Complete weird tales of.., p.564
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 564
Querida laughed: “Any man can always marry any woman. There’s no trick in getting any wife you want.”
“Sure,” grinned Allaire; “a wife is a cinch; it’s the front row that keeps good men guessing.” He glanced at Querida, his gray-green eyes brimming with an imprudent malice he could not even now deny himself— “Also the backs of the magazines keep one guessing,” he added, carelessly; “and I’ve the patience of a tom-cat, myself.”
Querida’s beautifully pencilled eyebrows were raised interrogatively.
“Oh, I’ll admit that the little West girl kept me sitting on back fences until some other fellow threw a bottle at me,” said Allaire with a disagreeable laugh. He had come as near as he dared to taunting Querida and, afraid at the last moment, had turned the edge of it on himself.
Querida lighted a cigarette and blew a whiff of smoke toward the ceiling.
“I’ve an idea,” he said, lazily, “that somebody is trying to marry her.”
“Forget it,” observed Allaire in contempt. “She wouldn’t stand for the sort who marry her kind. She’ll land hard on her neck one of these days, and the one best bet will be some long-faced Botticelli with heavenly principles and the moral stability of a tumbler pigeon. Then there’ll be hell to pay; but he will get over it and she’ll get aboard the toboggan. That’s the way it ends, Querida.”
Querida sipped his coffee and glanced out of the club window. From the window he could see the roof of the studio building where Neville lived. And he wondered how far Valerie was from that building at the present moment, wondered, and sipped his coffee.
He was a man whose career had been builded upon perseverance. He had begun life by slaying every doubt. And his had been a bitter life; but he had suffered smilingly; the sordid struggle along the edges of starvation had hardened nothing of his heart.
Sensitive, sympathetic, ardent, proud, and ambitious with the quiet certainty of a man predestined, he had a woman’s capacity for patience, for suffering, and for concealment, but not for mercy. And he cared passionately for love as he did for beauty — had succumbed to both in spirit oftener than in the caprice of some inconsequential amourette.
But never, until he came to know Valerie West, had a living woman meant anything vital to his happiness. Yet, what she aroused in him was that part of his nature to which he himself was a stranger — a restless, sensuous side which her very isolation and exposure to danger seemed to excite the more until desire to control her, to drive others away, to subdue, master, mould her, make her his own, obsessed him. And he had tried it and failed; and had drawn aside, fiercely, still watching and determined.
Some day he meant to marry properly. He had never doubted his ability to do so even in the sordid days. But there was no hurry, and life was young, and so was Valerie West — young enough, beautiful enough to bridge the years with him until his ultimate destiny awaited him.
And all was going well again with him until that New-year’s night; and matters had gone ill with him since then — so ill that he could not put the thought of it from him, and her beauty haunted him — and the expression of Neville’s eyes! —
But he remained silent, quiet, alert, watching and waiting with all his capacity for enduring. And he had now something else to watch — something that his sensitive intuition had divined in a single unfinished canvas of Neville’s.
So far there had been but one man supreme in the new world as a great painter of sunlight and of women. There could not be two. And he already felt the approach of a shadow menacing the glory of his sunlight — already stood alert and fixedly observant of a young man who had painted something disquieting into an unfinished canvas.
That man and the young girl whom he had painted to the astonishment and inward disturbance of José Querida, were having no easy time in that new world which they had created for themselves.
Embarked upon an enterprise in the management of which they were neither in accord nor ever seemed likely to be, they had, so far, weathered the storms of misunderstandings and the stress of prejudice. Blindly confident in Love, they were certain, so far, that it was Love itself that they worshipped no matter what rites and ceremonies each one observed in its adoration. Yet each was always attempting to convert the other to the true faith; and there were days of trouble and of tears and of telephones.
Neville presented a frightfully complex problem to Valerie West.
His even-tempered indifference to others — an indifference which had always characterised him — had left only a wider and deeper void now filling with his passion for her.
They were passing through a maze of cross-purposes; his ardent and exacting intolerance of any creed and opinion save his own was ever forcing her toward a more formal and literal appreciation of what he was determined must become a genuine and formal engagement — which attitude on his part naturally produced clash after clash between them.
That he entertained so confidently the conviction of her ultimate surrender to convention, at moments vexed her to the verge of anger. At times, too, his disposition to interfere with her liberty tried her patience. Again and again she explained to him the unalterable fundamentals of their pact. These were, first of all, her refusal to alienate him from his family and his own world; second, her right to her own individuality and freedom to support herself without interference or unrequested assistance from him; third, absolute independence of him in material matters and the perfect liberty of managing her own little financial affairs without a hint of dependence on him either before or after the great change.
That she posed only in costume now did not satisfy him. He did not wish her to pose at all; and they discussed various other theatres for her business activity. But she very patiently explained to him that she found, in posing for interesting people, much of the intellectual pleasure that he and other men found in painting; that the life and the environment, and the people she met, made her happy; and that she could not expect to meet cultivated people in any other way.
