Complete weird tales of.., p.603
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 603
“Kingsbury and his theories! The Countess of Semois will think him crazy. She’ll think us both crazy! And I am not sure that we’re not; youth is madness; half the world is lunatic! Take me, for example; I never did a more unexpected thing than kissing that shadow across the wall. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but I did it; and I am out of jail yet. Certainly it must have been the cook. Oh, Heavens! If cooks kiss that way, what, what must the indiscretion of a Countess resemble?... She did kiss back.... At least there was a soft, tremulous, perfumed flutter — a hint of delicate counter-pressure — —”
But he had arrived at the wall by that time.
“How like a woodland paradise!” he murmured sentimentally, youthful face upraised to the trees. “How sweet the zephyr! How softly sing the dicky-birds! I wonder — I wonder—” But what it was that perplexed him he did not say; he stood eying the top of the wall as the furtive turkey eyes its selected roost before coyly hopping thither.
“What’s the use? If I see her I’ll only take fright and skulk homeward. Why do I return again and again to the scene of guilt? Is it Countess or cook that draws me, or some one less exalted in the culinary confine? Why, why should love get busy with me? Is this the price I pay for that guileless kiss? Am I to be forever ‘it’ in love’s gay game of tag?”
He ascended the steplike niche in the wall, peeped fearfully over into his neighbour’s chasse. Tree and tangle slept in the golden light of afternoon; a cock-pheasant strutted out of a thicket, surveyed the solitude with brilliant eyes, and strutted back again; a baby rabbit frisked across the carrefour into the ferny warren beyond; and “Bubble, bubble, flowed the stream, like an old song through a dream.”
Sprawling there flat on top of the sun-warmed stucco wall, white sunlight barring the pages of his book, he lifted his head to listen. There was a leafy stirring somewhere, perhaps the pheasant rustling in the underbrush. The sing-song of the stream threaded the silence; and as he listened it seemed to grow louder, filling the woods with low, harmonious sounds. In the shallows he heard laughter; in the pouring waterfalls, echoes like wind-blown voices calling. Small grey and saffron tinted birds, passing from twig to twig, peered at him fearlessly; a heavy green lizard vanished between the stones with an iridescent wriggle. Suddenly a branch snapped and the underbrush crackled.
“Probably a deer,” thought Smith, turning to look. Close inspection of the thicket revealed nothing; he dropped his chin on his hands, crossed his legs, and opened his book.
The book was about one of those Americans who trouble the peace of mind of Princesses; and this was the place to read it, here in the enchanted stillness of the ancient Belgian forest, here where the sunshine spread its net on fretted waters, where lost pools glimmered with azure when the breeze stirred overhead — here where his neighbor was a Countess and some one in her household wore a mass of gold-red hair Greek fashion — and Aphrodite was not whiter of neck nor bluer eyed than she.
The romance that he read was designed to be thickly satisfying to American readers, for it described a typical American so accurately that Smith did not recognize the type. Until he had been enlightened by fiction he never imagined Americans were so attractive to exotic nobility. So he read on, gratified, cloyed, wondering how the Princess, although she happened to be encumbered with a husband, could stand for anything but ultimate surrender to the Stars and Stripes; and trustfully leaving it to another to see that it was done morally.
Hypnotized by the approaching crisis, he had begun already to finger the next page, when a slight crash in the bushes close by and the swish of parting foliage startled him from romance to reality.
But he had looked up too late; to slink away was impossible; to move was to reveal himself. It was she! And she was not ten feet distant.
One thing was certain: whether or not she was the shadowy partner of his kiss, she could not be the Countess, because she was fishing, unattended, hatless, the sleeves of her shirtwaist rolled up above her white elbows, a book and a short landing-net tucked under her left arm. Countesses don’t go fishing unattended; gillies carry things. Besides, the Countess of Semois was in Semois-les-Bains selling dolls to Kingsbury.
The sun glowed on her splendid red hair; she switched the slender rod about rather awkwardly, and every time the cast of flies became entangled in a nodding willow she set her red lips tight and with an impatient “Mais, c’est trop bête! Mais, c’est vraiment trop — —”
It was evident that she had not seen him where he lay on the wall; the chances were she would pass on — indeed her back was already toward him — when the unexpected happened: a trout leaped for a gnat and fell back into the pool with a resounding splash, sending ring on ring of sunny wavelets toward the shore.
“Ah! Te voilà!” she said aloud, swinging her line free for a cast.
Smith saw what was coming and tried to dodge, but the silk line whistled on the back-cast, and the next moment his cap was snatched from his head and deposited some twenty feet out in the centre of the pool.
The amazement of the fair angler was equal to his own as she looked hastily back over her shoulder and discovered him on the wall.
There is usually something undignified about a man whose hat has been knocked off; to laugh is as fatal as to show irritation; and Smith did neither, but quietly dropped over to her side of the wall, saying, “I’m awfully sorry I spoiled your cast. Don’t mind the cap; that trout was a big one, and he may rise again.”
He had spoken in English, and she answered in very pretty English: “I am so sorry — could I help you to recover your hat?”
“Thank you; if you would let me take your rod a moment.”
