Complete weird tales of.., p.1276
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1276
“Good-night,” she said; “I am really tired. I would rather you stayed here. Do you mind?”
“No,” he said.
“Then I shall go back alone.”
He watched her across the lawn. When she had gone half-way, she looked back and saw him standing there in the moonlight.
And that night, as her little silver hand-glass reflected her brilliant cheeks, she veiled her face in her bright hair and knelt down by her bedside.
But all she could say was, “I love him — truly I love him!” which was one kind of prayer, after all.
IV
A deep, sweet happiness awoke her ere the earliest robin chirped. Never since the first pink light touched Eden had such a rosy day dawned for any maid on earth.
She awoke in love; her enchanted eyes unclosed on a world she had never known.
Unashamed, she held out her arms to the waking world and spoke her lover’s name aloud. Then the young blood leaped in her, and her eyes were like stars after a rain.
Oh, she must hasten now, for there was so little time to live in the world, and every second counted. Healthy of body, wholesome of soul, innocent and ardent in her new-born happiness, she could scarcely endure the rush of golden moments lost in an impetuous bath, in twisting up her bright hair, in the quick knotting of a ribbon, the click of a buckle on knee and shoe.
Then, as she slipped down the stairs into the darkened hall, trepidation seized her, for she heard his step.
He came swinging along the hallway; she stood still, trembling. He came up quickly and took her hands; she did not move; his arm encircled her waist; he lifted her head; it lay back on his shoulder, and her eyes met his.
“All day together,” he was saying; and her soul leaped to meet his words, but she could not speak.
He held her at arms’-length, laughing, a little troubled.
“Mystery of mysteries,” he said, under his breath; “there is some blessed Heaven-directed mistake in this. Is there, sweetheart?”
“No,” she said.
“And if there was?”
“Can you ask?”
“Then come to breakfast, heart of my heart! — the moments are flying very swiftly, and there is only this day left — until to-morrow. Listen! I hear the steward moving like a gray rat in the pantry. Can we endure a steward in Eden?”
“Only during breakfast,” she said, laughing. “I smell the wheaten flapjacks, and, oh, I am famished!”
There have been other breakfasts — Barmecide breakfasts compared with their first crust broken in love.
But they ate — oh, indeed, they ate everything before them, from flapjacks to the piles of little, crisp trout. And they might have called for more, but there came, on tiptoe, the steward, bowing, presenting a telegram on a tray of silver; and Crawford’s heart stopped, and he stared at the bit of paper as though it concealed a coiled snake.
She, too, suddenly apprehensive, sat rigid, the smile dying out in her eyes; and when he finally took the envelope and tore it open, she shivered.
“Crawford, Sagamore Club:
“Ophir has consolidated with Steel Plank. You take charge of London office. Make arrangements to catch steamer leaving a week from to-morrow. Garcide and I will be at Sagamore to-night. James J. Crawford.”
He sat staring at the telegram; she, vaguely apprehensive for the safety of this new happiness of hers, clasped her hands tightly in her lap and waited.
“Any answer, sir?” asked the steward.
Crawford took the offered telegram blank and mechanically wrote:
“Instructions received. Will expect you and Garcide to-night.
James Crawford.”
She sat, twisting her fingers on her knees, watching him in growing apprehension. The steward took the telegram.
Crawford looked at her with a ghastly smile.
They rose together, instinctively, and walked to the porch.
“Oh yes,” he said, under his breath, “such happiness was too perfect. Magic is magic — it never lasts.”
“What is it?” she asked, faintly.
He picked up his cap, which was lying on a chair.
“Let’s get away, somewhere,” he said. “Do you mind coming with me — alone?”
“No,” she said.
There was a canoe on the river-bank below the lawn. He took a paddle and setting-pole from the veranda wall, and they went down to the river, side by side.
Heedless of the protests of the scandalized belted kingfishers, they embarked on Sagamore Water.
