Complete weird tales of.., p.566
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 566
Oporto who send him these kind of parrots occasionally. He names ’em all
Leparello, teaches ’em all the same jargon, and — gives ’em to girls!”
“How funny,” said Valerie. She looked at Sam, aware of something else in his grin, and gave an uncertain little laugh.
He sat down, rubbing his ear-lobes, the malicious grin still lingering on his countenance. What he had not told her was that Querida’s volcanically irregular affairs of the heart always ended with the gift of an Oporto parrot. Marianne Valdez owned one. So did Mazie Gray.
His cynical gaze rested on Valerie reflectively. He had heard plenty of rumours and whispers concerning her; and never believed any of them. He could not believe now that the gift of this crimson, green and sky-blue creature signified anything. Yet Querida had known her as long as anybody except Neville.
“When did he give you this parrot?” he asked, carelessly.
“Oh, one day just before I was going to Atlantic City. He was coming down, too, to stay a fortnight while I was there, and come back with me; and he said that He had intended to give the parrot to me after our return, but that he might as well give it to me before I went.”
“I see,” said Ogilvy, thoughtfully. A few moments later, as he and Annan were leaving the house, he said:
“It looks to me as though our friend, José, had taken too much for granted.”
“It looks like it,” nodded Annan, smiling unpleasantly.
“Too sure of conquest,” added Ogilvy. “Got the frozen mitt, didn’t he?”
“And the Grand Cordon of the double cross.”
“And the hot end of the poker; yes?”
“Sure; and it’s still sizzling.” Ogilvy cast a gleeful glance back at the house:
“Fine little girl. All white. Yes? No?”
“All white,” nodded Annan…. “And Neville isn’t that kind of a man, anyway.”
Ogilvy said: “So you think so, too?”
“Oh, yes. He’s crazy about her, and she isn’t taking Sundays out if it’s his day in…. Only, what’s the use?”
“No use…. I guess Kelly Neville has seen as many artists who’ve married their models as we have. Besides, his people are frightful snobs.”
Annan, walking along briskly, swung his stick vigorously:
“She’s a sweet little thing,” he said.
“I know it. It’s going to be hard for her. She can’t stand for a mutt — and it’s the only sort that will marry her…. I don’t know — she’s a healthy kind of girl — but God help her if she ever really falls in love with one of our sort.”
“I think she’s done it,” said Annan.
“Kelly!”
“Doesn’t it look like it?”
“Oh, it will wear off without any harm to either of them. That little girl is smart, all right; she’ll never waste an evening screaming for the moon. And Kelly Neville is — is Kelly Neville — a dear fellow, so utterly absorbed in the career of a brilliant and intelligent young artist named Louis Neville, that if the entire earth blew up he’d begin a new canvas the week after…. Not that I think him cold-hearted — no, not even selfish as that little bounder Allaire says — but he’s a man who has never yet had time to spare.”
“They’re the most hopeless,” observed Annan— “the men who haven’t time to spare. Because it takes only a moment to say, ‘Hello, old man! How in hell are you?’ It takes only a moment to put yourself, mentally, in some less lucky man’s shoes; and be friendly and sorry and interested.”
“He’s a pretty decent sort,” murmured Ogilvy. “Anyway, that Valerie child is safe enough in temporarily adoring Kelly Neville.”
* * * * *
The “Valerie child,” in a loose, rose-silk peignoir, cross-legged on her bed, was sewing industriously on her week’s mending. Rita, in dishabille, lay across the foot of the bed nibbling bonbons and reading the evening paper.
They had dined in their living room, a chafing dish aiding. Afterward Valerie went over her weekly accounts and had now taken up her regular mending; and there she sat, sewing away, and singing in her clear, young voice, the old madrigal:
”Let us dry the starting tear
For the hours are surely fleeting
And the sad sundown is near.
All must sip the cup of sorrow,
I to-day, and thou to-morrow!
This the end of every song,
Ding-dong! Ding-dong!
Yet until the shadows fall
Over one and over all,
Sing a merry madrigal!”
Rita, nibbling a chocolate, glanced up:
“That’s a gay little creed,” she observed.
“Of course. It’s the only creed.”
Rita shrugged and Valerie went on blithely singing and sewing.
“How long has that young man of yours been away?” inquired Rita, looking up again.
“Thirteen days.”
“Oh. Are you sure it isn’t fourteen?”
“Perfectly.” Then the sarcasm struck her, and she looked around at Rita and laughed:
“Of course I count the days,” she said, conscious of the soft colour mounting to her cheeks.
Rita sat up and, tucking a pillow under her shoulders, leaned back against the foot-board of the bed, kicking the newspaper to the floor. “Do you know,” she said, “that you have come pretty close to falling in love with Kelly Neville?”
Valerie’s lips trembled on the edge of a smile as she bent lower over her sewing, but she made no reply.
“I should say,” continued Rita, “that it was about time for you to pick up your skirts and run for it.”
Still Valerie sewed on in silence.
“Valerie!”
“What?”
“For goodness’ sake, say something!”
“What do you want me to say, dear?” asked the girl, laughing.
