Complete weird tales of.., p.1288
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1288
Darrow dropped his eyes; and when again he looked, the canoe had vanished behind the rushes of Flyover Point, and there was nothing moving on the water far as the eye could see.
* * *
About three o’clock that afternoon, the pigeon-toed Seminole Indian who followed Haltren, as a silent, dangerous dog follows its master, laid down the heavy pink cedar log which he had brought to the fire, and stood perfectly silent, nose up, slitted eyes almost closed.
Haltren’s glance was a question. “Paddl’um boat,” said the Indian, sullenly.
After a pause Haltren said, “I don’t hear it, Tiger.”
“Hunh!” grunted the Seminole. “Paddl’um damn slow. Bime-by you hear.”
And bime-by Haltren heard.
“Somebody is landing,” he said.
The Indian folded his arms and stood bolt upright for a moment; then, “Hunh!” he muttered, disgusted. “Heap squaw. Tiger will go.”
Haltren did not hear him; up the palmetto-choked trail from the landing strolled a girl, paddle poised over one shoulder, bright hair blowing. He rose to his feet; she saw him standing in the haze of the fire and made him a pretty gesture of recognition.
“I thought I’d call to pay my respects,” she said. “How do you do? May I sit on this soap-box?”
Smiling, she laid the paddle on the ground and held out one hand as he stepped forward.
They shook hands very civilly.
“That was a brave thing you did,” she said. “Mes compliments, monsieur.”
And that was all said about the wreck.
“It’s not unlike an Adirondack camp,” she suggested, looking around at the open-faced, palm-thatched shanty with its usual hangings of blankets and wet clothing, and its smoky, tin-pan bric-à-brac.
Her blue eyes swept all in rapid review — the guns leaning against the tree; the bunch of dead bluebill ducks hanging beyond; the improvised table and bench outside; the enormous mottled rattlesnake skin tacked lengthways on a live-oak.
“Are there many of those about?” she inquired.
“Very few” — he waited to control the voice which did not sound much like his own— “very few rattlers yet. They come out later.”
“That’s amiable of them,” she said, with a slight shrug of her shoulders.
There was a pause.
“I hope you are well,” he ventured.
“Perfectly — and thank you. I hope you are well, Jack.”
“Thank you, Kathleen.”
She picked up a chip of rose-colored cedar and sniffed it daintily.
“Like a lead-pencil, isn’t it? Put that big log on the fire. The odor of burning cedar must be delicious.”
He lifted the great log and laid it across the coals.
“Suppose we lunch?” she proposed, looking straight at the simmering coffee-pot.
“Would you really care to?” Then he raised his voice: “Tiger! Tiger! Where the dickens are you?” But Tiger, half a mile away, squatted sulkily on the lagoon’s edge, fishing, and muttering to himself that there were too many white people in the forest for him.
“He won’t come,” said Haltren. “You know the Seminoles hate the whites, and consider themselves still unconquered. There is scarcely an instance on record of a Seminole attaching himself to one of us.”
“But your tame Tiger appears to follow you.”
“He’s an exception.”
“Perhaps you are an exception, too.”
He looked up with a haggard smile, then bent over the fire and poked the ashes with a pointed palmetto stem. There were half a dozen sweet-potatoes there, and a baked duck and an ash-cake.
“Goodness!” she said; “if you knew how hungry I am you wouldn’t be so deliberate. Where are the cups and spoons? Which is Tiger’s? Well, you may use his.”
The log table was set and the duck ready before Haltren could hunt up the jug of mineral water which Tiger had buried somewhere to keep cool.
When he came back with it from the shore he found her sitting at table with an exaggerated air of patience.
They both laughed a little; he took his seat opposite; she poured the coffee, and he dismembered the duck.
“You ought to be ashamed of that duck,” she said. “The law is on now.”
“I know it,” he replied, “but necessity knows no law. I’m up here looking for wild orange stock, and I live on what I can get. Even the sacred, unbranded razor-back is fish for our net — with a fair chance of a shooting-scrape between us and a prowling cracker. If you will stay to dinner you may have roast wild boar.”
