Complete weird tales of.., p.1343
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1343
Here, on the polished, three-ply, antique Sheraton table, stood the only candles in the house, two of them, and their soft light glimmered on a wonderful sideboard — a masterpiece of plum-bloom mahogany exquisitely inlaid with dim, golden woods. Above hung two portraits.
“Gilbert Stuart,” nodded Jones mechanically.
The Professor made a courteous gesture in the affirmative, and his slender daughters looked up somewhat solemnly at their great-grandparents.
There was no cloth on the table; an ancient square of lace lay in the centre. A fat black wench served them “hawg and hominy,” home wine, corn-pone oranges, guavas, and bananas. And Jones thought he ought to cease eating, but simply couldn’t; nor could Scott, who fairly groaned within himself as he ate, fearful of totally impoverishing his hosts with such an appetite.
And after dinner Scott formally escorted Chrysis ta the veranda, and Jones took out Cisthene.
The ancient custom of not smoking in the presence of ladies still prevailed at Castle Place: the Professor took his guests to the west porch, seated them, and produced three new cob pipes and a jug of brandy, 1840.
And here they sat in courteous conversation until the pipes burned! out and the tiny glasses were empty.
And what interested and touched the young fellows was this man’s perfect confidence in them, his simplicity, his innocence of the world — for his travels had been only as far north as the travels of the Confederate army.
Of the world’s progress since the war, of the times he lived in, he knew very little. He read the Verbena Herald only when it was sent to him wrapped about some humble purchase; but the purchases of the Castle family were very few and far between. Any surplus from their slender means was invariably used for the yearly Commencement Ball. Because, he explained, it was proper and fitting that his family keep in touch with the celebrated institution of learning at Jasmine Inlet, wherein he had served his time in the cause of education. Besides, it was his daughters’ only social opportunity.
“Otherwise, sir, I should have had this veranda repaired, had not the funds available been, requiahed for the yearly social demands made upon my daughters,” explained the Professor without embarrassment.
Jones acquiesced gravely:
“This is a fine old place,” he said, glancing meaningly at Scott. “In fact, sir, it has seldom been my privilege to see such a beautiful collection of furniture under one roof.”
“I am attached to it all,” said the Professor simply.
“Are all the rooms still furnished with the original furniture?” Scott asked.
“I believe so, sir.”
Jones said casually:
“Apart from the sentimental value you naturally attach to these very beautiful examples of early eighteenth century furniture, you doubtless are aware of how valuable your collection is?”
The old man looked up inquiringly:
“Sir?”
“The furniture at Castle Place,” repeated Jones, “is of considerable historical importance. Collectors would consider many of these pieces almost priceless.”
“Do you mean, sir, that the furniture here is of any particular value to anybody except my own family and myse’f?”
Jones smiled:
“Why, yes. There are thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of furniture here that I myself have seen. I don’t know how much more this big house contains. But I know this, that the pair of Stuart portraits over the dining-room sideboard are alone worth thousands of dollars.”
There was a long silence. After a while Jones said quietly:
“Were you not aware of this?”
The Professor lifted his delicate face. It seemed unusually pale.
“No, sir,” he said, “I was not aware of the pecuniary value of my property.”
Another long silence fell; then at length the Professor rose with a slight and graceful inclination to his guests:
“Shall we have the honour of joining the ladies, gentlemen?”
On their carved and stately beds, under canopies from which faded brocades hung in tatters, the young men slept profoundly in their old-time chambers.
The Southern moon looked in, courteously, to see that all was well with them. All was well. Each stately chair stood on guard as though aware of the hospitality devolving upon it: the long, deeply carved sofas opened wide arms between overflowing horns of plenty; creamy moonlight carpeted the floor.
Only the scented silence knew what dim, sweet ghosts entered, lingered, and glided away from those moonlit rooms where two sleeping Yankees lay.
