Complete weird tales of.., p.1257
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1257
After a few moments it occurred to him that he had put it rather strongly; — in fact it was an unwarranted and idiotic thing to write. Why in the world should he leave Diamond Springs because a girl whom he had met three times and spoken to once, refused to meet him again? He hesitated, mused a little, and finally resumed his course. Let it stay as it was; it mattered nothing to him anyway. He would leave the hotel, — he would leave the state too, for that matter, for he was sick and weary of the Carolinas, and of the big hotels, filled with invalids who sat in hot baths or drank bottles of nasty “waters.” Would O’Hara go with him? He thought of Claire Weldon and frowned.
“She’s spoiled O’Hara, that’s what she’s done!” he pondered bitterly.
When he came in sight of the hotel he saw Dr. Beezeley pottering about the croquet ground. When the reverend gentleman walked, his flat feet scraped the gravel and lapped over each other in front, like the toes of a Shanghai rooster.
“Hey!” said Dr. Beezeley, “been a walkin’?”
Edgeworth nodded.
“Want to play croquet?” asked Beezeley, looking at him over his glasses; “it ain’t goin’ to rain much more.”
Edgeworth said he never played croquet.
Beezeley straightened a wicket, hammered a painted stake, and sniffed.
His face, with the bunchy chop-whiskers cut a little close, reminded Edgeworth of the countenance of some big buck rabbit. The reverend gentleman also had other rabbit peculiarities, such as a perpetual appetite, a prehensile lip, and an enormous progeny.
O’Hara hailed him from the tennis courts and he went over, puffing his pipe moodily. But when he found that Tommy intended to invite two girls to make up doubles, Edgeworth flatly refused to play.
“Confound it, Tommy,” he said, “you are good enough company for me, and I ought to be for you. What’s the use of lugging in strangers every minute?”
“Ladies are never strangers,” said Tom airily; “one of them is Miss Weldon.”
“That’s all right,” said Edgeworth savagely, “but she can’t play tennis. Is it a kindergarten you’re setting up, Tom O’Hara? Call your caddy and come on to the links.”
“Listen to the lad!” said O’Hara; “why, man, I’ll go with you where you like and I’ll do what you like, — only,” he added, “I have an appointment to ride at ten — with Miss Weldon.”
“Ride then,” said Edgeworth with a scowl, and turned on his heel, leaving O’Hara a sadly puzzled man.
“What the mischief is the matter with me, anyhow?” muttered Edgeworth, striding wrathfully away across the meadow; “why can’t I let Tommy alone with his girl. I’m making a nuisance of myself I fancy.”
The restlessness which possessed him he did not even attempt to analyse. That it was caused by something or somebody outside of himself he was convinced.
“These people here,” he thought, “are empty-headed and common — when they’re not sanctimonious and vulgar. I’ll be hanged if I’m going to spend the time talking platitudes to girls in golf gowns.”
Of course it was their fault that he felt irritable and bored. He thought of his book, “The Origin of the Cherokee Indian,” but the prospect of shutting himself in his room to drive a pen over reams of foolscap had small attraction for him. The rain had ceased, the heavy perfumed air, vague with vapour, oppressed him, and he looked up at the mountains, half veiled in mist. But climbing was out of the question, — he didn’t know exactly why, — but it was clearly out of the question. He would not go fishing either; neither would he read. What was there left to do? Nothing, except to go back to the foot-bridge.
So when at last, by the highways and byways of cogitation, he had completed the circle, and had arrived at the point from which he started, he found that his legs had secured the precedence of his brain, for already they were landing him at the footbridge.
He was really a little surprised when he found himself there. He stepped to the railing to find his inscription. Somebody had shaved it off with a knife, and, in its place was written:
“Good-bye.”
It was then that Edgeworth experienced a most amazing, not to say painful, sensation. It started in the region of the heart, and, before he was aware, it began to affect his throat.
“Good-bye.”
