Complete weird tales of.., p.471
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 471
She turned slowly from him to confront an aggrieved group of masked young men, who came up very much hurt, clamouring for justice, explaining volubly that it was up to her to keep her engagements and dance with somebody besides Duane Mallett.
“Mon Dieu, Messieurs, je ne demanderais pas mieux,” she said gaily. “Why didn’t somebody ask me before?”
“You promised us each a dance,” retorted Tappan sulkily, “but you never made good. I’ll take mine now if you don’t mind — —”
“I’m down first!” insisted the Pink ‘un.
They squabbled over her furiously; Bunbury Gray got her; she swung away into a waltz on his arm, glancing backward at Duane, who watched her until she disappeared in the whirl of dancers. Then he strolled to the edge of the lantern-lit glade, stood for a moment looking absently at the shadowy woods beyond, and presently sauntered into the luminous dusk, which became darker and more opaque as he left the glare of the glade behind.
Here and there fantastic figures loomed, moving slowly, two and two, under the fairy foliage; on the Gray Water canoes strung with gaudy paper lanterns drifted; clouds of red fire rolled rosy and vaporous along the water’s edge; and in the infernal glow, hazy shapes passed and repassed, finding places among scores of rustic tables, where servants in old-time livery and powdered wigs hurried to and fro with ices and salads, and set the white-covered tables with silverware and crystal.
A dainty masked figure in demon red flitted across his path in the uncanny radiance. He hailed her, and she turned, hesitated, then, as though convinced of his identity, laughed, and hastened on with a nod of invitation.
“Where are you going, pretty mask?” he inquired, wending his pace and trying to recognise the costume in the uncertain cross light.
But she merely laughed and continued to retreat before him, keeping the distance between them, hastening her steps whenever he struck a faster gait, pausing and looking back at him with a mocking smile when his steps slackened; a gracefully malicious, tormenting, laughing creature of lace and silk, whose retreat was a challenge, whose every movement and gesture seemed instinct with the witchery of provocation.
On the edge of the ring of tables she paused, picked up a goblet, held it out to a passing servant, who immediately filled the glass.
Then, before Duane could catch her, she drained the goblet to his health and fled into the shadows, he hard on her heels, pressing her closer, closer, until the pace became too hot for her, and she turned to face him, panting and covering her masked face with her fan.
“Now, my fair unknown, we shall pay a few penalties,” he said with satisfaction; but she defended herself so adroitly that he could not reach her mask.
“Be fair to me,” she gasped at last; “why are you so rough with me when — when you need not be? I knew you at once, Jack.”
And she dropped her arms, standing resistless, breathing fast, her masked face frankly upturned to be kissed.
“Now, who the devil,” thought Duane, “have I got in my arms? And for whom does she take me?”
He gazed searchingly into the slitted eye-holes; the eyes appeared to be blue, as well as he could make out. He looked at the fresh laughing mouth, a young, sensitive mouth, which even in laughter seemed not entirely gay.
“Don’t you really mind if I kiss you?” He spoke in a whisper to disguise his voice.
“Isn’t it a little late to ask me that?” she said; and under her mask the colour stained her skin. “I think what we do now scarcely matters.”
She was so confident, so plainly awaiting his caress, that for a moment he was quite ready to console her. And did not, could not, with the fragrant and yielding intimacy of Geraldine still warm in his quickened heart.
She stood quite motionless, her little hands warm in his, her masked face upturned. And, as he merely stared at her:
“What is the matter, Jack?” she breathed. “Why do you look at me so steadily?”
He ought to have let her go then; he hesitated, wondering which Jack she supposed him to be; and before he realised it her arms were on his shoulders, her mouth nearer to his.
“Jack, you frighten me! What is it?”
“N-nothing,” he continued to stammer.
“Yes, there is. Does your — your wife suspect — anything — —”
“No, she doesn’t,” said Duane grimly, trying to free himself without seeming to. “I’ve got an appointment — —”
But the girl said piteously: “It isn’t — Geraldine, is it?”
“What!”