But it was as though Jones divined their presence, for he lay sideways on his lavender-tinctured pillow, smiling in his dreams; and Scott’s boyish head was pillowed lightly on one arm as though it had been another arm, more slenderly rounded, perhaps.
On the morrow they had not departed. They pretended to each other that they meant to go. A week later they no longer even pretended. But the week after that their vacation would end. Jones so informed Cisthene, and Scott told Chrysis. Both girls expressed their regrets very sweetly.
They breakfasted late the day fixed for their departure, and they were a trifle ashamed, not to say chagrined, to find the Professor reading on the veranda and his daughters gone at dawn with horse and hound and horn.
“Not literally, gentlemen,” explained the Professor mildly, “for my daughters use a metal whistle and not a hunting horn.”
A few minutes later, while Jones and Scott, accoutred for forest work, were pocketing notebooks, compass, and an assortment of vials, bottles, boxes, and unusual looking instruments, the Professor, who had been watching them, said:
“I have to thank you for the information which you so courteously gave me in regard to the furniture of this house.”
He looked down at his worn volume, gravely, touching the yellowed pages with delicate fingers:
“It was, I must admit, a ve’y great surprise to me, gentlemen. I had never befo’ given any thought to such matters.”
“The growing appreciation of old-time art is very noticeable in New York,” said Jones.
“And the commercial value of such objects doubles every few years,” added Scott.
The Professor’s absent eyes rested on the ancient oaks that ringed the house. His revery remained unbroken until Jones, moving gingerly, picked up and belted his light wood axe. Then he glanced up gravely:
“Young gentlemen,” he said, as though his thoughts had been lingering about his chair of Greek at Verbena University, “the subject in question admits of but one interpretation. What the gods have given should be used foh the peace and happiness and material wellbeing of the living — not as memorials of the past, not as monuments to the dead.... I shall dispose of my furniture.... I have so informed my daughters.”
“It’s too bad, isn’t it?” remarked Jones, an hour later, jotting down caliper measurements in his notebook.
Scott had discovered a borer unknown to him, crawling on the bark of a blackjack.
“He can chew the damn tree for all I care,” he muttered, “but I’d better bottle him, I suppose.” And, answering Jones’ remark while immersing the reluctant beetle in alcohol: “Sure, it’s tough on such people to part with their heirlooms. But what else is there for them to do?”
“Nothing, I suppose.... Unless some wealthy idiot came along and married one of the twins.... Chrysis, for instance.”
“Why Chrysis?” asked Scott, looking around. “Why not Cisthene? Isn’t a wandering and wealthy idiot as likely to marry her as Chrysis?”
“She wouldn’t,” said Jones. “She’s not that sort.”
“Well, is Chrysis? Why do you suppose she is mercenary?”
“Did I say mercenary? Chrysis could fall in love with some wealthy ass, couldn’t she?”
“Why the devil do you assume that Chrysis could fall in love with an ass of any sort?” demanded Scott, hotly. “Your speculations concerning her are unwarranted.”
“I only said—”
“I know what you said! And it’s presumptuous!”
“Presumptuous P’
“Yes, it is! And it’s tiresome. If you want to speculate, speculate about Cisthene.”
“Off the handle again,” commented Jones.
“Why not? Yes, I am irritated. I talked to Chrysis last evening, and I know what sort of girl she is. She wouldn’t marry for money; she wouldn’t marry an ass. She is a very wonderful young girl, Jones — aside from her charm and beauty.”
“But why get mad about it?”
“I don’t! Only it irritates me. If anybody is likely to marry an ass for his money it’s her sister, I imagine.”
“You never had any imagination,” retorted Jones, warmly. “And you don’t know what you’re talking about. It happens that I conversed with Cisthene last evening, and am perfectly able to form an estimate of the character of perhaps the most remarkable girl I ever met in all my life. And let me inform you right now; Cisthene is as incapable of marrying unless she was in love as you are of falling in love!”
“What!”
“As you are incapable of falling in love,” repeated Jones.
