Complete weird tales of.., p.1286
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1286
“Well! — if — that — isn’t — curious!” said Tennant, astonished, as she swung nonchalantly towards an invisible mirror and passed a long, gilded pin through the crown of her hat.
“It seems that I only have to suggest a thing—” He hesitated, watching her.
“Of course it was coincidence,” he said; “but — suppose it wasn’t? Suppose it was telepathy — thought transmitted?”
His neighbor was buttoning her gloves.
“I’m a beast to stand here staring,” he murmured, as she moved leisurely towards her window, apparently unconscious of him. “It’s a shame,” he added, “that we don’t know each other! I’m going to the Park; I wish you were — I want you to go — because it would do you good! You must go!”
Her left glove was now buttoned; the right gave her some difficulty, which she started to overcome with a hair-pin.
“If mental persuasion can do it, you and I are going to meet under the wistaria arbor in the Park,” he said, with emphasis.
To concentrate his thoughts he stood rigid, thinking as hard as a young man can think with a distractingly pretty girl fastening her glove opposite; and the effort produced a deep crease between his eyebrows.
“You — are — going — to — the — wistaria — arbor — in — the Park!” he repeated, solemnly.
She turned as though she had heard, and looked straight at him. Her face was bright with color; never had he seen such fresh beauty in a human face.
Her eyes wandered from him upward to the serene blue sky; then she stepped back, glanced into the mirror, touched her hair with the tips of her gloved fingers, and walked away, disappearing into the gloom of the room.
An astonishing sense of loneliness came over him — a perfectly unreasonable feeling, because every day for months he had seen her disappear from the window, always viewing the phenomenon with disinterested equanimity.
“Now I don’t for a moment suppose she’s going to the wistaria arbor,” he said, mournfully, walking towards his door.
But all the way down in the elevator and out on the street he was comforting himself with stories of strange coincidences; of how, sometimes, walking alone and thinking of a person he had not seen or thought of for years, raising his eyes he had met that person face to face. And a presentiment that he should meet his neighbor under the wistaria arbor grew stronger and stronger, until, as he turned into the broad, southeastern entrance to the Park, his heart began beating an uneasy, expectant tattoo under his starched white waist-coat.
“I’ve been smoking too many cigarettes,” he muttered. “Things like that don’t happen. It would be too silly—”
And it was rather silly; but she was there. He saw her the moment he entered the wistaria arbor, seated in a rustic recess. It may be that she was reading the book she held so unsteadily in her small, gloved fingers, but the book was upside down. And when his footstep echoed on the asphalt, she raised a pair of thoroughly frightened eyes.
“HE SAW HER THE MOMENT HE ENTERED THE WISTARIA ARBOR”
His expression verged on the idiotic; they were a scared pair, and it was only when the bright flush of guilt flooded her face that he recovered his senses in a measure and took off his hat.
“I — I hadn’t the slightest notion that you would come,” he stammered. “This is the — the most amazing example of telepathy I ever heard of!”
“Telepathy?” she repeated, faintly.
“Telepathy! Thought persuasion! It’s incredible! It’s — it’s a — it was a dreadful thing to do. I don’t know what to say.”
“Is it necessary for you to say anything to — me?”
“Can you ever pardon me?”
“I don’t think I understand,” she said, slowly. “Are you asking pardon for your rudeness in speaking to me?”
“No,” he almost groaned; “I’ll do that later. There is something much worse—”
Her cool self-possession unnerved him. Composure is sometimes the culmination of fright; but he did not know that, because he did not know the subtler sex. His fluency left him; all he could repeat was, “I’m sorry I’m speaking to you — but there’s something much worse.”
“I cannot imagine anything worse,” she said.
“Won’t you grant me a moment to explain?” he urged.
“How can I?” she replied, calmly. “How can a woman permit a man to speak without shadow of excuse? You know perfectly well what convention requires.”
Hot, uncomfortable, he looked at her so appealingly that her eyes softened a little.
“I don’t suppose you mean to be impertinent to me,” she said, coldly.
He said that he didn’t with so much fervor that something perilously close to a smile touched her lips. He told her who he was, and the information appeared to surprise her, so it is safe to assume she knew it already. He pleaded in extenuation that they had been neighbors for a year; but she had not, apparently, been aware of this either; and the snub completed his discomfiture.
“I — I was so anxious to know you,” he said, miserably. “That was the beginning—”
“It is a perfectly horrid thing to say,” she said, indignantly. “Do you suppose, because you are a public character, you are privileged to speak to anybody?”
He attempted to say he didn’t, but she went on: “Of course that is not a palliation of your offence. It is a dreadful condition of affairs if a woman cannot go out alone—”
“Please don’t say that!” he cried.
“I must. It is a terrible comment on modern social conditions,” she repeated, shaking her pretty head. “A woman who permits it — especially a woman who is obliged to support herself — for if I were not poor I should be driving here in my brougham, and you know it! — oh, it is a hideously common thing for a girl to do!” Opening her book, she appeared to be deeply interested in it. But the book was upside down.
Glancing at him a moment later, she was apparently surprised to find him still standing beside her. However, he had noted two things in that moment of respite: she held the book upside down, and on the title-page was written a signature that he knew— “Marlitt.”
