Complete weird tales of.., p.501
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 501
Flight was, therefore, imperative — it was absolutely indispensable that she put a number of miles between herself and this young man who had just informed her that Fate had designed them for one another.
She was no longer considering whether she owed this amazing young man any gratitude, or what sort of a man he might be, agreeable, well-bred, attractive; all she understood was that this man had suddenly stepped into her life, politely expressing his conviction that they could not, ultimately, hope to escape from each other. And, beginning to realize the awful import of his words, the only thing that restrained her from instant flight on foot was the hidden Clarence. She could not abandon her cat. She must wait for that maid. She waited. Meanwhile she hunted up Dooley’s Agency in the telephone book and called them up. They told her the maid was on the way — as though Dooley’s Agency could thwart Destiny with a whole regiment of its employees!
She had discarded her roses with a shudder; cap, goggles, duster, lay in her lap. If the maid came before Brown returned she’d flee. If Brown came back before the maid arrived she’d tell him plainly what she had decided on, thank him, tell him kindly but with decision that, considering the incredible circumstances of their encounter, she must decline to encourage any hope he might entertain of ever again seeing her.
At this stern resolve her heart, being an automatic and independent affair, refused to approve, and began an unpleasantly irregular series of beats which annoyed her.
“It is true,” she admitted to herself, “that he is a gentleman, and I can scarcely be rude enough, after what he has done for me, to leave him without any explanation at all.... His clothes are ruined. I must remember that.”
Her heart seemed to approve such sentiments, and it beat more regularly as she seated herself at a desk, found in it a sheet of notepaper and a pencil, and wrote rapidly:
“Dear Mr. Brown:
“If my maid comes before you do I am going. I can’t help it. The maid will stay to look after Clarence until I can return with some of the family. I don’t mean to be rude, but I simply cannot stand what you told me about our — about what you told me.... I’m sorry you tore your clothes.
“Please believe my flight has nothing to do with you personally or your conduct, which was perfectly (‘charming’ scratched out) proper. It is only that to be suddenly told that one is predestined to (‘marry’ scratched out) become intimately acquainted (all this scratched out and a new line begun).
“It is unendurable for a girl to think that there is no freedom of choice in life left her — to be forced, by what you say are occult currents, into — friendship — with a perfectly strange man at the other end. So I don’t think we had better ever again attempt to find anybody to present us to each other. This doesn’t sound right, but you will surely understand.
“Please do not misjudge me. I must appear to you uncivil, ungrateful, and childish — but I am, somehow, a little frightened. I know you are perfectly nice — but all that has happened is almost, in a way, terrifying to me. Not that I am cowardly; but you must understand. You will — won’t you?.... But what is the use of my asking you, as I shall never see you again.
“So I am only going to thank you, and say (‘with all my heart’ crossed out) very cordially, that you have been most kind, most generous and considerate — most — most — —”
* * *
Her pencil faltered; she looked into space, and the image of Beekman Brown, pleasant-eyed, attractive, floated unbidden out of vacancy and looked at her.
She stared back at the vision curiously, more curiously as her mind evoked the agreeable details of his features, resting there, chin on the back of her hand, from which, presently, the pencil fell unheeded.
What could he be doing upstairs all this while. She had not heard him for many minutes now. Why was he so still?
She straightened up at her desk and glanced uneasily across her shoulder, listening.
Not a sound from above; she rose and walked to the foot of the stairs.
Why was he so still? Had he found Clarence? Had anything gone wrong? Had Clarence become suddenly rabid and attacked him. Cats can’t annihilate big, strong young men. But where was he? Had he, pursuing his quest, emerged through the scuttle on to the roof — and — and — fallen off?
Scarcely knowing what she did she mounted on tiptoe to the second floor, listening. The silence troubled her; she went from room to room, opening doors and clothespresses. Then she mounted to the third floor, searching more quickly. On the fourth floor she called to him in a voice not quite steady. There was no reply.
Alarmed now, she hurriedly flung open doors everywhere, then, picking up her rose-silk skirts, she ran to the top floor and called tremulously.
A faint sound answered; bewildered, she turned to the first closet at hand, and her cheeks suddenly blanched as she sprang to the door of the cedar press and tore it wide open.
He was lying on his face amid a heap of rolled rugs, clothes hangers and furs, quite motionless.
She knew enough to run into the servants’ rooms, fling open the windows and, with all the strength in her young body, drag the inanimate youth across the floor and into the fresh air.
“O-h!” she said, and said it only once. Then, ashy of lip and cheek, she took hold of Brown and, lashing her memory to help her in the emergency, performed for that inanimate gentleman the rudiments of an exercise which, if done properly, is supposed to induce artificial respiration.
It certainly induced something resembling it in Brown. After a while he made unlovely and inarticulate sounds; after a while the sounds became articulate. He said: “Betty!” several times, more or less distinctly. He opened one eye, then the other; then his hands closed on the hands that were holding his wrists; he looked up at her from where he lay on the floor. She, crouched beside him, eyes still dilated with the awful fear of death, looked back, breathless, trembling.