“That you are not in danger of making a silly ninny of yourself over
Kelly Neville.”
“Oh, I’ll say that very cheerfully—”
“Valerie!”
The girl looked at her, calmly amused. Then she said:
“I might as well tell you. I am head over heels in love with him. You knew it, anyway, Rita. You’ve known it — oh, I don’t know how long — but you’ve known it. Haven’t you?”
Rita thought a moment: “Yes, I have known it…. What are you going to do?”
“Do?”
“Yes; what do you intend to do about this matter?”
“Love him,” said Valerie. “What else can I do?”
“You could try not to.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You had better.”
“Why?”
“Because,” said Rita, deliberately, “if you really love him you’ll either become his wife or his mistress; and it’s a pretty rotten choice either way.”
Valerie blushed scarlet;
“Rotten — choice?”
“Certainly. You know perfectly well what your position would be when his family and his friends learned that he’d married his model. No girl of any spirit would endure it — no matter how affable his friends might perhaps pretend to be. No girl of any sense would ever put herself in such a false position…. I tell you, Valerie, it’s only the exceptional man who’ll stand by you. No doubt Louis Neville would. But it would cost him every friend he has — and probably the respect of his parents. And that means misery for you both — because he couldn’t conceal from you what marrying you was costing him—”
[Illustration: “Valerie’s lips trembled on the edge of a smile as she bent lower over her sewing.”]
“Rita!”
“Yes.”
“There is no use telling me all this. I know it. He knows I know it. I am not going to marry him.”
After a silence Rita said, slowly: “Did he ask you to?”
Valerie looked down, passed her needle through the hem once, twice.
“Yes,” she said, softly, “he asked me.”
“And — you refused?”
“Yes.”
Rita said: “I like Kelly Neville … and I love you better, dear. But it’s not best for you to marry him…. Life isn’t a very sentimental affair — not nearly as silly a matter as poets and painters and dramas and novels pretend it is. Love really plays a very minor part in life, Don’t you know it?”
“Yes. I lived twenty years without it,” said Valerie, demurely, yet in her smile Rita divined the hidden tragedy. And she leaned forward and kissed her impulsively.
“Let’s swear celibacy,” she said, “and live out our lives together in single blessedness! Will you? We can have a perfectly good time until the undertaker knocks.”
“I hope he won’t knock for a long while,” said Valerie, with a slight shiver. “There’s so much I want to see first.”
“You shall. We’ll see everything together. We’ll work hard, live frugally if you say so, cut out all frills and nonsense, and save and save until we have enough to retire on respectably. And then, like two nice old ladies, we’ll start out to see the world—”
“Oh, Rita! I don’t want to see it when I’m too old!”
“You’ll enjoy it more—”
“Rita! How ridiculous! You’ve seen more of the world than I have, anyway. It’s all very well for you to say wait till I’m an old maid; but you’ve been to Paris — haven’t you?”
“Yes,” said Rita. There was a slight colour in her face.
“Well, then! Why must I wait until I’m a dowdy old frump before I go? Why should you and I not be as happy as we can afford to be while we’re young and attractive and unspoiled?”
“I want you to be as happy as you can afford to be, Valerie…. But you can’t afford to fall in love.”
“Why?”
“Because it will make you miserable.”
“But it doesn’t.”
“It will if it is love.”
“It is, Rita,” said the girl, smiling out of her dark eyes — deep brown wells of truth that the other gazed into and saw a young soul there, fearless and doomed.
“Valerie,” she said, shivering, “you won’t do — that — will you?”
“Dear, I cannot marry him, and I love him. What else am I to do?”
“Well, then — then you’d better marry him!” stammered Rita, frightened.
“It’s better for you! It’s better—”
“For me? Yes, but how about him?”
“What do you care about him!” burst out Rita, almost incoherent in her fright and anger. “He’s a man; he can take care of himself. Don’t think of him. It isn’t your business to consider him. If he wants to marry you it’s his concern after all. Let him do it! Marry him and let him fight it out with his friends! After all what does a man give a girl that compares with what she gives him? Men — men—” she stammered— “they’re all alike in the depths of their own hearts. We are incidents to them — no matter how they say they love us. They can’t love as we do. They’re not made for it! We are part of the game to them; they are the whole game to us; we are, at best, an important episode in their careers; they are our whole careers. Oh, Valerie! Valerie! listen to me, child! That man could go on living and painting and eating and drinking and sleeping and getting up to dress and going to bed to sleep, if you lay dead in your grave. But if you loved him, and were his wife — or God forgive me! — his mistress, the day he died you would die, though your body might live on. I know — I know, Valerie. Death — whether it be his body or his love, ends all for the woman who really loves him. Woman’s loss is eternal. But man’s loss is only temporary — he is made that way, fashioned so. Now I tell you the exchange is not fair — it has never been fair — never will be, never can be. And I warn you not to give this man the freshness of your youth, the happy years of your life, your innocence, the devotion which he will transmute into passion with his accursed magic! I warn you not to forsake the tranquillity of ignorance, the blessed immunity from that devil’s paradise that you are already gazing into—”
“Rita! Rita! What are you saying?”
