Complete weird tales of.., p.1220
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1220
“Yep — an’ me, too,” said Tip, blissfully.
He fell asleep soon; Celia stood and watched him in the moonlight. She was thinking of Garland; Tip was dreaming of him.
When she came down, Garland was busy among the lilies with bullseye lantern and butterfly net, and she took a chair on the verandah and watched him. Two “Imperial” moths had fallen to his lot, perfect specimens, and he was happy, for had not Professor Wormly cautiously deplored the absence of this species in the whole country?
“One on Wormly,” laughed Garland, dropping the great yellow and violet-brown moths from his cyanide-jar into her lap, “are they not pretty, Celia?”
Since Garland had come, Celia had seen beauty through his eyes where ever his eyes saw it; the shadows on the pasture, the long light over the hills, the massed pines red in the sunset, the morning meadow sheeted with cobwebs. For the first time in her innocent life she had turned to watch the colour in the evening sky, she had stooped to lift a clover-drunk butterfly and examine the rainbow span of its wings, she lingered at the bars, listening to the music of the meadow brook along the alders. So when he asked her if the moths were beautiful, she smiled and saw that they were; and when he asked her to hold his lantern among the lilies, she prettily consented.
Up and down they moved, to and fro through the lilies and clustered pinks, but the moonlight was too clear and the swift sphinx moths did not visit the garden that night.
He was standing still, looking at the lilies, and she was swinging the lantern idly. “About Tip,” he said abruptly, “do you think the school here is good for him?”
“I know it is not,” she said sadly.
“His English is alarming,” said Garland.
“I know it — what can I do?”
“I don’t know; if he goes to school he will play with those children, I suppose.”
“He was such a well-bred child,” said Celia, “before — before we came here. He talked when he was three. I seem to have little influence over him.”
“You have a great deal — not in that way perhaps. Suppose you take Tip out of school, Celia.”
“What would become of him?” exclaimed Celia in gentle alarm.
“It’s better than leaving him there. I — er — I might help him a bit.”
“But — it’s very, very kind of you — but you will go away before winter — will you not?”
“I don’t know,” said Garland, and instinctively laid his hand on hers. At the contact, her cheeks flamed in the darkness.
“Celia,” he said, “I do not want to go.”
Her face was turned from him. After a moment his fingers unclosed and her impassive hand fell to her side. The swift touch left him silent and awkward. He tried to speak lightly again but could not. Finally he folded his net, extinguished the lantern and said good-night. Long after he had disappeared she stood among the lilies, her hands softly clasped to her breast.
IV
“HEU!” sniffed Uncle Billy, as he poured out a glass of beer for himself behind the fly-soiled bar at the Constitution Hotel, “there hain’t a man around taown dass say a word abaout the Minster girl when Mister Garland’s a settin’ here.”
“Mister Garland’s a skunk!” said Cy Pettingil, morosely.
“He ain’t the skunk that yew be, Cy Pettingil,” retorted Uncle Billy, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
Garland came in a moment later, satchel in hand, and laid a roll of bills on the bar. Uncle Billy moistened his thumb with his tongue, counted them, and shoved them into his waistcoat pocket. “C’rect,” he said, shifting his quid, “what can I dew for yew, sir?”
“Send this satchel with my trunk,” said Garland, “good-bye, Uncle Billy.”
Uncle Billy emerged from the bar, wiped his right hand on his trousers and extended it.
“Good luck, an’ many bugs to yew, Mister Garland. I’m real cut up that yew air goin’, sir; ennything in the bug line thet I hev I’ll send t’ Noo York.”
“Thank you, Uncle Billy,” said Garland, and walked out of the hotel, gloves in one hand, cane in the other.
Cy Pettingil sneered when he was gone, but, receiving no sympathy from Uncle Billy, went home and nagged at his wife, a pale woman weighed down with trouble and American pastry — until she retorted. Then he struck her.
