Complete weird tales of.., p.610
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 610
Lacy lighted another cigarette and winked at O’Hara. “Karl’s off again,” he said. “Now we’re going to get the Bible and the Sword for fair!”
“Doesn’t everybody need them both!” said Westguard, smiling. Then his heavy features altered: “I care a good deal for Dick Quarren,” he said. “That’s why his loose and careless financial methods make me mad — that’s why this loose and careless transformation of a decent, sincere, innocent boy into an experienced, easy-going, cynical man makes me tired. I’ve got to stand for it, I suppose, but I don’t want to. He’s a gifted, clever, lovable fellow, but he hasn’t any money and any right to leisure, and these people are turning him into one of those dancing things that leads cotillions and arranges tableaux, and plays social diplomat and forgets secrets and has his pockets full of boudoir keys — good Lord! I hate to say it, but they’re making a tame cat of him — they’re using him ignobly, I tell you — and that’s the truth — if he had a friend with courage enough to tell him! I’ve tried, but I can’t talk this way to him.”
There was a silence: then O’Hara crossed one lank leg over the other, gingerly, and contemplated his left shoe.
“Karl,” he said, “character never really changes; it only develops. What’s born in the cradle is lowered into the grave, as some Russian guy said. You’re a writer, and you know what I say is true.”
“Granted. But Quarren’s character isn’t developing; it’s being stifled, strangled. He could have been a professional man — a lawyer, and a brilliant one — or an engineer, or a physician — any old thing. He’s in real estate — if you can call it that. All right; why doesn’t he do something in it? I’ll tell you why,” he added, angrily answering his own question; “these silly women are turning Quarren’s ambition into laziness, his ideals into mockery, his convictions into cynicism — —”
He stopped short. The door opened, and Quarren sauntered in.
“Couldn’t help hearing part of your sermon, Karl,” he said laughing. “Go ahead; I don’t mind the Bible and the Sword — it’s good for Jack Lacy, too — and that scoundrel O’Hara. Hit us again, old Ironsides. We’re no good.” And he sat down on the edge of Lacy’s bed, and presently stretched out on it, gracefully, arms under his blond head.
“You’ve been catchin’ it, Ricky,” said O’Hara with a grin. “Karl says that fashionable society is a bally wampire a-gorgin’ of hisself at the expense of bright young men like you. What’s the come-back to that, sonny?”
“Thanks old fellow,” said Quarren laughing and slightly lifting his head to look across at Westguard. “Go ahead and talk hell and brimstone. A fight is the only free luxury in the Irish Legation. I’ll swat you with a pillow when I get mad enough.”
Westguard bent his heavy head and looked down at the yellow check on the table.
“Rix,” he said, “I’ve got to tell you that you have forgotten to make a deposit at your bank.”
“Oh, Lord!” exclaimed Quarren with weary but amiable vexation— “that is the third time. What are you fellows going to do? Put me out of the Legation?”
“Why the devil are you so careless?” growled Westguard.
“I honestly don’t know. I didn’t suppose I was so short. I thought I had a balance.”
“Rot! The minute a man begins to think he has a balance he knows damn well that he hasn’t! I don’t care, Rix — but, take it from me, you’ll have a mortifying experience one of these days.”
“I guess that’s right,” said Quarren with a kind of careless contrition. “I never seem to be more than a lap or two ahead of old lady Ruin. And I break the speed-laws, too.”
“No youngster ever beat that old woman in a foot-race,” observed Lacy. “Pay up and give her enough carfare to travel the other way; that’s your only chance, Ricky.”
“Oh, certainly. No fellow need be in debt if he pays up, you Hibernian idiot!”
“Do you want some money?” asked Westguard bluntly.
“Sure, Karl, oodles of it! But not from you, old chap.”
“You know you can have it from me, too, don’t you?” said O’Hara.
Quarren nodded cordially: “I’ll get it; no fear. I’m terribly sorry about that check. But it will be all right to-morrow, Karl.”
Lacy thought to himself with a grin: “He’ll kill somebody at Auction to square himself — that’s what Ricky means to do. God be good to the wealthy this winter night!”
O’Hara, lank, carefully scrubbed, carefully turned out as one of his own hunters, stood up with a yawn and glanced at his watch.
“Didn’t somebody say somebody was comin’ in to tea?” he asked generally.
“My cousin, Mrs. Wycherly,” said Westguard— “and a friend of hers — I’ve forgotten — —”
“Mrs. Leeds,” observed Lacy. “And she is reputed to be a radiant peach. Did any of you fellows ever meet her in the old days?”
Nobody there had ever seen her.
“Did Mrs. Wycherly say she is a looker?” asked O’Hara, sceptically.
Westguard shrugged: “You know what to expect when one woman tells you that another woman is good-looking. Probably she has a face that would kill a caterpillar.”
Quarren laughed lazily from the bed:
“I hear she’s pretty. She’s come out of the West. You know, of course, who she was.”
“Reggie Leeds’s wife,” said O’Hara, slowly.
There was a silence. Perhaps the men were thinking of the late Reginald Leeds, and of the deep damnation of his taking off.
“Have you never seen her?” asked Lacy.
