Complete weird tales of.., p.1072
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1072
Near him, in pasty-faced and shaky groups, huddled his fellow passengers, whom he had not seen during the voyage except when lined up for life-drill.
He had not wished to see them, either, nor, probably, had they desired to lavish social attentions on him or upon one another.
These pallid, discouraged voyagers were few — not two dozen cabin passengers in all.
Who they might be he had no curiosity to know; he had not exchanged ten words with any of them during the entire and nauseating voyage; he certainly did not intend to do so now.
He favoured them with a savage glance and walked over to the port side — the Jersey side — where there seemed to be nobody except a tired Scandinavian sailor or two.
In the grey of morning the Hook loomed up above the sea, gloomy as a thunder-head charged with lightning.
After a while the batteries along the Narrows slipped into view. Farther on, camouflaged ships rode sullenly at anchor, as though ashamed of their frivolous and undignified appearance. A battleship was just leaving the Lower Bay, smoke pouring from every funnel. Destroyers and chasers rushed by them, headed seaward.
Then, high over the shore mists and dimly visible through rising vapours, came speeding a colossal phantom.
Vague as a shark’s long shadow sheering translucent depths, the huge dirigible swept eastward and slid into the Long Island fog.
And at that moment somebody walked plump into young Shotwell; and the soft, fragrant shock knocked the breath out of both.
She recovered hers first:
“I’m sorry!” she faltered. “It was stupid. I was watching the balloon and not looking where I was going. I’m afraid I hurt you.”
He recovered his breath, saluted ceremoniously, readjusted his overseas cap to the proper angle.
Then he said, civilly enough: “It was my fault entirely. It was I who walked into you. I hope I didn’t hurt you.”
They smiled, unembarrassed.
“That was certainly a big dirigible,” he ventured. “There are bigger Zeps, of course.”
“Are there really?”
“Oh, yes. But they’re not much good in war, I believe.”
She turned her trim, small head and looked out across the bay; and Shotwell, who once had had a gaily receptive eye for pulchritude, thought her unusually pretty.
Also, the steady keel of the Elsinore was making him feel more human now; and he ventured a further polite observation concerning the pleasures of homecoming after extended exile.
She turned with a frank shake of her head: “It seems heartless to say so, but I’m rather sorry I’m back,” she said.
He smiled: “I must admit,” he confessed, “that I feel the same way. Of course I want to see my people. But I’d give anything to be in France at this moment, and that’s the truth!”
The girl nodded her comprehension: “It’s quite natural,” she remarked. “One does not wish to come home until this thing is settled.”
“That’s it exactly. It’s like leaving an interesting play half finished. It’s worse — it’s like leaving an absorbing drama in which you yourself are playing an exciting rôle.”
She glanced at him — a quick glance of intelligent appraisal.
“Yes, it must have seemed that way to you. But I’ve been merely one among a breathless audience.... And yet I can’t bear to leave in the very middle — not knowing how it is to end. Besides,” she added carelessly, “I have nobody to come back to except a rather remote relative, so my regrets are unmixed.”
There ensued a silence. He was afraid she was about to go, but couldn’t seem to think of anything to say to detain her.
For the girl was very attractive to a careless and amiably casual man of his sort — the sort who start their little journey through life with every intention of having the best kind of a time on the way.
She was so distractingly pretty, so confidently negligent of convention — or perhaps disdainful of it — that he already was regretting that he had not met her at the beginning of the voyage instead of at the end.
She had now begun to button up her ulster, as though preliminary to resuming her deck promenade. And he wanted to walk with her. But because she had chosen to be informal with him did not deceive him into thinking that she was likely to tolerate further informality on his part. And yet he had a vague notion that her inclinations were friendly.
“I’m sorry,” he said rather stupidly, “that I didn’t meet you in the beginning.”
The slightest inclination of her head indicated that although possibly she might be sorry too, regrets were now useless. Then she turned up the collar of her ulster. The face it framed was disturbingly lovely. And he took a last chance.
“And so,” he ventured politely, “you have really been on board the Elsinore all this time!”
She turned her charming head toward him, considered him a moment; then she smiled.
“Yes,” she said; “I’ve been on board all the time. I didn’t crawl aboard in mid-ocean, you know.”
The girl was frankly amused by the streak of boyishness in him — the perfectly transparent desire of this young man to detain her in conversation. And, still amused, she leaned back against the rail. If he wanted to talk to her she would let him — even help him. Why not?
“Is that a wound chevron?” she inquired, looking at the sleeve of his tunic.
“No,” he replied gratefully, “it’s a service stripe.”
“And what does the little cord around your shoulder signify?”
“That my regiment was cited.”
“For bravery?”
“Well — that was the idea, I believe.”
“Then you’ve been in action.”
“Yes.”
“Over the top?”
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
“Several. Recently it’s been more open work, you know.”
“And you were not hit?”
“No.”
She regarded him smilingly: “You are like all soldiers have faced death,” she said. “You are not communicative.”
At that he reddened. “Well, everybody else was facing it, too, you know. We all had the same experience.”
