Complete weird tales of.., p.1222
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1222
“Yes, — it was most humiliating for — for me.”
“Oh, I’m a perfect idiot,” I admitted.
She looked down at her slippers — they had been hurriedly and carelessly tied — and I noticed it and knelt to repair the oversight.
“I was in such haste,” she said. “Is it true that you have serenaded the dormitory before?”
“Not the dormitory—”
“You know what I mean; have you?”
“All the fellows do,” I said, vaguely.
She tapped her foot on the gravel.
“Those strings are sufficiently tied,” she said, “tell me whom you serenaded?”
“I can’t do that, Miss Thorne.”
“Why? Then tell me when it was.”
“When? Oh, last year, before I ever imagined such a girl as you existed. It’s a silly custom, anyway—”
“It isn’t, — it’s charming — when the man has any tact. It’s the tradition of the school that no girl shall spoon with a man who hasn’t serenaded her, and I do not expect to break the traditions of my school—”
“Only the rules, Miss Thorne?”
“Only the rules — and a heart or two!”
“Or two!”
“Faith, sir,” she said maliciously, “did you think you were the only one?”
“Yes,” said I, “I did.”
“And you tell me deliberately that you had serenaded other girls there before I came — I don’t know how many, perhaps a dozen, twenty, fifty, the whole school!”
“What!” I cried, bewildered.
“Oh, I don’t care,” she said, “I only wished to show you what men are and what their selfishness requires of women, — to sacrifice everything while they sacrifice nothing.”
“And you don’t care?” I asked.
“No, Mr. Stenhouse.”
“Then why did you risk everything to come and tell me?”
“W — what?” she stammered.
“Miss Thorne,” said I, very gravely, “your school is noted for its escapades. It is known in the village, not as the ‘Misses Timmins’s Select Boarding-School for Young Ladies,’ but as ‘The Devil’s Own.’ We engineer students are a reckless lot, also. We are, to put it plainly, a godless crew, but this — this is somehow different. I am beginning to believe that our thoughtless folly — yours and mine, may leave one of us miserable for life.”
“Me?”
“Who knows? I can only speak for myself, — I — I have changed already, — yes, in these few moments that we stood here face to face—”
“What do you mean?” she said mockingly.
“I mean that in another minute I shall love you — in another second!”
“Are you serious?” she demanded incredulously. Then, “Oh, I thought you jolly and clever, and you prove to be soft and silly! Master Harry, you bore me!”
“Do I?” I answered angrily. “Well, I’ll never do it again, and I was a fool to believe you would understand anything but chocolate-creams and dormitory flirting!”
“Not only soft and silly, but a boor,” she said. “Good-night. No, you need not walk to the gate with me — I never wish to set eyes on you again.”
III.
ON the first day of June I passed my final examinations at the great Engineering School at Clovermead, and was then ready to let myself loose on the mining regions of a deluded world.
The commencement exercises bored me; I went fishing most of the time, or else stayed in my rooms writing “ Dry Fly Casting as a Fine Art “ for the Trigger. In the long fragrant evenings I took lonely walks by the river or sat under the oak playing minor airs on my harmonica.
At the end of the first week in June the commencement exercises were over, the visiting hordes from New York and Boston had flitted away to Newport or Bar Harbor, the Government officers went back to Washington and West Point, and the little village of Clovermead lay in the sunshine, white, sweet-scented, deserted.
The Misses Timmins’s “Select Boarding-School for Young Ladies” had its commencement — a rainbow affair — and dissolved, leaving, as residue, an empty school-house and a dormitory dedicated to silence.
I didn’t go to their commencement, not because I was not invited, for most of the fellows went anyway. No, since my last serenade, I had shunned the school and all it works.
It was true that I lingered in the village of Clovermead after my fellow-students had departed, not, as I frequently explained to myself, to catch a last glimpse of Miss Thorne, but to catch that veteran trout in the Clovermead River. “I shall never see Miss Thorne again,” I said to myself, “and I’m glad of it.”
