Complete weird tales of.., p.387
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 387
Silvery pools of light inlaid the dim expanse of Washington Square. He turned east, then south, then east again, and doubled into a dim street, where old-time houses with toppling dormers crowded huddling together as though in the cowering contact there was safety from the destroyer who must one day come, bringing steel girders and cement to mark their graves with sky-scraping monuments of stone.
Into the doorway of one of these houses Lansing turned. When the town was young a Lansing had lived there in pomp and circumstance — his own great-grandfather — and he smiled grimly, amused at the irony of things terrestrial.
A slattern at the door halted him:
“Nobody ain’t let up them stairs without my knowin’ why,” she mumbled.
“I want to see Captain Selwyn,” he explained.
“Hey?”
“Captain Selwyn!”
“Hey? I’m a little deef!” screeched the old crone. “Is it Cap’n Selwyn you want?”
Above, Selwyn, hearing his name screamed through the shadows of the ancient house, came to the stairwell and looked down into the blackness.
“What is it, Mrs. Glodden?” he said sharply; then, catching sight of a dim figure springing up the stairs:
“Here! this way. Is it for me?” and as Boots came into the light from his open door: “Oh!” he whispered, deadly pale under the reaction; “I thought it was a telegram. Come in.”
Boots shook the snow from his hat and coat into the passageway and took the single chair; Selwyn, tall and gaunt in his shabby dressing-gown, stood looking at him and plucking nervously at the frayed and tasselled cord around his waist.
“I don’t know how you came to stumble in here,” he said at length, “but I’m glad to see you.”
“Thanks,” replied Boots, gazing shamelessly and inquisitively about. There was nothing to see except a few books, a pipe or two, toilet articles, and a shaky gas-jet. The flat military trunk was under the iron bed.
“I — it’s not much of a place,” observed Selwyn, forcing a smile. “However, you see I’m so seldom in town; I’m busy at the Hook, you know. So I don’t require anything elaborate.”
“Yes, I know,” said Boots solemnly. A silence.
“H — have a pipe?” inquired Selwyn uneasily. He had nothing else to offer.
Boots leaned back in his stiff chair, crossed his legs, and filled a pipe. When he had lighted it he said:
“How are things, Phil?”
“All right. First rate, thank you.”
Boots removed the pipe from his lips and swore at him; and Selwyn listened with head obstinately lowered and lean hands plucking at his frayed girdle. And when Boots had ended his observations with an emphatic question, Selwyn shook his head:
“No, Boots. You’re very good to ask me to stop with you, but I can’t. I’d be hampered; there are matters — affairs that concern me — that need instant attention at times — at certain times. I must be free to go, free to come. I couldn’t be in your house. Don’t ask me. But I’m — I thank you for offering—”
“Phil!”
“What?”
“Are you broke?”
“Ah — a little” — with a smile.
“Will you take what you require from me?”
“No.”
“Oh — very well. I was horribly afraid you would.”
Selwyn laughed and leaned back, indenting his meagre pillow.
“Come, Boots,” he said, “you and I have often had worse quarters than this. To tell you the truth I rather like it than otherwise.”
“Oh, damn!” said Boots, disgusted; “the same old conscience in the same old mule! Who likes squalidity? I don’t. You don’t! What if Fate has hit you a nasty swipe! Suppose Fortune has landed you a few in the slats! It’s only temporary and you know it. All business in the world is conducted on borrowed capital. It’s your business to live in decent quarters, and I’m here to lend you the means of conducting that business. Oh, come on, Phil, for Heaven’s sake! If there were really any reason — any logical reason for this genius-in-the-garret business, I’d not say a word. But there isn’t; you’re going to make money—”
“Oh, yes, I’ve got to,” said Selwyn simply.
“Well, then! In the meanwhile—”
“No. Listen, Boots; I couldn’t be free in your house. I — they — there are telegrams — unexpected ones — at all hours.”
“What of it?”
“You don’t understand.”
