Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “I suppose,” she said serenely, “that is all you ever see in any girl — anybody — a human document — an aid to the practice of your profession.”

  “Heretofore—” he ceased, troubled by her smile. But why the smile of a human document should trouble him he could not explain to himself. So he picked up his pencil and made a few hen-tracks on his pad. They represented the total of his morning’s work. She knew it, and somehow the knowledge gave her a malicious sense of satisfaction.

  “I suppose your book is progressing by leaps and bounds,” she remarked, slightly swinging one spurred heel above its blue shadow on the ground.

  He saw the little foot swing, the shadow oscillate.

  He had never seen such a slim and exquisite foot; and he forgot what she had said.

  “Is it?” she repeated, with emphasis.

  “My book? Oh — well, it’s — er — getting on, I fancy. It takes time. Books, you know, take time.”

  “I think yours has taken a little more than the usual count, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  “You say you’ve been three years at it,” she added, blushing at herself for her sporting vernacular. But he had heard her soft, pretty voice uttering a simile inspired by the prize ring. It was the most congruous thing he had ever heard.

  “You know,” he said, “you are the most interesting — girl—”

  “No, you mean document!”

  “I don’t mean document; I’m speaking — er—”

  “Professionally?”

  “No!” he said, annoyed. “I’m something else besides an author.”

  “Is it possible!”

  “Now,” he said, reddening, “you are ridiculing me.”

  “I?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid you are.... I’m afraid you’ve been doing it — for some time.... Perhaps ever since I came here.”

  “Mr. Smith,” she exclaimed, confused, contrite, and flushed, “please don’t think such a thing of me.”

  Evidently he was thinking it, and thinking it hard; and her sense of guilt kept her silent and ashamed. Also, for she had begun to take him, if not his book, rather seriously during the last week or so, his grave preoccupation frightened her a little.

  “Are you angry?” she asked.

  He looked up pleasantly, the becoming flush still in his cheeks:

  “No, I couldn’t be that.”

  “Because I do value your friendship.”

  “I am glad of that,” he said simply.

  After an interval of silence she placed one spurred boot on the ground; and, as he made no motion to retain her, she stood on both feet, gazing at nothing rather soberly. Somehow the sunshine in the orange grove seemed to have grown duller. But there were no clouds: she glanced up to see.

  Then she said, “Good morning,” in a subdued voice, and walked away through the grove. And she was wondering how deep a blow the lightest word could deal, and why after all it should matter so much to her what she said to this young man.

  Conscience was busy with her; she had very gently ridiculed him — not meaning he should ever become aware of it, of course, but merely out of sheer caprice and a native, idle, and no doubt deplorable sense of humour.

  Also, she accused herself of a lack of reverence for worthiness — a tendency toward mockery and mischievous misinterpretation. And pleaded guilty as charged.

  Which made her unhappy — and furious because she was so honest with herself. That was the trouble with the girl — she had always found it impossible to fool herself. She was unhappy, and she knew it and admitted it: she was terribly sorry and ashamed of herself for having ridiculed Smith and his book, and she realized that, too.

  But deepest and most painful of all was the fact that she had not, until that moment, understood how much she liked Smith.

  Now it was plain, and was becoming plainer as she, a trifle disturbed by the genuineness of her sorrow, began instinctively to cross-examine herself concerning her actual state of mind.

  To her consternation and surprise she presently discovered that Smith had become a rather important factor in her daily life. If he took it into his head to go away, she’d miss him. She liked him. She didn’t care to think of the next few months at Number Seven without Smith decorating the vicinity.

  Of course there was no sentiment in the affair; not at all. She simply and frankly liked Smith.

  By the time she had reached this conclusion she had arrived at the dehydrating plant.

  A negro foreman presented her with a tiny, dry object and a glass of water. Cyrille mechanically dropped the dry object into the glass of water, and then she and the foreman watched it swell and grow big and plump and crimson and succulent.