So on the day of her commencement I went fishing, very far off and I passed a miserable day. It rained, among other things.
The next morning the sun shone in at my window and I looked out into the village with a strange weight at my heart. I did not feel hungry, but went to breakfast, determined to let nothing disturb me or my appetite. As I touched the sugar-tongs to the sugar, a faint whistle came on the June wind from the distant railroad station.
“There go the young ladies from the boarding-school, “ said my landlady; “do take one of these shirred eggs, Mr. Stenhouse.”
“Thank you,” said I, with a queer sensation in my throat.
“May has gone,” I was thinking. After a while I said aloud: “what of it!”
“I beg your pardon,” said my landlady, smiling.
“I beg yours — it was nothing; I was only thinking that I was alone in the village.”
“I hope you will stay,” she said, fingering the black-edged handkerchief in her lap.
“You are very good,” I replied; “I shall stay until I catch that big trout in the river.”
“Then poor luck to you!” smiled the kindly old lady, “what time will you have your dinner, Mr. Stenhouse?”
I went back to my room and sat down by the window. A flowering branch of late apple blossoms scraped across the sash as I threw it open and leaned out.
For a long while I listened to the droning of bees among the half-opened buds, thinking that the warmth had fled from the sunshine and the scent was gone from mead and sedge.
And “why?” I repeated to myself again and again, until a sullen anger seized me and I tramped up and down my room, my hands buried in the canvas pockets of my shooting coat.
“Now,” said I to myself, “this is d — d foolishness. I’ll just go and try for that trout, and I’ll catch him too,” I added, gritting my teeth to dull the pain in my heart,— “I’ll catch him by fair means or foul, — yes, by jingo! I’ll use a worm!” No, I felt no horror for the deed I was about to commit. All that was base and depraved in my nature had risen with my better feelings to combat a depression, a sorrow, that was so sudden, so deep, that I hardly understood it.
Under such circumstances the truly good come out strong, — in novels; others do something wrong to occupy their minds. Wallowing dulls the capability of suffering, — for a time. It is much practised by weak and strong, contemporary fiction to the contrary.
So it happened one day in early June, when the sky was china blue and filmy clouds trailed like lace across the disk of a pale sun, that I, Henry Stenhouse, well and sound in mind and body, decided to commit a crime.
I started down the road, swinging my creel over my shoulder and whistling, buoyed up by that false exhilaration which always took possession of me when I felt myself on good terms with the devil. In my pocket nestled my luncheon, a small flask of Bordeaux, fly-book, harmonica, reel, and a tin bait box.
Imagine what it costs me to write this!
Well it’s written, — and on I went, whistling “Sir Daniel O’Donnel,” as though I had not a care in the world and love was but an old wive’s tale.
Yet, whistle as I would, I could not close my eyes to the caustic criticism of the sunny world on my solitary condition. Robins hopped about the pastures in pairs, blue-birds flew from sapling to fence, in pairs, yellow butterflies whirled over the clover in dozens and dozens of pairs, and the very trees, the silver birches, the maples and elms, all seemed to grow in pairs. Two by two I counted oak and beach, nestling in each others shadows, two by two the twinkling silver aspens seemed to wink at me with every leaf.
I alone was alone.
“Because,” said I to myself, “I’ve got brains”; but the boast fell only on the idle unbelieving ears of the corn, too young to understand or sympathize.
A great tenderness was in my heart, but I crushed it out, and turned into the fields, treading my way through rustling corn where June breezes lingered, whispering.
When I struck the hazel patch I felt better, and I whistled “Sir Daniel O’Donnel” again.
A wood-thrush, striving to imitate me, produced an unconscious masterpiece; a cat-bird mewed unceasingly from the deeper growth. Both had mates.