“You — you admitted that she attracted you — for a little while.... Oh, I did forgive you, Jack; truly I did with all my miserable heart! I was so fearfully unhappy — I would have done anything.” ... Her face flushed scarlet. “And I — did.... But you do love me, don’t you?” And the next moment her lips were on his with a sob.
Duane reached back and quietly unclasped her fingers. Then very gently he forced her to a seat on a great fallen log. Still looking up at him, droopingly pathetic in contrast to her gay début with him, she naïvely slipped up the mask over her forehead and passed her hand across her pretty blue eyes. Sylvia Quest!
The sinister significance of her attitude flashed over him, all doubt vanished, all the comedy of their encounter was gone in an instant. Over him swept a startled sequence of emotions — bitter contempt for Dysart, scorn of the wretchedly equivocal situation and of the society that bred it, a miserable desire to spare her, vexation at himself for what he had unwittingly stumbled upon. The last thought persisted, dominated; succeeded by a disgusted determination that she must be spared the shame and terror of what she had inadvertently revealed; that she must never know she had not been speaking to Dysart himself.
“If I tell you that all is well — and if I tell you no more than that,” he whispered, “will you trust me?”
“Have I not done so, Jack?”
The tragedy in her lifted eyes turned him cold with fury.
“Then wait here until I return,” he said. “Promise.”
“I promise,” she sighed, “but I don’t understand. I’m a — a little frightened, dear. But I — believe you.”
He swung on his heel and made toward the lights once more, and a moment later the man he sought passed within a few feet of him, and Duane knew him by his costume, which was a blue replica of his own gray silks.
“Dysart!” he said sharply.
The masked figure swung gracefully around and stood still, searching the shadowy woodland inquiringly.
“I want a word with you. Here — not in the light, if you please. You recognise my voice, don’t you?”
“Is that you, Mallett?” asked Dysart coldly, as the former appeared in the light for an instant and turned back again with a curt gesture.
“Yes. I want you to step over here among the trees, where nobody can interrupt us.”
Dysart followed more slowly; came to a careless halt:
“Well, what the devil do you want?” he demanded insolently.
“I’ll tell you. I’ve had an encounter with a mask who mistook me for you.... And she has said — several things — under that impression. She still believes that I am you. I asked her to wait for me over there by those oaks. Do you see where I mean?” He pointed and Dysart nodded coolly. “Well, then, I want you to go back there — find her, and act as though it had been you who heard what she said, not I.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly that. The girl ought never to know that what she said was heard and — and understood, Dysart, by any man in the world except the blackguard I’m telling this to. Now, do you understand?”
He stepped nearer:
“The girl is Sylvia Quest. Now, do you understand, damn you!”
A stray glimmer from the distant lanterns fell across Dysart’s masked visage. The skin around the mouth was loose and ashy, the dry lips worked.
“That was a dirty trick of yours,” he stammered; “a scoundrelly thing to do.”
“Do you suppose that I dreamed for an instant that she was convicting herself and you?” said Duane in bitter contempt. “Go and manufacture some explanation of my conduct as though it were your own. Let her have that much peace of mind, anyway.”
“You young sneak!” retorted Dysart. “I suppose you think that what you have heard will warrant your hanging around my wife. Try it and see.”
“Good God, Dysart!” he said, “I never thought you were anything more vicious than what is called a ‘dancing man.’ What are you, anyhow?”
“You’ll learn if you tamper with my affairs,” said Dysart. He whipped off his mask and turned a corpse-like visage on the younger man. Every feature of his face had altered: his good looks were gone, the youth in his eyes had disappeared, only a little evil lustre played over them; and out of the drawn pallor Duane saw an old man peering, an old man’s lips twitching back from uneven and yellowed teeth.
“Mallett,” he said, “you listen to me. Keep your investigating muzzle out of my affairs; forget what you’ve ferreted out; steer clear of me and mine. I want no scandal, but if you raise a breath of it you’ll have enough concerning yourself to occupy you. Do you understand?”
“No,” said Duane mechanically, staring at the man before him.