  When she drew it from the water it was a large, luscious and very fragrant strawberry, fresh and delicious as though just picked.

  She thought to herself, listlessly:

  “I’ll make my everlasting fortune here.”

  And she went to her room, stripped off her riding clothes, bathed, dressed in a filmy affair from Paris, with a hat to match — but why she dressed thusly she did not care to ask herself.

  And, after all, she had her labour for her pains. It seemed that he had taken his luncheon in a parcel and gone off somewhere with his manuscript. And her appetite for the first time in her life flagged. Evidently he was very deeply offended.

  She sat late that night reading a book she detested; but Smith remained in his room. She could, at intervals, hear him tramping about, hear things slam now and then.

  After she had retired, and lay communing rather sadly with herself on her pillow, the disturbing idea occurred to her that Smith might have been packing up.

  Feminine intuition is remarkable, for that is exactly what he had been doing.

  And the next morning, at sunrise, he arose, settled with the superintendent, tipped the servants, had his steamer trunk placed on a waggon, and then, entering the living room, he seated himself before her desk and wrote his adieux:

  DEAR MISS WEYMOUTH:

  I have long overstayed my time under your delightful and hospitable roof, and I thank you very much for permitting a stranger to put up at your beautiful fruit ranch.

  It has all been a novel experience for me; every moment rendered interesting by your employees and by yourself when you very graciously permitted me to trespass upon your time.

  All that you have done — all that you are accomplishing — is very wonderful. Such energy, good judgment, executive ability, and personal charm are, I should judge, rarely united in one person. But you have them all.

  Please accept the gratitude and adieux of a rather useless young man who has not very much to say to the world, and who is not very diligent about saying it.

  I am afraid that what you say is true: a profession at which one works only intermittently is scarce worthy of the name. You are quite right: art is work: never idleness.

  With many thanks for your kindness to me, I am very sincerely yours, GEORGE SMITH.

  It was some letter: but he did not find it difficult to compose. That is why, perhaps.

  He left it on her desk, went out and climbed into the waggon beside the negro driver.

  Seated on her bed, her soft little hands against her breast, Cyrille listened breathlessly to the crunch of wheels on the marl road.

  Then she made three separate jumps,: to the window where her eyes corroborated what her ears had divined; into her riding breeches and coat and stock; and down to the living-room.

  There it was — the note she knew must be there: and she tore it open and swept it with tearful and excited eyes.

  The tears dried before she was in the saddle: before she had overtaken the waggon her cheeks were brilliant.

  Only the negro driver sat in the waggon.

  “Where is Mr. Smith?” she demanded.

  It appeared that Smith had walked forward toward the landing, saying he needed exercise.

  “Turn your horses and take that trunk back to
the house,” she said. “Mr. Smith will decide to remain a little longer.”

  “Yaas’m,” drawled the driver. She cantered her horse past him; then he slowly turned his horses around toward the house he had recently left.

  As for Smith, he was sitting on a low-leaning branch of a white mulberry tree, eating the cool, dewy fruit, when Cyrille discovered him. How could a man eat under such circumstances! She forgot that he had had no breakfast, and, moreover, was probably angry at her.

  She pulled in her horse; he got up: she flung herself from the cross-saddle and went straight up to him:

  “I read your letter,” she said. “I met the waggon and sent back your trunk! I am ashamed and — and frightened, and p-perfectly miserable.... And I am — in love — with you!” She began to whimper. “D-darling!” stammered Smith, petrified.

  “I don’t know whether you are in love with me or not!” she said with a short sob. “Are you?”

  “I am now!” he said.

  “Were you when you went away?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you yesterday when you went off by yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you day before yesterday?”

  “No.”

  There was a silence. Suddenly the rosy colour dyed her face and her superb, young figure grew limp.

  Smith took her into his arms with a decision and vigour comforting to them both.