“That alone is almost worth staying for, isn’t it?” she asked, innocently.
There was a trifle more color in his sunburned face.
She ate very little, though protesting that her hunger shamed her; she sipped her coffee, blue eyes sometimes fixed on the tall palms and oaks overhead, sometimes on him.
“What was that great, winged shadow that passed across the table?” she exclaimed.
“A vulture; they are never far away.”
“Ugh!” she shuddered; “always waiting for something to die! How can a man live here, knowing that?”
“I don’t propose to die out-doors,” said Haltren, laughing.
Again the huge shadow swept between them; she shrank back with a little gesture of repugnance. Perhaps she was thinking of her nearness to death in the inlet.
“Are there alligators here, too?” she asked.
“Yes; they run away from you.”
“And moccasin snakes?”
“Some. They don’t trouble a man who keeps his eyes open.”
“A nice country you live in!” she said, disdainfully.
“It is one kind of country. There is good shooting.”
“Anything else?”
“Sunshine all the year round. I have a house covered with scented things and buried in orange-trees. It is very beautiful. A little lonely at times — one can’t have Fifth Avenue and pick one’s own grape-fruit from the veranda, too.”
A silence fell between them; through the late afternoon stillness they heard the splash! splash! of leaping mullet in the lagoon. Suddenly a crimson-throated humming-bird whirred past, hung vibrating before a flowering creeper, then darted away.
“Spring is drifting northward,” he said. “To-morrow will be Easter Day — Pasque Florida.”
She rose, saying, carelessly, “I was not thinking of to-morrow; I was thinking of to-day,” and, walking across the cleared circle, she picked up her paddle. He followed her, and she looked around gayly, swinging the paddle to her shoulder.
“You said you were thinking of to-day,” he stammered. “It — it is our anniversary.”
She raised her eyebrows. “I am astonished that you remembered.… I think that I ought to go. The Dione will be in before long—”
“We can hear her whistle when she steams in,” he said.
“Are you actually inviting me to stay?” she laughed, seating herself on the soap-box once more.
They became very grave as he sat down on the ground at her feet, and, a silence threatening, she hastily filled it with a description of the yacht and Major Brent’s guests. He listened, watching her intently. And after a while, having no more to say, she pretended to hear sounds resembling a distant yacht’s whistle.
“It’s the red-winged blackbirds in the reeds,” he said. “Now will you let me say something — about the past?”
“It has buried itself,” she said, under her breath.
“To-morrow is Easter,” he went on, slowly. “Can there be no resurrection for dead days as there is for Easter flowers? Winter is over; Pasque Florida will dawn on a world of blossoms. May I speak, Kathleen?”
“It is I who should speak,” she said. “I meant to. It is this: forgive me for all. I am sorry.”
“I have nothing to forgive,” he said. “I was a — a failure. I — I do not understand women.”
“Nor I men. They are not what I understand. I don’t mean the mob I’ve been bred to dance with — I understand them. But a real man—” she laughed, drearily— “I expected a god for a husband.”
“I am sorry,” he said; “I am horribly sorry. I have learned many things in four years. Kathleen, I — I don’t know what to do.”
“There is nothing to do, is there?”
“Your freedom—”
“I am free.”
“I am afraid you will need more freedom than you have, some day.”
She looked him full in the eyes. “Do you desire it?”
A faint sound fell upon the stillness of the forest; they listened; it came again from the distant sea.
“I think it is the yacht,” she said.
They rose together; he took her paddle, and they walked down the jungle path to the landing. Her canoe and his spare boat lay there, floating close together.
“It will be an hour before a boat from the yacht reaches the wrecked launch,” he said. “Will you wait in my boat?”
She bent her head and laid her hand in his, stepping lightly into the bow.
