Complete weird tales of.., p.1258
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1258
In February the Port-of-Waves is still untenanted. A few marauders appear, now and then a steel grey panther from the north frisking over the snow after the white hares, now and then a stub-tailed lynx, mean-faced, famished, snarling up at the white owls who look down and snap their beaks and hiss.
The first bud on the Indian-willow brings the first inhabitant back to the Port-of-Waves, Francis Lee, superintendent of the mica quarry. The quarry-men follow in batches; the willow-tassels see them all there; the wind-flowers witness the defile of the first shift through the pines.
On the last day of May the company’s flag was hoisted on the tool-house, the French-Canadians came down to repair the rusty narrow-gauge railroad, and Lee, pipe lighted, sea-jacket buttoned to the throat, tramped up and down the track with the lumber detail, chalking and condemning sleepers, blazing spruce and pine, sounding fish-plate and rail, and shouting at intervals until the washouts were shored up, windfalls hacked through, and landslide and boulder no longer blocked the progress of the company’s sole locomotive.
The first of June brought sunshine and black flies, but not the Collector of the Port. The Canadians went back to Sainte Isole across the line, the white-throated sparrows’ long dreary melody broke out in the clearing’s edge, but the Collector of the Port did not return.
That evening, Lee, smoking his pipe on the headland, looked out across the sunset-tinted ocean and saw the white gulls settling on the shoals and the fish-hawks soaring overhead with the red sunglint on their wings. The smoke of a moss smudge kept the flies away, his own tobacco smoke drove away care. Incidentally both drove Williams away, — a mere lad in baggy blue-jeans, smooth-faced, cleareyed, with sea-tan on wrist and cheek.
“How did you cut your hand?” asked Lee, turning his head as Williams moved away.
“Mica,” replied Williams briefly. After a moment Williams started on again.
“Come back,” said Lee; “that wasn’t what I had to tell you.”
He sat down on the headland, opened a jack-knife, and scraped the ashes out of his pipe. Williams came slowly up and stood a few paces behind his shoulder.
“Sit down,” said Lee.
Williams did not stir. Lee waited a moment, head slightly turned, but not far enough for him to see the figure motionless behind his shoulder.
“It’s none of my business,” began Lee, “but perhaps you had better know that you have deceived nobody. Finn came and spoke to me to-day. Dyce knows it, Carrots and Lefty Sawyer know it, — I should have known it myself had I looked at you twice.”
The June wind blowing across the grass, carried two white butterflies over the cliff. Lee watched them struggle back to land again. Williams watched Lee.
“I don’t know what to do,” said Lee, after a silence; “it is not forbidden for women to work in the quarry — that I am aware of. If you need work and prefer that sort, and if you perform your work properly, I shall not interfere with you. And I’ll see that the men do not.”
Williams stood motionless; the smoke from the smudge shifted west, then south.
“But,” continued Lee, “I must enter you properly on the pay-roll; I cannot approve of this masquerade. Finn will see you in the morning; it is unnecessary for me to repeat that you will not be disturbed.”
There was no answer. After a silence Lee turned, then rose to his feet. Williams was weeping.
Lee had never noticed her face; both sun-tanned hands hid it now; her felt hat was pulled down over the forehead.
“Why did you come to the quarry?” he asked soberly. She did not reply.
“It is men’s work,” he said; “look at your hands! You cannot do it.”
She tightened her hands over her eyes; tears stole between her fingers and dropped, one by one, on the young grass.
“If you need work — if you can find nothing else — I — I think perhaps I may manage something better,” he said. “You must not stand there crying — listen! Here come Finn and Dyce, and I don’t want them to talk all over the camp.” Finn and Dyce came toiling up the headland with news that the west drain was choked. They glanced askance at Williams, who turned her back. The sea-wind dried her eyes; it stung her torn hands too. She unconsciously placed one aching finger in her mouth and looked out to sea.
“The dreen’s bust by the second windfall,” said Dyce, with a jerk of his stunted thumb toward the forest. “If them sluice-props caves in, the timber’s wasted.”