“I scarcely know, child. I am trying to save you from lifelong unhappiness — trying to tell you that — that men are not worth it—”
“How do you know?”
There was a silence, then Rita, very pale and quiet, leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees and framing her face with her hands.
“I had my lesson,” she said.
“You! Oh, my darling — forgive me! I did not know—”
Rita suffered herself to be drawn into the younger girl’s impulsive embrace; they both cried a little, arms around each other, faltering out question and answer in unsteady whispers:
“Were you married, dearest?”
“No.”
“Oh — I am so sorry, dear—”
“So am I…. Do you blame me for thinking about men as I do think?”
“Didn’t you love — him?”
“I thought I did…. I was too young to know…. It doesn’t matter now—”
“No, no, of course not. You made a ghastly mistake, but it’s no more shame to you than it is to him. Besides, you thought you loved him.”
“He could have made me. I was young enough…. But he let me see how absolutely wicked he was…. And then it was too late to ever love him.”
“O Rita, Rita! — then you haven’t ever even had the happiness of loving?
Have you?”
Rita did not answer.
“Have you, darling?”
Then Rita broke down and laid her head on Valerie’s knees, crying as though her heart would break.
“That’s the terrible part of it,” she sobbed— “I really do love a man, now…. Not that first one … and there’s nothing to do about it — nothing, Valerie, nothing — because even if he asked me to marry him I can’t, now—”
“Because you—”
“Yes.”
“And if you had not—”
“God knows what I would do,” sobbed Rita, “I love him so, Valerie — I love him so!”
The younger girl looked down at the blond head lying on her knees — looked at the pretty tear-stained face gleaming through the fingers — looked and wondered over the philosophy broken down beside the bowed head and breaking heart.
Terrible her plight; with or without benefit of clergy she dared not give herself. Love was no happiness to her, no confidence, no sacrifice — only a dreadful mockery — a thing that fettered, paralysed, terrified.
“Does he love you?” whispered Valerie.
“No — I think not.”
“If he did he would forgive.”
“Do you think so?”
“Of course. Love pardons everything,” said the girl in surprise.
“Yes. But never forgets.”
* * * * *
That was the first confidence that ever had passed between Valerie West and Rita Tevis. And after it, Rita, apparently forgetting her own philosophical collapse, never ceased to urge upon Valerie the wisdom, the absolute necessity of self-preservation in considering her future relations with Louis Neville. But, like Neville’s logic, Rita’s failed before the innocent simplicity of the creed which Valerie had embraced. Valerie was willing that their relations should remain indefinitely as they were if the little gods of convention were to be considered; she had the courage to sever all relations with the man she loved if anybody could convince her that it was better for Neville. Marry him she would not, because she believed it meant inevitable unhappiness for him. But she was not afraid to lay her ringless hands in his for ever.
Querida called on them and was very agreeable and lively and fascinating; and when he went away Valerie asked him to come again. He did; and again after that. She and Rita dined with him once or twice; and things gradually slipped back to their old footing; and Querida remained on his best behaviour.
Neville had prolonged the visit to the parental roof. He did not explain to her why, but the reason was that he had made up his mind to tell his parents that he wished to marry and to find out once and for all what their attitudes would be toward such a girl as Valerie West. But he had not yet found courage to do it, and he was lingering on, trying to find it and the proper moment to employ it.
His father was a gentleman so utterly devoid of imagination that he had never even ventured into business, but had been emotionlessly content to marry and live upon an income sufficient to maintain the material and intellectual traditions of the house of Neville.
Tall, transparently pale, negative in character, he had made it a life object to get through life without increasing the number of his acquaintances — legacies in the second generation left him by his father, whose father before him had left the grandfathers of these friends as legacies to his son.
[Illustration: “She and Rita dined with him once or twice.”]
It was a pallid and limited society that Henry Neville and his wife frequented — a coterie of elderly, intellectual people, and their prematurely dried-out offspring. And intellectual in-breeding was thinning it to attenuation — to a bloodless meagreness in which they, who composed it, conceived a mournful pride.
Old New Yorkers all, knowing no other city, no other bourne north of Tenth Street or west of Chelsea — silent, serene, drab-toned people, whose drawing-rooms were musty with what had been fragrance once, whose science, religion, interests, desires were the beliefs, interests and emotions of a century ago, their colourless existence and passive snobbishness affronted nobody who did not come seeking affront.
To them Theodore Thomas had been the last conductor; his orchestra the last musical expression fit for a cultivated society; the Academy of Music remained their last symphonic temple, Wallack’s the last refuge of a drama now dead for ever.
Delmonico’s had been their northern limit, Stuyvesant Square their eastern, old Trinity their southern, and their western, Chelsea. Outside there was nothing. The blatancy and gilt of the million-voiced metropolis fell on closed eyes, and on ears attuned only to the murmurs of the past. They lived in their ancient houses and went abroad and summered in some simple old-time hamlet hallowed by the headstones of their grandsires, and existed as meaninglessly and blamelessly as the old catalpa trees spreading above their dooryards.