“Nobody ever has. She’s never before been here,” said Quarren, yawning.
“Then come down and set the kettle on, Ricky. She may be the peachiest kind of a peach in a special crate directed to your address and marked ‘Perishable! Rush! With care!’ So we’ll have to be very careful in rushing her — —”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake stop that lady-patter,” protested O’Hara, linking his arm in Lacy’s and sauntering toward the door. “That sort of conversation is Ricky’s line of tea-talk. You’ll reduce him to a pitiable silence if you take away his only asset.”
Westguard gathered up his papers, pausing a moment at the doorway:
“Coming?” he asked briefly of Quarren who was laughing.
“Certainly he’s coming,” said Lacy returning and attempting to drag him from the bed. “Come on, you tea-cup-rattling, macaroon-crunching, caste-smitten, fashion-bitten Arbiter Elegantiarum!”
They fought for a moment, then Lacy staggered back under repeated wallops from one of his own pillows, and presently retired to his bath-room to brush his thick red hair. This hair was his pride and sorrow: it defied him in a brilliant cowlick until plastered flat with water. However, well soaked, his hair darkened to what he considered a chestnut colour. And that made him very proud.
When he had soaked and subdued his ruddy locks he came out to where Westguard still stood.
“Are you coming, Rix?” demanded the latter again.
“Not unless you particularly want me,” returned Quarren, yawning amiably. “I could take a nap if that red-headed Mick would get out of here.”
Westguard said: “Suit yourself,” and followed Lacy and O’Hara down the stairs.
The two latter young fellows turned aside into O’Hara’s apartments to further remake a killing and deadly toilet. Westguard continued on to the first floor which he inhabited, and where he found a Japanese servant already preparing the tea paraphernalia. A few minutes later Mrs. Wycherly arrived with Mrs. Leeds.
All women, experienced or otherwise, never quite lose their curiosity concerning a bachelor’s quarters. The haunts of men interest woman, fascinating the married as well as the unwedded. Deep in their gentle souls they know that the most luxurious masculine abode could easily be made twice as comfortable by the kindly advice of any woman. Toleration, curiosity, sympathy are the emotions which stir feminine hearts when inspecting the solitary lair of the human male.
“So these are the new rooms,” said Molly Wycherly, patronisingly, after O’Hara and Lacy had appeared and everybody had been presented to everybody else. “Strelsa, do look at those early Edwards prints! It’s utterly impossible to find any of them now for sale anywhere.”
Strelsa Leeds looked up at the Botticelli Madonna and at Madame Royale; and the three men looked at her as though hypnotised.
So this was Reginald Leeds’s wife — this distractingly pretty woman — even yet scarcely more than a girl — with her delicate colour and vivid lips and unspoiled eyes — dark eyes — a kind of purplish gray, very purely and exquisitely shaped. But in their grayish-violet depths there was murder. And the assassination of Lacy and O’Hara had already been accomplished.
Her hat, gown, gloves, furs were black — as though the tragic shadow of two years ago still fell across her slender body.
She looked around at the room; Molly Wycherly, pouring tea, nodded to Westguard, and he handed the cup to Mrs. Leeds.
She said, smilingly: “And — do you three unprotected men live in this big house all by yourselves?”
“There are four of us in the Legation,” said Lacy, “and several servants to beat off the suffragettes who become enamoured of us.”
“The — legation?” she repeated, amused at the term.
“Our friends call this house the Irish Legation,” he explained. “We’re all Irish by descent except Westguard who’s a Sassenach — and Dick Quarren, who is only half Irish.’
“And who is Dick Quarren?” she asked innocently.
“Oh, Strelsa!” cautioned Molly Wycherly— “you really mustn’t argue yourself unknown.”
“But I am unknown,” insisted the girl, laughing and looking at the men in turn with an engaging candour that bowled them over again, one by one. “I don’t know who Mr. Quarren is, so why not admit it? Is he such a very wonderful personage, Mr. Lacy?”
“Not at all, Mrs. Leeds. He and I share the top floor of the Legation. We are, as a matter of record, the two financial wrecks of this establishment, so naturally we go to the garret. Poverty is my only distinction; Mr. Quarren, however, also leads the grand march at Lyric Hall now and then I believe — —”
“What is Lyric Hall? Ought I to know?”
Everybody was laughing, and Molly Wycherly said:
“Richard Quarren, known variously as Rix, Ricky, and Dick Quarren, is an exceedingly popular and indispensable young man in this town. You’ll meet him, Strelsa, and probably adore him. We all do.”
“Must I wait very long?” asked Strelsa, laughing. “I’d like to have the adoration begin.”
Lacy said to O’Hara: “Go up and pull that pitiable dub off the bed, Roger. The lady wishes to inspect him.”
“That’s not very civil of Rix,” said Mrs. Wycherly; “but I fancy I know why he requires slumber.” She added, glancing around mischievously at the three men who were all looking languishingly at Mrs. Leeds: “He’ll be sorry when you three gentlemen describe Strelsa to him. I can prophesy that much.”
“Certainly,” said Lacy, airily; “we’re all at Mrs. Leeds’s feet! Even the blind bat of Drumgool could see that! So why deny it?”
