Complete weird tales of.., p.461
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 461
Now and then some great trout, dark against the glimmer, leaped full length into the air; everywhere fish broke, swirled, or rolled over, showing “colour.”
“There is Scott,” she whispered, attuning her voice to the forest quiet— “out there in that canoe. No, he hasn’t taken his rod; he seldom does; he’s perfectly crazy over things of this sort. All day and half the night he’s out prowling about the woods, not fishing, not shooting, just mousing around and listening and looking. And for all his dreadfully expensive collection of arms and rods, he uses them very little. See him out there drifting about with the fish breaking all around — some within a foot of his canoe! He’ll never come in to dress for dinner unless we call him.”
And she framed her mouth with both hands and sent a long, clear call floating out across the Gray Water.
“All right; I’ll come!” shouted her brother. “Wait a moment!”
They waited many moments. Dusk, lurking in the forest, peered out, casting a gray net over shore and water. A star quivered, another, then ten, and scores and myriads.
They had found a seat on a fallen log; neither seemed to have very much to say. For a while the steady splashing of the fish sounded like the uninterrupted music of a distant woodland waterfall. Suddenly it ceased as if by magic. Not another trout rose; the quiet was absolute.
“Is not this stillness delicious?” she breathed.
“It is sweeter when you break it.”
“Please don’t say such things.... Can’t you understand how much I want you to be sincere to me? Lately, I don’t know why, I’ve seemed to feel so isolated. When you talk that way I feel more so. I — just want — a friend.”
There was a silence; then he said lightly:
“I’ve felt that way myself. The more friends I make the more solitary I seem to be. Some people are fashioned for a self-imprisonment from which they can’t break out, and through which no one can penetrate. But I never thought of you as one of those.”
“I seem to be at times — not exactly isolated, but unable to get close to — to Kathleen, for example. Do you know, Duane, it might be very good for me to have you to talk to.”
“People usually like to talk to me. I’ve noticed it. But the curious part of it is that they have nothing to give me in exchange for my attention.”
“What do you mean?”
He laughed. “Oh, nothing. I amuse people; I know it. You — and everybody — say I am all cleverness and froth — not to be taken seriously. But did it ever occur to you that what you see in me you evoke. Shallowness provokes shallowness, levity, lightness, inconsequence — all are answered by their own echo.... And you and the others think it is I who answer.”
He laughed, not looking at her:
“And it happens that you — and the others — are mistaken. If I appear to be what you say I am, it is merely a form of self-defence. Do you think I could endure the empty nonsense of a New York winter if I did not present to it a surface like a sounding-board and let Folly converse with its own echo — while, behind it, underneath it, Duane Mallett goes about his own business.”
Astonished, not clearly understanding, she listened in absolute silence. Never in all her life had she heard him speak in such a manner. She could not make out whether bitterness lay under his light and easy speech, whether a maliciously perverse humour lurked there, whether it was some new mockery.
He said carelessly: “I give what I receive. And I have never received any very serious attention from anybody. I’m only Duane Mallett, identified with the wealthy section of society you inhabit, the son of a wealthy man, who went abroad and dabbled in colour and who paints pictures of pretty women. Everybody and the newspapers know me. What I see of women is a polished coquetry that mirrors my fixed smirk; what I see of men is less interesting.”
He looked out through the dusk at the darkening water:
“You say you are beginning to feel isolated. Can anybody with any rudiment of intellect feel otherwise in the social environment you and I inhabit — where distinction and inherited position count for absolutely nothing unless propped up by wealth — where any ass is tolerated whose fortune and lineage pass inspection — where there is no place for intelligence and talent, even when combined with breeding and lineage, unless you are properly ballasted with money enough to forget that you have any?”
He laughed.
“So you feel isolated? I do, too. And I’m going to get out. I’m tired of decorating a set where the shuttle-cock of conversation is worn thin, frayed, ragged! Where the battledore is fashionable scandal and the players half dead with ennui and their neighbour’s wives — —”
“Duane!”
“Oh, Lord, you’re a world-wise graduate at twenty-two! Truth won’t shock you, more’s the pity.... As for the game — I’m done with it; I can’t stand it. The amusement I extract doesn’t pay. Good God! and you wonder why I kiss a few of you for distraction’s sake, press a finger-tip or two, brush a waist with my sleeve!”
He laughed unpleasantly, and bent forward in the darkness, clasped hands hanging between his knees.
“Duane,” she said in astonishment, “what do you mean? Are you trying to quarrel with me, just when, for the first time, something in this new forest country seemed to be drawing us together, making us the comrades we once were?”
“We’re too old to be comrades. That’s book rubbish. Men and women have nothing in common, intellectually, unless they’re in love. For company, for straight conversation, for business, for sport, a man would rather be with men. And either you and I are like everybody else or we’re going to really care for each other. Not for your pretty face and figure, or for my grin, my six feet, and thin shanks; I can care for face and figure in any woman. What’s the use of marrying for what you’ll scarcely notice in a month?... If you are you, Geraldine, under all your attractive surface there’s something else which you have never given me.”
