Complete weird tales of.., p.1351
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1351
“After all,” she said, “I am your housekeeper.”
“And the keepers of the house shall tremble!” But Rosalie did not. Maybe because she knew that a little further along in that divine and awful chapter was written: “And desire shall fail.” But maybe she didn’t know it — didn’t even know enough to tremble. Few do. The environs of the Pit are meadows full of flowers. That is where Proserpine got hers. Daffodils still grow there, and many are they that pick them.
“Certainly,” said Brown, with easy confidence, “you are housekeeper at Sapadillo Manor.”
“Is that its name?”
“Yes. It just occurred to me. Do you think it an incongruous name for a portable bungalow?”
She was doubtful; and she was so pretty when serious, and so distractingly pretty when not — as for instance now, as she looked up under her long lashes and laughed —
“You don’t like the name!” he said.
“Not, perhaps, for a portable bungalow. A manor house ought to be permanent and — and rather stately, oughtn’t it?”
“We’ll be funny about it,” he said. “We’ll call it Terrapin Towers.”
She seemed to think the suggestion mildly witty. “Well, then,” he said, “you name it!”
“I? That would not do. Housekeepers don’t christen gentlemen’s country estates.”
“Please think of something!”
She considered for a while in silence, her teeth worrying the page of the magazine. When she had nibbled at it sufficiently, he had concluded that she was an unusually interesting as well as ornamental girl; and by that time she had not thought of a name.
“I think,” she said, “a name will occur to us when we first see the place.”
“Nothing ever occurs to me,” he said. “I have no imagination.”
“You seem to.”
“I?”
“Yes. Haven’t you already in your imagination created a vast, tropical plantation out of the land you have acquired?”
“No,” he said honestly, “I haven’t. I got as far as picturing Sapadillo City to myself, and when it began to resemble St. Augustine, along came the foreman of the gang I sent down, and knocked the last glimmer of romance out of it — and out of me.”
She sat very quiet: Brown had not gilded for her the pill she was to swallow. He had been honest with her: he told her all he knew about the place, which was meagre information. She had paled slightly when he included snakes in the scenery; and the remaining assets did not seem very attractive to her.
“One thing I do know,” he said. “The bungalow is all right. You won’t have to go out of it, you know.” She nodded.
“All you have to do,” he said, “is to saunter about with a bunch of keys. Isn’t that about all?”
She lifted her violet eyes, a little distressed:
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m afraid that the duties of a housekeeper are not very clear to me.”
“Oh, that’s all right. If there’s anything to do, you’ll see that somebody does it. And that’s all there is about a housekeeper’s business.”
“I — I mean to be very faithful.” She looked up. Her eyes, too, seemed to be of that sort — fashioned for frankness, faith, perhaps credulity.
A porter came by announcing dinner. Brown looked at Rosalie with a questioning smile — so companionable had they already grown, so eloquent already had become this discourse of a single silent glance.
His eyes, smiling, said:
“Shall we dine now — together?”
Hers replied:
“Your pleasure is mine.”
At table, happening to encounter a hostile stare from legalized maternity at a neighbouring table, she flushed and bent her head. Brown was holding forth very happily upon some unimportant subject; and the girl sat there, with heightened colour, as though listening.
And after he had ended, she still sat, pensive, looking down at her pretty, ringless fingers, restless in her lap.
Afterward, in their chairs once more, her eyes on the sunset which swept the rattling windows with a running flash of fire: “You know,” she said, “that was our last dinner.”
“What?”
“Our last dinner together.”
He started to reply, but remained silent.
“Housekeepers don’t dine with their employers,” she added, smiling at him. And the smile was unembarrassed and genuine because he resembled at the moment a sulky little boy, balked of something he shouldn’t have.
“We’ll discuss that later,” he said.
Her pretty face grew serious:
“There will be nothing to discuss,” she said in a low voice.
She came in late to breakfast. He had waited for her as usual.
“That is not right,” she said. “We should begin to break ourselves of that habit.”
But they began their grapefruit together very happily.
At luncheon, too, they said nothing further about the habit. After all, it was scarcely worth while, for before dinner they would be at Sapadillo City.
All their luggage was gathered and piled together when that metropolis became visible. Brown recognized it from his foreman’s inventory: one water tank, one sidetrack, one empty freight car firmly rusted to same. Evidently the entire population of Sapadillo City had gathered to welcome the lord of the portable bungalow: seven negroes, three razorbacks, a houn’dawg, and a buzzard. The only noise was furnished by the houn’-dawg, and it was a melancholy salute.
The train lingered only to deposit the two passengers for Sapadillo City and their baggage, then, whistling its deep sense of relief, moved on, gathering momentum rapidly as though dreading the possibility of further detention in such a place.
Brown looked at Rosalie, and she gazed inquiringly at Brown.
“There seems to be no station here,” he said hesitatingly. He had cherished dreams of a hack to take him to the bungalow, wherever it was, but one look at the suburbs of Sapadillo City settled any such dream.