“Well, then, to be more precise, if you lift one finger to injure me you’ll cut a figure in court.... And you can marry her later.”
“Who?”
“My wife. I don’t think Miss Seagrave will stand for what I’ll drag you through if you don’t keep clear of me!”
Duane gazed at him curiously:
“So that is what you are, Dysart,” he said aloud to himself.
Dysart’s temples reddened.
“Yes, and then some!... I understand that you have given yourself the privilege of discussing my financial affairs in public. Have you?”
Duane said in a dull voice: “The Algonquin Trust was mentioned, I believe. I did say that you are a director.”
“You said I was hard hit and that the Clearing House meant to weed out a certain element that I represented in New York.”
“I did not happen to say that,” said Duane wearily, “but another man did.”
“Oh. You didn’t say it?”
“No. I don’t lie, Dysart.”
“Then add to that negative virtue by keeping your mouth shut,” said Dysart between his teeth, “or you’ll have other sorts of suits on your hands. I warn you now to keep clear of me and mine.”
“Just what is yours?” inquired Duane patiently.
“You’ll find out if you touch it.”
“Oh. Is — is Miss Quest included by any hazard? Because if the right chance falls my way, I shall certainly interfere.”
“If you do, I shall begin suit for alienation within twenty-four hours.”
“Oh, no, you won’t. You’re horribly afraid, Dysart. This grimacing of yours is fear. All you want is to be let alone, to burrow through the society that breeds your sort. Like a maggot in a chestnut you feed on what breeds you. I don’t care. Feed! What bred you is as rotten as you are. I’m done with it — done with all this,” turning his head toward the flare of light. “Go on and burrow. What nourishes you can look out for itself.... Only” — he wheeled around and looked into the darkness where, unseen, Sylvia Quest awaited him— “only, in this set, the young have less chance than the waifs of the East Side.”
He walked slowly up to Dysart and struck him across the face with open palm.
“Break with that girl or I’ll break your head,” he said.
Dysart was down on the leaves, struggling up to his knees, then to his feet, the thin blood running across his chin. The next instant he sprang at Duane, who caught him by both arms and forced him savagely into quivering inertia.
“Don’t,” he said. “You’re only a thing that dances. Don’t move, I tell you.... Wipe that blood off and go and set the silly girl’s heart at rest.... And keep away from her afterward. Do you hear?”
He set his teeth and shook him so wickedly that Dysart’s head rolled and his wig fell off.
“I know something of your sloppy record,” he continued, still shaking him; “I know about your lap-dog fawning around Miss Seagrave. It is generally understood that you’re as sexless as any other of your kind. I thought so, too. Now I know you. Keep clear of me and mine, Dysart.... And that will be about all.”
He left him planted against a tree and walked toward the lights once more, breathing heavily and in an ugly mood.
On the edge of the glade, just outside the lantern glow, he stood sombre, distrait, inspecting the torn lace on his sleeve, while all around him people were unmasking amid cries of surprise and shouts of laughter, and the orchestra was sounding a march, and multicoloured Bengal fires rolled in clouds from the water’s edge, turning the woods to a magic forest and the people to tinted wraiths.
Behind him he heard Rosalie’s voice, caressing, tormenting by turns; and, glancing around for her victim, beheld Grandcourt at heel in calflike adoration.
Kathleen’s laughter swung him the other way.
“Oh, Duane,” she cried, the pink of excitement in her cheeks, “isn’t it all too heavenly! It looks like Paradise afire with all those rosy clouds rolling under foot. Have you ever seen anything quite as charming?”
“It’s rotten,” said Duane brusquely, tearing the tattered lace free and tossing it aside.
“Wh-what!” she exclaimed.
“I say it’s all rotten,” he repeated, looking up at her. “All this — the whole thing — the stupidity of it — the society that’s driven to these kind of capers, dreading the only thing it ever dreads — ennui! Look at us all! For God’s sake, survey us damn fools, herded here in our pinchbeck mummery — forcing the sanctuary of these decent green woods, polluting them with smoke and noise and dirty little intrigues! I’m sick of it!”