The paddle flashed in the sunlight; the quick river caught the blade, the spray floated shoreward.
V
Late in the afternoon the canoe, heavily festooned with dripping water-lilies, moved like a shadow over the shining sands. The tall hemlocks walled the river with palisades unbroken; the calm water stretched away into the forest’s sombre depths, barred here and there by dusty sunbeams.
Over them, in the highest depths of the unclouded blue, towered an eagle, suspended from mid-zenith. Under them the shadow of their craft swept the yellow gravel.
Knee to knee, vis-à-vis, wrapped to their souls in the enchantment of each other, sat the entranced voyagers. Their rods lay idle beside them; life was serious just then for people who stood on the threshold of separation.
“I simply shall depart this life if you go to-morrow,” she said, looking at him.
The unfeigned misery in his face made her smile adorably, but she would not permit him to touch her.
“See to what you have brought me!” she said. “I’m utterly unable to live without you. And now what are you going to do with me?”
Her eyes were very tender. He caught her hand and kissed it, and laid it against his face.
“There is a way,” he said.
“A way?”
“Shall I lead? Would you follow?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, amused.
“There is a way,” he repeated. “That thread of a brook leads to it.”
He pointed off to the westward, where through the forest a stream, scarcely wider than the canoe, flowed deep and silent between its mounds of moss.
He picked up the paddle and touched the blade to the water; the canoe swung westward.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked.
But the canoe was already in the narrow stream, and he was laughing recklessly, setting-pole poised to swing round the short turns.
“If we turned back now,” she said, “it would be sunset before we reached the club.”
“What do we care?” he laughed. “Look!”
Without warning, a yellow glory broke through the trees, and the canoe shot out into a vast, flat country, drenched with the rays of the sinking sun.
Blue woods belted the distance; all in front of them was deep, moist meadow-land, carpeted with thickets of wild iris, through which the stream wound in pools of gold.
The beauty of it held her speechless; the spell was upon him, too, and he sat motionless, the water dripping from his steel-tipped setting-pole in drops of fire.
There was a figure moving in the distant meadow; the sun glimmered on something that might have been a long reed quivering.
“An old friend fishing yonder,” he said, quietly; “I knew he would be there.” He touched her and pointed to the distant figure. “That is the parson of Foxville,” he said. “We will need him before we go to London.”
She looked across the purple fields of iris. Suddenly his meaning flashed out like a sunbeam.
“Do — do you wish — that — now?” she faltered.
He picked up the paddle; she caught his hand, trembling.
“No, no!” — she whispered, with bent head— “I cannot; don’t take me so — so quickly. Truly we must be mad to think of it.”
He held the paddle poised; after a while her hand slid from the blade and she looked up into his eyes. The canoe moved on.
“Oh, we are quite mad,” she said, unsteadily.
“I am glad we are,” he said.
The mellow dip! dip! of the paddle woke the drowsing red-winged blackbirds from the reeds; the gray snipe wheeled out across the marsh in flickering flight.
The aged parson of Foxville, intent on his bobbing cork, looked up in mild surprise to see a canoe, heavily hung with water-lilies, glide into his pool and swing shoreward.
The parson of Foxville was a very old man — almost too old to fish for trout.
Crawford led him a pace aside, leaving Miss Castle, somewhat frightened, knee-deep in the purple iris.
Then the old parson came toddling to her and took her hand, and peered at her with his aged eyes, saying, “You are quite mad, my child, and very lovely, and very, very young. So I think, after all, you would be much safer if you were married.”
Somebody encircled her waist; she turned and looked into the eyes of her lover, and still looking at him, she laid her hands in his.
A wedding amid the iris, all gray with the hovering, misty wings of moths — that was her fate — with the sky a canopy of fire above her, and the curlew calling through the kindling dusk, and the blue processional of the woods lining the corridors of the coming night.
And at last the aged parson kissed her and shook hands with her husband and shambled away across the meadows.
