Complete weird tales of.., p.481
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 481
And there in mid-forest, right in the tall timber, Scott, advancing, flushed a woodcock, which darted up, filling the forest with twittering music — the truest music of our eastern autumn, clear, bewildering, charming in its evanescent sweetness which leaves in its wake a startling silence.
Ahead, lining both sides of a gully deep with last year’s leaves, was an oak grove in mid-forest. Here the brown earth was usually furrowed by the black snouts of wild boar, for mast lay thick here in autumn and tender roots invited investigation.
“Get down flat and crawl,” whispered Scott; “there may be a boar or two on the grounds.”
Kathleen, in her pretty white gown of lace and some sheer stuff, looked at him piteously; but when he and Geraldine dropped flat and wriggled forward into the wind, misgiving of what might prowl behind seized her, and she tucked up her skirts and gave herself to the brown earth with a tremor of indignation and despair.
Nearer and nearer they crept, making very little sound; but they made enough to rouse a young boar, who jerked his head into the air, where he stood among the acorns, big, furry ears high and wide, nose working nervously.
“He’s only a yearling,” breathed Scott in his sister’s ear. “There are traces of stripes, if you look hard. Wait for a better one.”
They lay silent, all three peering down at the yearling, who stood motionless, nosing for tainted air, listening, peering about with dull, near-sighted eyes.
And, after a long time, as they made no sound, the brute wheeled suddenly, made a complete circle at a nervous trout, uttered a series of short, staccato sounds that, when he became older, would become deeper, more of an ominous roar than a hoarse and irritated grunt.
Two deer, a doe and a fawn, came picking their way cautiously along the edge of the gully, sometimes flattening their ears, sometimes necks outstretched, ears forward, peering ahead at the young and bad-tempered pig.
The latter saw them, turned in fury and charged with swiftness incredible, and the deer stampeded headlong through the forest.
“What a fierce, little brute!” whispered Kathleen, appalled. “Scott, if he comes any nearer, I’m going to get into a tree.”
“If he sees us or winds us he’ll run. Don’t move; there may be a good boar in presently. I’ve thought two or three times that I heard something on that hemlock ridge.”
They listened, holding their breath. Crack! went a distant stick. Silence; nothing stirred except the yearling who had returned to the mast and was eagerly nosing among the acorns. They could hear him crunching the husks, see the gleam of long white teeth which one day would grow outside that furry muzzle and curve up and backward like ivory sabres.
Geraldine whispered: “There’s a huge black thing moving in the hemlock scrub. I can see its feet against the sky-line, and sometimes part of its bulk — —”
“Oh, heavens,” breathed Kathleen, “what is that?”
Out of the scrub trotted a huge, shaggy, black thing, all head and shoulders, with body slanting back abruptly to a pair of weak hindquarters. Down the slope it ran in quick, noiseless, jerky steps; the yearling turned his head, still munching, ears cocked forward. And suddenly the monster rushed at him with a squeal, and the yearling shrieked and fled, chased clear up the slope.
“It’s a sow; don’t shoot,” whispered Scott. “Look, Sis, you can’t see a sign of tusks. Good heavens, what a huge creature she is!”
Fierce, formidable, the great beast halted; three striped, partly grown pigs came rushing and frisking down the gully to join her, filling the forest with their clumsy clatter and baby squealing. From the ridge the two deer, who had sneaked back, regarded the scene with terrified fascination.
Presently the yearling rushed them out again, then sidled down, venturing to the edge of the feeding-ground, where he began to crunch acorns again with a cautious eye on the sow and her noisy brood.
Here and there a brilliant blue-jay floated down, seized an acorn, and winged hastily to some near tree where presently he filled the woods with the noise he made in hammering the acorn into some cleft in the bark.
Gradually the sunlight on the leaves reddened; long, luminous shadows lengthened eastward. Kathleen, lying at full length, her pretty face between her hands, suddenly sneezed.
The next moment the feeding-ground was deserted; only a distant crashing betrayed the line of flight where the great fierce sow and her young were rushing upward toward the rocks of the Gilded Dome.
“I’m so sorry,” faltered Kathleen, very pink and embarrassed.
Geraldine sat up and laughed, laying the uncocked rifle across her knees.
“Some of these days I’m going to win my wager,” she said to her brother. “And it won’t be with a striped yearling, either; it will be with the biggest, shaggiest, fiercest, tuskiest boar that ranges the Gilded Dome. And that,” she added, looking at Kathleen, “will give me something to think of and keep me rather busy, I believe.”
“Rather,” observed her brother, getting up and helping Kathleen to her feet. He added, to torment her: “Probably you’ll get Duane to win your bet for you, Sis.”
“No,” said the girl gravely; “whatever is to die I must slay all by myself, Scott — all alone, with no man’s help.”
He nodded: “Sure thing; it’s the only sporting way. There’s no stunt to it; only keep cool and keep shooting, and drop him before he comes to close quarters.”
“Yes,” she said, looking up at Kathleen.
Her brother drew her to her feet. She gave him a little hug.
“Believe in me, dear,” she said. “I’ll do it easier if you do.”
