Complete weird tales of.., p.459
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 459
“You seem to have been a sort of general Humpty Dumpty for falls all your life, Duane,” she said with dangerous sweetness.
“Like that immortal, I’ve had only one which permanently shattered me.”
“Which was that, if you please?”
“The fall you took out of me.”
“In other words,” she said disdainfully, “you are beginning to make love to me again.”
“No.... I was in love with you.”
“You were in love with yourself, young man. You are on such excellent terms with yourself that you sympathise too ardently with any attractive woman who takes the least and most innocent notice of you.”
He said, very much amused: “I was perfectly serious over you, Geraldine.”
“The selfish always take themselves seriously.”
It was she, however, who now sat there bright-eyed and unsmiling, and he was still laughing, deftly balancing his crop on one finger, and glancing at her from time to time with that glimmer of ever-latent mockery which always made her restive at first, then irritated her with an unreasoning desire to hurt him somehow. But she never seemed able to reach him.
“Sooner or later,” she said, “women will find you out, thoroughly.”
“And then, just think what a rush there will be to marry me!”
“There will be a rush to avoid you, Duane. And it will set in before you know it—” She thought of the recent gossip coupling his name with Rosalie’s, reddened and bit her lip in silence. But somehow the thought irritated her into speech again:
“Fortunately, I was among the first to find you out — the first, I think.”
“Heavens! when was that?” he asked in pretended concern, which infuriated her.
“You had better not ask me,” she flashed back. “When a woman suddenly discovers that a man is untrustworthy, do you think she ever forgets it?”
“Because I once kissed you? What a dreadful deed!”
“You forget the circumstances under which you did it.”
He flushed; she had managed to hurt him, after all. He began patiently:
“I’ve explained to you a dozen times that I didn’t know — —”
“But I told you!”
“And I couldn’t believe you — —”
“But you expect me to believe you?”
He could not exactly interpret her bright, smiling, steady gaze.
“The trouble with you is,” she said, “that there is nothing to you but good looks and talent. There was once, but it died — over in Europe — somewhere. No woman trusts a man like you. Don’t you know it?”
His smile did not seem to be very genuine, but he answered lightly:
“When I ask people to have confidence in me, it will be time for them to pitch into me.”
“Didn’t you once ask me for your confidence — and then abuse it?” she demanded.
“I told you I loved you — if that is what you mean. And you doubted it so strenuously that, perhaps I might be excused for doubting it myself.... What is the use of talking this way, Geraldine?”
There was a ring of exasperation in her laughter. She lifted his glass, sipped a little, and, looking over it at him:
“I drink to our doubts concerning each other: may nothing ever occur to disturb them.”
Her cheeks had begun to burn, her eyes were too bright, her voice unmodulated.
“Whether or not you ever again take the trouble to ask me to trust you in that way,” she said, “I’ll tell you now why I don’t and why I never could. It may amuse you. Shall I?”
“By all means,” he replied amiably; “but it seems to me as though you are rather rough on me.”
“You were rougher with me the first time I saw you, after all those years. I met you with perfect confidence, remembering what you once were. It was my first grown-up party. I was only a fool of a girl, merely ignorant, unfit to be trusted with a liberty I’d never before had.... And I took one glass of champagne and it — you know what it did.... And I was bewildered and frightened, and I told you; and — you perhaps remember how my confidence in my old play-fellow was requited. Do you?”
Reckless impulse urged her on. Heart and pulses were beating very fast with a persistent desire to hurt him. Her animation, brilliant colour, her laughter seemed to wing every word like an arrow. She knew he shrank from what she was saying, in spite of his polite attention, and her fresh, curved cheek and parted lips took on a brighter tint. Something was singing, seething in her veins. She lifted her glass, set it down, and suddenly pushed it from her so violently that it fell with a crash. A wave of tingling heat mounted to her face, receded, swept back again. Confused, she straightened up in her chair, breathing fast. What was coming over her? Again the wave surged back with a deafening rush; her senses struggled, the blood in her ran riot. Then terror clutched her. Neither lips nor tongue were very flexible when she spoke.
