Complete weird tales of.., p.1328
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1328
“Not if you don’t,” he replied pleasantly.
“I usually read after the dishes are done,” she said in a low voice, looking away from him.
He made a slight and amiable inclination.
So she led the way to her room, with its faded wall paper, limp sash curtains, its painted rocking-chair with the Paisley shawl lying over one arm. He looked about him at the single bookcase, the two broken vases full of dry immortelles, the pale photograph of her mother.
“You may have the chair,” she said. “I always lie on the bed when I read.”
She picked up a volume of memoirs at random, took the Paisley shawl, crossed to the narrow bed and laid her slender length across the quilt, pulling a pillow under her head and the shawl over her knees. Then, without another glance at him, she opened her book and fixed her eyes on the first page.
She had been reading for a minute or two before he bestirred himself, went to the bookcase and took out a volume at random.
Then he seated himself in her mother’s little rocking-chair and tried to read and keep one eye on her at the same time. This being impossible, his reading progressed slowly. But her gaze never left the printed page.
It is true she did not turn the page. Perhaps she read slowly.
A frost-stiffened wasp, crawling on the pane, diverted his attention; the little room itself was subtly disturbing to his thoughts, and he kept glancing around at its pathetic details, mute revelations of this young girl’s life and circumstances.
When again he looked in her direction he found the grey eyes intently fixed on him. Which, without any reason, startled him.
“Does my being here disturb you?” he asked.
“I ought to tell you,” she said slowly, “that I have told you a lie.”
“What!” he exclaimed.
“I told you that I usually read after my dishes are done. That is not true. I read at night, usually.”
“Well, that isn’t a very serious lie, is it?” he asked.
“The truth is,” she continued, “I thought that if you came up here — perhaps you might talk to me.... That is why I asked you to come — and why I came myself — not to read.”
If he had any inclination to smile he did not betray it. Never had he seen youthful eyes so wistfully earnest.
“I’d much rather talk to you than read,” he said with emphasis. “Shall I?”
“I’d be so glad if you would — unless your book interests you—”
He said the book was not as interesting as she was. “Because,” she went on, “you are the first man that has ever come here who reminds me of my real father.”
“Do I resemble him?”
“No. I mean to say that your voice, and manners — to me — your way of speaking — recall him.”
“I see. I am the general sort of man that your father was — that his friends were. Is that it?”
“I think so.”
“But other men of my sort sometimes come here hunting and fishing, don’t they?”
“I have never seen any.”
“That’s odd.” The keen expression flickered in his eyes; he turned his gaze on the window, carelessly, saying:
“Your stepfather, Mr. Wildrick, is a guide, isn’t he?” Her answer was so long in coming that he turned to look at her. She said:
“My stepfather has warned me not to answer questions from strangers.”
Her calm, level gaze met his: he thought he had never seen such honest eyes in any woman.
After a moment’s silence she said:
“Are you a warden?”
“No,” he said pleasantly.
“I thought you might be. We have to be careful.”
“Certainly,” he returned quietly. “Also, I imagine you have to be on the watch for excise officers and revenue men.”
She nodded.
“I am neither of these,” he assured her gaily. “Will you take my word for it?”
She hesitated for a moment.
“Yes,” she said, “I believe your word.”
He opened the book on his knee, ran over its pages absently.
“Your stepfather keeps a dog, does he not?”
“Yes.”
“A hound?”
“We call it a collie. You know, of course, what it is.” The young man laughed.
“How,” he asked, “do you ever manage to get any provisions in here? I fancy you have to live on ‘mountain beef’ mostly.”
She nodded.
“Are you not afraid of the local game protector?”
“He’s out hunting with my stepfather now,” she replied indifferently.
“I see. That’s a very comfortable arrangement, isn’t it?”
She shrugged her shoulders; then, dropping her clasped hands back under her head, turned her face toward him.
“Do you live in New York?” she asked.
“Yes — my home is there. Part of the year I am in Albany.”
“There are a great many theatres in New York, aren’t there?”
“About ten million,” he admitted, amused.
She smiled, too, then a very deep and serious sigh escaped her.
“You have been to New York?” he inquired.
“When I was a child.”
“Not since?”
“No, not for many, many years.”
“But,” he said laughingly, “that was not such a very long time ago. You are not more than eighteen?”
“I am twenty-four,” she replied unsmiling. “It was a long time ago — a long, long time.”
“But,” he insisted, a trifle uneasy at what he was discovering in her face, “you surely have been — somewhere — since then. Haven’t you?”
She shook her head. And when she turned her grey eyes on him once more, he saw plainly what he thought he had seen in them — the tragedy of youth, dying of its own solitude.
Neither spoke for a long while; the sun glowed in spots on shabby carpet and faded wall; the maudlin wasp crawled and buzzed and fell sprawling, only to begin its aimless, stiff-legged journey again. From the woods came the far screaming of jays.
Without knowing why, he abruptly rose, laid aside his book, and walked over to the bed. She lay there, motionless, looking up at him; and in her young eyes he saw a very hell of solitude.