Slowly northward through the dusk stole the canoe once more, bearing the bride of an hour, her head on her husband’s knees. The stars came out to watch them; a necklace of bubbles trailed in the paddle’s wake, stringing away, twinkling in the starlight.
Slowly through the perfumed gloom they glided, her warm head on his knees, his eyes fixed on the vague water ahead.
A stag crashed through the reeds ashore; the June fawn stared with eyes like rubies in the dark.
Onward, onward, through the spell-bound forest; and at last the windows of the house glimmered, reflected in the water.
Garcide and Crawford awaited them on the veranda as they came up, rising in chilling silence, ignoring the offered hands of greeting.
“I’ve a word to say to you,” snarled the Hon. John Garcide, in his ward’s ear— “and another word for your fool of an aunt!”
She shrank back against her husband, amazed and hurt. “What do you mean?” she stammered; “we — we are married. Will you not speak to my — my husband?”
A silence, too awful to last, was broken by a hoarse laugh.
“You’re all right, Jim,” said the elder Crawford, slowly. “Ophir Steel won’t slip through your fingers when I’m under the sod. Been married long, Jim?”
Contents
* * *
THE FIRE-WARDEN
* * *
I
AND of course what I buy is my own,” continued Burleson, patiently. “No man here will question that, I suppose?”
For a moment there was silence in the cross-roads store; then a lank, mud-splashed native arose from behind the stove, shoving his scarred hands deep into the ragged pockets of his trousers.
“Young man,” he said, harshly, “there’s a few things you can’t buy; you may think you can buy ’em — you may pay for ‘em, too — but they can’t be bought an’ sold. You thought you bought Grier’s tract; you thought you bought a lot o’ deer an’ birds an’ fish, several thousand acres in timber, and a dozen lakes. An’ you paid for ‘em, too. But, sonny, you was took in; you paid for ‘em, but you didn’t buy ‘em, because Grier couldn’t sell God’s free critters. He fooled ye that time.”
“Is that the way you regard it, Santry?” asked Burleson. “Is that the way these people regard private property?”
“I guess it is,” replied the ragged man, resuming his seat on the flour-barrel. “I cal’late the Lord A’mighty fashioned His wild critters f’r to peramble round about, offerin’ a fair mark an’ no favor to them that’s smart enough to git ’em with buck, bird-shot, or bullet. Live wild critters ain’t for sale; they never was made to buy an’ sell. The spryest gits ’em — an’ that’s all about it, I guess, Mister Burleson.”
A hard-faced young man leaning against the counter, added significantly: “We talked some to Grier, an’ he sold out. He come here, too, just like you.”
The covert menace set two spots of color deepening in young Burleson’s lean cheeks; but he answered calmly:
“What a man believes to be his own he seldom abandons from fear of threats.”
“That’s kinder like our case,” observed old man Santry, chewing vigorously.
Another man leaned over and whispered to a neighbor, who turned a grim eye on Burleson without replying.
As for Burleson and his argument, a vicious circle had been completed, and there was little chance of an understanding; he saw that plainly, but, loath to admit it, turned towards old man Santry once more.
“If what has been common rumor is true,” he said, “Mr. Grier, from whom I bought the Spirit Lake tract, was rough in defending what he believed to be his own. I want to be decent; I desire to preserve the game and the timber, but not at the expense of human suffering. You know better than I do what has been the history of Fox Cross-roads. Twenty-five years ago your village was a large one; you had tanneries, lumber-mills, paper-mills — even a newspaper. To-day the timber is gone, and so has the town except for your homes — twenty houses, perhaps. Your soil is sand and slate, fit only for a new forest; the entire country is useless for farming, and it is the natural home of pine and oak, of the deer and partridge.”
He took one step nearer the silent circle around the stove. “I have offered to buy your rights; Grier hemmed you in on every side to force you out. I do not want to force you; I offer to buy your land at a fair appraisal. And your answer is to put a prohibitive price on the land.”
