Complete weird tales of.., p.488
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 488
“Geraldine,” he said, “here’s a letter from Bunny Gray. He and Sylvia Quest were married yesterday very quietly, and they sailed for Cape Town this morning!”
“What!”
“That’s what he writes. Did you ever hear of anything quicker?”
“How funny,” she said. “Bunny and Sylvia? I knew he was attentive to her but — —”
“You mean Dysart?” he said carelessly. “Oh, he’s only a confirmed débutante chaser; a sort of social measles. They all recover rapidly.”
“I had the — social measles,” said Geraldine, smiling.
Duane repressed a shiver. “It’s inevitable,” he said gaily.... “That Bunny is a decent fellow.”
“Will you show me his letter?” she asked, extending her hand as a matter of course.
“No, dear.”
She looked up surprised.
“Why not? Oh — I beg your pardon, dear — —”
Duane bent over, kissed her hand, and tossed the letter into the fire. It was her first experience in shadows cast before, and it came to her with a little shock that no two are ever one in the prosier sense of the theory.
The letter that Duane had read was this:
“Sylvia and I were married quietly yesterday and she has told me that you will know why. There is little further for me to say, Duane. My wife is ill. We’re going to Cape Town to live for a while. We’re going to be happy. I am now. She will be.
“My wife asked me to write you. Her regard for you is very high. She wishes me to tell you that I know everything I ought to have known when we were married. You were very kind to her. You’re a good deal of a man, Duane.
“I want to add something: her brother, Stuyve, is out of the hospital and loose again. He’s got all the virtues of a Pomeranian pup — that is, none; and he’ll make a rotten bad fist of it. I’ll tell you now that, during the past winter, twice, when drunk, he shot at his sister. She did not tell me this; he did, when in a snivelling condition at the hospital.
“So God knows what he may do in this matter. It seems that the blackguard in question has been warned to steer clear of Stuyvesant. It’s up to them. I shall be glad to have Sylvia at Cape Town for a while.
“Delancy Grandcourt was witness for me, Rosalie for Sylvia. Delancy is a brick. Won’t you ask him up to Roya-Neh? He’s dying to go.
“And this is all. It’s a queer life, isn’t it, old fellow? But a good sporting proposition, anyway. It suits me.
“Our love to you, to the little chatelaine of Roya-Neh, to her brother, to Kathleen.
“Tell them we are married and off for Cape Town, but tell them no more.
“B. Gray.”
“It isn’t necessary to say burn this scrawl.”
Geraldine, watching him in calm speculation, said:
“I don’t see why they were married so quietly. Nobody’s in mourning — —”
“Dear?”
“What, dear?”
“Do something for me.”
“I promise.”
“Then ask Delancy up here to shoot. Do you mind?”
“I’d love to. Can he come?”
“I think so.”
“I’ll write now. Won’t it be jolly,” she said innocently, “to have him and Rosalie here together — —”
The blank change on his face checked her. “Isn’t it all right?” she asked, astonished.
He had made his blunder. There was only one thing for him to say and he said it cordially, mentally damning himself for forgetting that Rosalie was to be invited.
“I’ll write to them both this morning,” concluded Geraldine. “Of course poor Jack Dysart is out of the question.”
“A little,” he said mildly. And, furious with himself, he rose as she stood up, and followed her into the armory, her cool little hand trailing and just touching his.
For half an hour they prowled about, examining Winchesters, Stevens, Mänlichers — every make and pattern of rifle and fowling-piece was represented in Scott’s collection.
“Odd, isn’t it, that he never shoots,” mused Duane, lifting out a superb weapon from the rack behind the glass doors. “This seems to be one of those murderous, low trajectory pieces that fires a sort of brassy shot which is still rising when it’s a mile beyond the bunker. Now, sweetheart, if you’ve a heavy suit of ancient armour which I can crawl into, I’ll defy any boar that roots for mast on Cloudy Mountain.”
It was great fun for Geraldine to lay out their equipment in two neat piles; a rifle apiece with cases and bandoliers; cartridges, two hunting-knives with leather sheaths, shooting hoods and coats; and timberjack’s boots for her lover, moccasins for her; a pair of heavy sweaters for each, and woollen mitts, fashioned to leave the trigger finger free.