“Not all,” she said, watching him. “Some died.”
“Oh, of course.”
The girl’s face flushed and she nodded emphatically: “Of course! And that is our Yankee secret; — embodied in those two words— ‘of course.’ That is exactly why the boche runs away from our men. The boche doesn’t know why he runs, but it is because you all say, ‘of course! — of course we’re here to kill and get killed. What of it? It’s in the rules of the game, isn’t it? Very well; we’re playing the game!’
“But the rules of the hun game are different. According to their rules, machine guns are not charged on. That is not according to plan. Oh, no! But it is in your rules of the game. So after the boche has killed a number of you, and you say, ‘of course,’ and you keep coming on, it first bewilders the boche, then terrifies him. And the next time he sees you coming he takes to his heels.”
Shotwell, amused, fascinated, and entirely surprised, began to laugh.
“You seem to know the game pretty well yourself,” he said. “You are quite right. That is the idea.”
“It’s a wonderful game,” she mused. “I can understand why you are not pleased at being ordered home.”
“It’s rather rotten luck when the outfit had just been cited,” he explained.
“Oh. I should think you would hate to come back!” exclaimed the girl, with frank sympathy.
“Well, I was glad at first, but I’m sorry now. I’m missing a lot, you see.”
“Why did they send you back?”
“To instruct rookies!” he said with a grimace. “Rather inglorious, isn’t it? But I’m hoping I’ll have time to weather this detail and get back again before we reach the Rhine.”
“I want to get back again, too,” she reflected aloud, biting her lip and letting her dark eyes rest on the foggy statue of Liberty, towering up ahead.
“What was your branch?” he inquired.
“Oh, I didn’t do anything,” she exclaimed, flushing. “I’ve been in Russia. And now I must find out at once what I can do to be sent to France.”
“The war caught you over there, I suppose,” he hazarded.
“Yes.... I’ve been there since I was twenty. I’m twenty-four. I had a year’s travel and study and then I became the American companion of the little Russian Grand Duchess Marie.”
“They all were murdered, weren’t they?” he asked, much interested.
“Yes.... I’m trying to forget — —”
“I beg your pardon — —”
“It’s quite all right. I, myself, mentioned it first; but I can’t talk about it yet. It’s too personal — —” She turned and looked at the monstrous city.
After a silence: “It’s been a rotten voyage, hasn’t it?” he remarked.
“Perfectly rotten. I was so ill I could scarcely keep my place during life-drill.... I didn’t see you there,” she added with a faint smile, “but I’m sure you were aboard, even if you seem to doubt that I was.”
And then, perhaps considering that she had been sufficiently amiable to him, she gave him his congé with a pleasant little nod.
“Could I help you — do anything—” he began. But she thanked him with friendly finality.
They sauntered in opposite directions; and he did not see her again to speak to her.
Later, jolting toward home in a taxi, it occurred to him that it might have been agreeable to see such an attractively informal girl again. Any man likes informality in women, except among the women of his own household, where he would promptly brand it as indiscretion.
He thought of her for a while, recollecting details of the episode and realising that he didn’t even know her name. Which piqued him.
“Serves me right,” he said aloud with a shrug of finality. “I had more enterprise once.”
Then he looked out into the sunlit streets of Manhattan, all brilliant with flags and posters and swarming with prosperous looking people — his own people. But to his war-enlightened and disillusioned eyes his own people seemed almost like aliens; he vaguely resented their too evident prosperity, their irresponsible immunity, their heedless preoccupation with the petty things of life. The acres of bright flags fluttering above them, the posters that made a gay back-ground for the scene, the sheltered, undisturbed routine of peace seemed to annoy him.
An odd irritation invaded him; he had a sudden impulse to stop his taxi and shout, “Fat-heads! Get into the game! Don’t you know the world’s on fire? Don’t you know what a hun really is? You’d better look out and get busy!”
Fifth Avenue irritated him — shops, hotels, clubs, motors, the well-dressed throngs began to exasperate him.
On a side street he caught a glimpse of his own place of business; and it almost nauseated him to remember old man Sharrow, and the walls hung with plans of streets and sewers and surveys and photographs; and his own yellow oak desk ——
“Good Lord!” he thought. “If the war ends, have I got to go back to that! — —”
The family were at breakfast when he walked in on them — only two — his father and mother.
In his mother’s arms he suddenly felt very young and subdued, and very glad to be there.
“Where the devil did you come from, Jim?” repeated his father, with twitching features and a grip on his son’s strong hand that he could not bring himself to loosen.
Yes, it was pretty good to get home, after all — ... And he might not have come back at all. He realised it, now, in his mother’s arms, feeling very humble and secure.
His mother had realised it, too, in every waking hour since the day her only son had sailed at night — that had been the hardest! — at night — and at an unnamed hour of an unnamed day! — her only son — gone in the darkness ——
On his way upstairs, he noticed a red service flag bearing a single star hanging in his mother’s window.
He went into his own room, looked soberly around, sat down on the lounge, suddenly tired.
He had three days’ leave before reporting for duty. It seemed a miserly allowance. Instinctively he glanced at his wrist-watch. An hour had fled already.