I took the hidden path through the beech-woods until I came to a big pine. Here, following a trail, known to myself, I entered the denser woods, crossed the two spring brooks that feed the river, and after a few minutes rapid walking came to the oak which spreads above the limpid silvery pool, the abode of Mine Enemy.
“As long as I have sunk to the level of a pothunter,” said I, treading softly over the moss, “I might as well do the thing thoroughly.”
Very cautiously I produced an angle-worm from my box, baited my hook, cast the infernal machine into the pool, and then, placing my rod on the bank, put a flat stone on the butt and sat down to smoke. When I had finished my cigarette I lay down, stretching out on the moss under the oak tree.
And as I sprawled on my back looking skyward, I was aware of a pair of stockings, — black stockings, — hanging from a limb directly over my head.
Astonished and indignant I lay perfectly still, staring at the stockings. They had been wet but now were rapidly drying, swinging gently in the warm June wind.
“This is pleasant!” I thought; “some credulous country wench has taken my pool for a footbath. I’ll not put up with it, by jingo! Have fishermen no rights? Is this a picnic ground? Is that river a resort for barefooted giggling girls?”
If there were any people splashing and paddling about among the stones down the river, I knew that every trout within range would be paralyzed with fright. I sat up and tried to see through the foliage which bordered the shallow river where it curved into the woods.
“They’re down there,” I muttered, “and I bet they’ve done the business for every trout between here and the falls. Idiots!”
I looked up at the stockings. They were certainly silk, I could see that. The sun bronzed the pointed toes, now almost dry. And while I looked there came a faint sound of splashing close by, just where the river narrows to curve into the woods. Something bright was glistening down there between the branches, something white that moved slowly up stream, nearer and nearer, now plainly in view through the leaves.
It was a young woman in a light summer gown with a big straw hat on her head, and she was slowly and deliberately wading through the shallow water toward my pool.
She seemed to be enjoying it; the swift water rippled around her ankles dashing her skirts with spray, as she lifted her wet pink feet carefully over the sharp rocks and deeper channels. Her skirt, gathered naïvely in both hands, fluttered perhaps a trifle higher than it might have done under other circumstances. It was a pretty innocent picture, but it was out of place in my trout pool, and I stood up, determined to expostulate. After a second I sat down again, somewhat suddenly. The black stockings waved triumphantly above my head. I looked at them, bewildered, utterly upset. The young lady in the water was Miss Thorne.
Before I could decide what to do, she came in sight around the trees, stepping daintily over the sandy shallows. I dared not move. She did not look up.
“What the mischief shall I do?” I thought, keeping very still so that no movement should attract her eyes to the oak on the bank above. I could not retreat and leave my rod, I dared not creep to the pool to recover it. Besides, I didn’t want to go away.
She had sat down on a sunny rock, just below me, and was stirring the sandy bottom with her little toes. It was, as I said, a pretty picture, sweet and innocent, but utterly fatal to my peace of mind. I wondered what she’d do next, and lay silent, scarcely breathing.
“If she turns her back,” I thought, “I’ll get up and go. I’m no eavesdropper, and I’ll go, — only I hope she won’t give me the chance.”
She had drawn a book from the folds of her skirt, and, as I lay there without sound or motion, she began to read, repeating aloud to herself the passages that pleased her.
“I am the magic waterfall
Whose waters leap from fathomless and living springs, Far in the mist-hung silence of the Past.”
She paused, turning the leaves with languid capriciousness, then:
“I fill the woods with songs; the trees,
Through whose twigs flow prophecies,
I deck with vestments green.”
And again she read:
“The shower has freshened the song of the bird And budded the bushes And gilded the maple and tasselled the linden and willow, Staining with green the forest-fringed path.”
She sat silent, idly touching the fluttering pages. Then she raised her head, singing softly odd bits of songs to herself — to the thrushes around her.
A great belted kingfisher flashed past, a blurr of blue and white against the trees. His loud harsh rattle startled her for an instant.