Beside these she laid two fur-lined overcoats, and backed away in naïve admiration at her industry.
“Wonderful, wonderful,” he said. “We’ll only require saucepans and boiler lids to look exactly like Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee arrayed for battle. I say, Geraldine, how am I going to flee up a tree with all that on — and snow-shoes to boot-s,” he added shamelessly, grinning over his degraded wit.
She ignored it, advised him with motherly directness concerning the proper underwear he must don, looked at her rifle, examined his and, bidding him assume it, led him out to the range in the orchard and made him target his weapon at a hundred yards.
There was a terrific fusillade for half an hour or so; his work was respectable, and, satisfied, she led him proudly back to the house and, curling up on the leather divan in the library, invited him to sit beside her.
“Do you love me?” she inquired with such impersonal curiosity that he revenged himself fully then and there; and she rose and, instinctively repairing the disorder of her hair, seated herself reproachfully at a distance.
“Can’t a girl ask a simple question?” she said, aggrieved.
“Sure. Ask it again, dearest.”
She disdained to reply, and sat coaxing the tendrils of her dark hair to obey the dainty discipline of her slender fingers.
“I thought you weren’t going to,” she observed irrelevantly. But he seemed to know what she meant.
“Don’t you want me to even touch you for a year?”
“It isn’t a year. Months of it are over.”
“But in the months before us — —”
“No.”
She picked up a book. When he reached for a magazine she looked over the top of her book at him, then read a little, glanced up, read a little more, and looked at him again.
“Duane?”
“What?”
“This is a fool of a book. Do you want to read it?”
“No, thanks.”
“Over my shoulder, I mean?”
He got up, seated himself on the arm of her chair, and looked at the printed page over her shoulder.
For a full minute neither moved; then she turned her head, very slowly, and, looking into his eyes, she rested her lips on his.
“My darling,” she said; “my darling.”
Which is one of the countless variations of the malady which makes the world spin round in one continual and perpetual fit.
* * *
CHAPTER XXII. CLOUDY MOUNTAIN
FIVE DAYS RUNNING, Geraldine, Duane, and old Miller watched for the big gray boar among the rocky oak ridges under Cloudy Mountain; and though once they saw his huge tracks, they did not see him.
Every night, on their return, Scott jeered them and taunted them until a personal encounter with Duane was absolutely necessary, and they always adjourned to the snowy field of honour to wipe off the score and each other’s faces with the unblemished snow.
Rosalie and a Chow-dog arrived by the middle of the week; Delancy toward the end of it, unencumbered. Duane made a mental note of his own assininity, and let it go at that. He was as glad to see Rosalie as anybody, and just as glad to see Delancy, but he’d have preferred to enjoy the pleasures separately, though it really didn’t matter, after all.
“Sooner or later,” he admitted to himself, “that Delancy man is going to marry her; and it seems to me she’s entitled to another chance in the world. Even our earthly courts are lenient toward first offenders. As for the ethics — puzzle it out, you!” He made a gesture including the world in general, lighted a cigarette, and went out to the gun-room to join Geraldine.
“Rosalie and Delancy want to go shooting with us,” he explained with a shrug.
“Oh, Duane! — and our solitary and very heavenly trips alone together!”
“I know it. I have just telephoned Miller to get Kemp from Westgate for them. Is that all right?”
“Yes” — she hesitated— “I think so.”
“Let Kemp guide them,” he insisted. “They’ll never hold out as far as Cloudy Mountain. All they want is to shoot a boar, no matter how big it is. Miller says the boar are feeding again near the Green Pass. It’s easy enough to send them there.”
“Do you think that is perfectly hospitable? Rosalie and Delancy may find it rather stupid going off alone together with only Kemp to amuse them. I am fond of him,” she added, “but you know what a woman like Rosalie is prone to think of Delancy.”
He glanced at her keenly; she had, evidently, not the slightest notion of the status quo.
