Complete weird tales of.., p.1322
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1322
“You listen to me, you old grouch!” I hissed. “I’ll go. But before I go I’ll tell you why I’ve been civil to you. There’s only one reason in the world: I want to marry your daughter! And I’m going to do it!”
I stepped nearer him, menacing him with outstretched hand:
“As for you, you pitiable old dodo, with your bad manners and your worse pictures, and your degraded mania for prunes, you are a necessary evil that’s all, and I haven’t the slightest respect for either you or your art!”
“Is that true?” he said in an altered voice.
“True?” I laughed bitterly. “Of course it’s true, you miserable dauber!”
“D-dauber!” he stammered.
“Certainly! I said ‘dauber,’ and I mean it. Why, your work would shame the pictures on a child’s slate!”
“Smith,” he said unsteadily, “I believe I have utterly misjudged you. I believe you are a good deal of a man, after all—”
“I’m man enough,” said I, fiercely, “to go back, saddle my mule, kidnap your daughter, and start for home. And I’m going to do it!”
“Wait!” he cried. “I don’t want you to go. If you’ll remain I’ll be very glad. I’ll do anything you like. I’ll quarrel with you, and you can insult my pictures. It will agreeably stimulate us both. Don’t go, Smith—”
“If I stay, may I marry Wilna?”
“If you ask me I won’t let you!”
“Very well!” I retorted, angrily. “Then I’ll marry her anyway!”
“That’s the way to talk! Don’t go, Smith. I’m really beginning to like you. And when Billy Green arrives you and he will have a delightfully violent scene—”
“What!”
He rubbed his hands gleefully.
“He’s in love with Wilna. You and he won’t get on. It is going to be very stimulating for me — I can see that! You and he are going to behave most disagreeably to each other. And I shall be exceedingly unpleasant to you both! Come, Smith, promise me that you’ll stay!”
Profoundly worried, I stood staring at him in the moonlight, gnawing my mustache.
“Very well,” I said, “I’ll remain if—”
Something checked me, I did not quite know what for a moment. Blythe, too, was staring at me in an odd, apprehensive way. Suddenly I realised that under my feet the ground was stirring.
“Look out!” I cried; but speech froze on my lips as beneath me the solid earth began to rock and crack and billow up into a high, crumbling ridge, moving continually, as the sod cracks, heaves up, and crumbles above the subterranean progress of a mole.
Up into the air we were slowly pushed on the ever-growing ridge; and with us were carried rocks and bushes and sod, and even forest trees.
I could hear their tap-roots part with pistol-like reports; see great pines and hemlocks and oaks moving, slanting, settling, tilting crazily in every direction as they were heaved upward in this gigantic disturbance.
Blythe caught me by the arm; we clutched each other, balancing on the crest of the steadily rising mound.
“W-what is it?” he stammered. “Look! It’s circular. The woods are rising in a huge circle. What’s happening? Do you know?”
Over me crept a horrible certainty that something living was moving under us through the depths of the earth — something that, as it progressed, was heaping up the surface of the world above its unseen and burrowing course — something dreadful, enormous, sinister, and alive!
“Look out!” screamed Blythe; and at the same instant the crumbling summit of the ridge opened under our feet and a fissure hundreds of yards long yawned ahead of us.
And along it, shining slimily in the moonlight, a vast, viscous, ringed surface was moving, retracting, undulating, elongating, writhing, squirming, shuddering.
“It’s a worm!” shrieked Blythe. “Oh, God! It’s a mile long!”
* * *
“‘It’s a worm!’ shrieked Blythe.”
As in a nightmare we clutched each other, struggling frantically to avoid the fissure; but the soft earth slid and gave way under us, and we fell heavily upon that ghastly, living surface.
Instantly a violent convulsion hurled us upward; we fell on it again, rebounding from the rubbery thing, strove to regain our feet and scramble up the edges of the fissure, strove madly while the mammoth worm slid more rapidly through the rocking forests, carrying us forward with a speed increasing.