“Wait a bit! How do you know I don’t? Do the telegrams come from Sandy Hook?”
“No.”
Boots looked him calmly in the eye. “Then I do understand, old man. Come on out of this, in Heaven’s name! Come, now! Get your dressing-gown off and your coat on! Don’t you think I understand? I tell you I do! Yes, the whole blessed, illogical, chivalrous business. . . . Never mind how I know — for I won’t tell you! Oh, I’m not trying to interfere with you; I know enough to shun buzz-saws. All I want is for you to come and take that big back room and help a fellow live in a lonely house — help a man to make it cheerful. I can’t stand it alone any longer; and it will be four years before Drina is eighteen.”
“Drina!” repeated Selwyn blankly — then he laughed. It was genuine laughter, too; and Boots grinned and puffed at his pipe, and recrossed his legs, watching Selwyn out of eyes brightening with expectancy.
“Then it’s settled,” he said.
“What? Your ultimate career with Drina?”
“Oh, yes; that also. But I referred to your coming to live with me.”
“Boots—”
“Oh, fizz! Come on. I don’t like the way you act, Phil.”
Selwyn said slowly: “Do you make it a personal matter—”
“Yes, I do; dam’f I don’t! You’ll be perfectly free there. I don’t care what you do or where you go or what hours you keep. You can run up and down Broadway all night, if you want to, or you can stop at home and play with the cats. I’ve three fine ones” — he made a cup of his hands and breathed into them, for the room was horribly cold— “three fine tabbies, and a good fire for ’em to blink at when they start purring.”
He looked kindly but anxiously at Selwyn, waiting for a word; and as none came he said:
“Old fellow, you can’t fool me with your talk about needing nothing better because you’re out of town all the time. You know what you and I used to talk about in the old days — our longing for a home and an open fire and a brace of cats and bedroom slippers. Now I’ve got ‘em, and I make Ardois signals at you. If your shelter-tent got afire or blew away, wouldn’t you crawl into mine? And are you going to turn down an old tent-mate because his shack happens to be built of bricks?”
“Do you put it that way?”
“Yes, I do. Why, in Heaven’s name, do you want to stay in a vile hole like this — unless you’re smitten with Mrs. Glodden? Phil, I want you to come. Will you?”
“Then — I’ll accept a corner of your blanket — for a day or two,” said Selwyn wearily. . . . “You’ll let me go when I want to?”
“I’ll do more; I’ll make you go when I want you to. Come on; pay Mrs. Glodden and have your trunk sent.”
Selwyn forced a laugh, then sat up on the bed’s edge and looked around at the unpapered walls.
“Boots — you won’t say to — to anybody what sort of a place I’ve been living in—”
“No; but I will if you try to come back here.”
So Selwyn stood up and began to remove his dressing-gown, and Lansing dragged out the little flat trunk and began to pack it.
An hour later they went away together through the falling snow.
* * *
For a week Boots let him alone. He had a big, comfortable room, dressing-closet, and bath adjoining the suite occupied by his host; he was absolutely free to go and come, and for a week or ten days Boots scarcely laid eyes on him, except at breakfast, for Selwyn’s visits to Sandy Hook became a daily routine except when a telegram arrived from Edgewater calling him there.
But matters at Edgewater were beginning to be easier in one way for him. Alixe appeared to forget him for days at a time; she was less irritable, less restless and exacting. A sweet-tempered and childish docility made the care of her a simpler matter for the nurses and for him; her discontent had disappeared; she made fewer demands. She did ask for a sleigh to replace the phaeton, and Selwyn managed to get one for her; and Miss Casson, one of the nurses, wrote him how delighted Alixe had been, and how much good the sleighing was doing her.
“Yesterday,” continued the nurse in her letter, “there was a consultation here between Drs. Vail, Wesson, and Morrison — as you requested. They have not changed their opinions — indeed, they are convinced that there is no possible chance of the recovery you hoped for when you talked with Dr. Morrison. They all agree that Mrs. Ruthven is in excellent physical condition — young, strong, vigorous — and may live for years; may outlive us all. But there is nothing else to expect.”