“Duane!”
“Oh, yes; I’m one of ’em — dragging my idleness and viciousness and my stupidity and my money at my heels. I tell you, Kathleen, this is no good. There’s a stench of money everywhere; there’s a staler aroma in the air, too — the dubious perfume of decadence, of moral atrophy, of stupid recklessness, of the ennui that breeds intrigue! I’m deadly tired of it — of the sort of people I was born among; of their women folk, whose sole intellectual relaxation is in pirouetting along the danger mark without overstepping, and in concealing it when they do; of the overgroomed men who can do nothing except what can be done with money, who think nothing, know nothing, sweat nothing but money and what it can buy — like horses and yachts and prima donnas — —”
She uttered a shocked exclamation, but he went on:
“Yes, prima donnas. Which of our friends was it who bought that pretty one that sang in ‘La Esmeralda’?”
“Duane!” she exclaimed in consternation; but he took her protesting hands in his and held her powerless.
“You happen to be a darling,” he said; “but you were not born to this environment. Geraldine was — and she is a darling. God bless her. Outside of my sister, Naïda, and you two — with the exception of the newly fledged and as yet mercifully unregurgitated with vicious wisdom — who are all these people? Ciphers, save for their balances at their banks; nameless, save for the noisy reiteration of their hard-fisted forebears’ names; without any ambition, except financial and social; without any objective, save the escape from ennui — without any taste, culture, inspiration, except that of physical gratification! Oh, Lord, I’m one of them, but I resign to-night.”
“Duane, you’re quite mad,” she said, wrenching her hands free and gazing at him rather fearfully.
“I think he’s dead sensible,” said a calm voice at her elbow; and Scott Seagrave appeared, twirling his mask and blinking at them through his spectacles.
Duane laughed: “Of course I am, you old reptile-hunting, butterfly-chasing antediluvian! But, come on; Byzantium is gorging its diamond-swathed girth yonder with salad and champagne; and I’m hungry, even if Kathleen isn’t — —”
“I am!” she exclaimed indignantly. “Scott, can’t you find Naïda and Geraldine? Duane and I will keep a table until you return — —”
“I’ll find them,” said Duane; and he walked off among the noisy, laughing groups, his progress greeted uproariously from table to table. He found Naïda and Bunbury Gray, and they at once departed for the rendezvous indicated.
“Geraldine was here a little while ago,” said Gray, “but she walked to the lake with Jack Dysart. My, but she’s hitting it up,” he added admiringly.
“Hitting it up?” repeated Duane.
“For a girl who never does, I mean. I imagine that she’s a novice with champagne. Champagne and Geraldine make a very fetching combination, I can tell you.”
“She took no more than I,” observed Naïda with a shrug; “one solitary glass. If a girl happens to be high strung and ventures to laugh a little, some wretched man is sure to misunderstand! Bunny, you’re a gadabout!”
She made her way out from the maze of tables, Bunny following, somewhat abashed; and Duane walked toward the shore, where dozens of lantern-hung canoes bobbed, and the pasteboard cylinders of Bengal fire had burned to smouldering sparks.
In the dim light he came on the people he was looking for, seated on the rocks. Dysart, at her feet, was speaking in an undertone; Geraldine, partly turned away from him, hands clasped around her knees, was staring steadily across the water.
Neither rose as he came up; Dysart merely became mute; Geraldine looked around with a start; her lips parted in a soundless, mechanical greeting, then the flush in her cheeks brightened; and as she rose, Dysart got onto his feet and stood silently facing the new arrival.
“I said after the third dance, you know,” she observed with an assumed lightness that did not deceive him. And, as he made no answer, he saw the faint flicker of fright in her eyes and the lower lip quiver.
He said pleasantly, controlling his voice: “Isn’t this after the third dance? You are to be my partner for supper, I think.”
“A long time after; and I’ve already sat at Belshazzar’s feast, thank you. I couldn’t very well starve waiting for you, could I?” And she forced a smile.