Finn proposed new sluice gates; Lee objected, and swore roundly that if the damage was not repaired by next evening he’d hold Finn responsible. He told them he was there to save the company’s money, not to experiment with it; he spoke sharply to Finn of last year’s extravagance, and warned him not to trifle with orders.
“I pay you to follow my directions,” he said. “Do so and I’ll be responsible to the company; disobey, and I’ll hold you to the chalk-mark every time.”
Finn sullenly shifted his quid and nodded; Dyce looked rebellious.
“You might as well know,” continued Lee, “that I mean what I say. You’ll find it out. Do your work and we’ll get on without trouble. You’ll find I’m just.”
When Dyce and Finn had shuffled away toward the coast, Lee looked at the figure outlined on the cliffs against the sunset sky, — a desolate, lonely little figure in truth.
“Come,” said Lee; “if you must have work I will give you enough to keep you busy; not in the quarry either, — do you want to cripple yourself in that pit? It’s no place for children anyway. Can you write properly?”
The girl nodded, back turned toward him.
“Then you can keep the rolls, duplicates, and all. You’ll have a room to yourself in my shanty. I’ll pay quarry wages.”
He did not add that those wages must come out of his own pocket. The company allowed him no secretary, and he was too sensitive to suggest one.
“I don’t ask you where you came from or why you are here,” he said a little roughly. “If there is gossip I cannot help it.” He walked to the smudge and stood in the smoke, for the wind had died out and the black flies were active.
“Perhaps,” he hazarded, “you would like to go back to — to where you came from? I’ll send you back.”
She shook her head.
“There may be gossip in camp.”
The slightest movement of her shoulders indicated her indifference. Lee re-lighted his pipe, poked the smudge, and piled damp moss on it.
“All right,” he said, “don’t be unhappy; I’ll do what I can to make you comfortable. You had better come into the smudge, to begin with.”
She came, touching her eyes with her hands, awkward, hesitating. He looked gravely at her clumsy boots, at the loose, toil-stained overalls.
“What is your name?” he said, without embarrassment.
“My name is Helen Pine.” She looked up at him steadily; after a moment she repeated her name as though expecting him to recognise it. He did not; he had never before heard it, as far as he knew. Neither did he find in her eager, wistful face anything familiar. How should he remember her? Why should he remember? It was nearly six months ago that, snow-bound in the little village on the Mohawk, he and the directors of his company left their private Pullman car to amuse themselves at a country dance. How should he recollect the dark-eyed girl who had danced the “fireman’s quadrille” with him, who had romped through a reel or two with him, who had amused him through a snowy evening? How should he recall the careless country incident, — the corn popping, the apple race, the flirtation on the dark, windy stairway? Who could expect him to remember the laughing kiss, the meaningless promise to write, the promises to return some day for another dance, and kiss? A week later he had forgotten the village, forgotten the dance, the pop-corn, the stairway, and the kiss. She never forgot. Had he told her he loved her? He forgot it before she replied. Had he amused himself? Passably. But he was glad that the snow-plows cleared the track next morning, for there was trouble in Albany and lobbying to do, and a rival company was moving wheels within wheels to lubricate the machinery of honest legislation.
So it meant nothing to him, this episode of a snow blockade; it meant all the world to her. For months she awaited the letter that never came. An Albany journal mentioned his name and profession. She wrote to the company and learned where the quarry lay. She was young and foolish and nearly brokenhearted, so she ran away. Her first sentimental idea was to work herself to death, disguised, under his very eyes. When she lay dying she would reveal herself to him, and he should know too late the value of such a love. To this end she purchased some shears to cut her hair with; but the mental picture she conjured was not improved by such a sacrifice. She re-coiled her hair tightly and bought a slouched hat, too big.