“Duane — if you don’t mind — would you go away now? I’ve a wretched headache.”
He shrugged and stood up.
“It’s curious,” he said reflectively, “how utterly determined we seem to be to misunderstand each other. If you would give me half a chance — well — never mind.”
“I wish you would go,” she murmured, “I really am not well.” She could scarcely hear her own voice amid the deafening tumult of her pulses. Fright stiffened the fixed smile on her lips. Her plight paralysed her for a moment.
“Yes, I’ll go,” he answered, smiling. “I usually am going somewhere — most of the time.”
He picked up hat, gloves, and crop, looked down at her, came and stood at the table, resting one hand on the edge.
“We’re pretty young yet, Geraldine.... I never saw a girl I cared for as I might have cared for you. It’s true, no matter what I have done, or may do.... But you’re quite right, a man of that sort isn’t to be considered” — he laughed and pulled on one glove— “only — I knew as soon as I saw you that it was to be you or — everybody. First, it was anybody; then it was you — now it’s everybody. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” she managed to say. The dizzy waves swayed her; she rested her cheeks between both hands and, leaning there heavily, closed her eyes to fight against it. She had been seated on the side of a lounge; and now, feeling blindly behind her, she moved the cushions aside, turned and dropped among them, burying her blazing face. Over her the scorching vertigo swept, subsided, rose, and swept again. Oh, the horror of it! — the shame, the agonised surprise. What was this dreadful thing that, for the second time, she had unwittingly done? And this time it was so much more terrible. How could such an accident have happened to her? How could she face her own soul in the disgrace of it?
Fear, loathing, frightened incredulity that this could really be herself, stiffened her body and clinched her hands under her parted lips. On them her hot breath fell irregularly.
Rigid, motionless, she lay, breathing faster and more feverishly. Tears came after a long while, and with them relaxation and lassitude. She felt that the dreadful thing which had seized and held her was letting go its hold, was freeing her body and mind; and as it slowly released her and passed on its terrible silent way, she awoke and sat up with a frightened cry — to find herself lying on her own bed in utter darkness.
A moment later her bedroom door opened without a sound and the light from the hall streamed over Kathleen’s bare shoulders and braided hair.
“Geraldine?”
The girl scarcely recognised Kathleen’s altered voice. She lay listening, silent, motionless, staring at the white figure.
“Dearest, I thought you called me. May I come in?”
“I am not well.”
But Kathleen entered and stood beside the bed, looking down at her in the dim light.
“Dearest,” she began tremulously, “Duane told me you had a headache and had gone to your room to lie down, so I didn’t disturb you — —”
“Duane,” faltered the girl, “is he here? What did he say?”
“He was in the library before dinner when I came in, and he warned me not to waken you. Do you know what time it is?”
“No.”
“It is after midnight.... If you feel ill enough to lie here, you ought to be undressed. May I help you?”
There was no answer. For a moment Kathleen stood looking down at the girl in silence; then a sudden shivering seized her; she strove to control it, but her knees seemed to give way under it and she dropped down beside the bed, throwing both arms around Geraldine’s neck.
“Oh, the horror of it! — the shame, the agonised surprise.”
“Oh, don’t, don’t!” she whimpered. “It is too terrible! It ruined your father and your grandfather! Darling, I couldn’t bear to tell you this before, but now I’ve got to tell you! It is in your blood. Seagraves die of it! Do you understand?”
“W-what?” stammered the girl.
“That all their lives they did what — what you have done to-day — that you have inherited their terrible inclinations. Even as a little child you frightened me. Have you forgotten what you and I talked over and cried over after your first party?”
The girl said slowly: “I don’t know how — it — happened, Kathleen. Duane came in.... I tasted what he had in his glass.... I don’t know why I did it. I wish I were dead!”