“Willingly, monsieur.”
She handed him the rod; he loosened the line, measured the distance with practiced eye, turned to look behind him, and, seeing there was scant room for a long back-cast, began sending loop after loop of silken line forward across the water, using the Spey method, of which none except an expert is master.
The first cast struck half-way, but in line; the next, still in line, slipped over the cap, but failed to hook. Then, as he recovered, there was a boiling rush in the water, a flash of pink and silver, and the rod staggered.
“I — I beg your pardon!” he exclaimed aghast; “I have hooked your trout!”
“Play him,” she said quickly. The elfin shriek of the reel answered; he gave the fish every ounce the quivering rod could spare, the great trout surged deeply, swerved, circled and bored slowly upstream.
“This fish is magnificent,” said Smith, guiltily. “You really must take the rod — —”
“I shall not, indeed.”
“But this is not fair!”
“It is perfectly fair, monsieur — and a wonderful lesson in angling to me. Oh, I beg you to be careful! There is a sunken tree limb beyond!”
Her cheeks were the colour of wild roses, her blue eyes burned like stars.
“He’s down; I can’t stir him,” said Smith. “He’s down like a salmon!”
She linked her hands behind her back. “What is to be done?” she asked calmly.
“If you would gather a handful of those pebbles and throw one at a time into the pool where he is lying — —”
Before he finished speaking she had knelt, filled her palms with golden gravel, and stood ready at the water’s edge.
“Now?” she nodded, inquiringly.
“Yes, one at a time; try to hit him.”
The first pebble produced no effect; neither did the second, nor yet the third.
“Throw a handful at him,” he suggested, and braced himself for the result. A spray of gravel fell; the great fish sulked motionless.
“There’s a way—” began Smith, feeling in his pockets for his key-ring. It was not there.
“Could I be of any use?” she asked, looking up at Smith very guilelessly.
“Why, if I had something — a key-ring or anything that I could hang over the taut line — something that would slide down and jog him gently — —”
“A hairpin?” she asked.
“I’m afraid it’s too light.”
She reflected a moment; her bent forefinger brushed her velvet lips. Then she began to unfasten a long gold pin at her throat.
“Oh, not that!” exclaimed Smith, anxiously. “It might slip off.”
“It can’t; there’s a safety clasp. Anyway, we must have that trout!”
“But I could not permit — —”
“It is I who permit myself, monsieur.”
“No, no, it is too generous of you — —”
“Please!” She held the pin toward him; he shook his head; she hesitated, then with a quick movement she snapped the clasp over the taut line and sent it spinning toward the invisible fish.
He saw the gold glimmer become a spark under water, die out in dusky depths; then came a rushing upheaval of spray, a flash, the rod quivered to the reel-plate, and the fight began in fury. The rod was so slim, so light — scarce three ounces — that he could but stand on the defensive at first. Little by little the struggle became give and take, then imperceptibly he forced the issue, steadily, delicately, for the tackle was gossamer, and he fought for the safety of the golden clasp as well as for his honour as an angler.
“Do you know how to net a trout?” he asked presently. She came and stood at his shoulder, net poised, blue eyes intent upon the circling fish.
“I place it behind him, do I not?” she asked coolly.
“Yes — when I give the word — —”
One more swerve, a half circle sheering homeward, nearer, nearer ——
A moment later the huge trout lay on the moss; iridescent tints played over its broad surface, shimmering hues deepened, waxing, warning; the spots glowed like rubies set in bronze.
Kneeling there, left hand resting on the rod, Smith looked up at her over his shoulder; but all she said was: “Ah, the poor, brave thing! The gallant fish! This is wrong — all wrong. I wish we had not taken a life we cannot give again.”
“Shall I put the trout back madame?”
She looked at him surprised.
“Would you?” she asked incredulously.
“If you desire it.”
“But it is your fish.”
“It is yours, madame.”
“Will it live? Oh, try to make it live!”
He lifted the beautiful fish in both hands, and, walking to the water’s edge, laid it in the stream. For a while it floated there, gold and silver belly turned to the sky, gills slowly inflating and collapsing. Presently a fin stirred; the spasmodic movement of the gill-covers ceased, and the breathing grew quiet and steady. Smith touched the pectoral fins; the fish strove to turn over; he steadied the dorsal fin, then the caudal, righting the fish. Slowly, very slowly, the great trout moved off, farther, farther, sinking into cool, refreshing depths; there was a dull glitter under the water, a shadow gliding, then nothing except the green obscurity of the pool criss-crossed with surface sunshine.
When Smith turned around the girl was pensively regarding the water. His cap had stranded on a shoal almost at his feet; he recovered it, wrung the drops from it, and stood twirling it thoughtfully in the sunlight.
“I’ve ruined it, haven’t I?” she asked.
“Oh, no; it’s a shooting-cap. Like Tartarin, I shall probably ventilate it later in true Midi fashion.”
She laughed; then, with the flushed composure of uneasiness: “Thank you for a lesson in angling. I have learned a great deal — enough at least to know that I shall not care to destroy life, even in a fish.”
“That is as it should be,” he replied coolly. “Men find little charm in women who kill.”