  “Don’t you ever dare laugh at an author again!” he said. “You see what comes of it!”

  “I won’t,” she said, very humbly.

  “But you were right, darling,” he murmured. “I was an awful ass. And I don’t see how you can be in love with me.”

  “But I am,” she said, laying her face on his shoulder with a happy sigh.

  The future promised well for them — what with a dehydrating plant and a deaërated author in the family, what prospect could be brighter?

  “Dearest?” she said, with a heavenly sweetness in her eyes.

  “Cyrille, darling?”

  “Shall we go back to breakfast? I’m starved.” After all, she was young and sturdy, and her health and digestion were as perfect as her body.

  And only such as she can really love.

  DOWN AND OUT

  ON Sting-Ray Bayou lived Cisthene and Chrysis. They wore very white skins, hair which had red gleams through it, blue eyes, and usually a few freckles. Thus costumed by nature they were equipped for eventualities. Also, their age was nineteen. As the Verbena Herald explained, when noting their presence at a University Commencement dance: “The Misses Castle have been twins from birth.”

  Their father, Professor Castle, once temporarily inhabited Jasmine Inlet as assistant professor of Greek at Verbena University; hence the names adorning the twins — pronounced Cis-the-ne and Chry-sis — in case you read this story aloud.

  But the production and the classical embellishment of progeny was all he ever accomplished of any permanent significance; and since his retirement to the home of his forebears he had continued to occupy easy chairs and read Greek for his own edification. Meanwhile, the twins kept his cuffs trimmed and his hose darned. The financial barometer of the family had never fallen lower — not even in 1865. And it was still falling. In plainer vernacular, the Castles were down and out. Which was nothing against them in that region, and would even have added to their social prestige, if anything could add prestige to a Castle of Sting-Ray Bayou. But that would have been gilding the lily, which everybody knows is a silly pastime.

  As for Cisthene and Chrysis, they rode herd on the wild and branded razorbacks that roamed the outlying wilderness. Otherwise, they lounged about the business of life, looking slender, fresh, ornamental, and optimistic.

  The Commencement Ball at Verbena University had been their only dissipation since they were old enough to dissipate. After which yearly revel, their money being spent, they invariably retired from civilization to Sting-Ray Bayou and the vast, unkempt, decaying house of their nativity, known for many generations to many generations as “Castle Place.”

  But the Confederacy had come and gone, and now only honour remained at Castle Place. The house was full of it — every dim room, every screened gallery seemed redolent of it, as with a sad and subtle perfume.

  The roofs of the flanking “quarters,” heavy with moss, had long since sagged inward. A few negroes still inhabited the western quarters, descendants of former occupants. They and a dozen “houn’-dawgs” stuck to Castle Place as limpets stick to rocks, not to be loosened or pried away.

  How they lived and multiplied, and remained as fat as they were lazy, nobody seemed to know, for there was no abundance of anything at Castle Place — nor had been since their father’s youth.

  And yet, somehow, everybody lived and thrived and appeared wholesome and sturdy — the Professor, the graceful twins, negro, houn’-dawg, and the four horses always ready and resigned to either saddle or plow.

  How this distribution of manna was managed by Providence remained a mystery — for there seemed to be no other management at Castle Place — yet no negro ever yearned for hawg and hominy in vain; no creature hungered unappeased.

  And if the Professor’s coat was darned, and if Cisthene’s riding skirt displayed indiscreetly more of Cisthene’s symmetry than might be regarded as conservative; and if Chrysis’ hunting bridle was part rope, and her saddle held together only by the grace of God and a copper wire, it bothered that family and their black retainers not at all.

  For a ci-devant professor of Greek who, in the natural and kindly course of events, had not a hundred years of life before him, sufficient remained at Castle Place to interest and amuse him during the balance of his career. There was the house itself, the grounds, the aged trees; the many dim rooms furnished as they had been from the beginning: there were his books, shelf after shelf of them; there were his memories.