He looked stupidly at the word, repeating it aloud once or twice. Presently he pulled out his knife and hacked away the writing with a misty idea that it might bother him less when it was obliterated. On the contrary it bothered him more than ever. A desire possessed him to go away, but, when he pictured himself in a train, rushing northward, the prospect was not as alluring as he felt it should be. Perhaps it was because he knew O’Hara would not go with him.
“The devil take Tom O’Hara!” he blurted out.
The effect of this outburst did not soothe him; it did, however, frighten a small hedge-sparrow nearly to death.
He looked up at the sun-warped sign-post on the end of the bridge. It bore the following valuable information.
“Yo Espero,” he repeated aloud.
There was a step on the creaking planks behind him, — a light step, — but he heard it.
They faced each other for a moment in silence. The sun shone out of the mist above and tinged the edges of her hair with a mellow radiance.
“Come,” she said, “we can’t stay here.”
“Where — then?”
Their eyes met. Her lips were slightly parted; perhaps she had walked fast, for her breast rose and fell irregularly. In that silent exchange of glances, each read, for one brief second, a line in the book of fate; — each read, — but whether they understood or not, God knows, for they smiled at each other and turned away, side by side into the forest.
“Yo Espero! Yo Espero!” Asleep, awake, the words haunted him, night and day they rang in his ears, “Yo Espero, Yo Espero.” The brooks sang it; in the hot mid-day the cadence of the meadow creatures took it up; the orioles repeated it across the fields, the thrushes’ hymn was for her alone: “Yo Espero, Yo Espero.”
Days dawned and vanished, brief as the flash of a fire-fly wing. The locust-trees powdered the greensward with white blossoms, the laurel, dainty and conventional, spread its flowered cambric out to dry, and the dogwood leaves drifted through the forest like snowflakes.
O’Hara, the triumphant affianced of Claire, provoked the wrath of all unaffianced gods and men. He simply mooned. Guests arrived and guests left the Diamond Spring Hotel, but the Beezeleys stayed on for ever. There were captains and colonels and generals from the South; the names of Fairfax and Marmaduke and Carter and Stuart were heard in corridor and card-room. There were Rittenhouses and Appletons, and Van Burens, too, and the flat bleat of Philadelphia echoed the colourless jargon of Boston and the semi-civilized accent of New York.
It was the middle of May. The catbirds had ceased their music and now haunted the garden, mewing from every thicket. A crested blue jay, ominous prophet of distant autumn, screamed viciously at the great belted kingfishers, but wisely avoided these dagger-billed birds, and also the occasional cock-of-the-woods that flew into the oak-grove, and tapped all day on the loose bark.
Edgeworth loved all these creatures. A few weeks previous he hadn’t cared tuppence for them. But now it was different; he felt at home with all the world; he smiled knowingly at the thrushes, he nodded gaily to the great blue heron, and laughed when that dignified but snobbish biped, cut him dead. Flowers too he was on good terms with; he haunted the woods, now all ablaze with azaleas, he sat among blue and violet larkspurs and felt that he was among friends. The little wood-violets peeped up at him fearlessly; they knew he would never pick them; the big orange lady-slippers arranged themselves neatly, two by two, as he passed, but he laughingly disregarded their offers. True, the girl at his side, — for he never rambled alone, — was worthy of such self-sacrifice on the part of any lady-slipper, orange or maroon.
“Io,” he said, as they lay in the forest on the heights above Diamond Springs, “can you realise it all? I scarcely can. Was it yesterday, was it last week, — was it years ago that I said good morning to you there on our bridge?”
“Jim, I don’t know.”
Her hair had fallen down and she flung it like a glistening veil from her face. She lay full length across the soft pine needles, her scarlet lips parted, tearing bits of flame-colored azalia blossoms from a cluster at her belt.
“See the lizards,” said Edgeworth sitting up beside her, “see them race over the dry leaves! There! They’ve run up a tree! Look, Io.”
“I see,” she said. But she was looking up at him.
He bent over her and kissed her, both hands clasped in hers.
“You didn’t look at all,” he said.