“Why am I incapable of falling in love?” demanded Scott, angrily.
“You’re too fond of yourself.”
“Do you think so?”
“I know it.”
“That,” scowled Scott, “shows how much you know about anything! I’m not only capable of falling in love, but I’ve been seriously thinking of doing it.”
“With whom?” inquired Jones incredulously.
“With a girl who is, perhaps, the most rare and unusual example of her sex that I have ever encountered.”
“Do you mean Chrysis?”
“Why not?” retorted Scott, fiercely.
“No reason,” said Jones, with misleading mildness, “except I doubt that she’d return the compliment.”
“That may be. I never saw any man good enough for such a girl. Maybe she wouldn’t bother with men like me — or you. But,” he muttered, shaking his bottled beetle, “we’ll see.”
“You are going to ask her!”
“I don’t know.... I can’t keep my mind on this beetle, or on anything for thinking of her. That’s the truth, Jones. It — it hit me like lightning; that’s what it did to me!” he said, gesticulating with his bottled beetle. “It just happened. I didn’t know what was happening to me. Why,” he demanded dramatically, “why should this happen to me this way? How could I dream that I’d ever come down into this God-forsaken corner of the world, after borers and fungi, and be sandbagged by — by Love within the first few minutes!”
Jones came over to where his comrade was standing:
“Are you really serious?”
“I seem to be. I didn’t even realize I was serious, until this squabble with you opened my eyes.”
“I’m sorry,” said Jones.
“Well, you needn’t be. I’m glad we had a row; I’m glad I know how I feel about Chrysis. I’m in love with her; that’s what has happened to me. And I’m going to stay here until I tell her so.”
“Good luck to you,” said Jones respectfully.
They shook hands; Scott jiggled the alcohol and gazed absently upon the defunct beetle; Jones wandered off, a prey to uneasy wonder.
For what had happened to Scott might happen to him. Had it happened already, stealthily, without any suspicion on his part?
He examined himself honestly and didn’t think it had.
“No, I’m not in love with Cisthene,” he thought with a sigh — of relief, perhaps; and perhaps he sighed because he was not in love. Young men are odd.
“Evidently,” he said to himself, “I am not in love with Cisthene.... But I don’t feel like working, either.... I wonder if she has returned.”
Half an hour later he realized that he had wandered in a semicircle through the woods, for here was the orange grove, and beyond it rose the weather stained portico of Castle Place.
A negro was crossing the open space leading two sweating saddle horses; a troop of nondescript and muddy dogs trudged at his heels, tongues lolling. And on the ancient horse block sat Cisthene and Chrysis, their riding habits spotted with marl and streaked with white dust from the shell road.
“Where is Mr. Scott?” asked Chrysis naïvely, as Jones came up, hat in hand.
Jones had been looking at Cisthene. And suddenly he realized that he loved her. And, with the descent of a great and sudden love upon the defenceless heart of Jones, there arose within that young man’s brain a great and sudden cunning.
He said to Chrysis:
“Scott is down by the stream in the woods where the blackjacks grow. He has discovered a most remarkable beetle — a creature unknown to him. Would you like to see it?”
“Very much,” said Chrysis innocently.
“Then I’ll go back and get it—” He turned and looked deliberately into the blue eyes of Cisthene. The eyes of Cisthene seemed to be perfectly guileless. Judge for yourself, however, for upon the cheeks of that maiden a slight flush came, and, still looking at Jones, she said:
“Why not walk down there yourself, Chrysis? It’s only a step.”
Upon the fair cheek of Chrysis the faintest tinge of rose settled. She looked silently at her sister, then smiled upon Jones:
“Yes,” she said, “I’ll walk over myse’f and look at that interesting beetle. And perhaps I may discover another one for Mr. Scott.”
She went, gracefully, lightly; her sister looked after her; Jones marked her progress with thumping heart. His doom was upon him. He felt it, knew it, and derived from the knowledge alternate jabs and thrills of ecstasy and gloom.