“Shall we be friends?” he asked pleasantly. “Or have you already too many?”
She did not seem to understand him.
“How old did you say you are?” he asked. “Twenty-four.”
“I am thirty-one. Our ages are very perfectly suited for the best sort of friendship.”
She made no response.
“My name,” he continued, “is — well, it’s John — and then some. I’ll tell you the rest — tomorrow — or next day. Will John do for the present?”
She did not seem to comprehend what he was saying. “Will John do for a beginning — Helen?”
“Did you wish me to — speak that way to you?” she asked in a curious, still voice.
“Yes — if you’ll let me speak that way to you.”
Her eyes never left his, but she made no reply.
“Shall I talk to you? Somehow, I have an idea you’d like to be talked to. And what shall I say to you? Shall I tell you about New York — and theatres, and crowded streets, and women in pretty gowns—”
She half rose on one elbow and rested so, breathless; and he looked into the flushed face, astonished at its sudden passionate transformation.
“I — I saw New York — I saw all that — as a child — what you describe,” she stammered. “I saw it — I was part of it — part of — all that. I wish to be part of it again.”
From her lips, scarcely moving, the breath came quickly and unevenly, and her eyes were the colour of purple iris bloom.
“I can’t forget it,” she went on unsteadily. “If I could forget it I might stand it here — better — stand the stillness — the dreadful woods — that terrible river — and the men who come here—”
“The men?”
“Yes, drunk or sober — even the game warden — Hal Glade — and the shoe clerk from Lynxville — who does the same thing—”
“What thing?”
“They never let me alone when they come—”
“What is it they do?”
“Try to get me — to be — what I — I don’t want to be!”
“I see,” he said coolly.
“Some of them say they want to marry me, too — but nobody seems to care what men do in these mountains!
There’s a law for deer, and partridges, and trout — but none for men. They can even kill each other — and they dot I wish I were out of here — or dead! I — I wish you liked me — and would take me away!” she cried out fiercely.
Astonished at the crude frankness of the outburst, he had seated himself on the bed’s edge, where she lay supported on one elbow, her eyes and cheeks brilliant.
“You’re the only one I’ve ever seen that I could go with,” she muttered, turning her head on the pillow and staring out of the window.
There was nothing to see out there except wintry sunshine and naked tree tops, and a jay, intensely blue against the hemlocks.
She said, under her breath, still staring at the sky:
“Unless somebody takes me I can’t get away. I’ve tried, but they always catch me. It’s twenty miles of open and then ten more. Some friend of Jim’s always sees me.”
For a while she lay silent; the young man beside gazed gravely at the floor.
Presently she said:
“Some man will hit me and slam me around some day and get me that way. It’s the only way anybody can get me — unless you want me to go away with you.”
“Don’t talk that way,” he said in a low voice.
She turned an expressionless face toward him.
“I am only saying what is true. Unless they beat me insensible some day, they can’t have me.... I’ve often wished one of them would do it — and kill me by mistake. They’ve come near it.”
“You mean to say that men have hurt you?”
“I’ve been black and blue from head to foot.”
“Here? In your own house?”
“Anywhere. I have been carrying a knife—” She flung aside her apron and he saw a hunting knife strapped flat on her thigh.
“Does Wildrick know?” he asked quietly.
“Yes. Whoever gets me will have to marry me, or Jim will kill him. It isn’t that. I want to go away. The mountains and the river — you don’t understand — but they are terrible! And the silence — and everywhere only the sky and the trees.... And nobody — nobody—”
The feverish flush burnt her cheeks; her hands clenched and unclenched against the book on her breast; her superb hair, loosened, framed face and shoulders.
“It is the first time,” she said, “that I have ever heard my own voice saying these things; but all day, all night I have thought them. I had to say them aloud to you.... You do not care to take me away with you, do you?”
And as he remained silent, studying the floor, she raised herself on one arm, swung to her feet, and, walking to the little bookshelf, replaced the volume she had taken. Then she moved listlessly toward the stairs, adjusting her disordered hair.
“Wait a minute,” he said.
She halted and stood looking at him, her fingers still busy with the splendid masses of her ruddy hair.
“If I take you away,” he said, “what then?”
“I don’t know.”
“Would you expect me to marry you?”
“No — I don’t suppose you would.”
“Would you care?”
She shook her head.
“You merely wish to get away?”
“Yes.”
“Any man would do?”
“I have never asked another man.”
“Why did you ask me?”
“I don’t know: I must have been crazy.”
“It wasn’t because you — thought you might — care for me?”
“Yes; I could.”
“Care very much?”
Still busy with her hair, she lifted her head and regarded him with the clearest and saddest eyes he had ever seen.
“I think,” she said, “that such a man as you could make of any woman whatever you wished.”
“Suppose,” he said, “I take you — honestly.”
“How?”
“Not marry you — and not — bother you.”
“You could never bother me. I know that.”
“Other men have.”
She dropped her hands and her hair sagged again. For a few moments’ silence she stood in the doorway, eyes remote, her sensitive lips resting in troubled curves upon each other.