“Didn’t I?” whispered Yo Espero.
It was true that she had not looked. When her eyes were not fastened upon his face, they were closed.
So he sat smiling down at her with her slim fingers twisted in his; and that shadow of wistfulness that ever hovers close to happiness, fell over his eyes. And he said: “Do you ever regret — anything — Io?”
She smiled faintly.
“No — nothing, dear.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“Then you are happy.”
“Yes.”
What had she to regret? She loved him. To him she came, sick at heart for the companionship which she had never known. He had delivered her from her loneliness. First she listened to him with the fierce happiness of the lonely; then she idolized him; then she loved him. Love was all she had to give; and she gave it, even before he asked, — gave it without thought or regret.
“Do you know,” he said, “that you have the prettiest hands in the world?”
“Have I?”
“Don’t you know that your whole figure is exquisite?”
She raised one hand indolently and placed the fingers across his lips.
“What do I care, — if you love me?” she said.
“But I care,” he said; “to think that you, — all, all of you, — with your beautiful eyes and your neck and your lips and these two little hands, are mine — all mine!—”
“And that brown hair above me — is mine, — isn’t it?” murmured the girl; “I never asked you before, but don’t — don’t I own some of you too? I have given you all of myself.”
It was little to ask; — the question was a new one though, and he suddenly began to wonder how much of him she did own. He looked at her half curiously as she lay there, her innocent face upturned, her young figure flung across the pine-needle matting of the forest. Her eyes told him she loved him; every line and curve of her sweet body solemnized the vow.
“Io,” he said, “all of me that is worth owning you own.”
“This hand?” she asked, locking her fingers in his. “Both,” he said.
“Everything? All — all?”
“All, Yo Espero.”
“You never said so — before.”
“I say it now; all! all! all!”
* * * * * *
“We will go to Silver Mine Creek,” said Yo Espero, “and we will fish there for a little fish. There are bass in the French Broad, and you shall catch them from the rifts below Deepwater Bridge. We will gallop on horseback to Sunset Sands and we will go to Bubbling Spring. All this will take time, you know, but you are never going away, are you? Hush! I could not live until sunrise. Then, in the fall, we will go across to the little Hurricane where there are deer. You shall shoot a great wild-turkey also! Dear me! What more can a man ask for? And then there are teal and mallard on the French Broad before the ice has bridged the Little Red Horse. You will love the South.”
“Yes, dear,” he answered, soberly; but his eyes were turned to the North.
“I know lots of springs in the forest,” she said, watching his face.
“And blockade stills?” he smiled.
She laughed outright and sat up, gathering her heavy hair into a twist.
“There is one within a few steps of. where we sit; you could never find it,” she said, tauntingly.
“Oho!” he exclaimed, “whose?”
“Zeke’s,” said the girl, “I could go to it in two minutes, — hark! — was that a gunshot from the valley?”
“I think it was,” he said, “it came from that way,” and he pointed to the west.
“From Painted Mountain! Did it sound like a rifle, Jim?”
Her eyes were very bright. Two red spots glowed on either cheek.
“I don’t know, dear,” he said, “why?”
As he spoke he rose and stepped back two paces. And as he took the second step there came a whirr, a girl’s scream, and a rattlesnake struck him twice above the ankle.
For one second the forest swam before his eyes; then a cold sweat started from the roots of his hair and he bent and picked up a stick, shaking in every limb. It was over in a moment; the snake lay dead, shuddering and twisting among the rocks, but it was Yo Espero who had crushed it, and now she turned to him a face as bloodless as his own.
“Wait!” she panted, “there’s whisky at Zeke’s!” and she sprang across the mountain-side and vanished among the thickets.
He bent over and tore down his stocking; then his head whirled and he sank trembling upon the ground.
As he lay there great throbs of pain swept through him in waves, succeeded by momentary numbness, but through the mist of faintness and the delirium of pain he heard the dead snake thumping among the leaves. Then all was one great thrill of agony, but, as his senses reeled again, a touch fell upon his arm and he heard her voice:
“Drink, — quickly — all — all you can!”