“Of course I do. You’re a better sport than I. You always were. And that’s no idle jest; witness my nose and Duane’s in days gone by.”
The girl smiled. As they turned homeward she slung her rifle, passed her right arm through Kathleen’s, and dropped her left on her brother’s shoulder. She was very tired, and hopeful that she might sleep.
And tired, hopeful, thinking of her lover, she passed through the woods, leaning on those who were nearest and most dear.
Somehow — and just why was not clear to her — it seemed at that moment as though she had passed the danger mark — as though the very worst lay behind her — close, scarcely clear of her skirts yet, but all the same it lay behind her, not ahead.
She knew, and dreaded, and shrank from what still lay before her; she understood into what ruin treachery to self might precipitate her still at any moment. And yet, somehow, she felt vaguely that something had been gained that day which never before had been gained. And she thought of her lover as she passed through the forest, leaning on Scott and Kathleen, her little feet keeping step with theirs, her eyes steady in the red western glare that flooded the forest to an infernal beauty.
Behind her streamed her gigantic shadow; behind her lay another shadow, cast by her soul and floating wide of it now. And it must never touch her soul again, God helping.
Suddenly her heart almost ceased its beating. Far away within, stirring in unsuspected depths, something moved furtively.
Her face whitened a little; her eyes closed, the lids fluttered, opened; she gazed straight in front of her, walked on, small head erect, lips firm, facing the hell that lay before her — lay surely, surely before her. For the breath of it glowed already in her veins and the voices of it were already busy in her ears, and the unseen stirring of it had begun once more within her body — that tired white, slender body of hers which had endured so bravely and so long.
If sleep would only aid her, come to her in her need, be her ally in the peril of her solitude — if it would only come, and help her to endure!
And wondering if it would, not knowing, hoping, she walked onward through the falling night.
* * *
CHAPTER XVII. THE DANGER MARK
HER LETTERS TO him still bore the red cross:
“I understand perfectly why you cannot come,” she wrote; “I would do exactly as you are doing if I had a father. It must be a very great happiness to have one. My need of you is not as great as his; I can hold my own alone, I think. You see I am doing it, and you must not worry. Only, dear, when you have the opportunity, come up if only for a day.”
And again, in November:
“You are the sweetest boy, and it is not difficult to understand why your father cannot endure to have you out of his sight. But is this not a very heavy strain on you? Of course your mother and Naïda must not be left alone with him; you are the only son, and your place is there.
“Dear, I know what you are going through is one of the most dreadful things that any man is called upon to bear — your father stricken, your mother and sister prostrate; the newspapers — for I have read them — cruel beyond belief! But whatever they say, whatever is true or untrue, Duane, remember that it cannot affect my regard for you and yours.
“If I had a father, whatever he might have done, or permitted others to do, would not, could not alter my affection for him.
“Men say that women have no sense of honour. I do not know what that sense may be if it falters when loyalty and compassion are needed, too.
“I have read the papers; I know only what I read and what you tell me. The rules that custom has framed to safeguard and govern financial operations, I do not understand; but, as far as I can comprehend, it seems to me that custom has hitherto sanctioned what disaster has now placed under a bann. It seems to me that the very men who now blame your father have all done successfully what he did so disastrously.
“One thing I know: no kinder, dearer man than your father ever lived; and I love him, and I love his family, and I will marry his son when I am fit to do it.”
And again she wrote:
“I saw in the papers that the Algonquin Trust Company had closed its doors; I read the heartbreaking details of the crowds besieging it, the lines of frightened people standing there in the rain all night long. It is dreadful, terrible!
“Who are these Wall Street men who would not help the Algonquin when they could? Why is the Clearing House so bitter? I don’t know what it all means; I read columns about poor Jack Dysart — words and figures and technical phrases and stock quotations — and it means nothing, and I understand nothing of it save that it is all a fierce outcry against him and against the men with whom he was financially involved.
“The papers are so gloomy, so eager in their search for evil, so merciless, so exultant when scandal is unearthed, that I can scarcely bear to read them. Why do they drag in unhappy people who know nothing about these matters? The interview with your mother and Naïda, which you say is false, was most dreadful. How cruel men are!
“Tell them I love them dearly; tell your father, too. And, dear, I don’t know exactly how Scott and I are situated, but if we can be of any financial use to you, please, please let us! Our fortune, when it came to us, was, I believe, all in first mortgages and railroad securities. I believe that Scott made some changes in our investments under advice from your father. I don’t know what they were.
“Don’t bother your father with such details now; he has enough to think of lying there in his grief, bewildered, broken in mind and body. Duane, is it not more merciful that he is unable to understand what the papers are saying?
“Dear, heart and soul I am loyal to you and yours.”
She wrote again:
“Yes, I had a talk with Scott. I did not know he had been receiving all those letters from your attorneys. Magnelius Grandcourt manages the investments. Scott’s brokers are Stainer & Elting; our attorneys are, as you know, Landon, Brooks & Gayfield.
“Duane, I absolutely forbid you to worry. My brother is of age, sound in mind and body, responsible for whatever he does or has done. It is his affair if he solicits advice, his affair if he follows it. Your father has no responsibility whatever in the matter of the Cascade Development and Securities Company. Besides, Scott tells me that what he did was against the advice of Mr. Tappan.