“Wh — what?” she asked faintly.
“Intelligent interest in me.”
“Do you mean,” she said slowly, “that you think I underestimate you?”
“Not as I am. I don’t amount to much; but I might if you cared.”
“Cared for you?”
“No, confound it! Cared for what I could be.”
“I — I don’t think I understand. What could you be?”
“A man, for one thing. I’m a thing that dances. A fashionable portrait painter for another. The combination is horrible.”
“You are a successful painter.”
“Am I? Geraldine, in all the small talk you and I have indulged in since my return from abroad, have you ever asked me one sincere, intelligent, affectionate question about my work?”
“I — yes — but I don’t know anything about — —”
He laughed, and it hurt her.
“Don’t you understand,” she said, “that ordinary people are very shy about talking art to a professional — —”
“I don’t want you to talk art. Any little thing with blue eyes and blond curls can do it. I wanted you to see what I do, say what you think, like it or damn it — only do something about it! You’ve never been to my studio except to stand with the perfumed crowd and talk commonplaces in front of a picture.”
“I can’t go alone.”
“Can’t you?” he asked, looking closely at her in the dusk, so close that she could see every mocking feature.
“Yes,” she said in a low, surprised voice, “I could go alone — anywhere — with you.... I didn’t realise it before, Duane.”
“You never tried. You once mistook an impulse of genuine passion for the sort of thing I’ve done since. You made a terrific fuss about being kissed when I saw, as soon as I saw you, that I wanted to win you, if you’d let me. Since then you’ve chosen the key-note of our relations, not I, and you don’t like my interpretation of my part.”
For a while she sat silent, preoccupied with this totally new revelation of a man about whom she supposed she had long ago made up her mind.
“I’m glad we’ve had this talk,” she said at last.
“I am, too. I haven’t asked you to fall in love with me; I haven’t asked for your confidence. I’ve asked you to take an intelligent, affectionate interest in what I might become, and perhaps you and I won’t be so lonely if you do.”
He struck a match in the darkness and lighted a cigarette. Close inshore Scott Seagrave’s electric torch flashed. They heard the velvety scraping of the canoe, the rattle and thump as he flung it, bottom upward, on the sandy point.
“Hello, you people! Where are you?” — sweeping the wood’s edge with his flash-light— “oh, there you are. Isn’t this glorious? Did you ever see such a sight as those big fellows jumping?”
“Meanwhile,” said his sister, rising, “our guests are doubtless yelling with hunger. What time is it, Duane? Half-past eight? Please hurry, Scott; we’ve got to get back and dress in five minutes!”
“I can do it easily,” announced her brother, going ahead to light the path. And all the way home he discussed aloud upon the stripping, hatching, breeding, care, and diseases of trout, never looking back, and quite confident that they were listening attentively to his woodland lecture.
“Duane,” she said, lowering her voice, “do you think all our misunderstandings are ended?”
“Certainly,” he replied gaily. “Don’t you?”
“But how am I going to make everybody think you are not frivolous?”
“I am frivolous. There’s lots of froth to me — on top. You know that sort of foam you see on grass-stems in the fields. Hidden away inside is a very clever and busy little creature. He uses the froth to protect himself.”
“Are you going to froth?”
“Yes — until — —”
“Until what?”
“You — —”
“Go on.”
“Shall I say it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, unless you and I find each other intellectually satisfactory.”
“You said only a man — in love with a woman — could find her interesting in that way.”
“Yes. What of it?”
“Nothing.... Only I’m afraid you’ll have to froth, then,” she said, laughing. “I haven’t any intention of falling in love with you, Duane, and you’ll find me stupid if I don’t. Do you know that what you intimate is very horrid?”
“Why?”
“Yes, it is. Besides, it’s a sort of threat — —”
“A threat?”
“Certainly. You threaten to — you know perfectly well what you threaten to do unless I immediately consider the possibility of our — caring for each other — sentimentally.”
“But what do you care if you don’t care?”
“I — don’t. All the same it’s horrid and — and unfair. Suppose I was frothy and behaved — —”
“Misbehaved?”
“Yes. Just because you wouldn’t agree to take a sentimental interest in me?”
“I would agree! I’ll agree now!”
“Suppose you wouldn’t?”
“I can’t imagine — —”
“Oh, Duane, be honest! And I’ll tell you flatly — if you do misbehave. Just because I don’t particularly desire to rush into your arms — —”
“But I haven’t threatened to.”
Unconsciously she laid her hand on his arm again, slipping it a little way under.
“You’re just as you were years ago — just the dearest of playmates. We’re not too old to play, are we?”
“I can’t with you; it’s too dangerous.”
“What nonsense! Yes, you can. You like me for my intelligence in spite of what you say about men and women — —”
“I wouldn’t care for your intelligence if I were not in — —”
“Duane, stop, please!”
“In danger,” he continued blandly, “of proving my proposition.”
“You are insufferable. I am as intelligent as you.”