“That is scarcely in accord with the English novels I read — and I read many,” she said laughing.
“It is true, nevertheless. Saint Hubert save us from the woman who can watch the spark of life fade out in the eye of any living thing.”
“Are you not a little eccentric, monsieur?”
“If you say so. Eccentricity is the full-blown blossom of mediocrity.”
* * *
CHAPTER XXIV
A JOURNEY TO THE MOON
THERE WAS A silence so politely indifferent on her part that he felt it to be the signal for his dismissal. And he took his leave with a formality so attractive, and a good humour so informal, that before she meant to she had spoken again — a phrase politely meaningless in itself, yet — if he chose to take it so — acting as a stay of execution.
“I was wondering,” he said, amiably, “how I was going to climb back over the wall.”
A sudden caprice tinged with malice dawned in the most guileless of smiles as she raised her eyes to his:
“You forgot your ladder this time, didn’t you?”
Would he ever stop getting redder? His ears were afire, and felt enormous.
“I am afraid you misunderstood me,” she said, and her smile became pitilessly sweet. “I am quite sure a distinguished foreign angler could scarcely condescend to notice trespass signs in a half-ruined old park — —”
His crimson distress softened her, perhaps, for she hesitated, then added impulsively: “I did not mean it, monsieur; I have gone too far — —”
“No, you have not gone too far,” he said. “I’ve disgraced myself and deserve no mercy.”
“You are mistaken; the trout may have come from your side of the wall — —”
“It did, but that is a miserable excuse. Nothing can palliate my conduct. It’s a curious thing,” he added, bitterly, “that a fellow who is decent enough at home immediately begins to do things in Europe.”
“What things, monsieur?”
“Ill-bred things; I might as well say it. Theoretically, poaching is romantic; practically, it’s a misdemeanor — the old conflict between realism and romance, madame — as typified by a book I am at present reading — a copy of the same book which I notice you are now carrying under your arm.”
She glanced at him, curious, irresolute, waiting for him to continue. And as he did not, but stood moodily twirling his cap like a sulky schoolboy, she leaned back against a tree, saying: “You are very severe on romance, monsieur.”
“You are very lenient with reality, madame.”
“How do you know? I may be far more angry with you than you suspect. Indeed, every time I have seen you on the wall—” she hesitated, paling a trifle. She had made a mistake, unless he was more stupid than she dared hope.
“But until this morning I had done nothing to anger you?” he said, looking up sharply. Her features wore the indifference of perfect repose; his latent alarm subsided. She had made no mistake in his stupidity.
And now, perfectly conscious of the irregularity of the proceedings, perhaps a trifle exhilarated by it, she permitted curiosity to stir behind the curtain, ready for the proper cue.
“Of course,” he said, colouring, “I know you perfectly well by sight — —”
“And I you, monsieur — perfectly well. One notices strangers, particularly when reading so frequently about them in romance. This book” — she opened it leisurely and examined an illustration— “appears to describe the American quite perfectly. So, having read so much about Americans, I was a trifle curious to see one.”
He did not know what to say; her youthful face was so innocent that suspicion subsided.
“That American you are reading about is merely a phantom of romance,” he said honestly. “His type, if he ever did exist, would become such a public nuisance in Europe that the police would take charge of him — after a few kings and dukes had finished thrashing him.”
“I do not believe you,” she said, with a hint of surprise and defiance. “Besides, if it were true, what sense is there in destroying the pleasure of illusion? Romance is at least amusing; reality alone is a sorry scarecrow clothed in the faded rags of dreams. Do you think you do well to destroy the tinted film of romance through which every woman ever born gazes at man — and pardons him because the rainbow dims her vision?”
She leaned back against the silver birch once more and laid her white hand flat on the open pages of the book:
“Monsieur, if life were truly like this, fewer tears would fall from women’s eyes — eyes which man, in his wisdom, takes pains to clear — to his own destruction!”
She struck the book a light blow, smiling up at him:
“Here in these pages are spring and youth eternal — blue skies and roses, love and love and love unending, and once more love, and the world’s young heart afire! Close the book and what remains?” She closed the covers very gently. “What remains?” she asked, raising her blue eyes to him.
“You remain, madame.”
She flushed with displeasure.
“And yet,” he said, smiling, “if the hero of that book replied as I have you would have smiled. That is the false light the moon of romance sheds in competition with the living sun.” He shrugged his broad shoulders, laughing: “The contrast between the heroine of that romance and you proves which is the lovelier, reality or romance — —”
She bit her lips and looked at him narrowly, the high colour pulsating and dying in her cheeks. Under cover of the very shield that should have protected her he was using weapons which she herself had sanctioned — the impalpable weapons of romance.
Dusk, too, had already laid its bloom on hill and forest and had spun a haze along the stream — dusk, the accomplice of all the dim, jewelled forms that people the tinted shadows of romance. Why — if he had displeased her — did she not dismiss him? It is not with a question that a woman gives a man his congé.
“Why do you speak as you do?” she asked, gravely. “Why, merely because you are clever, do you twist words into compliments. We are scarcely on such a footing, monsieur.”
“What I said I meant,” he replied, slowly.