And he did, blindly, guided by her arm. She held the demijohn until his head fell back.
Then she knelt, ripped her own sleeve from wrist to shoulder and stared at her round white arm. Two blue marks, close together, capped the summit of a terrible swelling, and she cried out once for help. With all the strength that remained, she dragged the demijohn to her mouth and stretched out on the ground, the crystal clear liquor running between her teeth. She tried hard to swallow. Once she murmured, “I knew there was not enough for both, — I guess there isn’t much left; I guess — it’s — too late—”
After a minute or two she wandered in her delirium, but still she swallowed desperately until the demijohn rolled away from her nerveless grasp, and she seemed to lose consciousness. With the last spark of understanding left in her numbed brain, she turned over and stretched out, her lips crushed against his face.
Zeke found them. Whether it was the smell of blockade whisky, coupled with the absence of his demijohn, or whether it was Providence, cannot be successfully argued here. But he found them, and he carried them into his ramshackle cabin and laid them side by side across his mattress.
After he had looked at them for half an hour’s absolute silence, he spat the remains of a hard-chewed quid into a corner, picked up his gun, and wended his way down the mountain-side to the Diamond Springs Hotel.
Here he was promptly arrested by two pale-faced Revenue Officers, and here, for the first time, he learned that Clyde, the tenant of Yo Espero on Painted Mountain, had been shot dead, two hours before, for resisting arrest at the hands of United States officers.
The hotel was in commotion, but when Zeke drawled out his story, panic reigned supreme, and the Beezeleys started in a body for Zeke’s hut.’ How they got lost on the mountain and were frightened by snakes, and how Dr. Samuel Meeke headed a rescue party in their behalf, has no place in this story, — nor, I imagine, in any story. O’Hara went on Zeke’s bond, and Zeke, followed by O’Hara and the proprietor of the Diamond Springs Hotel, started for the blockader’s burrow. The proprietor’s name was Eph Doom, but, unlike his namesake, nothing about him was sealed, not even his lips, and he chattered continually until Zeke drawled out: “O shet up, yew mewl o’ misery!”
Once O’Hara spoke:
“You left them both lying across your bed, Zeke?”
“‘Bout a foot apart,” drawled Zeke.
But when O’Hara burst into the cabin, he cried: “Thank God!” For they were in each other’s arms.
* * * * * *
And that is all there is to say.
Eph Doom recounts a great deal more; he tells how those two striplings, dazed by alcohol and numbed with poison, clung together blindly; he tells how he, personally, drove a shoal of Beezeleys and Meekes and Dills from the door of the cabin, and he relates with fire how young Edgeworth sat up, pale, trembling, and demanded that he, Ephraim Doom, should, as a Justice of the Peace, then and there instantly unite in holy wedlock James Edgeworth and Yo Espero Clyde: which he did not do, because O’Hara whispered: “Wait till he’s sober.” How Zeke escaped the clutches of the law needs a story by itself.
How Dr. Samuel Meeke and Mrs. Dill — but that is scandal.
How Yo Espero and Edgeworth loved is all that concerns this story.
COLLECTOR OF THE PORT
“‘WHY DO YOU limp?’ asked the maid.
‘I always stumble when the path is smooth,’ said Love.”
I will grow round him in his place,
Grow, live, die looking on his face,
Die, dying clasp’d in his embrace.
TENNYSON.
In winter the Port is closed, the population migrates, the Collector of the Port sails southward. There is nothing left but black rocks sheathed in ice where icy seas clash and splinter and white squalls howl across the headland. When the wind slackens and the inlet freezes, spotted seals swim up and down the ragged edges of the ice, sleek restless heads raised, mild eyes fixed on the turbid shallows.
In January, blizzard-driven, snowy owls whirl into the pines and sit all day in the demi-twilight, the white ptarmigan covers the softer snow with winding tracks, and the white hare, huddled in his whiter “form,” plays hide and seek with his own shadow.