Through the forest we tore, reeling about on the slippery back of the thing, as though riding on a plowshare, while trees clashed and tilted and fell from the enormous furrow on every side; then, suddenly out of the woods into the moonlight, far ahead of us we could see the grassy upland heave up, cake, break, and crumble above the burrowing course of the monster.
“It’s making for the crater!” gasped Blythe; and horror spurred us on, and we scrambled and slipped and clawed the billowing sides of the furrow until we gained the heaving top of it.
As one runs in a bad dream, heavily, half-paralyzed, so ran Blythe and I, toiling over the undulating, tumbling upheaval until, half-fainting, we fell and rolled down the shifting slope onto solid and unvexed sod on the very edges of the crater.
Below us we saw, with sickened eyes, the entire circumference of the crater agitated, saw it rise and fall as avalanches of rock and earth slid into it, tons and thousands of tons rushing down the slope, blotting from our sight the flickering ring of flame, and extinguishing the last filmy jet of vapour.
Suddenly the entire crater caved in and filled up under my anguished eyes, quenching for all eternity the vapour wall, the fire, and burying the little denizens of the flames, and perhaps a billion dollars’ worth of emeralds under as many billion tons of earth.
Quieter and quieter grew the earth as the gigantic worm bored straight down into depths immeasurable. And at last the moon shone upon a world that lay without a tremor in its milky lustre.
“I shall name it Verma gigantica,” said I, with a hysterical sob; “but nobody will ever believe me when I tell this story!”
Still terribly shaken, we turned toward the house. And, as we approached the lamplit veranda, I saw a horse standing there and a young man hastily dismounting.
And then a terrible thing occurred; for, before I could even shriek, Wilna had put both arms around that young man’s neck, and both of his arms were clasping her waist.
Blythe was kind to me. He took me around the back way and put me to bed.
And there I lay through the most awful night I ever experienced, listening to the piano below, where Wilna and William Green were singing, “Un Peu d’Amour.”
* * *
THE EGGS OF THE SILVER MOON
IN THE NEW white marble Administration Building at Bronx Park, my private office separated the offices of Dr. Silas Quint and Professor Boomly; and it had been arranged so on purpose, because of the increasingly frequent personal misunderstanding between these two celebrated entomologists. It was very plain to me that a crisis in this quarrel was rapidly approaching.
A bitter animosity had for some months existed on both sides, born of the most intense professional jealousy. They had been friends for years. No unseemly rivalry disturbed this friendship as long as it was merely a question of collecting, preparing, and mounting for exhibition the vast numbers of butterflies and moths which haunt this insectivorous earth. Even their zeal in the eternal hunt for new and undescribed species had not made them enemies.
I am afraid that my suggestion for the construction of a great glass flying-cage for living specimens of moths and butterflies started the trouble between these hitherto godly and middle-aged men. That, and the Carnegie Educational Medal were the causes which began this deplorable affair.
Various field collectors, employed by both Quint and Boomly, were always out all over the world foraging for specimens; also, they were constantly returning with spoils from every quarter of the globe.
Now, to secure rare and beautiful living specimens of butterflies and moths for the crystal flying-cage was a serious and delicate job. Such tropical insects could not survive the journey of several months from the wilds of Australia, India, Asia, Africa, or the jungles of South America — nor could semi-tropical species endure the captivity of a few weeks or even days, when captured in the West Indies, Mexico, or Florida. Only our duller-coloured, smaller, and hardier native species tolerated capture and exhibition.
Therefore, the mode of procedure which I suggested was for our field expeditions to obtain males and females of the same species of butterfly or moth, mate them, and, as soon as any female deposited her eggs, place the tiny pearl-like eggs in cold storage to retard their hatching, which normally occurs, in the majority of species, within ten days or two weeks.
This now was the usual mode of procedure followed by the field collectors employed by Dr. Quint and Professor Boomly. And not only were the eggs of various butterflies and moths so packed for transportation, but a sufficient store of their various native food-plants was also preserved, where such food-plants could not be procured in the United States. So when the eggs arrived at Bronx Park, and were hatched there in due time, the young caterpillars had plenty of nourishment ready for them in cold storage.