“Cast off and row me a little way,” she said, leaning back in the stern. “Isn’t this lagoon wonderful? See the color in water and sky. How green the forest is! — green as a young woodland in April. And the reeds are green and gold, and the west is all gold. Look at that great white bird — with wings like an angel’s! What is that heavenly odor from the forest? Oh,” she sighed, elbows on knees, “this is too delicious to be real!”
A moment later she began, irrelevantly: “Ethics! Ethics! who can teach them? One must know, and heed no teaching. All preconceived ideas may be wrong; I am quite sure I was wrong — sometimes.”
And again irrelevantly, “I was horribly intolerant once.”
“Once you asked me a question,” he said. “We separated because I refused to answer you.”
She closed her eyes and the color flooded her face.
“I shall never ask it again,” she said.
But he went on: “I refused to reply. I was an ass; I had theories, too. They’re gone, quite gone. I will answer you now, if you wish.”
Her face burned. “No! No, don’t — don’t answer me; don’t, I beg of you! I — I know now that even the gods—” She covered her face with her hands. The boat drifted rapidly on; it was flood-tide.
“Yes, even the gods,” he said. “There is the answer. Now you know.”
Overhead the sky grew pink; wedge after wedge of water-fowl swept through the calm evening air, and their aërial whimpering rush sounded faintly over the water.
“Kathleen!”
She made no movement.
Far away a dull shock set the air vibrating. The Dione was saluting her castaways. The swift Southern night, robed in rose and violet, already veiled the forest; and the darkling water deepened into purple.
“Jack!”
He rose and crept forward to the stern where she was sitting. Her hands hung idly; her head was bent.
Into the purple dusk they drifted, he at her feet, close against her knees. Once she laid her hands on his shoulders, peering at him with wet eyes.
And, with his lips pressed to her imprisoned hands, she slipped down into the boat beside him, crouching there, her face against his.
So, under the Southern stars, they drifted home together. The Dione fired guns and sent up rockets, which they neither heard nor saw; Major Brent toddled about the deck and his guests talked scandal; but what did they care!
Darrow, standing alone on the wrecked launch, stared at the stars and waited for the search-boat to return.
It was dawn when the truth broke upon Major Brent. It broke so suddenly that he fairly yelped as the Dione poked her white beak seaward.
It was dawn, too, when a pigeon-toed Seminole Indian stood upon the veranda of a house which was covered with blossoms of Pasque Florida.
Silently he stood, inspecting the closed door; then warily stooped and picked up something lying on the veranda at his feet. It was a gold comb.
“Heap squaw,” he said, deliberately. “Tiger will go.”
But he never did.
* * *
THE END
The Tree of Heaven
This short story collection builds upon the success of Chambers’ atmospheric ‘Young Man in a Hurry’, presenting several further tales linked by a nocturnal, snowy New York setting. As with Chambers’ previous collection, the atmosphere is light and romantic, but there are also hints of the weird in some of the stories. The collection was first published in 1907.
Cover of the first edition
CONTENTS
THE CARPET OF BELSHAZZAR
THE SIGN OF VENUS
THE CASE OF MR. HELMER
THE TREE OF DREAMS
THE BRIDAL PAIR
EX CURIA
THE GOLDEN POOL
OUT OF THE DEPTHS
THE SWASTIKA
THE GHOST OF CHANCE
Title page of the first edition
TO MY FRIEND
AUSTIN CORBIN
CHAPTER I
THE CARPET OF BELSHAZZAR
WE ALL WERE glad to see him; on his return he had found us all his friends. Nobody had spoken to him about his abrupt departure from New York; nobody had mentioned Westover; nothing connected with that episode was even hinted at by any of us, I believe, during his short sojourn among us. It was he himself who spoke of it first.
Of course during his absence we had followed his career; many among us had read and tried to understand what he had written in his three world-famous volumes, “Occult Philosophy,”
“The Weight of Human Souls,” and “The Interstellar Laws of Psychic Phenomena.”
