Complete weird tales of.., p.404
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 404
Warm-hearted, generous, and restless, she loved the character of Lady Bountiful; and, naïvely convinced of her own unassailable supremacy, played very picturesquely the rôle of graciousness and patronage to the tenants of her great estates and of her social and intellectual world alike. Hence, although she went where many of her less fashionable guests might not have been asked to go, she herself paid self-confident homage to intellect as she understood it, and in her own house her entourage was as mixed as her notions of a “salon” permitted.
She was gracious to Hamil on account of his aunt, his profession, and himself. Also her instinct was to be nice to everybody. As hostess she had but a moment to accord him, but during that moment she contrived to speak reassuringly of the Suydam genealogy, the art of landscape architecture, and impart a little special knowledge from her inexhaustible reserve, informing him that the name of her villa, Tsa-na Lah-ni, was Seminole, and meant “Yellow Butterfly.” And then she passed him sweetly along into a crush of bright-eyed young things who attempted to pour tea into him and be agreeable in various artless ways; and presently he found himself in a back-water where fashion and intellect were conscientiously doing their best to mix. But the mixture was a thin solution — thinner than Swizzles and Caravan, and the experience of the very young girl beside him who talked herself out in thirty seconds from pure nervousness and remained eternally grateful to him for giving her a kindly opportunity to escape to cover among the feather-brained and frivolous.
Then, close to him, a girl spoke of the “purple perfume of petunias,” and a man used the phrases, “body politic,” and “the gaiety of nations.”
So he knew he was among the elect, redundant, and truly precious. A chinless young man turned to him and said:
“There is nobody to-day who writes as Bernard Haw writes.”
“Does anybody want to?” asked Hamil pleasantly.
“You mean that this is an age of trumpery romance?” demanded a heavy gentleman in dull disdain. “William Dean has erased all romance from modern life with one smear of his honest thumb!”
“The honest thumb that persistently and patiently rubs the scales from sapphire and golden wings in order to be certain that the vination of the Ornithoptera is still underneath, is not the digit of inspiration,” suggested Hamil.
The disciple turned a dull brick-colour; but he betrayed neither his master nor himself.
“What, in God’s name,” he asked heavily, “is an ornithoptera?”
A very thin author, who had been listening and twisting himself into a number of shapes, thrust his neck forward into the arena and considered Hamil with the pale grimace of challenge.
“Henry Haynes?” he inquired— “your appreciation in one phrase, Mr. Hamil.”
“In a Henry Haynes phrase?” asked Hamil good-humouredly.
“The same old calumny?” said the thin author, writhing almost off his chair.
“I’m afraid so; and the remedy a daily dose of verbifuge — until he gets back to the suffocated fount of inspiration. I am very sorry if I seem to differ from everybody, but everybody seems to differ from me, so I can’t help it.”
A Swami, unctuous and fat, and furious at the lack of feminine attention, said something suavely outrageous about modern women. He was immediately surrounded by several mature examples who adored to be safely smitten by the gelatinous and esoteric.
A little flabby, featureless, but very fashionable portrait painter muttered to Hamil: “Orient and Occident! the molluskular and the muscular. Mr. Hamil, do you realise what the Occident is?”
“Geographically?” inquired Hamil wearily.
“No, symbolically. It is that!” explained the painter, doubling his meagre biceps and punching at the infinite, with a flattened thumb. “That,” he repeated, “is America. Do you comprehend?”
The wan young girl who had spoken of the purple perfume of petunias said that she understood. It may be that she did; she reviewed literature for the Tribune.
Harried and restless, Hamil looked for Shiela and saw Portlaw, very hot and uncomfortable in his best raiment, shooting his cuffs and looking dully about for some avenue of escape; and Hamil, exasperated with purple perfumes and thumbs, meanly snared him and left him to confront a rather ample and demonstrative young girl who believed that all human thought was precious — even sinful thought — of which she knew as much as a newly hatched caterpillar. However, Portlaw was able to enlighten her if he cared to.