Might I not, legitimately, have expected the Carnegie Educational Medal for all this? I have never received it. I say this without indignation — even without sorrow. I merely make the statement.
Yet, my system was really a very beautiful system; a tiny batch of eggs would arrive from Ceylon, or Sumatra, or Africa; when taken from cold storage and placed in the herbarium they would presently hatch; the caterpillars were fed with their accustomed food-plant — a few leaves being taken from cold storage every day for them — they would pass through their three or four moulting periods, cease feeding in due time, transform into the chrysalis stage, and finally appear in all the splendour and magnificence of butterfly or moth.
The great glass flying-cage was now alive with superb moths and butterflies, flitting, darting, fluttering among the flowering bushes or feeding along the sandy banks of the brook which flowed through the flying-cage, bordered by thickets of scented flowers. And it was like looking at a meteoric shower of winged jewels, where the huge metallic-blue Morphos from South America flapped and sailed, and the orange and gold and green Ornithoptera from Borneo pursued their majestic, bird-like flight — where big, glittering Papilios flashed through the bushes or alighted nervously to feed for a few moments on jasmine and phlox, and where the slowly flopping Heliconians winged their way amid the denser tangles of tropical vegetation.
Nothing like this flying-cage had ever before been seen in New York; thousands and thousands of men, women, and children thronged the lawn about the flying-cage all day long.
By night, also, the effect was wonderful; the electric lights among the foliage broke out; the great downy-winged moths, which had been asleep all day while the butterflies flitted through the sunshine, now came out to display their crimson or peacock-spotted wings, and the butterflies folded their wings and went to bed for the night.
The public was enchanted, the authorities of the Bronx proud and delighted; all apparently was happiness and harmony. Except that nobody offered me the Carnegie medal.
I was sitting one morning in my office, which, as I have said, separated the offices of Dr. Quint and Professor Boomly, when there came a loud rapping on my door, and, at my invitation, Dr. Quint bustled in — a little, meagre, excitable, near-sighted man with pointed mustaches and a fleck of an imperial smudging his lower lip.
“Last week,” he began angrily, “young Jones arrived from Singapore bringing me the eggs of Erebia astarte, the great Silver Moon butterfly. Attempts to destroy them have been made. Last night I left them in a breeding-cage on my desk. Has anybody been in there?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “What has happened?”
“I found an ichneumon fly in the cage yesterday!” he shouted; “and this morning the eggs have either shrunk to half their size or else the eggs of another species have been secretly substituted for them and the Silver Moon eggs stolen! Has he been in there?”
“Who?” I asked, pretending to misunderstand.
“He!” demanded Quint fiercely. “If he has I’ll kill him some day.”
He meant his one-time friend, Dr. Boomly. Alas!
“For heaven’s sake, why are you two perpetually squabbling?” I asked wearily. “You used to be inseparable friends. Why can’t you make up?”
“Because I’ve come to know him. That’s why! I have unmasked this — this Borgia — this Machiavelli — this monster of duplicity! Matters are approaching a point where something has got to be done short of murder. I’ve stood all his envy and jealousy and cheap imputations and hints and contemptible innuendoes that I’m going to—”
He stopped short, glaring at the doorway, which had suddenly been darkened by the vast bulk of Professor Boomly — a figure largely abdominal but majestic — like the massive butt end of an elephant. For the rest, he had a rather insignificant and peevish face and a melancholy mustache that usually looked damp.
“Mr. Smith,” he said to me, in his thin, high, sarcastic voice — a voice incongruously at variance with his bulk— “has anybody had the infernal impudence to enter my room and nose about my desk?”
“Yes, I have!” replied Quint excitedly. “I’ve been in your room. What of it? What about it?”
Boomly permitted his heavy-lidded eyes to rest on Quint for a moment, then, turning to me:
“I want a patent lock put on my door. Will you speak to Professor Farrago?”
“I want one put on mine, too!” cried Quint. “I want a lock put on my door which will keep envious, dull-minded, mentally broken-down, impertinent, and fat people out of my office!”