Worse still, no pecuniary consideration could induce any of the city’s inhabitants to produce waggon or wheelbarrow for the transportation of his housekeeper, himself and his luggage.
They stood in a shiny black row, flanked by the houn’-dawg and the razorbacks, and grinningly declined to entertain any suggestion of manual labor. The buzzard, perched on a black gum tree, looked on with perfect indifference.
So they were obliged to leave the trunks. Laden with his suit-case and her satchel, Brown took the path indicated. It was a white, sandy path running through scrub palmetto: and the prospects being in favour of snakes, he suggested that Rosalie should walk behind him.
Which made her a trifle pensive, because she took it as the first expression from him of their new relations as master and housekeeper. It was all right, of course, it had to be that way. And Rosalie, silent and subdued, tripped along in the wake of the lord of the bungalow, her somewhat sad young eyes fixed on the level sunset.
The declining sun tipped the flat waste of palmetto fronds with pink and amber fire and painted tall pines and palms crimson. From a wood’s blue shadow came the querulous, insistent whisper of the widow-bird, discounting the coming twilight.
Trudging along, Brown looked over his shoulder: “This isn’t very cheerful,” he said. “I ought to have learned something about this place before I came here — or let you come. But, somehow, I always do things the wrong way.”
“I don’t mind coming,” she said with a little note of hesitation in her voice, “if you think there’s really a bungalow here.”
“Why, of course there is! I sent one down, and I also sent a gang down to put it up.”
“Did you say it was a — a portable bungalow?”
“Yes. Anybody can put it up or take it to pieces.”
“Very portable?”
“What!”
“I wondered if it were possible that anybody could have t-taken it away.”
“Good heavens!” he said, “why do you suppose such a thing as that?”
“I don’t know.... Why did those darkeys grin at us so incessantly?”
“They always grin. That is the sum total of their physical exertions,... Where the dickens is that bungalow? How far do you suppose we have walked?”
“About five miles?” she ventured interrogatively. “Oh, no, not over a quarter of a mile. But I was told it was only five minutes’ stroll from the station.”
“There is no station,” she observed uneasily. “That’s so! That may be the trouble. Perhaps they couldn’t tell just how far it was, having no station to start from.”
“You are trying to reassure me,” she said quietly. “You are as much worried as I am.”
“Worried? Not a bit! I only am wondering—”
He halted; she came forward beside him; and they stood there, knee-deep in palmetto, gazing at the dying cinders of the sun. Red as a bed of coals the last glow glimmered through the palms; turned to ashes along the horizon even as they looked.
“There is a star,” she said in a low voice.
It was already night.
He said cheerfully:
“If you care to risk going on, I’m sure we’ll find the bungalow in a few minutes.”
“What else is there to do?” she asked.
“We could go back.”
“Where?”
“To the sta — to the railroad.”
“Would we be any better off there?”
He was silent.
“I — I didn’t like those pigs — and that large and very horrid bird that kept watching us,” she said.
“Oh, that was only a buzzard—”
“A buzzard!”
“Yes — they’re common down South—”
“But — I’ve heard that buzzards sit around and wait for people to die! T-tell me frankly, fearlessly, do you suppose that bird was waiting to see us get lost in these woods?”
“No, of course not. You mustn’t think such things. You are not going to lose your nerve, are you?”
“N-no.”
Her voice was not very steady. He touched her arm. She was trembling.
“Please don’t,” he said, “Pm terribly sorry; it’s all my fault. But there is nothing to be afraid of. If worst comes to worst, a night under these big yellow stars isn’t so bad.” He leaned nearer, peering at her. She was weeping in silence.
For her benefit he accused himself and called himself various graphic names, some of which fitted, but he didn’t know it. Also, he put one arm around her shoulders; and she drew back against him with a gasp as the shuddering cry of a great cat-owl broke out in the starlight, filling the woods with uncanny echoes.
He had in his grip an electric flashlight; now he fished it out, and, shining the path, persuaded her forward into the woods.
Ghostly palms arched over them; enormous yellow stars sparkled between the fronds. Even by day the tropic forest would have been an awesome novelty: and now, at night, it frightened her. Spectral grey moss waved mournfully from the live oaks; festoons of vines and creepers draped the sad high arches with strange tapestries; subtly disturbing odours haunted the dusky silence, scent of spicy, unknown saps and gums dripping, vague perfumes of exotics — leaf and bark and bloom.
For the hard, rapid beating of Rosalie’s heart the upas tree itself might have exhaled from its magic foliage the suave, seductive odour that grew sweeter all around them.
But it was only a China tree making more exquisite the star lustre.
A little stream running molten silver cut their path, spreading to a pool in front of them under a pair of thin and slender palms.
Brown looked at the water, played his flashlight over it, then set his luggage on the ground.
“I shall have to carry you across,” he said; sank one knee slightly, and picked her up.
Arms clasping his neck, she looked down at the water: “What,” she asked, “is on the other side?”
“The bungalow, of course.”
“Are you sure?”
He was silent.
“Because we have come a long way,” she faltered. “Are you tired?”