“The dickens!” he muttered. But he still sat there. After a while he smiled to himself and rose leisurely to make his toilet.
“Such an attractively informal girl,” he thought regretfully.
“I’m sorry I didn’t learn her name. Why didn’t I?”
Philosophy might have answered: “But to what purpose? No young man expects to pick up a girl of his own kind. And he has no business with other kinds.”
But Shotwell was no philosopher.
* * * * *
The “attractively informal girl,” on whom young Shotwell was condescending to bestow a passing regret while changing his linen, had, however, quite forgotten him by this time. There is more philosophy in women.
Her train was now nearing Shadow Hill; she already could see the village in its early winter nakedness — the stone bridge, the old-time houses of the well-to-do, Main Street full of automobiles and farmers’ wagons, a crowded trolley-car starting for Deepdale, the county seat.
After four years the crudity of it all astonished her — the stark vulgarity of Main Street in the sunshine, every mean, flimsy architectural detail revealed — the dingy trolley poles, the telegraph poles loaded with unlovely wires and battered little electric light fixtures — the uncompromising, unrelieved ugliness of street and people, of shop and vehicle, of treeless sidewalks, brick pavement, car rails, hydrants, and rusty gasoline pumps.
Here was a people ignorant of civic pride, knowing no necessity for beauty, having no standards, no aspirations, conscious of nothing but the grosser material needs.
The hopelessness of this American town — and there were thousands like it — its architectural squalor, its animal unconsciousness, shocked her after four years in lands where colour, symmetry and good taste are indigenous and beauty as necessary as bread.
And the girl had been born here, too; had known no other home except when at boarding school or on shopping trips to New York.
Painfully depressed, she descended at the station, where she climbed into one of the familiar omnibuses and gave her luggage check to the lively young driver.
Several drummers also got in, and finally a farmer whom she recognised but who had evidently forgotten her.
The driver, a talkative young man whom she remembered as an obnoxious boy who delivered newspapers, came from the express office with her trunk, flung it on top of the bus, gossiped with several station idlers, then leisurely mounted his seat and gathered up the reins.
Rattling along the main street she became aware of changes — a brand new yellow brick clothing store — a dreadful Quick Lunch — a moving picture theatre — other monstrosities. And she saw familiar faces on the street.
The drummers got out with their sample cases at the Bolton House — Charles H. Bolton, proprietor. The farmer descended at the “Par Excellence Market,” where, as he informed the driver, he expected to dispose of a bull calf which he had finally decided “to veal.”
“Which way, ma’am?” inquired the driver, looking in at her through the door and chewing gum very fast.
“To Miss Dumont’s on Shadow Street.”
“Oh!...” Then, suddenly he knew her. “Say, wasn’t you her niece?” he demanded.
“I am Miss Dumont’s niece,” replied Palla, smiling.
“Sure! I didn’t reckonise you. Used to leave the Star on your doorstep! Been away, ain’t you? Home looks kinda good to you, even if it’s kinda lonesome—” He checked himself as though recollecting something else. “Sure! You been over in Rooshia livin’ with the Queen! There was a piece in the Star about it. Gee!” he added affably. “That was pretty soft! Some life, I bet!”
And he grinned a genial grin and climbed into his seat, chewing rapidly.
“He means to be friendly,” thought the heart-sick girl, with a shudder.
When Palla got out she spoke pleasantly to him as she paid him, and inquired about his father — a shiftless old gaffer who used, sometimes, to do garden work for her aunt.
But the driver, obsessed by the fact that she had lived with the “Queen of Rooshia,” merely grinned and repeated, “Pretty soft,” and, shouldering her trunk, walked to the front door, chewing furiously.
Martha opened the door, stared through her spectacles.
“Land o’ mercy!” she gasped. “It’s Palla!” Which, in Shadow Hill, is the manner and speech of the “hired girl,” whose “folks” are “neighbours” and not inferiors.
“How do you do, Martha,” said the girl smilingly; and offered her gloved hand.
“Well, I’m so’s to be ‘round—” She wheeled on the man with the trunk: “Here, you! Don’t go-a-trackin’ mud all over my carpet like that! Wipe your feet like as if you was brought up respectful!”
“Ain’t I wipin’ em?” retorted the driver, in an injured voice. “Now then, Marthy, where does this here trunk go to?”
“Big room front — wait, young fellow; you just follow me and be careful don’t bang the banisters — —”
Half way up she called back over her shoulder: “Your room’s all ready, Palla—” and suddenly remembered something else and stood aside on the landing until the young man with the trunk had passed her; then waited for him to return and get himself out of the house. Then, when he had gone out, banging the door, she came slowly back down the stairs and met Palla ascending.
“Where is my aunt?” asked Palla.
And, as Martha remained silent, gazing oddly down at her through her glasses:
“My aunt isn’t ill, is she?”
“No, she ain’t ill. H’ain’t you heard?”
“Heard what?”
“Didn’t you get my letter?”
“Your letter? Why did you write? What is the matter? Where is my aunt?” asked the disturbed girl.