“Oh, they’ll get along together, all right,” he said carelessly. “If they choose to remain with us, of course we all can keep on to Cloudy Mountain; but you’ll see them accept Kemp and the Green Pass with grateful alacrity after two miles of snow-shoeing through the brush; and we’ll have the mountain all to ourselves.”
“You’re a shameless deviser of schemes, aren’t you, dear?” she asked, considering him with that faint, intimate smile, which, however, had always in it something of curiosity. “You know perfectly well we could drive those poor people the whole way to Cloudy Mountain.”
“Why, that is so!” he exclaimed, pretending surprise; “but, after all, dear, it’s better sport to beat up the alders below Green Pass and try to jump a pig for them. That’s true hospitality — —”
She laughed, shaking her head. “Oh, Duane, Duane!” she murmured, suffering him to capture both her hands and lay them against his face to cover the glee that twitched it at his own unholy perfidy.
And so it came about that, after an early luncheon, a big double sleigh jingled up, received its jolly cargo, and sped away again into the white woodlands, Kathleen waving adieu and Scott deriding them with scoffing and snowballs.
The drive was very beautiful, particularly through the pine and hemlock belt where the great trees, clothed heavily with snow, bent branch and crest under the pale winter sunshine. Tall fir-balsams pricked the sky, perfect cones of white; spruces were snowy mounds; far into the forest twilight glimmered the unsullied snow.
As they sped along, Geraldine pointed out imprints of fox and rabbit, faint trails where a field-mouse had passed, the string of henlike footprints recording the deliberate progress of some ruffed grouse picking its leisurely way across the snow; the sharp, indented marks of squirrels.
Rosalie was enchanted, Delancy mildly so, but when a deeper trail ploughed the snow, running parallel to their progress, he regarded it with more animation.
“Pig,” said Geraldine briefly.
“Wild?” he inquired.
“Of course,” she smiled; “and probably a good big boar.”
Rosalie thrilled and unconsciously rested her fur-gloved hand on Delancy’s sleeve.
“You know,” she said, “you must shoot a little straighter than you did at target practice this morning. Because I can’t run very fast,” she added with another delightful shudder.
Delancy, at her anxious request, modestly assured her that he would “plug” the first boar that showed his tusks; and Geraldine laughed and made Rosalie promise to do the same.
“You’re both likely to have a shot,” she said as the sleigh drew up on a stone bridge and Miller and Kemp came over and saluted — big, raw-boned men on snow-shoes, wearing no outer coats over their thin woollen shirts, although every thermometer at Roya-Neh recorded zero.
Gun-cases were handed out, rifles withdrawn, and the cases stowed away in the sleigh again. Fur coats were rolled in pairs, strapped, and slung behind the broad shoulders of the guides. Then snow-shoes were adjusted — skis for Geraldine; Miller walked westward and took post; Kemp’s huge bulk closed the eastern extremity of the line, and between them, two and two at thirty paces apart, stood the hunters, Duane with Rosalie, Geraldine with Delancy, loading their magazines.
Ahead was an open wood of second growth, birch, beech, and maple; sunlight lay in white splashes here and there; nothing except these blinding pools of light and the soft impression of a fallen twig varied the immaculate snow surface as far as the eye could see.
“Forward and silence,” called out Geraldine; the mellow swish of snow-shoes answered her, and she glided forward on her skis, instructing Delancy under her breath.
“The wind is right,” she said. “They can’t scent us here, though deeper in the mountains the wind cuts up and you never can be sure what it may do. There’s just a chance of jumping a pig here, but there’s a better chance when we strike the alder country. Try not to shoot a sow.”
“How am I to tell?”
“Sows have no tusks that show. Be careful not to mistake the white patches of snow on a sow’s jowl for tusks. They get them by rooting and it’s not always easy to tell.”
Delancy said very honestly: “You’ll have to control me; I’m likely to let drive at anything.”
“You’re more likely to forget to shoot until the pig is out of sight,” she whispered, laughing. “Look! Three trails! They were made last night.”
“Boar?”
“Yes,” she nodded, glancing at the deep cloven imprints. She leaned forward and glanced across the line at Miller, who caught her eye and signalled significantly with one hand.
