motionless, scarcely breathing.

  A year of growing fear amounting to terror passed with the dragging seconds; then, suddenly, from the forest on his left three shots came, distant and dull.

  His shout to the dogs ended in a sob; he swung his horse and launched him headlong across the palmetto scrub. Once he was almost unseated and thrown as a rattlesnake buzzed and his horse bounded aside, but he clung to the saddle and to his shotgun, and drove on through the waning light of the woods.

  The setting sun painted every tree trunk crimson, and stained the dead leaves with sombre red: ghosts of the water already floated in filmy cerements among the cypress; strange whistlings and squawks and croaks and the heavy rustle of great wings fanning above him marked some hidden heronry.

  A moment later the dogs yelped hysterically and fled past him, outstripping his horse; and as he galloped into the more open woods he caught sight of her, standing beside her horse, the dogs leaping madly about her.

  The reaction from his dread of the “black terror” had evidently altered his face, for as he rode up and dismounted, she came forward and gazed earnestly into his drawn and pallid visage.

  “What is it?” she asked. “Has anything happened to father?”

  He shook his head, unable to speak for the moment.

  “What is the matter?” she repeated. “I heard your shots, and I answered them. Is there anything wrong, Mr. Burke?”

  “No. Is there anything wrong with you? You are all over dead leaves and you have been crying! Did your horse throw you?”

  “No.”

  She looked at him, bewildered; more bewildered still when he took her hands and pressed his lips to them, crushing them in silence. And she could feel the muscles of his face working.

  “Tell me,” she faltered, “what has happened — to make you look at me like that?”

  “Nothing. Why have you been crying?”

  “I don’t know — exactly.... Why did you follow me out here?”

  “I don’t know what possessed me to follow you — what made me so anxious — worried—”

  “Anxious? About what?”

  “Your father mentioned the reason that you went armed.... And — it was getting late—”

  “Was it for me you were afraid?” she asked, amazed. “Oh God, yes!” he broke out: “I couldn’t stand it — I can never stand it again — to know you are out here alone — alone — and the black peril always to be reckoned with — and the sun going down — in such a land as this! — and you out in it — somewhere — alone—”

  “Mr. Burke—”

  “I can’t stand it, Jessie! — I — what’s the use of my telling you I love you — worship you — that since I’ve known you I’ve never had any thought except for you — you lovely, wonderful thing! — you’ve got to care for me. — Can’t you, dear? You must! Forgive me — I don’t know what I’m saying: I’m very humble; I’m begging for your regard — just a little bit of your friendship to begin — I’m totally at your mercy — but I’ll never, never let you go! — Please — please overlook my b-bad manners and my violence, because I’m really afraid of you — only I’m more afraid of losing you — I don’t know what I’m saying! When a plain business man is — is in love under circumstances — like these — it — it knocks him down and out — it does, indeed.”

  Her bewilderment had become a flushed silence; her brown eyes had met and sustained his gaze to the limit of endurance.

  Now, though he still retained her hands in a grip that might have hurt anybody except a girl too excited, too deeply moved to heed mere physical pain, she had lowered her brown eyes, her head, too; and she stood very straight and still there in the last level rays of the setting sun.

  Presently she spoke with an effort, still looking down: “So you came here — on my account — afraid for me.”

  “I suppose,” he said, chagrined, “that I made a donkey of myself.”

  But his expression altered swiftly when she looked up. There were tears in her eyes and her lips quivered. “It was dear of you to come,” she said.

  “Jessie!”

  “You knew that I cared for you. Didn’t you? I began to do it within the very hour I saw you first.... And I was afraid I’d show it Because I — I knew it was in my voice, in my eyes, in everything I said or thought or did....”

  “Jessie! Jessie! I ne
ver even dreamed it!”

  “Didn’t you? Father did. Mose and Venus knew it. I believe the dogs knew it — I am sure that Joseph did — and even the very forest trees seemed to know. Oh, I was afraid you’d know it, too! — but I was more afraid you wouldn’t.”

  “My darling!”

  “And I didn’t know what to do!” she murmured; “I didn’t know what to do about it — and that’s why I was sitting out here in the woods — trying to think — trying to think it out—”

  “Dearest! Dearest!—”

  “ — I had given you up. I was completely down and out when — you fired to signal me.”

  He drew her close; she put both strong, young arms around his neck.

  “You took your time about answering my signal,” he said, unsteadily.

  “I could not seem to find my revolver.”

  “Why not?”

  “I was down and out — down on my knees, half blind with — with tears—”

  “Doing what?”

  “Asking God for you,” she said faintly.

  “Dearest! Dearest! Was that your prayer?”

  “Yes, my principal prayer.... I did pray for a home in New York,” she added naïvely.... “That was childish, wasn’t it?”

  “Poor little heart that misses its nursery! You shall have it again, toys and all.”

  “But if I am to live with you I don’t care where I live. Anywhere will be like New York to me — if I am to live with you.”

  He said:

  “Love is love; home is home. To combine them is to enter Paradise. I think I have found the key to it.”

  “Paradise is wherever you take me,” she whispered. “And I shall take you home — back to New York. Because it is the nursery we both were born to, you and! It’s full of dust and draughts and broken toys — trash, junk, memories, and tarnished household gods. It’s shabby and old-fashioned, unsanitary, dingy, and worn out. But we miss it when we remain away too long. And our hearts know no peace until we are playing there once more with the old familiar and battered toys.”

  “But your health — Reginald—”

  He unclasped one arm and waved it defiantly at the evening sky:

  “I had rather,” he said, “go crazy in New York than remain safe and sane and live to be a hundred anywhere else!”