Garland walked on past the church and school-house, through the sweet-briar lane by the Post Office, and, taking the path above the cemetery, followed it until he came in sight of the stone house among the pines. The Maltese cat trotted out to greet him, the tethered kid stared at him from the lawn, but Celia was invisible, and he stood hesitating under the woodbine on the porch. He had never entered Celia’s house. She had never asked him in, and he knew that she was right. He sat down under the pines and looked off over the pastures where the Alderney and Jersey were feeding along the brookside.
Garland had come to say good-bye. There was nothing that he could do for Tip; Celia was not able to send him to a better school, nor could she have afforded to go with him. Even if she should accept an offer to send Tip to school, what would she do there alone in that scandal nest of the freeborn? So Garland sat poking pine cones with his stick and crumpling his gloves in his brown hand until a tangle of sun-warmed curls rose over the fence and Tip appeared, smoking a cigarette. When he saw Garland he dropped the cigarette and looked the other way, whistling.
“Come, Tip,” said Garland, wearily, “let’s have it out before Celia comes.”
Tip went to him at once.
“Who gave you that cigarette?” asked Garland. “No one, I made it.”
“Tobacco?”
“No, sir, sweet-fern and corn silk.”
“That is not much better. Tip, are you going to stop this?”
The child picked up a pine cone, examined it carefully, and tossed it toward the Maltese cat.
“Answer me,” said Garland.
The child was silent.
“Very well,” said Garland.
“I promise!” cried Tip,— “I won’t never smoke nothing, — don’t go away, Mr. Garland!”
“Is that your word of honour, Tip?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right, ‘r said Garland, smiling, “now you have promised me not to drink or smoke until you are twenty-one. I know I can trust you, and I am very happy. You need not tell Celia of this.”
“I — I will if you want?” said Tip, humbly. “No, — it will only worry her — and you have promised now. What did you do in school today?”
“I punched Jimmy Bro—”
“I did not ask for an account of your athletic victories,” said Garland, “I merely wished to know in what particular branch of the applied sciences you excelled.”
“Wh — a — at, sir?”
“Were you perfect in reading?”
“N — no, sir.”
“In writing?”
“No — o—”
“In arithmetic?”
Tip stirred restlessly, and looked at the Maltese cat. Then he brightened and said, “A skunk got into the cellar while school was goin’. Teacher told us all about skunks an’ anermals.”
“Oh,” said Garland, “an object lesson in natural history?”
“Yep. Skunk ain’t its real name, its real name is Methodist Americanus—”
“What’s that?” exclaimed Garland.
“Methodist Americanus—”
“Mephetis Americanus, Tip,” said Garland gravely.
“Oh! I thought the man what named it might have had a uncle like mine—”
“Tip!”
“Yes, sir?”
“That will do,” Said Garland seriously.
The child nodded contentedly and began an elaborate series of evolutions, the object of which was to capture the Maltese cat. The cat was perfectly aware of this; she allowed the boy to approach her until his hand was within an inch of her back; then she ran a few feet, cocked her ears, switched her tail, and pretended to forget him. After a while they disappeared behind the lilac bushes at the end of the verandah, and Garland leaned back against the tree and poked at pine cones again.
The sun sank lower and lower, flooding the pastures, tinging the calm meadow pools with the splendour of its fading glory. In the evening glow the turf burned like golden tapestry, the swallows twittered among the chimneys or drifted and rose high in the quiet air, and the chickens looked up with restless peeps to their roost in the lilac branches. An orange light, ever deepening, dyed the edges of the pools where the ripples of a rising fish or a low dipping gnat disturbed the surface reflection of the placid evening sky. From palest green to grey the horizon changed until, like a breath creeping over a window, a rosy flush stained the zenith. And the sun had set.
With sunset Celia came, walking slowly over the grass that shone in the shadows with a green almost metallic. She started slightly when Garland moved in the shade of the pines, but came to him, offering her hand.
“Then you are going,” she said simply.