“I know it, but it wouldn’t attract me unless — —”
“It ought to,” she said hastily. “And, Duane, I’m going to make you take me into account. I’m going to exercise a man’s privilege with you by — by saying frankly — several things — —”
“What things?”
The amused mockery in his voice gave her courage.
“For one thing, I’m going to tell you that people — gossip — that there are — are — —”
“Rumours?” he asked in pretended anxiety.
“Yes.... About you and — of course they are silly and contemptible; but what’s the use of being attentive enough to a woman — careless enough to give colour to them?”
After an interval he said: “Perhaps you’ll tell me who beside myself these rumours concern?”
“You know, don’t you?”
“There might be several,” he said coolly. “Who is it?”
For a moment a tiny flash of anger made her cheeks hot. Then she said:
“You know perfectly well it’s Rosalie. I think we have become good enough comrades for me to use a man’s privilege — —”
“Men wouldn’t permit themselves that sort of privilege,” he said, laughing.
“Aren’t men frank with their friends?” she demanded hotly.
“About as frank as women.”
“I thought—” She hesitated, tingling with the old desire to hurt him, flick him in the raw, make him wince in his exasperating complacency. Then, “I’ve said it anyhow. I’m trying to show an interest in you — as you asked me to do — —”
He turned in the darkness, caught her hand:
“You dear little thing,” he whispered, laughing.
* * *
CHAPTER VI. ADRIFT
DURING THE WEEK the guests at Roya-Neh were left very much to their own devices. Nobody was asked to do anything; there were several good enough horses at their disposal, two motor cars, a power-boat, canoes, rods, and tennis courts and golf links. The chances are they wanted sea-bathing. Inland guests usually do.
Scott Seagrave, however, concerned himself little about his guests. All day long he moused about his new estate, field-glasses dangling, cap on the back of his head, pockets bulging with untidy odds and ends until the increasing carelessness of his attire and manners moved Kathleen Severn to protest.
“I don’t know what is the matter with you, Scott,” she said. “You were always such a fastidious boy — even dandified. Doesn’t anybody ever cut your hair? Doesn’t somebody keep your clothes in order?”
“Yes, but I tear ’em again,” he replied, carefully examining a small dark-red newt which he held in the palm of one hand. “I say, Kathleen, look at this little creature. I was messing about under the ledges along Hurryon Brook, and found this amphibious gentleman occupying the ground-floor apartment of a flat stone.”
Kathleen craned her dainty neck over the shoulder of his ragged shooting coat.
“He’s red enough to be poisonous, isn’t he? Oh, do be careful!”
“It’s only a young newt. Take him in your hand; he’s cool and clammy and rather agreeable.”
“Scott, I won’t touch him!”
“Yes, you will!” He caught her by the arm; “I’m going to teach you not to be afraid of things outdoors. This lizard-like thing is perfectly harmless. Hold out your hand!”
“Oh, Scott, don’t make me — —”
“Yes, I will. I thought you and I were going to be in thorough accord and sympathy and everything else.”
“Yes, but you mustn’t bully me.”
“I’m not. I merely want you to get over your absurd fear of live things, so that you and I can really enjoy ourselves. You said you would, Kathleen.”
“Can’t we be in perfect sympathy and roam about and — and everything, unless I touch such things?”
He said reproachfully, balancing the little creature on his palm: “The fun is in being perfectly confident and fearless. You have no idea how I like all these things. You said you were going to like ‘em, too.”
“I do — rather.”
“Then take this one and pet it.”
She glanced at the boy beside her, realising how completely their former relations were changing.
Long ago she had given all her heart to the Seagrave children — all the unspent passion in her had become an unswerving devotion to them. And now, a woman still young, the devotion remained, but time was modifying it in a manner sometimes disquieting. She tried not to remember that now, in Scott, she had a man to deal with, and tried in vain; and dealt with him weakly, and he was beginning to do with her as he pleased.
“You do like to bully me, don’t you?” she said.
“I only want you to like to do what I like to do.”
She stood silent a moment, then, with a shudder, held out her hand, fingers rigid and wide apart.
“Oh!” she protested, as he placed the small dark-red amphibian on the palm, where it crinkled up and lowered its head.
“That’s the idea!” he said, delighted. “Here, I’ll take it now. Some day you’ll be able to handle snakes if you’ll only have patience.”
“But I don’t want to.” She stood holding out the contaminated hand for a moment, then dropped on her knees and scrubbed it vigorously in the brook.
“You see,” said Scott, squatting cheerfully beside her, “you and I don’t yet begin to realise the pleasure that there is in these woods and streams — hidden and waiting for us to discover it. I wouldn’t bother with any other woman, but you’ve always liked what I like, and its half the fun in having you see these things. Look here, Kathleen, I’m keeping a book of field notes.” He extracted from his stuffed pockets a small leather-covered book, fished out a stylograph, and wrote the date while she watched over his shoulder.
“Discovered what seems to be a small dark-red newt under a stone near Hurryon Brook. Couldn’t make it bite me, so let Kathleen hold it. Query: Is it a land or water lizard, a salamander, or a newt; and what does it feed on and where does it deposit its eggs?”