“There is only one thing to do — never to touch anything — anything — —”
“Y-yes, I know that I must not. But how was I to know before? Will you tell me?”
“You understand now, thank God!”
“N-not exactly.... Other girls seem to do as they please without danger.... It is amazing that such a horrible thing should happen to me — —”
“It is a shameful thing that it should happen to any woman. And the horror of it is that almost every hostess in town lets girls of your age run the risk. Darling, don’t you know that the only chance a woman has with the world is in her self-control? When that goes, her chances go, every one of them! Dear — we have latent in us much the same vices that men have. We have within us the same possibilities of temptations, the same capacity for excesses, the same capabilities for resistance. Because you are a girl, you are not immune from unworthy desires.”
“I know it. The — the dreadful thing about it is that I do desire such things. Perhaps I had better not even nibble sugar scented with cologne — —”
“Do you do that?” faltered Kathleen.
“I did not know there was any danger in it,” sobbed the girl. “You have scared me terribly, Kathleen.”
“Is that true about the cologne?”
“Y-yes.”
“You don’t do it now, do you?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t do it every day, do you?”
“Yes, several times.”
“How long” — Kathleen’s lips almost refused to move— “how long have you done this?”
“For a long time. I’ve been ashamed of it. It’s — it’s the alcohol in it that I like, isn’t it? I never thought of it in that way till now.”
Kathleen, on her knees by the bedside, was crying silently. The girl slipped from her arms, turned partly over, and lying on her back, stared upward through the darkness.
So this was the secret reason that, unsuspected, had long been stirring her to instinctive uneasiness, which had made her half ashamed, half impatient with this silly habit which already inconvenienced her. Yet even now she could not feel any real alarm; she could not understand that the fangs of a habit can poison when plucked out. Of course there was now only one thing to do — keep aloof from everything. That would be easy. The tingling warmth of the perfume was certainly agreeable, but she must not risk even such a silly indulgence as that. Really, it was a very simple matter. She sat up, supporting her weight on one arm.
“Kathleen, darling,” she whispered, bending forward and drawing the elder woman up onto the bed, “you mustn’t be frightened about me. I’ve learned some things I didn’t know. Do you think Duane—” In the darkness the blood scorched her face, the humiliation almost crushed her. But she went on: “Do you think Duane suspects that — that — —”
“I don’t think Duane suspects anything,” said Kathleen, striving to steady her voice. “You came in here as soon as you felt — ill; didn’t you?”
“I — yes — —”
She could say no more. How she came to be on her bed in her own room she could not remember. It seemed to her as though she had fallen asleep on the lounge. Somehow, after Duane had gone, she must have waked and gone to her own room. But she could not recollect doing it.
Now she realised that she was tired, wretched, feverish. She suffered Kathleen to undress her, comb her hair, bathe her, and dry the white, slender body and limbs in which the veins still burned and throbbed.
When at length she lay between the cool sheets, silent, limp, heavy-lidded, Kathleen turned out the electric brackets and lighted the candle.
“Dear,” she said, trying to speak cheerfully, “do you know what your brother has done?”
“What?” asked Geraldine drowsily.
“He has bought Roya-Neh, if you please, and he invites you to draw a check for half of it and to move there next week. As for me, I was furious with him. What do you think?”
Her voice softened to a whisper; she bent over the girl, looking closely at the closed lids. Under them a faint bluish tint faded into the whiteness of the cheek.
“Darling, darling!” whispered Kathleen, bending closer over the sleeping girl, “I love you so — I love you so!” And even as she said it, between the sleeper’s features and her own floated the vision of Scott’s youthfully earnest face; and she straightened suddenly to her full height and laid her hand on her breast in consternation. Under the fingers’ soft pressure her heart beat faster. Again, with new dismay, this incredible sensation was stealing upon her, threatening to transform itself into something real, something definite, something not to be stifled or ignored.