It seemed, at times, here to us in America, that it was impossible that the man we had known so well could have become the great Psychic Scientist who had written these three astounding works — who now occupied the Chair of Psychical Philosophy in the great University of Trebizond — the man who was the confidential adviser of the Shah of Persia, the mentor of the Ameer of Afghanistan, the inspirer of the greatest diplomat of all the East — the late Akhound of Swat.
As he sat there in his immaculate evening dress, bronzed, youthful looking, presiding so quietly at the little dinner which he had given to us as a half-formal, half-intimate leave-taking before he sailed, it seemed to us incredible that this man, now on his return journey to Trebizond via Lhassa, could be the beloved and dreaded arbiter of Asiatic politics — the one white man in all the Orient who had ever been wholly respected, and absolutely feared by the temporal and spiritual heads of nations, religions, clans, and sects.
That, of course, he was what is popularly known as an adept, we supposed. What his wisdom, his insight, his amazing knowledge of the occult might include, we preferred, rather uncomfortably, not to conjecture.
There is, naturally, in all of us a childlike desire to hear of marvels; there is also a stronger and more childish desire to see miracles performed.
I am quite sure that we all hoped he might perhaps care to do something for us — merely to convince us. And at first, I know that many among us, seated there in the private room at the Lenox Club, felt a trifle ill at ease and a little in awe of this man with whom we were at such close quarters.
There was nothing particularly remarkable about the dinner; it was the usual excellent affair one might expect at the Lenox; the wines perfect, the service flawless.
And now, smoking our cigars, lounging in groups over the flower-laden table, we fell into the old, intimate, easy channels of conversation, chatting of past days, of our hopes and ambitions.
And our host, quiet, self-contained, pushed back his chair, looking somewhat curiously, I thought, from one to the other. And I thought, too, as his pleasant bronzed features changed from a faint smile to a graver expression, and then reverted to the smile for a moment, that he seemed to see something in each of us that was perhaps hidden from ourselves — that, as his eyes swept us, he was not only capable of reading much of what was not understood by us, but also something in the hidden future which awaited each of us.
So strongly did this idea begin to take hold of me that it began to make me uneasy. I felt, too, that others among us harbored that same idea — for the conversation was less accented now, and intermittent; voices had fallen to a lower, quieter pitch; and after a little nobody spoke.
Then I saw that we all were looking straight at our host, as though under some subtle and fascinated compulsion.
He sat very still; his composure appeared a trifle forced, as though he had voicelessly summoned us to concentrate upon him our attention, and was now searching for the exact words for some statement which he had meant to make to us all.
After a moment a slight flush crept over his handsome face. He said:
“You fellows are very good to come here and let me take leave of you so pleasantly. You have been very kind to me since I have come again among you. The sort of friendship that asks nothing but takes a man for granted is a good sort. Helmer,” — he looked at the sculptor Helmer—” I shall see you soon again.” We all turned in surprise to Helmer, who seemed as surprised as we were. “I shall see you sooner than you expect.... Smith!” — he smiled at J. Abingdon Smith, 3d— “some day you will uproot a Tree of Dreams, but not the dream, Smith; that will become very real when you awake — as true” — and he turned to the man on his left—” as true as a dream which you shall dream under the Sign of Venus.”
We sat there breathless, expectant. He was doing something after all; he was prophesying, in a curious sort of manner, probably speaking in symbols. And though we could not understand, we listened while the little shivers fluttered our pulses.
Then he looked at Edgerton, smiling; and Edgerton flushed up and looked back at him, almost defiantly.
“Edgerton,” he said, “don’t worry too much. What is not to be settled in court can sometimes be settled — ex curia.” And to the young man on his right: “Doctor, don’t overwork. If you do you will learn a stranger truth than is locked up among the molecules and atoms in your laboratory!” Then he leaned across the table and laid one hand on Leeds’s shoulder. “I congratulate you,” he said, smiling; “you’ve got a good-natured ghost following you about. But he’ll leave you if you turn idle. And don’t be afraid, my boy.”