“I don’t want to learn stenography and take dictation in a stuffy office, dear,” she pleaded. “I don’t want to sit all day in a library where people whisper about books. I don’t want to teach in a public school or read novels to invalids, or learn how to be a trained nurse and place thermometers in people’s mouths. I like children pretty well but I don’t want to be a governess and teach other people’s children; I want to be taught myself; I want to learn — I’m a sort of a child, too, dear; and it’s the familiarity with wiser people and brighter people and pleasant surroundings that has made me as happy as I am — given me what I never had as a child. You don’t understand, but I’m having my childhood now — nursery, kindergarten, parties, boarding-school, finishing school, début — all concentrated into this happy year of being among gay, clever, animated people.”
“Yet you will not let me take you into a world which is still pleasanter—”
And the eternal discussion immediately became inevitable, tiring both with its earnestness and its utter absence of a common ground. Because in him apparently remained every vital germ of convention and of generations of training in every precept of formality; and in her — for with Valerie West adolescence had arrived late — that mystery had been responsible for far-reaching disturbances consequent on the starved years of self-imprisonment, of exaltations suppressed, of fears and doubts and vague desires and dreams ineffable possessing the silence of a lonely soul.
And so, essentially solitary, inevitably lonely, out of her own young heart and an untrained mind she was evolving a code of responsibility to herself and to the world.
Her ethics and her morals were becoming what wide, desultory, and unrestrained reading was making them; her passion for happiness and for truth, her restless intelligence, were prematurely forming her character. There was no one in authority to tell her — check, guide, or direct her in the revolt from dogmatism, pedantry, sophistry and conventionalism. And by this path youthful intelligence inevitably passes, incredulous of snare and pitfall where lie the bones of many a savant under magic blossoms nourished by creeds long dead.
“To bring no sorrow to any one, Louis — that is the way I am trying to live,” she said, seriously.
“You are bringing it to me.”
“If that is so — then I had better depart as I came and leave you in peace.”
“It’s too late.”
“Perhaps it is not. Shall we try it?”
“Could you recover?”
“I don’t know. I am willing to try for your sake.”
“Do you want to?” he asked, almost angrily.
“I am not thinking of myself, Louis.”
“I want you to. I don’t want you not to think about yourself all the time.”
She made a hopeless gesture, opening her arms and turning her palms outward:
“Kelly Neville! What do you suppose loving you means to me?”
“Don’t you think of yourself at all when you love me?”
“Why — I suppose I do — in a way. I know I’m fortunate, happy — I—” She glanced up shyly— “I am glad that I am — loved—”
“You darling!”
She let him take her into his arms, suffered his caress, looking at him in silence out of eyes as dark and clear and beautiful as brown pools in a forest.
“You’re just a bad, spoiled, perverse little kid, aren’t you?” he said, rumpling her hair.
“You say so.”
“Breaking my heart because you won’t marry me.”
“No, breaking my own because you don’t really love me enough, yet.”
“I love you too much—”
“That is literary bosh, Louis.”
“Good God! Can’t you ever understand that I’m respectable enough to want you for my wife?”
“You mean that you want me for what I do not wish to be. And you decline to love me unless I turn into a selfish, dependent, conventional nonentity, which you adore because respectable. Is that what you mean?”
“I want the laws of civilisation to safeguard you,” he persisted patiently.
“I need no more protection than you need. I am not a baby. I am not afraid. Are you?”
“That is not the question—”
“Yes it is, dear. I stand in no fear. Why do you wish to force me to do what I believe would be a wrong to you? Can’t you respect my disreputable convictions?”
“They are theories — not convictions—”
“Oh, Kelly, I’m so tired of hearing you say that!”
“I should think you would be, you little imp of perversity!”
“I am…. And I wonder how I can love you just as much, as though you were kind and reasonable and — and minded your own business, dear.”
“Isn’t it my business to tell the girl to whom I’m engaged what I believe to be right?”
“Yes; and it’s her business to tell you” she said, smiling; and put her arms higher so that they slipped around his neck for a moment, then were quickly withdrawn.
“What a thoroughly obstinate boy you are!” she exclaimed. “We’re wasting such lots of time in argument when it’s all so very simple. Your soul is your own to develop; mine is mine. Noli, me tangere!”
But he was not to be pacified; and presently she went away to pour their tea, and he followed and sat down in an armchair near the fire, brooding gaze fixed on the coals.
They had tea in hostile silence; he lighted a cigarette, but presently flung it into the fire without smoking.
She said: “You know, Louis, if this is really going to be an unhappiness to you, instead of a happiness beyond words, we had better end it now.” She added, with an irrepressible laugh, partly nervous, “Your happiness seems to be beyond words already. Your silence is very eloquent…. I think I’ll take my doll and go home.”
She rose, stood still a moment looking at him where he sat, head bent, staring into the coals; then a swift tenderness filled her eyes; her sensitive lips quivered; and she came swiftly to him and took his head into her arms.