Again and again Hamil, wandering in circles, looked across the wilderness of women’s hats at Shiela Cardross, but a dozen men surrounded her, and among them he noticed the graceful figure of Malcourt directly in front of her, blocking any signal he might have given.
Somebody was saying something about Mrs. Ascott. He recollected that he hadn’t met her; so he found somebody to present him.
“And you are the man?” exclaimed Mrs. Ascott softly, considering him with her head on one side. “Shiela Cardross wrote to me in New York about you, but I’ve wanted to inspect you for my own information.”
“Are you doing it now?” he asked, amused.
“It’s done! Do you imagine you are complex? I’ve heard various tales about you from three sources, to-day; from an old friend, Louis Malcourt — from another, Virginia Suydam — and steadily during the last month — including to-day — from Shiela Cardross. But I couldn’t find a true verdict until the accused appeared personally before me. Tell me, Mr. Hamil, do you plead guilty to being as amiable as the somewhat contradictory evidence indicates?”
“Parole me in custody of this court and let me convince your Honor,” said Hamil, looking into the captivatingly cool and humourous face upturned to his.
Mrs. Ascott was small, and finely moulded; something of the miniature grande dame in porcelain. The poise of her head, the lifted chin, every detail in the polished and delicately tinted surface reflected cool experience of the world and of men. Yet the eyes were young, and there was no hardness in them, and the mouth seemed curiously unfashioned for worldly badinage — a very wistful, full-lipped mouth that must have been disciplined in some sad school to lose its cheerfulness in repose.
“I am wondering,” she said, “why Mr. Portlaw does not come and talk to me. We are neighbors in the country, you know; I live at Pride’s Fall. I don’t think it’s particularly civil of him to avoid me.”
“I can’t imagine anybody, including Portlaw, avoiding you,” he said.
“We were such good friends — I don’t know — he behaved very badly to me last autumn.”
They chatted together for a moment or two in the same inconsequential vein, then, other people being presented, she nodded an amiable dismissal; and, as he stepped aside, held out her hand.
“There are a lot of things I’d like to ask you some day; one is about a park for me at Pride’s Fall — oh, the tiniest sort of a park, only it should be quite formal in all its miniature details. Will you let Shiela bring you for a little conference? Soon?”
He promised and took his leave, elated at the chances of a new commission, hunting through the constantly arriving and departing throngs for Shiela. And presently he encountered his aunt.
“You certainly do neglect me,” she said with her engaging and care-free laugh. “Where have you been for a week?”
“In the flat-woods. And, by the way, don’t worry about any snakes. Virginia said you were anxious.”
“Nonsense,” said his aunt, amused, “Virginia is trying to plague you! I said nothing about snakes to her.”
“Didn’t you say there were snakes in my district?”
“No. I did say there were girls in your district, but it didn’t worry me.”
His face was so serious that the smile died out on her own.
“Why, Garret,” she said, “surely you are not offended, are you?”
“Not with you — Virginia has apparently taken her cue from that unspeakable Mrs. Van Dieman, and is acting like the deuce toward Shiela Cardross. Couldn’t you find an opportunity to discourage that sort of behaviour? It’s astonishingly underbred.”
His aunt’s eyelids flickered as she regarded him.
“Come to see me to-night and explain a little more fully what Virginia has done, dear. Colonel Vetchen is hunting for me and I’m going to let him find me now. Why don’t you come back with us if you are not looking for anybody in particular.”
“I’m looking for Shiela Cardross,” he said.
“Oh, she’s over there on the terrace holding her fascinating court — with Louis Malcourt at her heels as usual.”
“I didn’t know that Malcourt was usually at her heels,” he said almost irritably. It was the second time he had heard that comment, and he found it unaccountably distasteful.
His aunt looked up, smiling.
“Can’t we dine together, Garry?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, dear” — faintly ironical. “So now if you’ll go I’ll reveal myself to Gussie Vetchen. Stand aside, my condescending friend.”
