Complete weird tales of.., p.587
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 587
“You’re so devilish abrupt, Jim,” he said. “Did you get any telegrams from us?”
“Telegrams? No, sir. When?”
“No matter,” said Mr. Delancy.
Another silence, and Harroll said: “Fact is, sir, we were blown out to sea, and that’s how we came here. I fancy Selden wouldn’t mind an invitation to dinner and a chance to dry his clothes.”
Selden smiled hopefully and modestly as Mr. Delancy surveyed him.
“Pray accept my hospitality, gentlemen,” said Mr. Delancy, with a grim smile. “I’ve been ass enough to take a villa in this forsaken place. The food I have to offer you might be relished by squirrels, perhaps; the clothing resembles my own, and can be furnished you by the simple process of removing the sheets from your beds.”
He rose, flung the flap of his toga over one shoulder, and passed his arm through Harroll’s.
“Don’t you like it here?” asked Harroll.
“Like it!” repeated Mr. Delancy.
“But — why did you come?”
“I came,” said Mr. Delancy slowly, “because I desired to be rid of you.”
Selden instinctively fell back out of earshot. Harroll reddened.
“I thought your theory was — —”
“You smashed that theory — now you’ve shattered this — you and Catharine between you.”
Harroll looked thoughtfully at Selden, who stood watching two pretty girls playing handball on the green.
“Young man,” said Mr. Delancy, “do you realize what I’ve been through in one week? I have been obliged to wear this unspeakable garment, I’ve been obliged to endure every species of tomfoolery, I’ve been fed on bird seed, deprived of cigars, and sent to bed at half past nine. And I’m as sound in limb and body as you are. And all because I desired to be rid of you. I had two theories! both are smashed. I refuse to entertain any more theories concerning anything!”
Harroll laughed; then his attention became concentrated on the exquisite landscape, where amid green foliage white villas of Georgia marble glimmered, buried in blossoming thickets of oleander, wistaria, and Cherokee roses — where through the trees a placid lake lay reflecting the violet sky — where fallow-deer wandered, lipping young maple buds — where beneath a pergola heavily draped with golden jasmine a white-robed figure moved in the shade — a still, sunny world of green and gold and violet exhaling incense under a cloudless sky.
“I would like to see Catharine,” he said, slowly, “with your permission — and in view of the fate of the theories.”
“Jim,” said Mr. Delancy, “you are doubtless unconscious of the trouble you have created in my family.”
“Trouble, sir?” repeated the young man, flushing up.
“Trouble for two. My daughter and I believed you drowned.”
Harroll stood perfectly still. Mr. Delancy took a step or two forward, turned, and came back across the lawn. “She is sitting under that pergola yonder, looking out to sea, and I’m afraid she’s crying her eyes out for something she wants. It’s probably not good for her, either. But — such as it is — she may have it.”
The two men looked at one another steadily.
“I’m rather glad you were not drowned,” said Mr. Delancy, “but I’m not infatuated with you.”
They shook hands solemnly, then Mr. Delancy walked over and joined Selden, who appeared to be fascinated by an attractive girl in Greek robes and sandals who was playing handball on the green.
“‘Give up my dead!’ she whispered. ‘Give up my dead!’”
“Young man,” said Mr. Delancy, “there’s always trouble for two in this world. That young woman with yellow hair and violet eyes who is playing handball with her sister, and who appears to hypnotize you, is here to recuperate from the loss of an elderly husband.”
“A widow with yellow hair and blue eyes!” murmured Selden, entranced.
“Precisely. Your train, however, leaves to-night — unless you mean to remain here on a diet of bird-seed.”
Selden smiled absently. Bird-seed had no terror for him.
“Besides,” he said, “I’m rather good at handball.”
A moment later he looked around, presumably for Harroll. That young man was already half-way to the jasmine-covered arbor, where a young girl sat, dry-eyed, deathly pale, staring out to sea.