“Dear,” she whispered, “I only want to do the best for you. Let me try in my own way. It’s all for you — everything I do or think or wish or hope is for you. Even I myself was made merely for you.”
Sideways on the arm of his chair, she stooped down, laying her cheek against his, drawing his face closer.
“I am so hopelessly in love with you,” she murmured; “if I make mistakes, forgive me; remember only that it is because I love you enough to die for you very willingly.”
He drew her down into his arms. She was never quick to respond to the deeper emotions in him, but her cheeks and throat were flushed now, and, as his embrace enclosed her, she responded with a sudden flash of blind passion — a moment’s impulsive self-surrender to his lips and arms — and drew away from him dazed, trembling, shielding her face with one arm.
All that the swift contact was awakening in him turned on her fiercely now; in his arms again she swayed, breathless, covering her face with desperate hands, striving to comprehend, to steady her senses, to reason while pulses and heart beat wildly and every vein ran fire.
“No—” she stammered— “this is — is wrong — wrong! Louis, I beg you, to remember what I am to you…. Don’t kiss me again — I ask you not to — I pray that you won’t…. We are — I am — engaged to you, dear…. Oh — it is wrong — wrong, now! — all wrong between us!”
“Valerie,” he stammered, “you care nothing for any law — nor do I — now—”
“I do! You don’t understand me! Let me go. Louis — you don’t love me enough…. This — this is madness — wickedness! — you can’t love me! You don’t — you can’t!”
“I do love you, Valerie—”
“No — no — or you would let me go! — or you would not kiss me again—”
She freed herself, breathless, crimson with shame and anger, avoiding his eyes, and slipped out of his embrace to her knees, sank down on the rug at his feet, and laid her head against the chair, breathing fast, both small hands pressed to her breast.
For a few minutes he let her lie so; then, stooping over her, white lipped, trembling:
“What can you expect if we sow the wind?”
She began to cry, softly: “You don’t understand — you never have understood!”
“I understand this: that I am ready to take you in your way, now. I cannot live without you, and I won’t. I care no longer how I take you, or when, or where, as long as I can have you for mine, to keep for ever, to love, to watch over, to worship…. Dear — will you speak to me?”
She shook her head, desolately, where it lay now against his knees, amid its tumbled hair.
Then he asked again for her forgiveness — almost fiercely, for passion still swayed him with every word. He told her he loved her, adored her, could not endure life without her; that he was only too happy to take her on any terms she offered.
“Louis,” she said in a voice made very small and low by the crossed arms muffling her face, “I am wondering whether you will ever know what love is.”
“Have I not proved that I love you?”
“I — don’t know what it is you have proved…. We were engaged to each other — and — and—”
“I thought you cared nothing for such conventions!”
She began to cry again, silently.
“Valerie — darling—”
“No — you don’t understand,” she sobbed.
“Understand what, dearest — dearest —
“That I thought our love was its own protection — and mine.”
He made no answer.
She knelt there silent for a little while, then put her hand up appealingly for his handkerchief.
“I have been very happy in loving you,” she faltered; “I have promised you all there is of myself. And you have already had my best self. The rest — whatever it is — whatever happens to me — I have promised — so that there will be nothing of this girl called Valerie West which is not all yours — all, all — every thought, Louis, every pulse-beat — mind, soul, body…. But no future day had been set; I had thought of none as yet. Still — since I knew I was to be to you what I am to be, I have been very busy preparing for it — mind, soul, my little earthly possessions, my personal affairs in their small routine…. No bride in your world, busy with her trousseau, has been a happier dreamer than have I, Louis. You don’t know how true I have tried to be to myself, and to the truth as I understand it — as true as I have been to you in thought and deed…. And, somehow, what threatened — a moment since — frightens me, humiliates me—”
She lifted her head and looked up at him with dimmed eyes:
“You were untrue to yourself, Louis — to your own idea of truth. And you were untrue to me. And for the first time I look at you, ashamed and shamed.”
“Yes,” he said, very white.
“Why did you offer our love such an insult?” she asked.
He made no answer.
“Was it because, in your heart, you hold a girl lightly who promised to give herself to you for your own sake, renouncing the marriage vows?”
“No! Good God—”
“Then — is it because you do not yet love me enough? For I shall not give myself to you until you do.”
He hung his head.
“I think that is it,” she said, sorrowfully.
“No. I’m no good,” he said. “And that’s the truth, Valerie.” A dark flush stained his face and he turned it away, sitting there in silence, his tense clasp tightening on the arms of the chair. Then he said, still not meeting her eyes:
“Whatever your beliefs are you practice them; you are true to your convictions, loyal to yourself. I am only a miserable, rotten specimen of man who is true to nothing — not even to himself. I’m not worth your trouble, Valerie.”
“Louis!”
“Well, what am I?” he demanded in fierce disgust. “I have told you that I believe in the conventions — and I violate every one of them. I’m a spectacle for gods and men!” His face was stern with self-disgust: he forced himself to meet her gaze, wincing under it; but he went on:
