Complete weird tales of.., p.1006
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1006
“There was no question of you at that time,” said Grismer, lifting his eyes to Cleland’s drawn face. “And I was very desperately in love.... There seemed to be hope that Stephanie might care for me.... Then came that reckless escapade at Albany, where she was recognized by some old friends of your father and by schoolmates of her own....
“Cleland, I would gladly have shot myself then, had that been any solution. But there seemed to be only the one solution.... She has told you, I believe?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that was what was done.... I think she cried all the way back. The Albany Post Road seemed like a road through hell to me. I knew then that Stephanie cared nothing for me in that way; that my place in her life served other purposes.
“I don’t know what she thought I expected of her — what duty she believed she owed me. I know now that the very thought of wifehood was abhorrent to her.... But she was game, Cleland! ... What line of reasoning she followed I don’t know. Whether my love for her touched her, or some generous impulse of renunciation — some childish idea of bringing to me again the inheritance which I had forced on her, I don’t know.
“But she was game. She came here that night with her suitcase. She was as white as death, could scarcely speak.... I never even touched her hand, Cleland.... She slept there — behind that curtain on the iron bed. I sat here all night long.
“In the morning we talked it over. And with every generous plucky word she uttered I realized that it was hopeless. And do you know — God knows how — but somehow I kept thinking of you, Cleland. And it was like clairvoyance, almost, for I could not drive away the idea that she cared for you, unknowingly, and that when you came back some day she’d find it out.”
He rose from the couch and began to pace the studio slowly, his hands in his pockets.
“Cleland,” he said, “she meant to play the game. The bed she had made for herself she was ready to lie on.... But I looked into those grey eyes of hers and I knew that it was pity that moved her, square dealing that nerved her, and that already she was suffering agonies to know what you would think of what she had done — done with a man you never liked — the son of a man whom your father held in contempt because — because he considered him — dishonest!”
He halted a pace from where Cleland was sitting:
“I told her to go back to her studio and think it over. She went out.... I did not think of her coming back here.... I was standing in front of that cracked mirror over there.... To get a sure line on my temple.... That’s what shattered the glass — when she struck my arm up....
“Well, a man goes to pieces sometimes.... She made me promise to wait two years — said she would try to care for me enough in that time to live with me.... The child was frightened sick. The terror of my ever doing such a — a fool thing remains latent in her brain. I know it. I know it’s there. I know, Cleland, that she is in love with you. And that she dare not ask me for her freedom for fear that I shall do some such silly thing.”
He began to laugh, quite naturally, without any bitterness at all:
“I tried to make you understand. I told you that I would do anything for you. But you didn’t comprehend.... Yet, I meant it. I mean it now. She belongs to you, Cleland. I want you to take her. I wish her to understand that I give her the freedom she’s entitled to. That she need not be afraid to take it — need not fear that I might make an ass of myself.”
He laughed again, quite gaily:
“No, indeed, I mean to live. I tell you, Cleland, there is no excitement on earth like beating Fate at her own game. There’s only one thing — —”
After a pause, Cleland looked up into the man’s wistful, golden eyes.
“What is it, Grismer?”
“If I could win — your friendship — —”
“Good God!” whispered Cleland, rising and offering a hand that shook, “ — Do you think I’m worth it, Oswald?”
Their hands met, clasped; a strange light flashed in Grismer’s golden eyes.
“Do you mean it, Cleland?”
“With all my heart, old chap.... I don’t know what to say to you — except that you’re white all through — straighter than I am, Grismer — clean to the soul of you!”
Grismer drew a long, deep breath.
“Thanks,” he said. “That’s about all I want of life.... Tell Stephanie what you said to me — if you don’t mind.... I don’t care what others think ... if you and she think me straight.”
“Oswald, I tell you you’re straighter than I am — stronger. Your thoughts never wavered; you stood steady to punishment, not whimpering. I’ve had a curb-bit on myself, and I don’t know now how long it might have taken me to get it between my teeth and smash things.”
Grismer smiled:
“It would have taken two to smash the Cleland traditions. It couldn’t have been done — between you and Stephanie.... Are you going back to Runner’s Rest to-night?”
“Yes — if you say so,” he replied in a low voice.
“I do say so. Call her on the telephone as soon as you leave here. Then take the first train.”
“And you? Will you come?”
“Not to-night.”
“Will you let us know when you can come, Oswald?”
Grismer picked up a shabby dressing gown from the back of a decrepit chair, and put it on over his undershirt and trousers.
“Sure,” he said pleasantly. “I’ve one or two matters to keep me here. I’ll fix them up to-night.... And please make it very plain to Stephanie that I’m taking this affair beautifully and that the last thing I’d do would be to indulge in any foolishness to shock her.... I’m really most interested in living. Tell her so. She will believe it. For I have never lied to her, Cleland.”
They walked together to the area gate.
“Stephanie should see her attorneys,” said Grismer. “The easiest way, I think, would be for her to leave the state and for me to go abroad. Her attorneys will advise her. But,” he added carelessly, “there’s time to talk over that with her. The main thing is to know that she will be free. And she will be.... Good night, Cleland!” ... He laughed boyishly. “I’ve never been as happy in my whole life!”
CHAPTER XXXIV
WITH THE CLANG of the closing gate, Grismer’s handsome face altered terribly, and he turned deathly white for a moment. Two policemen lounged by in the glare of the arc-light; one of them glanced down into the areaway and saw a pallid face behind the iron bars — turned sharply to look again.
“Gee,” he said to his mate, “d’yeh get that guy’s map?”
“Coke,” said the other carelessly. “Looks like a feller I seen in Sing Sing waitin’ for the priest — what’s his name, now — —” The voices receded. But Grismer had heard.
Perhaps his brain registered the scene sketched by the policeman — a bloodless face behind the death-cell grating — the distant steps of the procession already sounding in the corridor.
He opened the gate and went out to the sidewalk where a young girl, unskillfully painted, stood looking about her preliminary to opening the night’s campaign.
“Hello,” she said tentatively.
“Ah,” he said pleasantly, “a goddess of the stars!”
“Got anything on?” she asked, approaching with her mirthless smile.
“Yes, a few casual garments.”
She looked him over with the uncanny wisdom of her caste, and, young as she was, she divined in this man only the opportunity to waste her time.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, glancing at his shabby dressing gown. “Up against it?”
“What I’m up against,” he said, absently, “will look good to you, too, some day.”
“What’s that?”
“Death, my dear.”
“Quit kiddin’!” she retorted, with an uneasy laugh. “You got your looks yet.” She stepped nearer, looking at him curiously. “Nothing like that,” she said. “You’re a looker. Buck up, old scout!”
She was leaning against the railing where he stood resting his back. Presently he turned, leisurely, and surveyed her.
“You are young,” he said. “You’ll be a tired girl before you’re up against what I am.”
“What have you done?” she enquired curiously.
“Nothing.”
“Sure. That’s why we all go up the river.”
“I’m going across the river,” he remarked, smiling.
“Which?”
“The Styx. You never heard of it, I suppose.”
“One of them dirty rivers in Jersey?”
He nodded gravely.
“What’s out there?” she enquired.
“I don’t know, my dear.”
“Then what’s the idea?”
She waited for an answer, but his golden eyes were dreamily remote.
The girl lingered. Once or twice professional sense suggested departure, but when her tired eyes of a child rested on him something held her inert.
When she again interrupted his revery he looked around at her as though he had never before seen her, and she repeated what she had said.
“What?” he asked sharply.
“I got a fiver that ain’t workin’,” she said again. “You can use it in your business if it’s any good.”
“My dear child,” he said pleasantly, “you’re very kind, but that’s not what the matter is.” He turned, dropped his arm on the railing, facing her: “What’s your name?”
“Gloria Cameron.”
“Come on,” he said, good-humouredly, “what’s your other name?”
“Anne.”
“Anne, what?”
“O’Hara.”
“Will you wait a minute?”
She nodded uncertainly.
He went back through the area, entered his studio and dressed in his shabby street clothes.
The cheque was still lying on a small table where Cleland had placed it at his request. And now he picked it up, dipped a rusty pen into an ink-bottle, and indorsed the cheque, making it payable to Anne O’Hara. Then he took his straw hat and went out.
The girl was waiting.
“Anne,” he said, “I want you to read what’s written on this pretty perforated piece of paper.” He held it so that the electric light fell on it.
“Is it good?” she asked in an awed voice.
“Perfectly.” He turned the cheque over and showed her the indorsement.
She found her voice presently:
“What are you putting over on me?”
He said:
“I’d give this cheque to you now, but it wouldn’t be any good when the banks open to-morrow.”
She stared her question, and he laughed:
“It’s a law concerning cheques. Never mind. But there’s a way to beat it. I had a lot of money once. They’ll take my paper at Square Jack Hennesey’s. Shall we stroll up that way?”
She did not understand. It was quite evident that she had no faith in the scrap of paper either. But it was still more evident that she was willing to remain with him, even at the loss of professional opportunities — even though she was facing the obloquy of being “kidded.”
“Come into my studio first,” he said.
She went without protest. In the brightly lighted basement he turned and scrutinized her coolly from head to foot.
“How old?” he asked bluntly.
“Seventeen.”
“How long are you on the job?”
“Two years.”
“Whose are you?”
“I’m for myself — —”
“Come on! Don’t lie!”
She straightened her thin finger in defiance:
“What are you? A bull?”
“You know I’m not. Who are you working for? Wait! Never mind! You’re working for somebody, aren’t you?”
“Y-yes.”
“Do your folks know it?”
“No.”
“What was it — cloaks, feathers, department store?”
She nodded.
“You can go back?”
She remained silent, and he repeated the question. Then the girl turned white under her paint.
“Damn you!” she said, “what are you trying to do to me?”