The sea was blue and smiling; the soft thunder of the surf came up to her. She heard the gulls mewing in the sky and the hum of bees in the wind-stirred blossoms; she saw a crested osprey plunge into the shallows and a great tarpon fling its mass of silver into the sun. Paroquets gleaming like living jewels rustled and preened in the china-trees; black and gold butterflies, covered with pollen, crawled over and over the massed orange bloom. Ah, the mask of youth that the sly world wore to mock her! Ah, the living lie of the sky, and the false, smooth sea fawning at her feet!
Little persuasive breezes came whispering, plucking at the white hem of her robe to curry favor; the ingratiating surf purred, blinking with a million iridescent bubbles. The smug smile of nature appalled her; its hypocrisy sickened her; and she bent her dark eyes fiercely on the sea and clinched her little hands.
“Give up my dead!” she whispered. “Give up my dead!”
“Catharine!”
Dazed, she rose to her sandalled feet, the white folds of her robe falling straight and slim.
“Catharine!”
Her voiceless lips repeated his name; she swayed, steadying herself by the arm around her waist.
Then trouble for two began.
* * *
As Williams ended, I looked at him with indignation.
“As far as I can see,” I said, “you are acting as attorney for the defense. That’s a fine story to tell a father of two attractive daughters. You needn’t repeat it to them.”
“But it happened, old man — —”
“Don’t call me ‘old man,’ either. I’ll explain to you why.” And I did, peevishly.
After that I saw less of Williams, from choice. He has a literary way with him in telling a story — and I didn’t wish Alida and Dulcima to sympathize with young Harroll and that little ninny, Catharine Delancy. So I kept clear of Williams until we arrived in Paris.
* * *
CHAPTER IV
WHEREIN A MODEST MAN IS BULLIED AND A LITERARY MAN PRACTICES STYLE
“WHAT WAS YOUR first impression of Paris, Mr. Van Twiller?” inquired the young man from East Boston, as I was lighting my cigar in the corridor of the Hôtel des Michetons after breakfast.
“The first thing I noticed,” said I, “was the entire United States walking down the Boulevard des Italiens.”
“And your second impression, sir?” he asked somewhat uncertainly.
“The entire United States walking back again.” He lighted a cigarette and tried to appear cheerful. He knew I possessed two daughters. A man in possession of such knowledge will endure much.
Presently the stout young man from Chicago came up to request a light for his cigar. “See Paris and die, eh?” he observed with odious affability.
“I doubt that the city can be as unhealthy as that,” I said coldly.
Defeated, he joined forces with the young man from East Boston, and they retired to the terrace to sit and hate me.
My daughter Alida, my daughter Dulcima, and I spent our first day in Paris “ong voitoor” as the denizen of East Boston informed me later.
“What is your first impression, Alida?” I asked, as our taxi rolled smoothly down the Avenue de l’Opera.
“Paris? An enormous blossom carved out of stone! — a huge architectural Renaissance rose with white stone petals!”
I looked at my pretty daughter with pride.
“That is what Mr. Van Dieman says,” she added conscientiously.
My enthusiasm cooled at once.
“Van Dieman exaggerates,” I said. “Dulcima, what do you find to characterize Paris?”
“The gowns!” she cried. “Oh, papa! did you see that girl driving past just now?”
I opened my guidebook in silence. I had seen her.
The sunshine flooded everything; the scent of flowers filled the soft air; the city was a garden, sweet with green leaves, embroidered with green grass — a garden, too, in architecture, carved out in silvery gray foliage of stone. The streets are as smooth and clean as a steamer’s deck, with little clear rivulets running in gutters that seem as inviting as country brooks. It did not resemble Manhattan.
Paris!
Paris is a big city full of red-legged soldiers.
Paris is a forest of pink and white chestnut blossoms under which the inhabitants sit without their hats.
Paris is a collection of vistas; at the end of every vista is a misty masterpiece of architecture; on the summit of every monument is a masterpiece of sculpture.
Paris is a city of several millions of inhabitants, every inhabitant holding both hands out to you for a tip.
Paris is a park, smothered in foliage, under which asphalted streets lead to Paradise.