He said, smiling: “You’re the prettiest revelation here. I’ll be at the hotel at eight.”
And with that they parted just as the happy little Vetchen, catching sight of them, came bustling up with all the fuss and demonstration of a long-lost terrier.
A few minutes later Hamil found Shiela Cardross surrounded by her inevitable entourage — a jolly, animated circle hemming her in with Malcourt at her left and Van Tassel Cuyp on her right; and he halted on the circle’s edge to look and listen, glancing askance at Malcourt with a curiosity unaccustomed.
That young man with his well-made graceful figure, his dark hair and vivid tints, had never particularly impressed Hamil. He had accepted him at his face value, lacking the interest to appraise him; and the acquaintance had always been as casual and agreeable as mutual good-humour permitted. But now Malcourt, as a type, attracted his attention; and for a moment he contrasted this rather florid example with the specimens of young men around him. Then he looked at Shiela Cardross. Her delicately noble head was bent a trifle as she listened with the others to Malcourt’s fluent humour; and it remained so, though at moments she lifted her eyes in that straight, questioning gaze which left the brows level.
And now she was replying to Malcourt; and Hamil watched her and listened to her with newer interest, noting the poise, the subtle reserve under the gayest provocation of badinage — the melody of her rare laughter, the unaffected sweetness of her voice, and its satisfying sincerity — satisfying as the clear regard from her lifted eyes.
Small wonder men were attracted; Hamil could understand what drew them — the instinctive recognition of a fibre finer and a metal purer than was often found under the surface of such loveliness.
And now, as he watched her, the merriment broke out again around her, and she laughed, lifting her face to his in all its youthfully bewildering beauty, and saw him standing near her for the first time.
Without apparent reason a dull colour rose to his face; and, as though answering fire with fire, her fainter signal in response tinted lip and cheek.
It was scarcely the signal agreed upon for their departure; and for a moment longer, amid the laughing tumult, she sat looking at him as though confused. Malcourt bent forward saying something to her, but she rose while he was speaking, as though she had not heard him; and Hamil walked through the circle to where she stood. A number of very young men looked around at him with hostile eyes; Malcourt’s brows lifted a trifle; then he shot an ironical glance at Shiela and, as the circle about her disintegrated, sauntered up, bland, debonair, to accept his congé.
His bow, a shade exaggerated, and the narrowed mockery of his eyes escaped her; and even what he said made no impression as she stood, brightly inattentive, looking across the little throng at Hamil. And Malcourt’s smile became flickering and uncertain when she left the terrace with Hamil, moving very slowly side by side across the lawn.
“Such lots of pretty women,” commented Shiela. “Have you been passably amused?”
“Passably,” he replied in a slightly sullen tone.
“Oh, only passably? I rather hoped that unawakened heart of yours might be aroused to-day.”
“It has been.”
“Not Mrs. Ascott!” she exclaimed, halting.
“Not Mrs. Ascott.”
“Mrs. Tom O’Hara! Is it? Every man promptly goes to smash when Mrs. Tom looks sideways.”
“O Lord!” he said with a shrug.
“That is not nice of you, Mr. Hamil. If it is not with her you have fallen in love there is a more civil way of denying it.”
“Did you take what I said seriously?” he asked— “about falling in love?”
“Were you not serious?”
“I could be if you were,” he said in a tone which slightly startled her. She looked up at him questioningly; he said:
“I’ve had a stupid time without you. The little I’ve seen of you has spoiled other women for me. And I’ve just found it out. Do you mind my saying so?”
“Are you not a little over-emphatic in your loyalty to me? I like it, but not at the expense of others, please.”
They moved on together, slowly and in step. His head was bent, face sullen and uncomfortably flushed. Again she felt the curiously unaccountable glow in her own cheeks responding in pink fire once more; and annoyed and confused she halted and looked up at him with that frank confidence characteristic of her.
“Something has gone wrong,” she said. “Tell me.”