Cisthene, seated on the horse block, waited very courteously to the limit of her youthful patience. Then she said:
“What was it you desired to say to me alone, Mr. Jones?”
But he simply couldn’t say it that way, here in the full sunshine, and her father reading on the veranda above, and a row of pickaninnies staring at them from the quarters and sucking their dusky thumbs.
“It — it was — concerned — the — your — your father’s furniture,” he stammered.
“Yes?”
“It’s — it’s very handsome furniture — very valuable—”
She shook her pretty head:
“Father told us what you had said. He has offered to part with the furniture — if Chrysis and I wish it.... But we couldn’t do it. We have talked it over this morning.... We couldn’t do it.”
“But your father—”
“I know, Mr. Jones. I know what this house and everything in it means to him. No, Chrysis and I could not do it.”
“And yet,” he said, “your father’s reasoning was logical and just.”
“Are logic and justice the only things in life, Mr. Jones?” She lifted her blue eyes to his: “Love reasons more truly,” she said.
“You love him too dearly to accept such a sacrifice from him,” said Jones under his breath.
“Of course. What is there that money could give to Chrysis and to me that could console us for such a loss to him?”
Jones’ heart began to cut up, and for a moment he decided not to try to say anything.
Cisthene sat very still on the horse block, gazing into space.
“I wonder if you’d let me t-tell you s-s-something?” he stammered.
She looked up, inquiringly, her lips already parting to grant his request, when a something in the eyes of Jones checked her.
She sat motionless, stiller than before. As for Jones, he appeared to be petrified.
The throbbing seconds raced away; sunlight set ruddy threads gleaming in her hair and fell on her shabby riding skirt and on her slender hands clasped tightly in her lap.
Her head still remained lifted; a quick little pulse was beating in the delicate, white throat. But her eyes closed.
“Cisthene!”
She rose as a dreamer stirs at the sound of a familiar name, turned, slowly mounted the veranda steps, and passing her father as though unconscious of his presence, entered the dim house.
Jones found her in the parlour, sitting at one end of a sofa, her fair head bowed in her arms.
He gazed at her for a moment, then turned and walked out to where her father was sitting.
“I don’t know what you will think of me, sir,” he said, “but I’m so deeply in love with Cisthene that I scarcely know what I’m saying. Do you think you could possibly give me permission to pay my addresses to your daughter?”
The Professor had closed his book and bowed his head on one thin wrist.
For a long while he sat there, motionless, listening to Jones’ account of himself, his family, his profession, his fortune, and his ambitions. There was no mistaking the boy’s candour, his earnestness, his frank but youthfully exaggerated self-depreciation.
“I am not worthy of her,” he said: “no man ever could be. I know that, sir. But if — —”
“Yes—” said the elder man quietly, “‘if!’... The answer to all riddles halts there.... ‘If!’... And ‘if she could care for you — I should not — interfere.... My inclination is to like you.... It is perhaps more than an inclination. So— ‘if my daughter cares to listen to you—”
He passed his frail hand over his eyes, and let it remain there.
After a moment Jones rose quietly and went into the dim parlour. Cisthene still sat there, her head on her arm, a slim figure in the dusk, amid the stiff shapes of the old-time furniture.
In the vague, gracious half-light of that old and formal room, Jones dropped on one knee at the little feet of Cisthene. And she sat upright to listen to him.
And after she had listened, and when the room had become very still again, she bent forward slightly and placed her hands lightly on the shoulders of Jones. It was the very ghost of contact.
“Could you care for me?” he whispered.
“Yes.”
Down in the woods it was different. Chrysis, cheeks flushed, blue eyes hostile, stood looking sideways at Scott.
“I reckon,” she said, “it’s your Yankee bringing up, but it is not the custom here.”
“What on earth am I to do?” asked Scott, piteously. “I fell in love? with you and I thought I ought to tell “Why ought you to tell me, Mr. Scott?”