Paris is a sanitarium so skillfully conducted that nobody can tell the patients from the physicians; and all the inmates are firmly convinced that the outside world is mad.
I looked back at the gilded mass of the Opera — that great pile of stone set lightly there as the toe of a ballet-girl’s satin slipper ——
“What are you thinking, papa?” asked Alida.
“Nothing,” I said hastily, amazed at my own frivolity. “Notice,” said I, “the exquisite harmony of the sky-line. Here in Paris the Government regulates the height of buildings. Nothing inharmonious can be built; the selfishness and indifference of private ownership which in New York erects skyscrapers around our loveliest architectural remains, the City Hall, would not be tolerated here, where artistic ensemble is as necessary to people as the bread they eat.”
“Dear me, where have I read that?” exclaimed Alida innocently.
I said nothing more.
We were now passing through that wing of the Louvre which faces the Carousal, and we turned sharply to the right under the little arc, and straight past the Tuileries Gardens, all blooming with tulips and hyacinths, past the quaint weather-stained statues of an epoch as dead as its own sculptors, past the long arcades of the Rivoli, under which human spiders lurk for the tourist of Cook, and out into the Place de la Concorde — the finest square in the world.
The sun glittered on the brass inlaid base on which towered the monolyth. The splashing of the great fountains filled the air with a fresh sweet sound. Round us, in a vast circle, sat the “Cities of France,” with “Strasburg” smothered in crêpe and funeral wreaths, each still stone figure crowned with battlemented crowns and bearing the carved symbols of their ancient power on time-indented escutcheons, all of stone.
The fresh wet pavement blazed in the sunshine; men wheeled handcarts filled with violets or piled high with yellow jonquils and silvery hyacinths.
Violet, white, and yellow — these are the colors which Paris wears in springtime, twined in her chaplet of tender green.
I said this aloud to Dulcima, who replied that they were wearing blue in Paris this spring, and that she would like to know how soon we were going to the dressmakers.
Now at last we were rolling up the Champs Elysées, with the Arc de Triomphe, a bridge of pearl at the end of the finest vista in the world. Past us galloped gay cavalry officers, out for a morning canter in the Bois de Boulogne; past us whizzed automobiles of every hue, shape and species.
Past us, too, trotted shoals of people well diluted by our fellow countrymen, yet a truly Parisian crowd for all that. Hundreds of uniforms dotted the throngs; cuirassiers in short blue stable jackets, sabres hooked under their left elbows, little piou-piou lads, in baggy red trousers and shakos bound with yellow; hussars jingling along, wearing jackets of robin’s-egg blue faced with white; chasseurs à Cheval, wearing turquoise blue braided with black; then came the priests in black, well groomed as jackdaws in April; policemen in sombre uniforms, wearing sword bayonets; gendarmes off duty — for the Republican Guard takes the place of the Gendarmerie within the walls of Paris; smart officers from the Fontainebleau artillery school, in cherry-red and black; Saint-Cyr soldiers in crude blues and reds, with the blue shako smothered under plumes; then Sisters, in their dark habits and white coifs, with sweet, serene faces looking out on the sinful world they spend their lives in praying for.
“Dulcima,” I said, “what particular characteristic strikes you when you watch these passing throngs of women?”
“Their necks; every Parisienne is a beauty from behind — such exquisite necks and hair.”
“Their ankles,” added Alida innocently; “they are the best-shod women in the world!”
I had noticed something of the sort; in fact, there is no escape for a man’s eyes in Paris. Look where he will, he is bound to bring up against two neat little shoes trotting along demurely about their own frivolous business. One cannot help wondering what that business may be or where those little polished shoes are going so lightly, tap! tap! across the polished asphalt. And there are thousands on thousands of such shoes, passing, repassing, twinkling everywhere, exquisite, shapely, gay little shoes of Paris, pattering through boulevard and avenue, square, and street until the whole city takes the cadence, keeping time, day and night, to the little tripping feet of the Parisienne — bless her, heart and sole!
“Of what are you thinking, papa?” asked Alida.