“I thought perhaps you wanted me,” she said at last. “All men seem to.... And you offered to come into the kitchen.... I suppose I am half crazy — with loneliness and fear — of the woods and the river—”
She leaned wearily against the doorway, one slim hand half framing her face, one finger worrying her scarlet lips.
“I thought, for a moment, there was a chance for me,” she said. “And as it’s got to be some man I — had rather it were you.”
He rose quietly and walked over to where she stood. “If it were to be any woman,” he said, “I had rather it were to be you. But — love is not bora this way.”
“Love?”
“Is not that what you expect of a man?”
She shook her pretty head vaguely.
“No; I only hoped ftfr — kindness. And would have given for it whatever you wished.”
“Love?”
“I don’t know. I could try.”
“You mean you would try to love me if I took you away and were kind to you?”
“I should try,” she repeated, her clear gaze meeting his. “I do not think it would be difficult, if you took me away and were kind to me.”
“And you do not care whether I marry you or not?”
“I — care. But — whatever you wish is better than to stay here and be beaten insensible some day — whether or not he marries me or Jim kills him for not doing it.... But you are not going to take me — are you?”
“I don’t know what I am going to do,” he said.
After a few moments’ silence she turned and went downstairs. He continued on along the passageway to his room, where he repacked his kit. Then he took his rifle and suit-case with him downstairs and out to the barn; harnessed the horse to the wagon, backed it out into the sunshine, and flung into it his own belongings.
The girl was nowhere in sight; in the frosty, sunlit silence nothing stirred except the grey-hawk’s shadow floating on the ground.
“Helen!” he called.
The river ledges echoed her name for a few seconds, then the babble of the stream filled the silence once more.
So he went up to her room, took the tattered, faded quilt from the bed; and into it he rolled her few possessions — books, photographs, Paisley shawl, scanty wardrobe, and carried everything to the wagon.
There remained the rocking-chair: he went up and got that, placed it in the wagon, and then seated himself on the chopping block.
Presently he rose, cut a sapling, sharpened the point, walked out to a brush-heap, dragged the dead branches aside, and began to probe in the soft earth.
When he had located what he was after, he went to the barn, returned with a spade, and dug out the head of a freshly killed doe.
Leaving it lying there, he sauntered about the house and barn, probing here and there with the pointed stick, pausing now and then to dig. Sometimes he disinterred nothing, sometimes a dozen bottles containing beer or whiskey. And whatever he dug out he left lying beside the excavation.
Pausing to rest upon his spade before entering upon fresh exertions, he glanced around him and saw the girl, wearing a heavy ulster, coming slowly along the road. But it was only when she turned the angle of the bam that she discovered the harnessed horse and wagon.
He saw her stop stock still, then turn slowly in his direction. Limply and with lagging steps she approached him; the hand he took and held seemed lifeless and icy cold.
“You are going?” she said.
“Yes. I was waiting to tell you.”
“Good-bye,” she whispered, in a voice so low that he only saw her lips move.
“Are you not going with me, Helen?”
She lifted a pale, incredulous face, gazed at him a moment, then slowly turned and looked at the wagon. And saw her own possessions in it lying beside his suitcase and rifle.
She seemed stunned; and when, her cold little hands still resting in his, he led her to the wagon, aided her up, and seated her, she never uttered a word but sat motionless and in silence as he sprang in beside her, gathered the reins, and guided, the horse out into the sandy road.
And there Wildrick leaped from the gully brambles, caught the horse’s head, threw him back on his haunches, and menaced them both with levelled rifle.
“Been a-diggin’, hey!” he shouted. “You poor damn, sneakin’ thing! And what the hell have you dug up that you aim to squeal about? Hey?” And turning in fury on the girl: “Ah, you dirty little slut — showin’ up your own fambly, damn you! I’ll put a load o’ buck into you fust! You lyin’ little cat—”
“No good, Wildrick,” interrupted the young man calmly. “I found the stuff myself. Put up that gun! No, it’s no use. They’ll only send you to the chair instead of Clinton Prison. There are twenty of my men watching you now. Drop it. It’s no good.” Wildrick’s eyes blazed, but his lantern features had grown chalky.
“And who the hell be you,” he roared, “with your twenty men bluff and the damned cheek of you?”
“I happen to be the new State Commissioner for Conservation,” said the young man coolly.
“John Burling!” yelled Wildrick incredulously; and believed it at the same instant. “Gor’ a-mighty!” he stammered. “Is them your wardens lyin’ out and drivin’ me back here! I knowed it was some dirty trick. And my dog’s dead on Lynx Peak — and my party — God knows where!”
He paused, jaws agape, slowly realizing that what had threatened him was now accomplished — that the new Commissioner had kept his word; and that Wildrick’s Dump was already but a legend.
“Wildrick,” said the young man quietly, “you had better run’ for it. The Canada line isn’t far. It’s a sporting chance. Take it. But don’t ever try to come back here. Stand clear, now!”