“I remember last winter that he brought a Mr. Skelton to luncheon, and a horrid man named Klawber.
“Poor Scott! He certainly knows nothing about business matters. I know he had no desire to increase his private fortune; he tells me that what interested him in the Cascade Development and Securities Company was the chance that cheap radium might stimulate scientific research the world over. Poor Scott!
“Dear, you are not to think for one instant that any trouble which may involve Scott is due to you or yours. And if it were, Duane, it could make no difference to him or to me. Money and what it buys is such a pitiful detail in what goes to make up happiness. Who but I should understand that!
“Loss of social prestige and position, is a serious matter, I suppose; I may show my ignorance and inexperience when I tell you how much more serious to me are other things — like the loss of faith in one’s self or in others — or the loss of the gentler virtues, which means the loss of what one once was.
“The loss of honour is, as you say, a pitiful thing; yet, I think that when that happens, love and compassion were never more truly needed.
“Honour, as I understand it, is not to take advantage of others or of one’s better self. This is a young girl’s definition. I cannot see — if one has yielded once to temptation, and truly repents — why honour cannot be regained.
“The honour of men and nations that seems to require arrogance, aggression, violence for its defence, I do not understand. How can the misdeeds of others impair one’s true honour? How can punishment for such misdeeds restore it? No; it lies within one, quite intangible save by one’s self.
“Why should I not know, dear? — I who have lost my own and found it, have held it desperately for a while, then lost it, then regained it, holding it again as I do now — alas! — against no other enemy than I who write this record for your eyes!
“Dear, I know of nothing lost which may not be regained, except life. I know of nothing which cannot be rendered tolerable through loyalty.
“That material happiness which means so much to some, means now so very little to me, perhaps because I have never lacked it.
“Yet I know that, once mistress of myself, nothing else could matter unless your love failed.”
Again she wrote him toward the end of November:
“Why will you not let me help you, dear? My fortune is practically intact so far, except that, of course, I met those obligations which Scott could not meet. Poor Scott!
“You know it’s rather bewildering to me where millions go to. I don’t quite comprehend how they can so utterly vanish in such a short time, even in such a frightful fiasco as the Cascade Development Company.
“So many people have been here — Mr. Landon and Mr. Gayfield, Mr. Stainer of Elting & Stainer, that dreadful creature Klawber, a very horrid man named Amos Flack — and dear, grim, pig-headed Mr. Tappan — old Remsen Tappan of all men!
“He practically kicked out Mr. Flack and the creature Klawber, who had been trying to frighten Scott and me and even our lawyers.
“And think, Duane! He never uttered one sarcasm, one reproach for Scott’s foolishness; he sat grim and rusty as the iron that he once dealt in, listening to what Scott had to tell him, never opening that cragged jaw, never unclosing that thin line of cleavage which is his mouth.
“We did not know what he had come for; but we know now. He is so good — so good, Duane! And I, who hated him as a child, as a girl — I am almost too ashamed to let him take command and untangle for us, with those knotted, steel-sinewed fingers of his, the wretched, tangled mess that has coiled around Scott and me.
“Surely, this man Klawber is a very great villain; and it seems that Mr. Skelton and the wretched Flack creature are little less. As for Jack Dysart, it is all too sorrowful to think about. How must he feel! Surely, surely he could not have known what he was doing. He must have been desperate to go to Delancy Grandcourt. It was wrong; nothing on earth could have propped up the Algonquin, and why did he let his best friend go down with it?
“But it was fine of Delancy to stand by him — fine, fine! His father is perfectly furious, but, Duane, it was fine!
“And now, dear, about Scott. It will amuse you, and perhaps horrify you, if I tell you that he has not turned a hair.
“Not that he doesn’t care; not that he is not more or less mortified. But he blames nobody except himself; and he’s laying plans quite cheerfully for a career on a small income that really does not require the austerity and frugality he imagines.
“One thing is certain; the town house is to be sold. My income is not sufficient to maintain it and Roya-Neh, and live as we do, and have anything left. I don’t yet know how far my fortune is involved, but I have a very unpleasant premonition that there is going to be much less left than anybody believes, and that ultimately we ought to sell Roya-Neh.
“However, it is far too early to speculate; besides, this family has done enough speculating for one generation.
“Dear, you ask about myself. I am not one bit worried, sad, or apprehensive. I am better, Duane. Do you understand? All this has developed a set of steadier nerves in me than I have had since I was a child.
“A new and curiously keen enjoyment has been slowly growing in me — a happiness in physical and violent effort. I’ve a devilish horse to ride; and I love it! I’ve climbed all over the Gilded Dome and Lynx Peak after the biggest and shaggiest boar you ever saw. Oh, Duane! I came on him just at the edge of evening, and he winded me and went thundering down the Westgate ravine, and I fired too quickly.
“But I’m after him almost every day with old Miller, and my arms and legs are getting so strong, and my flesh so firm, and actually I’m becoming almost plump in the face! Don’t you care for that kind of a girl?