“Send you home, Anne, with a couple of thousand real money. Will you go?”
“Show it to me!” she said, but her voice had become childish and tremulous and her painted mouth was quivering.
“I’m going to show it to you,” he said pleasantly. “I’ll get it at Square Jack’s for you. If I do will you fly the coop? I mean now, to-night! Will you?”
“W-with you?”
“Dear child, I’ve got to cross that dirty Jersey river. I told you. You live up state, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Hudson.”
“All right. Will you go now, just as you are? You’d stand a fat chance if you went back and tried to pack up. That thing would batter you to a pulp, wouldn’t he?”
She nodded.
“All right,” he said. “Take off your hat and wash your face, Anne. They’d be on to you at home. I’ve got to pack a few things for my journey and write a couple of letters. Get all the paint off while I’m busy. There’s soap, towels, and a basin behind that screen.”
She came slowly to him and stood looking at him out of her disenchanted young eyes.
“Is this on the square?” she asked.
“Won’t you take a chance that it is?” he asked, taking her slim hands and looking her in the eyes.
“Yes.... I’ll take a chance with you — if you ask me to.”
“I do.” He patted her hands and smiled, then released them. “Hustle!” he said. “I’ll be ready very soon.”
He wrote first to Cleland:
DEAR CLELAND:
I think I’ll go up tonight, stay at Pittsfield, and either drive across the mountain in the morning of take an early train through the tunnel for North Adams. Either way ought to land me at Runner’s Rest station about eight in the morning.
I can’t tell you what your kindness has done for me. I think it was about all I really wanted in the world — your friendship. It seems to clean off my slate, square me with life.
I shall start in a few minutes. Until we meet, then, your friend, OSWALD GRISMER.
He directed the envelope to Cleland’s studio in town.
The other letter he directed to Stephanie at Runner’s Rest and stamped it.
He wrote to her:
I’m happier than I have been in years because I can do this thing for you.
And now I’m going to admit something which will ease your mind immensely: the situation was so impossible that I also began to weary of it a little. You are entitled to the truth.
And now life looks very inviting to me. Liberty is the most wonderful thing in the world. And I am restless for it, restless to begin again.
So if I come to you as a comrade, don’t think for a moment that any sympathy is due me. Alas, man belongs to a restless sex, Stephanie, and the four winds are less irresponsible and inconstant!
As a comrade, I should delight in you. You are a very wonderful girl — but you belong to Cleland and not to me. Don’t worry. I’m absolutely satisfied. Until we meet, then,
Your grateful friend,
OSWALD.
“I’ll get a special for this letter on our way uptown,” he said, voicing his thoughts aloud to the girl who was scrubbing her painted lips and cheeks behind the screen.
When she emerged, pinning on her hat, he had packed a suitcase and was ready.
They found a taxi in Washington Square.
On the way uptown he mailed his letter to Stephanie; sent a district messenger with his letter to Cleland’s studio; sent a night letter to Runner’s Rest saying that he would take accommodations on a train which would be due at Runner’s Rest station at eight next morning; stopped at the darkened and barred house of Square Jack Hennesey, and was admitted after being scrutinized through a sliding grill.
When he came out half an hour later he told the driver to go to the Grand Central Station, and got into the cab...
“Anne,” he said gaily, “here’s the two thousand. Count it.”
The sheafs of new bills pinned to their paper bands lay in her lap for a long time before she touched them. Even then she merely lifted one packet and let it drop without even looking at it. So Grismer folded the bills and put them into her reticule. Then he took her slim left hand in both of his and held it while they rode on in silence through the electric glare of the metropolis.
At the station he dismissed the taxicab, bought a ticket and sleeping-car accommodations to Hudson — managed to get a state-room for her all to herself.
“You won’t sleep much,” he remarked, smiling, “so we’ll have to provide you with amusement, Anne.”
Carrying his suitcase, the girl walking beside him, he walked across the great rotunda to the newsstand. There, and at the confectionery counter opposite, he purchased food for mind and body — light food suitable for a young and badly bruised mind, and for a soul in embryo, still in the making.
Then he went over to another window and bought a ticket for himself to Pittsfield, and sleeping accommodations.
“We travel by different lines, Anne,” he said, opening his portfolio and placing his own tickets in it, where several letters lay addressed to him at his basement studio. Then he replaced the portfolio in his breast pocket.
“I’ll go with you to your train,” he said, declining with a shake of his head the offices of a red-capped porter. “Your train leaves at 12.10 and we have only a few minutes.”
They walked together through the gates, the officials permitting him to accompany her.
The train stood on the right — a very long train, and they had a long distance to walk along the concrete platform before they found her car.
A porter showed them to her stateroom. Grismer tipped him generously:
“Be very attentive to this young lady,” he said, “and see that she has every service required, and that she is notified in plenty of time to get off at Hudson. Now you may leave us until we ring.”
He turned from the corridor and entered the stateroom, closing the door behind him. The girl sat on the sofa, very pale, with a dazed expression in her eyes.