“Under the circumstances,” she said, coldly, “do you think it decent to continue this conversation?”
“Yes, I do,” he said. “I’m a decent sort of fellow, or you would have divined the contrary long ago; and there is a humiliating explanation that I owe you.”
“You owe me every explanation,” she said, “but I am generous enough to spare you the humiliation.”
“I know what you mean,” he admitted. “I hypnotized you into coming here, and you are aware of it.”
Pink to the ears with resentment and confusion, she sat up very straight and stared at him. From a pretty girl defiant, she became an angry beauty. And he quailed.
“Did you imagine that you hypnotized me?” she asked, incredulously.
“What was it, then?” he muttered. “You did everything I wished for—”
“What did you wish for?”
“I — I thought you needed the sun, and as soon as I said that you ought to go out, you — you put on that big, black hat. And then I wished I knew you — I wished you would come here to the wistaria arbor, and — you came.”
“In other words,” she said, disdainfully, “you deliberately planned to control my mind and induce me to meet you in a clandestine and horrid manner.”
“I never looked at it in that way. I only knew I admired you a lot, and — and you were tremendously charming — more so than my sketch—”
“What sketch?”
“I — you see, I made a little sketch,” he admitted— “a little picture of you—”
Her silence scared him.
“Do you mind?” he ventured.
“Of course you will send that portrait to me at once!” she said.
“Oh yes, of course I will; I had meant to send it anyway—”
“That,” she observed, “would have been the very height of impertinence.”
Opening her book again, she indulged him with a view of the most exquisite profile he had ever dreamed of.
She despised him; there seemed to be no doubt about that. He despised himself; his offence, stripped by her of all extenuation, appeared to him in its own naked hideousness; and it appalled him.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “there’s nothing criminal in me. I never imagined that a man could appear to such disadvantage as I appear. I’ll go. There’s no use in hoping for pardon. I’ll go.”
Studying her book, she said, without raising her eyes, “I am offended — deeply hurt — but—”
He waited anxiously.
“But I am sorry to say that I am not as deeply offended as I ought to be.”
“That is very, very kind of you,” he said, warmly.
“It is very depraved of me,” she retorted, turning a page.
After a silence, he said, “Then I suppose I must go.”
It is possible she did not hear him; she seemed engrossed, bending a little closer over the book on her knee, for the shadows of blossom and foliage above had crept across the printed page.
All the silence was in tremulous vibration with the hum of bees; the perfume of the flowers grew sweeter as the sun sank towards the west, flinging long, blue shadows over the grass and asphalt.
A gray squirrel came hopping along, tail twitching, and deliberately climbed up the seat where she was sitting, squatting beside her, paws drooping in dumb appeal.
“You dear little thing!” said the girl, impulsively. “I wish I had a bonbon for you! Have you anything in the world to give this half-starved squirrel, Mr. Tennant?”
“Nothing but a cigarette,” muttered Tennant. “I’ll go out to the gate if you—” He hesitated. “They generally sell peanuts out there,” he added, vaguely.
“Squirrels adore peanuts,” she murmured, caressing the squirrel, who had begun fearlessly snooping into her lap.
Tennant, enchanted at the tacit commission, started off at a pace that brought him to the gate and back again before he could arrange his own disordered thoughts.
She was reading when he returned, and she cooled his enthusiasm with a stare of surprise.
“The squirrel? Oh, I’m sure I don’t know where that squirrel has gone. Did you really go all the way to the gate for peanuts to stuff that overfed squirrel?”
He looked at the four paper bags, opened one of them, and stirred the nuts with his hand.
“What shall I do with them?” he asked.
Then, and neither ever knew exactly why, she began to laugh. The first laugh was brief; an oppressive silence followed — then she laughed again; and as he grew redder and redder, she laughed the most deliciously fresh peal of laughter he had ever heard.
“This is dreadful!” she said. “I should never have come alone to the Park! You should never have dared to speak to me. All we need to do now is to eat those peanuts, and you have all the material for a picture of courtship below-stairs! Oh, dear, and the worst part of it all is that I laugh!”
“If you’d let me sit down,” he said, “I’d complete the picture and eat peanuts.”
“You dare not!”
He seated himself, opened a paper bag, and deliberately cracked and ate a nut.
“Horrors! and disillusion! The idol of the public — munching peanuts!”
“You ought to try one,” he said.
She stood it for a while; but the saving grace of humour warned her of her peril, and she ate a peanut.
“To save my face,” she explained. “But I didn’t suppose you were capable of it.”
“As a matter of fact,” he said, tranquilly, “a man can do anything in this world if he only does it thoroughly and appears to enjoy himself. I’ve seen the Prince Regent of Boznovia sitting at the window of the Crown Regiment barracks arrayed in his shirt-sleeves and absorbing beer and pretzels.”
“But he was the Prince Regent!”
“And I’m Tennant.”
“According to that philosophy you are at liberty to eat fish with your knife.”
“But I don’t want to.”
“But suppose you did want to?”
“That is neither philosophy nor logic,” he insisted; “that is speculation. May I offer you a stick of old-fashioned circus candy flavored with wintergreen?”