She extinguished the candle; as she felt her way out of the darkness, arms extended, far away in the house she heard a door open and shut, and she bent over the balustrade to listen.
“Is that you, Scott?” she called softly.
“Yes; Duane and I did some billiards at the club.” He looked up at her, the same slight pucker between his brows, boyishly slender in his evening dress. “You’re not going to bed at once, are you, Kathleen, dear?”
“Yes, I am,” she said briefly, backing into her own room, but holding the door ajar so that she could look out at him.
“Oh, come out and talk to a fellow,” he urged; “I’m quite excited about this Roya-Neh business — —”
“You’re a perfect wretch, Scott. I don’t want to talk about your unholy extravagance.”
The boy laughed and stood at ease looking at the pretty face partly disclosed between door and wall with darkness for a velvety background.
“Just come out into the library while I smoke one cigarette,” he began in his wheedling way. “I’m dying to talk to you about the game-preserve — —”
“I can’t; I’m not attired for a tête-à-tête with anything except my pillow.”
“Then put on one of those fetching affairs you wear sometimes — —”
“Oh, Scott, you are a nuisance!”
When, a few moments later, she came into the library in a delicate shimmering thing and little slippers of the same elusive tint, Scott jumped up and dragged a big chair forward.
“You certainly are stunning, Kathleen,” he said frankly; “you look twenty with all the charm of thirty. Sit here; I’ve a map of the Roya-Neh forest to show you.”
He drew up a chair for himself, lifted a big map from the table, and, unrolling it, laid it across her knees. Then he began to talk enthusiastically about lake and stream and mountain, and about wild boar and deer and keepers and lodges; and she bent her pretty head over the map, following his moving pencil with her eyes, sometimes asking a question, sometimes tracing a road with her own delicate finger.
Once or twice it happened that their hands touched en passant; and at the light contact, she was vaguely aware that somewhere, deep within her, the same faint dismay awoke; that in her, buried in depths unsuspected, something incredible existed, stirred, threatened.
“Scott, dear,” she said quietly, “I am glad you are happy over Roya-Neh forest, but it was too expensive, and it troubles me; so I’m going to sleep to dream over it.”
“You sweet little goose!” laughed the boy impulsively, passing his arm around her. He had done it so often to this nurse and mother.
They both rose abruptly; the map dropped; his arm fell away from her warm, yielding body.
He gazed at her flushed face rather stupidly, not realising yet that the mother and nurse and elder sister had vanished like a tinted bubble in that strange instant — that Kathleen was gone — that, in her calm, sweet, familiar guise stood a woman — a stranger, exquisite, youthful, with troubled violet eyes and vivid lips, looking at him as though for the first time she had met his gaze across the world.
She recovered her composure instantly.
“I’m sorry, Scott, but I’m too sleepy to talk any more. Besides, Geraldine isn’t very well, and I’m going to doze with one eye open. Good-night, dear.”
“Good-night,” said the boy vacantly, not offering the dutiful embrace to which he and she had so long and so lightly been accustomed.
* * *
CHAPTER V. ROYA-NEH
LATE ON A fragrant mid-June afternoon young Seagrave stood on the Long Terrace to welcome a guest whose advent completed a small house-party of twelve at Roya-Neh.
“Hello, Duane!” cried the youthful landowner in all the pride of new possession, as Mallett emerged from the motor; “frightfully glad to see you, old fellow! How is it in town? Did you bring your own rods? There are plenty here. What do you think of my view? Isn’t that rather fine?” — looking down through the trees at the lake below. “There are bass in it. Those things standing around under the oaks are only silly English fallow deer. Sorry I got ‘em. What do you think of my house? It’s merely a modern affair worked up to look old and colonial.... Yes, it certainly does resemble the real thing, but it isn’t. No Seagraves fit and bled here. Those are Geraldine’s quarters up there behind the leaded windows. Those are Kathleen’s where the dinky woodbine twineth. Mine face the east, and yours are next. Come on out into the park — —”