And, as she turned to watch his flight along the winding stream, I rose and slipped noiselessly into the forest. Before I had taken a dozen steps, however, I remembered my rod, and halted irresolutely. Looking back through the thicket fringe, I saw that she had turned my way again, and it was out of the question to recover it without being seen.
“If she only had her stockings on,” I sighed.
Should I wait, taking discreet observations occasionally? Should I go and let the rod take care of itself? Suppose the big trout should seize hold and drag it into the river? Suppose Miss Thorne should step on the barbed hook with her bare little feet! At the thought I turned hastily back in my own tracks, halted again, started on, wavered, took one irresolute step, and stopped.
I could see her now quite plainly without being seen. She had tossed her book up on the moss, and was picking her way along the ascending bank, holding on to branch and root.
“She’s coming for her stockings, that’s what she’s doing,” I thought.
Until she had safely passed the pool where the hook lay, I kept my eyes on her. After that I waited until I saw her reach up to the oak-limb for the stockings; then I looked the other way.
I gave her ten minutes to complete her toilet, holding my watch in my hand.
Once she sang pensively that puzzling but pathetic old ballad:
“‘ Mother, may I go out to swim?’
‘ Yes, my darling daughter, —
Hang your hose on a hickory limb,
But don’t go near the water.’”
The ten minutes were up at last. “Now,” said I to myself, “shall I look? No — yes — no indeed! — I don’t know, — I’ll just see whether—”
I turned around.
She had left the shelter of the oak and was hurrying down the bank toward my rod, with every appearance of excitement.
“I’ll bet there’s a fish on it,” said I to myself; “by jingo! there is! — and it’s bending and tugging as if a porpoise had the line! It’ll be into the river in a moment! There! It’s gone!”
But I was mistaken, for Miss Thorne grasped it just as it slid over the edge of the bank.
“She’ll break it! I’ll bet it’s my big fish! There! She’s pulling the fish out — she’s trying to drag the fish up! I can’t stand this! It’s no use — I’ve got to go.”
When she saw me hastening down the slope she did not cry out, neither did she drop the rod, but her blue eyes grew very large and round. And as I hurried up she gave one last convulsive tug and hauled up, over, and on to the bank an enormous trout, flapping and bouncing among the leaves.
In a second I had seized the fish — it took all the strength of my arm to hold him — and the rest was soon over. There he lay, a monarch among trout, glistening, dappled, crimson-flecked. I walked down to the water’s edge, washed my hands mechanically, and slowly climbed back again.
“I didn’t know it was your rod,” she said. “I only saw a big fish on it, and I pulled it out.”
“I — I thought you had left Clovermead,” I stammered.
“I thought you had also,” she said; “all the others have gone. To-morrow I go; my guardian is coming.”
“To-morrow?”
“Yes; at eight o’clock in the morning.”
There was an awkward pause. I glanced askance at the fish, already ashamed of my work, dreading to know what she thought of a man who fished with bait.
“It is a large trout,” she said timidly; “it is a wonder that I didn’t break your rod and line. You see I never before caught a trout.”
“And — and you would not — you don’t think less of a man because he fishes with bait?” I asked, red with shame.
“I? Why, no. What else would you use?”
“Flies,” I said, desperately. “You know it.”
“Flies? Can you catch enough?”
“I mean artificial flies,” I said. “You don’t understand, you can’t conceive the depth of depravity that leads a man to catch a trout as I’ve caught this, — can you? It’s simple murder.”
“But,” said Miss Thorne, with a puzzled glance at the fish, “I thought that I caught him.”
“I — I baited the hook,” I faltered.
“Then,” said she, “it’s a clear case of collusion, and we’re both responsible.”
We looked at each other for an instant. She sighed, almost imperceptibly.
“I am very sorry for what I said that night,” I began. “You can’t think how it has troubled me ever since. I have suffered a great deal — er — and I’m deucedly miserable, Miss Thorne.”