“Nothing, child, nothing,” I muttered.
We left our taxi and mounted to the top of the Arc de Triomphe. The world around us was bathed in a delicate haze; silver-gray and emerald the view stretched on every side from the great Basilica on Montmârtre to the silent Fortress of Mont-Valerien; from the vast dome of the Pantheon, springing up like a silver bubble in the sky, to the dull golden dome of the Invalides, and the dome of the Val-de-Grâce.
Spite of the Sainte Chapel, with its gilded lace-work, spite of the bizarre Tour Saint-Jacques, spite of the lean monster raised by Monsieur Eiffel, straddling the vase Esplanade in the west, the solid twin towers of Nôtre-Dame dominated the spreading city by their sheer majesty — dominated Saint-Sulpice, dominated the Trocadero, dominated even the Pantheon.
“From those towers,” said I, “Quasimodo looked down and saw the slim body of Esmeralda hanging on the gibbet.”
“What became of her goat?” asked Alida, who was fond of pets.
“That reminds me,” began Dulcima, “that now we are safely in Paris we might be allowed to ask papa about that — —”
“There is a steamer which sails for New York to-morrow,” I said calmly. “Any mention of that pig will ensure us staterooms in half an hour.”
Considerably subdued, the girls meekly opened their Baedekers and patronized the view, while I lighted a cigar and mused.
It was my second cigar that morning. Certainly I was a changed man — but was it a change for the better? Within me I felt something stirring — I knew not what.
It was that long-buried germ of gayety, that latent uncultivated and embryotic germ which lies dormant in all Anglo-Saxons; and usually dies dormant or is drowned in solitary cocktails at a solemn club.
Certainly I was changing. Van Dieman was right. Doubtless any change could not be the worse for a man who has not sufficient intelligence to take care of his own pig.
“There is,” said Dulcima, referring to her guidebook, “a café near here in the Bois de Boulogne, called the Café des Fleurs de Chine. I should so love to breakfast at a Chinese café.”
“With chopsticks!” added Alida, soulfully clasping her gloved hands.
“Your Café Chinois is doubtless a rendezvous for Apaches,” I said, “but we’ll try it if you wish.”
I am wondering, now, just what sort of a place that café is, set like a jewel among the green trees of the Bois. I know it is expensive, but not very expensive; I know, also, that the dainty young persons who sipped mint on the terrace appeared to disregard certain conventionalities which I had been led to believe were never disregarded in France.
The safest way was to pretend a grave abstraction when their bright eyes wandered toward one; and I did this, without exactly knowing why I did.
“I wish,” said I to Dulcima, “that Van Dieman were here. He understands all this surface life one sees in the parks and streets.”
“Do you really wish that Mr. Van Dieman were here?” asked Alida, softly coloring.
I looked at her gravely.
“Because,” she said, “I believe he is coming about the middle of May.”
“Oh, he is, is he?” I said, without enthusiasm. “Well, we shall doubtless be in the Rhine by the middle of May.”
“My gowns couldn’t be finished until June any way,” said Dulcima, laying her gloved fingers on Alida’s chair.
So they were allies, then.
“I didn’t know you had ordered any gowns,” I said superciliously.
“I haven’t — yet,” she said coolly.
“Neither have I,” began Alida; but I refused to hear any more.
“When you are at your modistes you may talk gowns until you faint away,” said I; “but now let us try to take an intelligent interest in this famous and ancient capital of European civilization and liberty — —”
“Did you notice that girl’s gown?” motioned Alida to Dulcima.
I also looked. But it was not the beauty of the gown that I found so remarkable.
“I wonder,” thought I— “but no matter. I wish that idiot Van Dieman were here.”
* * *
That evening, after my daughters had retired, I determined to sit up later than I ought to. The reckless ideas which Paris inspired in me, alarmed me now and then. But I was game.
So I seated myself in the moonlit court of the hotel and lighted an unwise cigar and ordered what concerns nobody except the man who swallowed it, and, crossing my legs, looked amiably around.