“That is a devil of a place, that closet,” he said faintly.
She tried to smile, tried wearily to free her hands, watched them, dazed, being drawn toward him, drawn tight against his lips — felt his lips on them.
Then, without warning, an incredible thrill shot through her to the heart, stilling it — silencing pulse and breath — nay, thought itself. She heard him speaking; his words came to her like distant sounds in a dream:
“I cared for you. You give me life — and I adore you.... Let me. It will not harm you. The problem of life is solved for me; I have solved it; but unless some day you will prove it for me — Betty — the problem of life is but a sorry sum — a total of ciphers without end.... No other two people in all the world could be what we are and what we have been to each other. No other two people could dare to face what we dare face.” He paused: “Dare we, Betty?”
Her eyes turned from his. He rose unsteadily, supported on one arm; she sprang to her feet, looked at him, and, as he made an awkward effort to rise, suddenly bent forward and gave him both hands in aid.
“Wait — wait!” she said; “let me try to think, if I can. Don’t speak to me again — not yet — not now.”
But, at intervals, as they descended the flights of stairs, she turned instinctively to watch his progress, for he still moved with difficulty.
In the drawing-room they halted, he leaning heavily on the back of a chair, she, distrait, restless, pacing the polished parquet, treading her roses under foot, turning from time to time to look at him — a strange, direct, pure-lidded gaze that seemed to freshen his very soul.
Once he stooped and picked up one of the trodden roses bruised by her slim foot; once, as she passed him, pacing absently the space between the door and him, he spoke her name.
But: “Wait!” she breathed. “You have said everything. It is for me to reply — if I speak at all. C-can’t you wait for — me?”
“Have I angered you?”
She halted, head high, superb in her slim, young beauty.
“Do I look it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Nor I. Let me find out.”
The room had become dimmer; the light on her hair and face and hands glimmered dully as she passed and re-passed him in her restless progress — restless, dismayed, frightened progress toward a goal she already saw ahead — close ahead of her — every time she turned to look at him. She already knew the end.
That man! And she knew that already he must be, for her, something that she could never again forget — something she must reckon with forever and ever while life endured.
She paused and inspected him almost insolently. Suddenly the rush of the last revolt overwhelmed her; her eyes blazed, her white hands tightened into two small clenched fists — and then tumult died in her ringing ears, the brightness of the eyes was quenched, her hands relaxed, her head sank low, lower, never again to look on this man undismayed, heart free, unafraid — never again to look into this man’s eyes with the unthinking, unbelieving tranquillity born of the most harmless skepticism in the world.
She stood there in silence, heard his step beside her, raised her head with an effort.
“Betty!”
Her hands quivered, refusing surrender. He bent and lifted them, pressing them to his eyes, his forehead. Then lowered them to the level of his lips, holding them suspended, eyes looking into hers, waiting.
Suddenly her eyes closed, a convulsive little tremor swept her, she pressed both clasped hands against his lips, her own moved, but no words came — only a long, sweet, soundless sigh, soft as the breeze that stirs the crimson maple buds when the snows of spring at last begin to melt.
From a dark corner under the piano Clarence watched them furtively.
XII
SYBILLA
SHOWING WHAT COMES of Disobedience, Rosium, and Flour-Paste
About noon Bushwyck Carr bounced into the gymnasium, where the triplets had just finished their fencing lesson.
“Did any of you three go into the laboratory this morning?” he demanded, his voice terminating in a sort of musical bellow, like the blast of a mellow French horn on a touring car.
The triplets — Flavilla, Drusilla, and Sybilla — all clothed precisely alike in knee kilts, plastrons, gauntlets and masks, came to attention, saluting their parent with their foils. The Boznovian fencing mistress, Madame Tzinglala, gracefully withdrew to the dressing room and departed.
“Which of you three girls went into the laboratory this morning?” repeated their father impatiently.
The triplets continued to stand in a neat row, the buttons of their foils aligned and resting on the hardwood floor. In graceful unison they removed their masks; three flushed and unusually pretty faces regarded the author of their being attentively — more attentively still when that round and ruddy gentleman, executing a facial contortion, screwed his monocle into an angry left eye and glared.
“Didn’t I warn you to keep out of that laboratory?” he asked wrathfully; “didn’t I explain to you that it was none of your business? I believe I informed you that whatever is locked up in that room is no concern of yours. Didn’t I?”
“Yes, Pa-pah.”
“Well, confound it, what did you go in for, then?”
An anxious silence was his answer. “You didn’t all go in, did you?” he demanded in a melodious bellow.
“Oh, no, Pa-pah!”
“Did two of you go?”
“Oh-h, n-o, Pa-pah!”
“Well, which one did?”
The line of beauty wavered for a moment; then Sybilla stepped slowly to the front, three paces, and halted with downcast eyes.
“I told you not to, didn’t I?” said her father, scowling the monocle out of his eye and reinserting it.