When, arrived at the quarry, she saw him again, she nearly fainted from fright. He met her twice, face to face, and she was astounded that he did not recognise her. Reflection, however, assured her that her disguise must be perfect, and she awaited the dramatic moment when she should reveal herself — not dying from quarry-toil — for she did not wish to die now that she had seen him. No — she would live — live to prove to him how a woman can love — live to confound him with her constancy. She had read many romances. Now, when he had bade her follow him to the headland, she knew she had been discovered; she was weak with terror and shame and hope. She thought he knew her; when he spoke so coolly she stood dumb with amazement; when he spoke of Finn and Sawyer and Dyce she understood he had not penetrated her disguise, except from hearsay, and a terror of loneliness and desolation rushed over her.
Then the impulse came to hide her identity from him, — why, she did not know. Again that vanished when he called her to come into the smoke. As she looked up at him her heart almost stopped; yet he did not recognise her. Then the courage of despair seized her and she told her name. When at length she comprehended that he had entirely forgotten her — forgotten her very name — fright sealed her lips. All the hopelessness and horror of her position dawned upon her, — all she had believed, expected, prayed for, came down with a crash.
As they stood together in the smoke of the smudge, she mechanically laid her hand on his sleeve, for her knees scarcely supported her.
“What is it; does the smoke make you dizzy?” he asked.
She nodded; he aided her to the cliff’s edge and seated heron a boulder. Under the cliff the sunset light reddened the sea. A quarryman, standing on a rock, looked up at Lee and pointed seaward.
“Hello!” answered Lee, “what is it? The Collector of the Port?”
Other quarrymen, grouped on the coast, took up the cry; the lumbermen, returning from the forest along the inlet, paused, axe on shoulder, to stare at the sea. Presently, out in the calm ocean, a black triangle cut the surface, dipped, glided landward, dipped, glided, disappeared. Again the dark point came into view, now close under the cliff where thirty feet of limpid water bathed its base.
“The Collector of the Port!” shouted Finn from the rocks.
Lee bent over the cliff’s brink. Far down into the clear water he followed the outline of the cliff. Under it a shadowy shape floated, a monstrous shark, rubbing the rock softly as if in greeting for old acquaintance’ sake.
The Collector of the Port had returned from the south.
II.
The Collector of the Port and the company were rivals; both killed their men, one at sea, the other in the quarry. The company objected to pelagic slaughter and sent some men with harpoons, bombs, and shark-hooks to the Port; but the Collector sheered off to sea and waited for them to go away.
The company could not keep the quarrymen from bathing; Lee could not keep the Collector from Port-of-Waves. Every year two or three quarrymen fell to his share; the company killed the even half-dozen. Years before, the quarrymen had named the shark; the name fascinated everybody with its sinister conventionality. In truth he was Collector of the Port, — an official who took toll of all who ventured from this Port where nothing entered from the sea save the sea itself, wave on wave, wave after wave.
In the superintendent’s office there were two rolls of victims, — victims of the quarry and victims of the Collector of the Port. Pensions were not allowed to families of the latter class, so, as Dyce said to Dyce’s dying brother: “Thank God you was blowed up, an’ say no more about it, Hank.”
There was, curiously enough, little animosity against the Collector of the Port among the quarry-men. When June brought the great shark back to the Port they welcomed him with sticks of dynamite, but nevertheless a sense of proprietorship, of exclusive right to the biggest shark on the coast, aroused in the quarrymen a sentiment akin to pride. Between the shark and the men existed an uncanny comradeship, curiously in evidence when the company’s imported shark-destroyers appeared at the Port.
“G’wan now,” observed Farrely, “an’ divil a shark ye’ll get in the wather, me bucks! Is it sharks ye’ll harpoon? Sure th’ company’s full o’ thim.”
The shark-catchers, harpoons, bombs, and hooks, retired after a month’s useless worrying, and the men jeered them as they embarked on the gravel train.
“Drhop a dynamite shtick on the nob av his nibs!” shouted Farrely after them — meaning the president of the company. The next day, little Caesar l’Hommedieu, indulging in his semi-annual bath, was appreciated and accepted by the Collector of the Port, and his name was added to the unpensioned roll in the office of the company’s superintendent, Francis Lee.