“No.... I’d sit down for a little while if you don’t mind.... Because, somehow, I don’t believe we are — are ever going to get out of these w-woods—”
“Rosalie! Don’t cry.”
Quiet sobs.
“Rosalie!”
Sobs under better control and now stifled by his shoulder.
“Rosalie, dear, you will be brave, won’t you?” His voice shook, perhaps from the charm his own words held for him — an unexpected charm — for he had not meant to say “Rosalie” or “dear,” or to link the two words that had linked themselves in his own mind so prettily, so naturally, even before he uttered them.
She lifted her head and stared around her in the darkness, sitting up very slender and straight in his arms.
“Do you hear anything?” she whispered.
“A bird singing in the starlight.”
She listened for a moment, both hands on his shoulders, then twisted slightly: and he set her down and released her. His heart was going it. Yet the exertion had not been severe. She weighed one hundred and twenty.
Under the slim twin palms they seated themselves. At her request he played his flashlight over her satchel; and from it she extracted a bottle of spring water and a paper box full of cold chicken, bread, fruit, and assorted chocolates.
“I had them put up for us by the dining-car steward,” she said. “I thought perhaps we might not find everything quite ready at the bungalow.”
“We haven’t even found the bungalow,” he said, and laughed nervously. But to Rosalie it was not yet a laughing matter.
The night was balmy, the air delicious; so was the chicken. He laid his flashlight on the ground and they Ate in its brilliant, fan-shaped radiance. Traces of tears, like the powdery silver of dew on iris blossoms, still made her eyes brilliant; and now he knew what a young goddess looked like eating nectar and quaffing ambrosia, as he furtively observed the girl beside him.
First she bit a dainty little semi-circle out of a sandwich, and after her pretty lips had moved as though in murmured prayer thirty-two times, she blushingly set the mouth of the bottle to her own and drank as innocently as a little bird drinks, its beak uptilted toward Heaven, giving thanks for every swallow.
Every now and then he picked up the flashlight and swept the cobwebs of the night from their surroundings as with a broom of glory. This fine phrase also occurred to Brown, and he employed it, conscious of inspiration totally new which apparently was evoking from the commonplace within him a most unusual and gratifying mental attitude toward life.
She smiled a shy acknowledgment of this literary eruption. And the intellectual response from her confirmed his dawning opinion that she was mentally as extraordinary as she was physically attractive.
His flashlight played over long silvery banners of Spanish moss, ran glittering across massed magnolia foliage set with gigantic white cups of scented bloom, flashed on trailing yellow jasmine, swept across China trees where the great, lilac-tinted bunches of blossoms hung all misty with hovering moths.
“It’s like a wonderful scene set for the theatre,” he said. Which trite remark did him no damage, she considering it very original.
Unseen things ruffled and flapped in the trees occasionally, and these inexplicable interruptions were all that mitigated her increasing confidence and even pleasure in the situation. But the dry, silken rustle of unseen plumage on high concerned her and always temporarily disconnected her appetite until Brown rose and searched the big water oak’s top with his flashlight; and there disclosed three big, snow-white birds standing solemnly on one leg each.
“The lovely things!” she exclaimed in the quick reaction of relief and delight. “They stand there like guardian angels watching over us.” And she continued to nibble her chocolate bonbon with thankfulness and content.
Brown carefully laid the flashlight on the ground between them.
“Do you know,” he said, “that you are a very extraordinary girl?”
She lifted her head in pretty surprise.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” he continued. “You are just right, exactly balanced — feminine but not too feminine; brave but not aggressively cocky; patient but not meek; self-controlled but neither stolid nor ignorant. As far as I can discover, you are the real thing in girls.”
“W-what an odd thing to think!”
“Why, just consider your qualities,” he went on, deeply interested in his analysis; “you are a good sport, or you never would have taken a chance and started for this God-forsaken place. Yet, you are farseeing and thoughtful, or you wouldn’t have had the dining-car steward put up this dinner for us.
“You are reticent, full of a charming sort of dignity, and so confident in the security of your own self-respect that you accept temporarily a menial position for household work when your own profession no longer affords you a living.”
“But I”
“That is admirable!” he interrupted warmly, somewhat excited by his own unsuspected powers of logical analysis. “That is noble — like Cincinnatus at the plow; like Israel Putnam in his undershirt; like Jeanne d’Arc; like—”
The emotion superinduced by his own eloquence checked him: then:
“I do not understand how it is,” he said, “but to me you have already proven a most inexplicable inspiration — I may even say an exhilaration. In our brief companionship I seem to think of things I never before thought of — ideas, language, phrases, elegancies of verbal expression, flow fluently and without any effort on my part.
“When I talk with you, look at you, I feel as though there were original possibilities in me. I aspire to — I don’t know exactly what just yet, I am—” Again he checked himself to let his eyes rest on her in silence.
She sat at the foot of a palm tree, her dainty hands clasped under her chin, elbows set on her knees, eyes lowered. And in her cheeks the delicate colour came and went, waning, glowing with every word and with the confused thoughts he was stirring and stampeding in her youthful brain.