  As for Cisthene and Chrysis, they shot, fished, made preserves and pies, knitted, darned, constructed their own clothes, managed the smokehouse, superintended the limited agricultured activities of the negroes in garden patch and orange grove, and rode herd like a pair of blond demons.

  Rounding up and branding the wild hogs of the wilderness was a serious business. The twins took a hand in it partly from choice, liking the excitement of the headlong gallop through pathless woodlands — partly because they knew negroes too well to leave either hog or orange grove to the easy stewardship of any dusky overseer.

  Such was the narrow world which circumscribed Castle Place and they that dwelt therein. And one day, into that very limited and remote section of North America sauntered a young man from New York.

  His shoulders were adorned with a pack upon which was strapped a rifle and a stewpan; his grey flannel shirt hung open to his wishbone, and his sunburnt skin glimmered moist with perspiration. He was all in.

  On the veranda the Professor closed his volume and rose rheumatically to receive the stranger: from the cool, dusky drawing-room also rose and presently appeared Cisthene with a tray, glasses, and a decanter of light, homemade wine; and Chrysis arrived with a newly-baked orange cake. So the rites of hospitality began without haste, apology, or embarrassment.

  It naturally transpired that the stranger’s name was Jones; that he was a student at the forestry school which infested one of the Northern state forests; that he had come to study the adjacent forests. But Jones did not inform them that he was not obliged to work for a living, or that his father’s income tax alone would run an average railroad both prosperously and indefinitely.

  Indeed, there was a simplicity, a homespun and butternut effect about the boy which, with the visible sweat of his manly brow, forbade any such surmise.

  Jones was not, perhaps, actually horny-handed, but his brier-torn fists had been deeply stained with pine pitch, and his heavy boots and leggins would have instantly won the confidence of Northern proletariat or local aristocrat.

  Gordon Jones was his entire and impressive name; and Cis
thene looked at him and decided she was about to like him; and Chrysis gazed upon him with sweet, unspeculative eyes and made up her mind that she liked him, too.

  So they all sipped a little homemade wine and ate orange cake; and Cisthene, keeping her riding skirt together with one furtive hand, resolved to take some more stitches in it; and Chrysis, who wore her mother’s ring, let the sunshine glimmer on it with an innocent desire to please.

  But when Jones arose and remarked that it was about time he made camp, Castle Place also arose, protesting; and Jones very quickly understood what hospitality meant to those whose ancestors had inherited the habit from forebears remoter yet.

  A mere glance at the people before him, a casual survey of the dilapidated surroundings, was sufficient to inform Jones of their poverty and their pride. Yet, he had no choice; he must accept or hurt them.

  So Cisthene and Chrysis went away very happily to prepare a room for him — which preparation consisted of dusting; investing the huge, four-post bed with clean but ragged linen, and sending a negro to fill the water pitcher. There were no candles; a splinter of light-wood projected from a candlestick, and two matches lay beside it. Such was compulsory economy at Castle Place.

  Jones, seated on the veranda below with his mild-eyed, dreamy host, was troubled; and presently ventured to voice his apprehensions concerning one George Scott, his comrade and fellow student, whom he did not desire to inflict upon Castle Place.

  But the Professor, surprised and courteously reproachful, reminded Jones that Castle Place was as ample as its hospitality: and a quarter of an hour later Scott appeared in rig similar to Jones’; was received, formally regaled with wine and orange cake; and another chamber prepared for his entertainment.

  The young fellows had only one change of outer garments, and these were anything but dainty.

  They sat on the edge of Scott’s bed, consulting and dressing intermittently, greatly disturbed at the expense which their sojourn must add to the slender means of these kindly people.

  “What a wreck of a fine place—” observed Jones in a low voice, “everywhere mildew, mould, decay, disintegration! How they exist here, I can’t see, yet the niggers and the dogs stick to them. It’s tragic, isn’t it!”