“Y-yes, Pa-pah.”
“But you did?”
“Y-yes — —”
“That will do! Flavilla! Drusilla! You are excused,” dismissing the two guiltless triplets with a wave of the terrible eyeglass; and when they had faced to the rear and retired in good order, closing the door behind them, he regarded his delinquent daughter in wrathy and rubicund dismay.
“What did you see in that laboratory?” he demanded.
Sybilla began to count on her fingers. “As I walked around the room I noticed jars, bottles, tubes, lamps, retorts, blowpipes, batteries — —”
“Did you notice a small, shiny machine that somewhat resembles the interior economy of a watch?”
“Yes, Pa-pah, but I haven’t come to that yet — —”
“Did you go near it?”
“Quite near — —”
“You didn’t touch it, did you?”
“I was going to tell you — —”
“Did you?” he bellowed musically. “Answer me, Sybilla!”
“Y-yes — I did.”
“What did you suppose it to be?”
“I thought — we all thought — that you kept a wireless telephone instrument in there — —”
“Why? Just because I happen to be president of the Amalgamated Wireless Trust Company?”
“Yes. And we were dying to see a wireless telephone work.... I thought I’d like to call up Central — just to be sure I could make the thing go — What is the matter, Pa-pah?”
He dropped into a wadded armchair and motioned Sybilla to a seat opposite. Then with another frightful facial contortion he reimbedded the monocle.
“So you deliberately opened that door and went in to rummage?”
“No,” said the girl; “we were — skylarking a little, on our way to the gymnasium; and I gave Brasilia a little shove toward the laboratory door, and then Flavilla pushed me — very gently — and somehow I — the door flew open and my mask fell off and rolled inside; and I went in after it. That is how it happened — partly.”
She lifted her dark and very beautiful eyes to her stony parent, then they dropped, and she began tracing figures and arabesques on the polished floor with the point of her foil. “That is partly how,” she repeated.
“What is the other part?”
“The other part was that, having unfortunately disobeyed you, and being already in the room, I thought I might as well stay and take a little peep around — —”
Her father fairly bounced in his padded chair. The velvet-eyed descendant of Eve shot a fearful glance at him and continued, still casually tracing invisible arabesques with her foil’s point.
“You see, don’t you,” she said, “that being actually in, I thought I might as well do something before I came out again, which would make my disobedience worth the punishment. So I first picked up my mask, then I took a scared peep around. There were only jars and bottles and things.... I was dreadfully disappointed. The certainty of being punished and then, after all, seeing nothing but bottles, did seem rather unfair.... So I — walked around to — to see if I could find something to look at which would repay me for the punishment.... There is a proverb, isn’t there Pa-pah? — something about being executed for a lamb — —”
“Go on!” he said sharply.
“Well, all I could find that looked as though I had no business to touch it was a little jeweled machine — —”
“That was it! Did you touch it?”
“Yes, several times. Was it a wireless?”
“Never mind! Yes, it’s one kind of a wireless instrument. Go on!”
Sybilla shook her head:
“I’m sure I don’t see why you are so disturbingly emphatic; because I haven’t an idea how to send or receive a wireless message, and I hadn’t the vaguest notion how that machine might work. I tried very hard to make it go; I turned several screws and pushed all the push-buttons — —”
Mr. Carr emitted a hollow, despairing sound — a sort of musical groan — and feebly plucked at space.
“I tried every lever, screw, and spring,” she went on calmly, “but the machine must have been out of order, for I only got one miserable little spark — —”
“You got a spark?”
“Yes — just a tiny, noiseless atom of white fire — —”
Her father bounced to his feet and waved both hands at her distractedly.
“Do you know what you’ve done?” he bellowed.
“N-no — —”
“Well, you’ve prepared yourself to fall in love! And you’ve probably induced some indescribable pup to fall in love with you! And that’s what you’ve done!”
“In — love!”
“Yes, you have!”
“But how can a common wireless telephone — —”
“It’s another kind of a wireless. Your brother-in-law, William Destyn, invented it; I’m backing it and experimenting with it. I told you to keep out of that room. I hung up a sign on the door: ‘Danger! Keep out!’”
“W-was that thing loaded?”
“Yes, it was loaded!”
“W-what with?”
“Waves!” shouted her father, furiously. “Psychic waves! You little ninny, we’ve just discovered that the world and everything in it is enveloped in psychic waves, as well as invisible electric currents. The minute you got near that machine and opened the receiver, waves from your subconscious personality flowed into it. And the minute you touched that spring and got a spark, your psychic waves had signaled, by wireless, the subconscious personality of some young man — some insufferable pup — who’ll come from wherever he is at present — from the world’s end if need be — and fall in love with you.”
Mr. Carr jumped ponderously up and down in pure fury; his daughter regarded him in calm consternation.
“I am so very, very sorry,” she said; “but I am quite certain that I am not going to fall in love — —”
“You can’t help it,” roared her father, “if that instrument worked.”