The letter ran on:
“I am enclosing the bills you desired to have sent you. Fuel is very expensive, as you will see. The items for fruits, too, seems unreasonably large, but grapes are two dollars a pound and fresh vegetables dreadfully expensive.
“Mrs. Ruthven is comfortable and happy in the luxury provided. She is very sweet and docile with us all — and we are careful not to irritate her or to have anything intrude which might excite or cause the slightest shock to her.
“Yesterday, standing at the window, she caught sight of a passing negro, and she turned to me like a flash and said:
“‘The Tenth Cavalry were there!’
“She seemed rather excited for a moment — not unpleasantly — but when I ventured to ask her a question, she had quite forgotten it all.
“I meant to thank you for sending me the revolver and cartridges. It seemed a silly request, but we are in a rather lonely place, and I think Miss Bond and I feel a little safer knowing that, in case of necessity, we have something to frighten away any roaming intruder who might take it into his head to visit us.
“One thing we must be careful about: yesterday Mrs. Ruthven had a doll on my bed, and I sat sewing by the window, not noticing what she was doing until I heard her pretty, pathetic little laugh.
“And what do you think she had done? She had discovered your revolver under my pillow, and she had tied her handkerchief around it, and was using it as a doll!
“I got it away with a little persuasion, but at times she still asks for her ‘army’ doll — saying that a boy she knew, named Philip, had sent it to her from Manila, where he was living.
“This, Captain Selwyn, is all the news. I do not think she will begin to fret for you again for some time. At first, you remember, it was every other day, then every three or four days. It has now been a week since she asked for you. When she does I will, as usual, telegraph you.
“With many thanks for your kindness to us all, “Very respectfully yours,
“Mary Casson.”
Selwyn read this letter sitting before the fire in the living-room, feet on the fender, pipe between his teeth. It was the first day of absolute rest he had had in a long while.
The day before he had been at the Hook until almost dark, watching the firing of a big gun, and the results had been so satisfactory that he was venturing to give himself a holiday — unless wanted at Edgewater.
But the morning had brought this letter; Alixe was contented and comfortable. So when Boots, after breakfast, went off to his Air Line office, Selwyn permitted himself the luxury of smoking-jacket and slippers, and settled down before the fire to reread the letter and examine the enclosed bills, and ponder and worry over them at his ease. To have leisure to worry over perplexities was something; to worry in such luxury as this seemed something so very near to happiness that as he refolded the last bill for household expenses he smiled faintly to himself.
Boots’s three tabby-cats were disposed comfortably before the blaze, fore paws folded under, purring and blinking lazily at the grate. All around were evidences of Boots’s personal taste in pretty wall-paper and hangings, a few handsome Shiraz rugs underfoot, deep, comfortable chairs, low, open bookcases full of promising literature — the more promising because not contemporary.
Selwyn loved such a room as this — where all was comfort, and nothing in the quiet, but cheerful, ensemble disturbed the peaceful homeliness.
Once — and not very long since — he had persuaded himself that there had been a chance for him to have such a home, and live in it — not alone. That chance had gone — had never really existed, he knew now. For sooner or later he must have awakened from the pleasant dreams of self-persuasion to the reality of his relentless responsibility. No, there had never been such a chance; and he thanked God that he had learned before it was too late that for him there could be no earthly paradise, no fireside à deux, no home, no hope of it.
As long as Alixe lived his spiritual responsibility must endure. And they had just told him that she might easily outlive them all.
He turned heavily in his chair and stared at the fire. Perhaps he saw infernal visions in the flames; perhaps the blaze meant nothing more to him than an example of chemical reaction, for his face was set and colourless and vacant, and his hands lay loosely along the padded arms of his easy-chair.