“You may,” she said, accepting it. “If there is any lower depth I may attain, I’m sure you will suggest it.”
“I’ll try,” he said. Their eyes met for an instant; then hers were lowered.
Squirrels came in troops; she fed the little, fat scamps to repletion, and the green lawn was dotted with squirrels all busily burying peanuts for future consumption. A brilliant peacock appeared, picking his way towards them, followed by a covey of imbecile peafowl. She fed them until their crops protruded.
The sun glittered on the upper windows of the clubs and hotels along Fifth Avenue; the west turned gold, then pink. Clouds of tiny moths came hovering among the wistaria blossoms; and high in the sky the metallic note of a nighthawk rang, repeating in querulous cadence the cries of water-fowl on the lake, where mallard and widgeon were restlessly preparing for an evening flight.
“You know,” she said, gravely, “a woman who over-steps convention always suffers; a man, never. I have done something I never expected to do — never supposed was in me to do. And now that I have gone so far, it is perhaps better for me to go farther.” She looked at him steadily. “Your studio is a perfect sounding-board. You have an astonishingly frank habit of talking to yourself; and every word is perfectly audible to me when my window is raised. When you chose to apostrophize me as a ‘white-faced, dark-eyed little thing,’ and when you remarked to yourself that there were ‘thousands like me in New York,’ I was perfectly indignant.”
He sat staring at her, utterly incapable of uttering a sound.
“It costs a great deal for me to say this,” she went on. “But I am obliged to because it is not fair to let you go on communing aloud with yourself — and I cannot close my window in warm weather. It costs more than you know for me to say this; for it is an admission that I heard you say that you were coming to the wistaria arbor—”
She bent her crimsoned face; the silence of evening fell over the arbor.
“I don’t know why I came,” she said— “whether with a vague idea of giving you the chance to speak, and so seizing the opportunity to warn you that your soliloquies were audible to me — whether to tempt you to speak and make it plain to you that I am not one of the thousand shop-girls you have observed after the shops close—”
“Don’t,” he said, hoarsely. “I’m miserable enough.”
“I don’t wish you to feel miserable,” she said. “I have a very exalted idea of you. I — I understand artists.”
“They’re fools,” he said. “Say anything you like before I go. I had — hoped for — perhaps for your friendship. But a woman can’t respect a fool.”
He rose in his humiliation.
“I can ask no privileges,” he said, “but I must say one thing before I go. You have a book there which bears the signature of an artist named Marlitt. I am very anxious for his address; I think I have important news for him — good news. That is why I ask it.”
The girl looked at him quietly.
“What news have you for him?”
“I suppose you have a right to ask,” he said, “or you would not ask. I do not know Marlitt. I liked his work. Mr. Calvert suggested that Marlitt should return to resume work—”
“No,” said the girl, “you suggested it.”
He was staggered. “Did you even hear that!” he gasped.
“You were standing by your window,” she said. “Mr. Tennant, I think that was the real reason why I came to the wistaria arbor — to thank you for what you have done. You see — you see, I am Marlitt.”
He sank down on the seat opposite.
“Everything has gone wrong,” she said. “I came to thank you — and everything turned out so differently — and I was dreadfully rude to you—”
She covered her face with her hands.
“Then you wrote me that letter,” he said, slowly. In the silence of the gathering dusk the electric lamps snapped alight, flooding the arbor with silvery radiance. He said:
“If a man had written me that letter I should have desired his friendship and offered mine.”
She dropped her hands and looked at him. “Thank you for speaking to Calvert,” she said, rising hastily; “I have been desperately in need of work. My pride is quite dead, you see — one or the other of us had to die.”
She looked down with a gay little smile. “If it wouldn’t spoil you I should tell you what I think of you. Meanwhile, as servitude becomes man, you may tie my shoe for me — Marlitt’s shoe that pinched you.… Tie it tightly, so that I shall not lose it again.… Thank you.”
As he rose, their eyes met once more; and the perilous sweetness in hers fascinated him.
She drew a deep, unsteady breath. “Will you take me home?” she asked.
Contents
* * *
PASQUE FLORIDA
THE STEADY FLICKER of lightning in the southwest continued; the wind freshened, blowing in cooler streaks across acres of rattling rushes and dead marsh-grass. A dull light grew through the scudding clouds, then faded as the mid-day sun went out in the smother, leaving an ominous red smear overhead.
Gun in hand, Haltren stood up among the reeds and inspected the landscape. Already the fish-crows and egrets were flying inland, the pelicans had left the sandbar, the eagles were gone from beach and dune. High in the thickening sky wild ducks passed over Flyover Point and dropped into the sheltered marshes among the cypress.
As Haltren stood undecided, watching the ruddy play of lightning, which came no nearer than the horizon, a squall struck the lagoon. Then, amid the immense solitude of marsh and water, a deep sound grew — the roar of the wind in the wilderness. The solemn pæon swelled and died away as thunder dies, leaving the air tremulous.
“I’d better get out of this,” said Haltren to himself. He felt for the breech of his gun, unloaded both barrels, and slowly pocketed the cartridges.