“Because,” observed old man Santry, “we’ve got you ketched. That’s business, I guess.”
Burleson flushed up. “Not business; blackmail, Santry.”
Another silence, then a man laughed: “Is that what they call it down to York, Mr. Burleson?”
“I think so.”
“When a man wants to put up a skyscraper an’ gits all but the key-lot, an’ if the owner of the key-lot holds out for his price, do they call it blackmail?”
“No,” said Burleson; “I think I spoke hastily.”
Not a sound broke the stillness in the store. After a moment old man Santry opened his clasp-knife, leaned forward, and shaved off a thin slice from the cheese on the counter. This he ate, faded eyes fixed on space. Men all around him relaxed in their chairs, spat, recrossed their muddy boots, stretching and yawning. Plainly the conference had ended.
“I am sorry,” said young Burleson; “I had hoped for a fair understanding.”
Nobody answered.
He tucked his riding-crop under one arm and stood watching them, buttoning his tan gloves. Then with the butt of his crop he rubbed a dry spot of mud from his leather puttees, freed the incrusted spurs, and turned towards the door, pausing there to look back.
“I hate to leave it this way,” he said, impulsively. “I want to live in peace with my neighbors. I mean to make no threats — but neither can I be moved by threats.… Perhaps time will aid us to come to a fair understanding; perhaps a better knowledge of one another. Although the shooting and fishing are restricted, my house is always open to my neighbors. You will be welcome when you come—”
The silence was profound as he hesitated, standing there before them in the sunshine of the doorway — a lean, well-built, faultless figure, an unconscious challenge to poverty, a terrible offence to their every instinct — the living embodiment of all that they hated most in all the world.
And so he went away with a brief “Good-morning,” swung himself astride his horse, and cantered off, gathering bridle as he rode, sweeping at a gallop across the wooden bridge into the forest world beyond.
The September woods were dry — dry enough to catch fire. His troubled eyes swept the second growth as he drew bridle at a gate set in a fence eight feet high and entirely constructed of wire net interwoven with barbed wire, and heavily hedged with locust and buck-thorn.
He dismounted, unlocked the iron gate, led his horse through, refastened the gate, and walked on, his horse following as a trained dog follows at heel.
Through the still September sunshine ripened leaves drifted down through interlaced branches, and the whispering rustle of their fall filled the forest silence. The wood road, carpeted with brilliant leaves, wound through second growth, following the edge of a dark, swift stream, then swept westward among the pines, where the cushion of brown needles deadened every step, and where there was no sound save the rustle of a flock of rose-tinted birds half buried in the feathery fronds of a white pine. Again the road curved eastward; skirting a cleft of slate rocks, through which the stream rushed with the sound of a wind-stirred woodland; and by this stream a man stood, loading a rusty fowling-piece.
Young Burleson had retained Grier’s keepers, for obvious reasons; and already he knew them all by name. But this man was no keeper of his; and he walked straight up to him, bidding him a rather sharp good-morning, which was sullenly returned.
Then Burleson told him as pleasantly as he could that the land was preserved, that he could not tolerate armed trespassing, and that the keepers were charged to enforce the laws.
“It is better,” he said, “to have a clear understanding at once. I think the law governing private property is clearly set forth on the signs along my boundary. This preserve is posted and patrolled; I have done all I could to guarantee public rights; I have not made any application to have the public road closed, and I am perfectly willing to keep it open for public convenience. But it is not right for anybody to carry a gun in these preserves; and if it continues I shall surely apply for permission to close the road.”
“I guess you think you’ll do a lot o’ things,” observed the man, stolidly.
“I think I will,” returned Burleson, refusing to take offence at the insolence.
The man tossed his gun to his shoulder and slouched towards the boundary. Burleson watched him in silence until the fellow reached the netted wire fence, then he called out.