Boomly flushed heavily:
“Fat?” he repeated, glaring at Quint. “Did you say ‘fat?’”
“Yes, fat — intellectually and corporeally fat! I want that kind of individual kept out. I don’t trust them. I’m afraid of them. Their minds are atrophied. They are unmoral, possibly even criminal! I don’t want them in my room snooping about to see what I have and what I’m doing. I don’t want them to sneak in, eaten up with jealousy and envy, and try to damage the eggs of the Silver Moon butterfly because the honour and glory of hatching them would probably procure for me the Carnegie Educational Medal—”
“Why, you little, dried-up, protoplasmic atom!” burst out Boomly, his face suffused with passion, “Are you insinuating that I have any designs on your batch of eggs?”
“It’s my belief,” shouted Quint, “that you want that medal yourself, and that you put an ichneumon fly in my breeding-cage in hopes it would sting the eggs of the Silver Moon.”
“If you found an ichneumon fly there,” retorted Boomly, “you probably hatched it in mistake for a butterfly!” And he burst into a peal of contemptuous laughter, but his little, pig-like eyes under the heavy lids were furious.
“I now believe,” said Quint, trembling with rage, “that you have criminally substituted a batch of common Plexippus eggs for the Silver Moon eggs I had in my breeding-cage! I believe you are sufficiently abandoned to do it!”
“Ha! Ha!” retorted Boomly scornfully. “I don’t believe you ever had anything in your breeding-cage except a few clothes moths and cockroaches!”
Quint began to dance:
“You did take them!” he yelled; “and you left me a bunch of milkweed butterflies’ eggs! Give me my eggs or I shall violently assault you!”
“Assault your grandmother!” remarked Boomly, with unscientific brevity. “What do you suppose I want of your ridiculous eggs? Haven’t I enough eggs of Heliconius salome hatching to give me the Carnegie medal if I want it?”
“The Silver Moon eggs are unique!” cried Quint. “You know it! You know that if they hatch, pupate, and become perfect insects that I shall certainly be awarded—”
“You’ll be awarded the Matteawan medal,” remarked Boomly with venom.
Quint ran at him with a half-suppressed howl, his momentum carrying him halfway up Professor Boomly’s person. Then, losing foothold, he fell to the floor and began to kick in the general direction of Professor Boomly. It was a sorrowful sight to see these two celebrated scientists panting, mauling, scuffling and punching each other around the room, tables and chairs and scrapbaskets flying in every direction, and I mounted on the window-sill horrified, speechless, trying to keep clear of the revolving storm centre.
“Where are my Silver Moon eggs!” screamed Dr. Quint. “Where are my eggs that Jones brought me from Singapore — you entomological robber! You’ve got ’em somewhere! If you don’t give ’em up I’ll find means to destroy you!”
“You insignificant pair of maxillary palpi!” bellowed Professor Boomly, galloping after Dr. Quint as he dodged around my desk. “I’ll pull off those antennæ you call whiskers if I can get hold of em—”
Dr. Quint’s threatened mustaches bristled as he fled before the elephantine charge of Professor Boomly — once again around my desk, then out into the hall, where I heard the door of his office slam, and Boomly, gasping, panting, breathing vengeance outside, and vowing to leave Quint quite whiskerless when he caught him.
It was a painful scene for scientists to figure in or to gaze upon. Profoundly shocked and upset, I locked up the anthropological department offices and went out into the Park, where the sun was shining and a gentle June wind stirred the trees.
Too completely upset to do any more work that day, I wandered about amid the gaily dressed crowds at hazard; sometimes I contemplated the monkeys; sometimes gazed sadly upon the seals. They dashed and splashed and raced round and round their tank, or crawled up on the rocks, craned their wet, sleek necks, and barked — houp! houp! houp!
For luncheon I went over to the Rolling Stone Restaurant. There was a very pretty girl there — an unusually pretty girl — or perhaps it was one of those days on which every girl looked unusually pretty to me. There are such days.