Helen Pine, sitting alone in her room, copied the roll, erased little Caesar’s name from the pay-roll, computed the total back pay due him, and made out an order on the company for $20.39. Then she rose, stepped quietly into Lee’s office which adjoined her own room, and silently handed him the order.
Lee was busy and motioned her to be seated. Dyce and Finn, hats in hand, looked obliquely at her as she leaned on the window-ledge, face turned toward the sea. She heard Lee say, “Go on, Finn;” and Finn began again in his smooth plausible voice:
“I opened the safe on a flat-car, an’ God knows who uncoupled the flat. Then Dyce signalled go ahead, but Henderson he sez Dyce signalled to back her up, an’ the first I see was that flat hangin’ over the dump-dock. Then she tipped up like a seesaw an’ slid the safe into the water — fifty-eight feet sheer at low tide.”
Lee said quietly: “Rig a derrick on the dump-dock, and tell Kinny to get his diving kit ready by three o’clock.”
Finn and Dyce exchanged glances.
“Kinny he went to Bangor last night to see about them new drills,” said Finn defiantly.
“Who sent him?” asked Lee angrily. “Oh, you did, eh?”
“I thought you wanted them drills,” repeated Finn.
Lee’s eyes turned from Finn to Dyce. There was, in the sullen faces before him, something that he had never before seen, something worse than sinister. The next moment he said pleasantly: “Well then, tell Lefty Sawyer to take his diving kit and be ready by three. If you need a new ladder at the dump-dock send one there by noon. That is all, men.”
When Finn and Dyce had gone, Lee sprang to his feet and began to pace the office. Once he stopped to light his pipe; once he jerked open the top drawer of his table and glanced at a pair of heavy Colt’s revolvers lying there, cocked and loaded. He sat down at his desk after a while and spoke, perhaps half unconsciously, to Helen, as though he had been speaking to her since Finn and Dyce left:
“They’re a hard crowd — a tough lot — and I knew it would come to a crisis sooner or later. Last year they drove the other superintendent to resign, and I was warned to look out for myself. Now they see that they can’t use me, and they mean to get rid of me.”
She turned from the window as he finished; he looked at her without seeing the oval face, the dark questioning eyes, the young rounded figure involuntarily bending toward him.
“They tipped that safe off the dock on purpose,” he said; “they sent Kinny to Bangor on a fool’s errand. Now Sawyer’s got to go down and see what can be done. I know what he’ll say! — He’ll report the safe broken and one or two cash boxes missing, and he’ll bring up the rest and wait for a chance to divide with his gang.”
He started to his feet and began to pace the floor again, talking all the while:
“It’s come to a crisis now, and Pm not going under! I’ll face them down; I’ll break that gang as they break stone! If I only knew how to use a diving kit — and if I dared — with Dyce at the lifeline—”
Half an hour later Lee, seated at his desk, raised his pale face from his hands and, for the first time, became conscious that Helen sat watching him beside the window.
“Can I do anything for you?” he asked pleasantly.
She held the order out to him; he took it, examined it, and, picking up a pen, signed his name.
“Forward it to the company,” he said; “Caesar’s family will collect it quicker than the shark collected Caesar.”
He did not mean to shock the girl with cynicism; indeed it was only such artificial indifference that enabled him to endure the misery of the Port-of-Waves, — misery that came under his eyes from sea and land, — interminable hopeless human woe.
What could he do for the lacerated creatures at the quarry? He had only his salary. What could he do for families made destitute? The mica crushed and cut and blinded; the Collector of the Port exacted bloody toll in spite of him. He could not drive the dust-choked, half-maddened quarry-men from their one solace and balm, the cool, healing ocean; he could not drive the Collector from the Port-of-Waves.
“I didn’t mean to speak unfeelingly,” he said. “I feel such things very deeply.”
To his surprise and displeasure she replied: “I did not know you felt anything.”
She grew red after she said it; he stared at her. “Do you regard me as brutal?” he asked sarcastically.
“No,” she said, steadying her voice: “you are not brutal; one must be human to be brutal.”
He looked at her half angrily, half inclined to laugh.
“You mean I am devoid of human feeling?”