“I will. I’m telling myself now.” She laughed, stole a glance at him, then her face fell.
“I certainly don’t know what you mean, and I’m not very sure that you know.”
She was right; he did not yet know. Strange, swift pulses were beating in temple and throat; strange tumults and confusion were threatening his common sense, paralyzing will-power. A slow, resistless intoxication had enveloped him, through which instinctively persisted one warning ray of reason. In the light of that single ray he strove to think clearly. They walked to the pavilion together, he silent, sombre-eyed, taking a mechanical leave of his hostess, fulfilling conventions while scarcely aware of the routine or of the people around him; she composed, sweet, conventionally faultless — and a trifle pale as they turned away together across the lawn.
When they took their places side by side in the chair she was saying something perfunctory concerning the fête and Mrs. Ascott. And as he offered no comment: “Don’t you think her very charming and sincere.... Are you listening to me, Mr. Hamil?”
“Yes,” he said. “Everybody was very jolly. Yes, indeed.”
“And — the girl who adores the purple perfume of petunias?” she asked mischievously. “I think that same purple perfume has made you drowsy, my uncivil friend.”
He turned. “Oh, you heard that?”
“Yes; I thought it best to keep a sisterly eye on you.”
He forced a smile.
“You were very much amused, I suppose — to see me sitting bras-dessus-bras-dessous with the high-browed and precious.”
“Not amused; no. I was worried; you appeared to be so hopelessly captivated by her of the purple perfumery. Still, knowing you to be a man normally innocent of sentiment, I hoped for Mrs. Ascott and the best.”
“Did I once tell you that there was no sentiment in me, Calypso? I believe I did.”
“You certainly did, brother,” she replied with cheerful satisfaction.
“Well, I—”
“ — And,” she interrupted calmly, “I believed you. I am particularly happy now in believing you.” A pause — and she glanced at him. “In fact, speaking seriously, it is the nicest thing about you — the most attractive to me, I think.” She looked sideways at him, “Because, there is no more sentiment in me than there is in you.... Which is, of course, very agreeable — to us both.”
He said nothing more; the chair sped on homeward. Above them the sky was salmon-colour; patches of late sunlight burned red on the tree trunks; over the lagoon against the slowly kindling west clouds of wild-fowl whirled, swung, and spread out into endless lengthening streaks like drifting bands of smoke.
From time to time the girl cast a furtive glance toward him; but he was looking straight ahead with a darkly set face; and an ache, dull, scarcely perceptible, grew in her heart as they flew on along the glimmering road.
“Of what are you thinking, brother?” she asked persuasively.
“Of something I am going to do; as soon as I reach home; I mean your home.”
“I wish it were yours, too,” she said, smiling frankly; “you are such a safe, sound, satisfactory substitute for another brother.” ... And as he made no response: “What is this thing which you are going to do when you reach home?”
“I am going to ask your mother a question.”
Unquiet she turned toward him, but his face was doggedly set forward as the chair circled through the gates and swept up to the terrace.
He sprang out; and as he aided her to descend she felt his hand trembling under hers. A blind thrill of premonition halted her; then she bit her lip, turned, and mounted the steps with him. At the door he stood aside for her to pass; but again she paused and turned to Hamil, irresolute, confused, not even daring to analyse what sheer instinct was clamouring; what intuition was reading even now in his face, what her ears divined in his unsteady voice uttering some commonplace to thank her for the day spent with him.
“What is it that you are going to say to my mother?” she asked again.
And at the same instant she knew from his eyes — gazing into them in dread and dismay.
“Don’t!” she said breathlessly; “I cannot let—” The mounting wave of colour swept her: “Don’t go to her! — don’t ask such a — a thing. I am—”
She faltered, looking up at him with terrified eyes, and laid one hand on his arm.
The frightened wordless appeal stunned him as they stood there, confronting one another. Suddenly hope came surging up within her; her hand fell from his arm; she lifted her eyes in flushed silence — only to find hopeless confirmation of all she dreaded in his set and colourless face.