The hardest lesson he had to learn in these days was to avoid thinking. Or, if he must surrender to the throbbing, unbidden memories which came crowding in hordes to carry him by the suddenness of their assault, that he learn to curb and subdue and direct them in pity toward that hopeless, helpless, stricken creature who was so utterly dependent upon him in her dreadful isolation.
And he could not so direct them.
Loyal in act and deed, his thoughts betrayed him. Memories, insurgent, turned on him to stab him; and he shrank from them, cowering among his pillows at midnight. But memory is merciless, and what has been is without pity; and so remembrance rose at midnight from its cerements, like a spectre, floating before his covered eyes, wearing the shape of youth and love, crowned with the splendour of her hair, looking at him out of those clear, sweet eyes whose gaze was purity and truth eternal.
And truth is truth, though he might lie with hands clinched across his brow to shut out the wraith of it that haunted him; though he might set his course by the faith that was in him, and put away the hope of the world — whose hope is love — the truth was there, staring, staring at him out of Eileen Erroll’s dark-blue eyes.
* * *
He had seen her seldom that winter. When he had seen her their relations appeared to be as happy, as friendly as before; there was no apparent constraint, nothing from her to indicate that she noticed an absence for which his continual business with the Government seemed sufficient excuse.
Besides, her days were full days, consequent upon Nina’s goading and indefatigable activity; and Eileen danced and received, and she bridged and lunched, and she heard opera Wednesdays and was good to the poor on Fridays; and there were balls, and theatres, and classes for intellectual improvement, and routine duties incident to obligations born with those inhabitants of Manhattan who are numbered among the thousand caryatides that support upon their jewelled necks and naked shoulders the social structure of the metropolis.
But Selwyn, unable longer to fulfil his social obligations, was being quietly eliminated from the social scheme of things. Passed over here, dropped there, counted out as one more man not to be depended upon, it was not a question of loss of caste; he simply stayed away, and his absence was accepted by people who, in the breathless pleasure chase, have no leisure to inquire why a man has lagged behind.
There were rumours, however, that he had merely temporarily donned overalls for the purpose of making a gigantic fortune; and many an envious young fellow asked his pretty partner in the dance if it was true, and many a young girl frankly hoped it was, and that the fortune would be quick in the making. For Selwyn was well liked in the younger set, and that he was in process of becoming eligible interested everybody except Gladys and the Minster twins, who considered him sufficiently eligible without the material additions required by their cynical seniors, and would rather have had him penniless and present than absent and opulent.
But they were young and foolish, and after a while they forgot to miss him, particularly Gladys, whose mother had asked her not to dance quite so often with Gerald, and to favour him a trifle less frequently in cotillon. Which prevoyance had been coped with successfully by Nina, who, noticing it, at first took merely a perverse pleasure in foiling Mrs. Orchil; but afterward, as the affair became noticeable, animated by the instinct of the truly clever opportunist, she gave Gerald every fighting chance. Whatever came of it — and, no doubt, the Orchils had more ambitious views for Gladys — it was well to have Gerald mentioned in such a fashionable episode, whether anything came of it or not.
Gerald, in the early days of his affair with Gladys, and before even it had assumed the proportions of an affair, had shyly come to Selwyn, not for confession but with the crafty purpose of introducing her name into the conversation so that he might have the luxury of talking about her to somebody who would neither quiz him nor suspect him.
Selwyn, of course, ultimately suspected him; but as he never quizzed him, Gerald continued his elaborate system of subterfuges to make her personality and doings a topic for him to expand upon and Selwyn to listen to.
It had amused Selwyn; he thought of it now — a gay memory like a ray of light flung for a moment across the sombre background of his own sadness. Fortunate or unfortunate, Gerald was still lucky in his freedom to hazard it with chance and fate.
Freedom to love! That alone was blessed, though that love be unreturned. Without that right — the right to love — a man was no man. Lansing had been correct: such a man was a spectre in a living world — the ghost of what he had been. But there was no help for it, and there Lansing had been in the wrong. No hope, no help, nothing for it but to set a true course and hang to it.