“Be ready, Delancy,” she whispered. “There’s a boar somewhere ahead.”
“How can you tell?”
“I can scent him. It’s strong enough in the wind,” she added, wrinkling her delicate nose with a smile.
Grandcourt sniffed and sniffed, and finally detected a slight acrid odour in the light, clear breeze. He looked wisely around him; Geraldine was skirting a fallen tree on her skis; he started on and was just rounding a clump of brush when there came a light, crashing noise directly ahead of him; a big, dark, shaggy creature went bounding and bucking across his line of vision — a most extraordinary animal, all head and shoulders and big, furry ears.
The snapping crack of a rifle echoed by the sharp racket of another shot aroused him to action too late, for Miller, knife drawn, was hastening across the snow to a distant dark, motionless heap; and Geraldine stood jerking back the ejector of her weapon and throwing a fresh cartridge into the breach.
“My goodness!” he faltered, “somebody got him! Who fired, Geraldine?”
She said: “I waited as long as I dared, Delancy. They go like lightning, you know. I’m terribly sorry you didn’t fire.”
“Good girl!” said Duane in a low voice as she sped by him on her skis, rifle ready for emergencies as old Miller cautiously approached the shaggy brown heap, knife glittering.
But there was no emergency; Miller’s knife sank to the hilt; Geraldine uncocked her rifle and bent curiously over the dead boar.
“Nice tusks. Miss Seagrave,” commented the old man. “He’s fat as butter, too. I cal’late he’ll tip the beam at a hundred and forty paound!”
The hunters clustered around with exclamations of admiration; Rosalie, distractingly pretty in her white wool kilts and cap, knelt down and touched the fierce, long-nosed head and stroked the furry jowl.
“Oh, Delancy!” she wailed, “why didn’t you ‘plug’ him as you promised? I simply couldn’t shoot; Duane tried to make me, but I was so excited and so surprised to see the creature run so fast that all my ideas went out of my head and I never thought of pulling that wretched trigger!”
“That,” said Delancy, very red, “is precisely what happened to me.” And, turning to Geraldine, who looked dreadfully repentant: “I heard you tell me to shoot, and I merely gawked at the beast like a rubbering jay at a ten-cent show.”
“Everybody does that at first,” said Duane cheerfully; “I’ll bet anything that you and Rosalie empty your magazines at the next one.”
“We really must, Delancy,” insisted Rosalie as she and Geraldine turned away when Miller and Kemp tucked up their sleeves and unsheathed their knives in preparation for unpleasant but necessary details.
But they worked like lightning; and in exactly seven minutes the heavy beast was drawn, washed out with snow, roped, and hung to a tree well out of reach of any four-footed forest marauders that might prowl that way before night.
Geraldine, smiling her deprecation of their praise, waited with the others until the two guides were ready. Then, in the same order as before, they moved forward, descended the slope, and came into a strange wilderness of stark gray alders that stretched away in every direction. And threading, circling, crossing each other everywhere among the alders ran the trails of deer and wild boar, deep and fresh in the powdery snow.
At intervals, as they advanced, hard-wood ridges crossed the bewildering alder labyrinths. Twice, while ascending these ridges, Rosalie’s heart jumped as a grouse thundered up. Once three steel-gray deer started out of the scrub and went bounding off, displaying enormous white flags; once a young buck, hunting for trouble, winded it, whistled, and came leaping past Rosalie so close that she shrank aside with a half-stifled cry of apprehension and delight.
Half a mile farther on Delancy, labouring along on his snow-shoes, suddenly halted, detaining Geraldine with a quick touch on the shoulder.
“There’s something in that clearing,” he whispered.
Miller had seen it, too; Duane motioned Rosalie forward to join Delancy, and, side by side, they crept ahead, keeping a clump of scrub hemlock between them and the edge of the clearing. It was the Green Pass feed-ground, a rocky strip of pasture climbing upward toward Lynx Peak; and there, clean cut against the snowy background, three dark objects were moving, trotting nervously here and there, nosing, nuzzling, tunnelling the snow with long, sharp muzzles.