“Yes, — I am going. My train leaves at nine to-night. How did you know?”
She glanced at his gloves and stick and smiled gently.
“I am going,” he said, “because they want me in New York. Some day I will come back—”
A ghost of a smile touched her lips again. He moved impatiently nearer, and she looked at his troubled eyes.
“Shall I come back?” he asked awkwardly.
“Yes — come; Tip will welcome you—”
“And you?”
“I,” — she said softly—” I don’t know.”
“What troubles you?” he said; but she turned her head toward the sunset. “What troubles you?” he said again;— “is — is he coming?”
She dropped her head.
“When?” asked Garland in a hard voice. “To-night.”
Something of the horror in her face as she turned it was reflected in his own. This, then, was the reward for her quiet struggle for life; this was the reward, — the return of this miserable actor whom she had learned to loathe — her husband! Whew! the stench of perfume and grease paint seemed to fill his nostrils; he could see the smooth fat face shaved blue, as he had seen it behind the footlights in the metropolis, the bull neck, the professional curly head!
Then he set his teeth and dug his stick into the turf at his feet. The girl moved a step from him.
“Celia,” he said unsteadily, “have you ever thought of divorce?”
“Yes.”
They were silent again. The whistle of a distant train startled Garland from his reverie and he picked up his gloves and buttoned his coat. It was the incoming train from New York. With a frightened glance at him she held out her hand, murmuring good-bye, and turned toward the house, but he stepped swiftly to her side and touched her arm.
Oh, the terror in the eyes that met his, — and the kiss, — as she clung to his breast in the twilight there — the kiss that solved all problems, that broke down barriers and made the way plain and clear, — the way that they should travel together through life and the life to come.
And so they went away into the world together, and Tip went with them, one dimpled hand in Garland’s, one clasping the Maltese cat close to his breast.
THE CRIME.
“‘HOW,’ SAYS HE, blessing himself, ‘would I whip this child.... if it were my child.’”
SAMUEL, PEPYS.
THE CRIME
“Heark! Oh, heark! you guilty trees,
In whose gloomy galleries
Was the cruellest murder done
That e’re yet eclipst the sunne.”
I.
NOW it happened one day in the early Springtime when the sky was china blue and filmy clouds trailed like lace across the disk of a pale sun, that I, Henry Stenhouse, nineteen years of age, well and sound in mind and body, decided to commit a crime.
The crime which I contemplated was murder. For three years past I had watched the object of my pursuit; I had peered at him at night as he lay sleeping, I had crept stealthily to his home, evening after evening, waiting for a chance to kill him. I had seen him moving about on his daily business, growing fatter and sleeker, serene, sly, self-centred, absorbed in his own affairs, yet keeping a keen, shrewd eye upon strangers. For he mistrusted strangers; those who passed by him, not even noticing him, he mistrusted less than he did others who came to him with smiles and outstretched hands.
He never accepted anything from anybody. A strange step or the sound of a strange voice made him shy and suspicious. But he was cold and selfish, cold-blooded as a fish — in fact he — but I had better tell you a little more about him first. He was my enemy; I determined to kill him, and perhaps he read it in my drawn face and sparkling eyes, for, as I stepped toward him, the first time, he turned and fled — fled straight across the Clovermead River.
And although I searched the river banks up and down and up and down again, I saw no more of him that day.
When I went home, excited, furious, I made passionate preparations to kill him. All night long I tossed feverishly in my tumbled bed, longing, aching for the morning. When the morning came I stole out of the house and bent my steps towards the river, for I had reason to believe that he lived somewhere in that neighbourhood. As I crept along, the early morning sun glittered on something that I clutched with nervous fingers. It was a weapon.
This happened three years ago; I did not find him that morning although I searched until the shadows fell over meadow and thicket. That night too found me on his trail, but the calm Spring moon rose over Clovermead village and its pale light fell on no scene of blood.
So for three years I trailed him and stalked him, always awaiting the moment to strike, — praying for an opportunity to slay; but he never gave me one. He was fierce and shifty, swift as lightning when aroused, but the battle that I offered he declined. Oh, he was deep, — deep and crafty, cold-blooded as a fish, — in fact, he was a fish, Mine Enemy, the Trout.
Do you imagine that the killing of Mine Enemy was a crime? No, my friend — that, properly done, was what is known as sport; improperly done, it is murder; — there, the murder’s out! I was going to catch the trout with bait!
You, dear brethren of the angle, brave fly-fishermen, all, wet or dry, turn not from me with loathing! Hear my confession, the confession of one who was tempted, listened, fell, and fished for a trout with a worm!
Anyway, it’s your own fault if you throw down this book and beat your breasts with cruel violence. I told you that my story was to be the story of a crime, and if you don’t like to read about crimes, you had no business to begin this tale. There are worse crimes too, — some people habitually fish with bait; some net fish, and there exist a few degraded objects in human shape who snare trout with a wicked wire loop on the end of a sapling.
Now I don’t propose to tell you about these things, I am no depraved realist, so thank your stars that the crime I contemplated was no worse than it was, and listen to the story of an erring brother. Mea culpa!
I was only nineteen, a student at the State School of Engineering, and in my senior year. What I did in engineering was barely sufficient to carry me through my examination; what I did in shooting and trout fishing might have furnished material for a sporting library. I had no particular aversion to my profession; my father before me had been a mining engineer. I was not entirely ignorant either; I knew mica-chist from malachite, and I could — but that’s of no consequence now. It is true, however, that instead of applying myself to the studies of my profession I spent a great deal of time contributing to a New York sporting journal called the Trigger. I produced a couple of columns a week on such subjects as “German Trout versus Natives,”
“Do Automatic Reels Pay?” and “Experiments with the Amherst Pheasant.” But my article entitled “The Enemies of the Spawning-Beds,” won me recognition, and I became a regular contributor to the Trigger.
How I ever passed my examinations is one of those mysteries that had better remain uninvestigated. I don’t remember that I studied or attended many lectures. I was too busy, shooting or fishing, or writing for the Trigger.
Also there existed a girls’ boarding-school a mile away.
This school was run by two old maids, the Misses Timmins. It was the Timmins sisters’ aim in life to prevent the members of their school from coming into contact with the engineers from Clovermead; therefore we knew them all.
The means of communication were varied and ingenious, for the little maidens at the boarding-school were quite as enthusiastic as we were. We never went through the formality of an introduction, — it was not expected; we spoke when we had the chance, and thanked fortune for the chance.
There was, however, one weird custom laid down by the boarding-school maidens, a tradition which had existed as long as the school; and this was well understood by the Clovermead Engineers. It was this: no youth could expect to spoon with any Timmins maiden unless he first declared his intentions by serenading her.
We were not all blessed with a high order of musical ability, — I played a harmonica, — but we were willing to try. I had tried several times. The results were very sweet, — I don’t mean in a musical way.
So between the boarding-school and the Trigger I found little leisure, and the less leisure I had the less I felt inclined to occupy it with engineering problems. Besides, there was the big trout to think of, Mine Enemy, whom I had sworn to drag from the depths of that most delicious of streams, the Clovermead River.
During these three years while I persistently fished for Mine Enemy (and goodness knows I had never before beheld so lusty a trout!) every fly known to anglers, and many flies unknown to anybody but myself, I tried on that impassive fish.
And he grew fatter and fatter.
I remember well the day of the temptation. I was sitting at the foot of the big oak tree that spreads above the pool where Mine Enemy lurked. Wearied with casting, I had sought the shadow of the oak and had lighted a cigarette to change my luck. And as I sat on the cool turf, I was aware of an angle worm, travelling along at my feet on business of its own. Scarcely conscious of what I did, I picked up a twig and tossed the little worm over the bank.