“You’re not denying it, Mr. Lacy,” said Strelsa, laughing. “But I realise perfectly that I am in the Irish Legation. So I shall carefully salt everything you say to me.”
“If you think I’ve kissed the blessed pebble you ought to listen to that other bankrupt upstairs,” said Lacy.
“As far as pretty speeches are concerned you seem to be perfectly solvent,” said Strelsa gaily, looking around her at the various adornments of this masculine abode. “I wonder where you dine,” she added with curiosity unabashed.
“We’ve a fine dining-room below,” he said proudly, “haven’t we, Roger? And as soon as Dick Quarren and I are sufficiently solvent to warrant it, the Legation is going to give a series of brilliant banquets; will you come, Mrs. Leeds?”
“When you are solvent, perhaps,” said Strelsa, smiling.
“Westguard and I will give you a banquet at an hour’s notice,” said O’Hara, eagerly. “Will you accept?”
“Such overwhelming offers of hospitality!” she protested. “I had believed the contrary about New Yorkers. You see I’ve just emerged from the West, and I don’t really know what to think of such bewildering cordiality.”
“Karl,” said Mrs. Wycherly, “are you going to show us over the house? If you are we must hurry, as Strelsa and I are to decorate the Calderas’ box this evening, and it takes me an hour to paint my face.” She turned a fresh, winsome countenance to Westguard, who laughed, rose, and took his pretty cousin by the hand.
Under triple escort Mrs. Wycherly and Mrs. Leeds examined the Legation from kitchen to garret — and Strelsa, inadvertently glancing in at a room just as Westguard started to close the door, caught sight of a recumbent shape on a bed — just a glimpse of a blond, symmetrical head and a well-coupled figure, graceful even in the careless relaxation of sleep.
Westguard asked her pardon: “That’s Quarren. He was probably up till daylight.”
“He was,” said Molly Wycherly; “and by the same token so was I. Thank you so much, Karl.... Thank you, Mr. O’Hara — and you, too, Jack!” — offering her hand— “We’ve had a splendid party.... Strelsa, we really ought to go at once — —”
“Will you come again?”
“We will come again if you ask us,” said Strelsa; “we’re perfectly fascinated by the Legation.”
“And its personnel?” hinted Lacy. “Do you like us, Mrs. Leeds?”
“I’ve only seen three of you,” parried Strelsa, much amused.
“We refuse to commit ourselves,” said Molly. “Good-bye. I suppose you all are coming to my house-warming.”
They all looked at Mrs. Leeds and said that they were coming — said so fervently.
Molly laughed: she had no envy in her make-up, perhaps because she was too pretty herself.
“Oh, yes,” she said, replying to their unasked questions, “Mrs. Leeds will be there — and I plainly see my miserable fate. But what can a wretched woman expect from the Irish? Not constancy. Strelsa, take warning. They loved me once!”
* * *
After Westguard had put them in their limousine, he came back to find Quarren in his sitting-room, wearing a dressing-gown, and Lacy madly detailing to him the charms of Strelsa Leeds:
“Take it from me, Dicky, she’s some queen! You didn’t miss a thing but the prettiest woman in town! And there’s a something about her — a kind of a sort of a something — —”
“You appear to be in love, dear friend,” observed Quarren kindly.
“I am. So’s every man here who met her. We don’t deny it! We glory in our fall! What was that costume of hers, Karl? Mourning?”
“Fancy a glorious creature like her wearin’ black for that nasty little cad,” observed O’Hara disgustedly.
“It’s probably fashion, not grief,” remarked Westguard.
“I guess it’s nix for the weeps,” said O’Hara— “after all she probably went through with Reggie Leeds, I fancy she had no tears left over.”
“I want to talk,” cried Lacy; “I want to tell Rix what he missed. I’d got as far as her gown, I think — —”
“Go on,” smiled Quarren.
“Anyway,” said Lacy, “she wore a sort of mourning as far as her veil went, and her furs and gown and gloves were black, and her purse was gun-metal and black opals — rather brisk? Yes? — And all the dingles on her were gun-metal — everything black and sober — and that ruddy gold head — and — those eyes! — a kind of a purple-gray, Ricky, slanting a little, with long black lashes — I noticed ’em — and her lips were very vivid — not paint, but a kind of noticeably healthy scarlet — and that straight nose — and the fresh fragrant youth of her — —”
“For Heaven’s sake, Jack — —”
“Sure. I’m through with ’em all. I’m wise to the sex. That was merely a word picture. I’m talking like a writer, that’s all. That’s how you boobs talk, isn’t it, Karl?”
“Always,” said Westguard gravely.
“Me for Mrs. Leeds,” remarked O’Hara frankly. “I’d ask her to marry me on the drop of a hat.”
“Well, I’ll drop no hat for you!” said Lacy. “And there’ll be plenty of lunatics in this town who’ll go madder than you or me before they forget Mrs. Leeds. Wait! Town is going to sit up and take notice when this new planet swims into its social ken. How’s that epigram, Karl?”
Westguard said thoughtfully: “There’ll be notoriety, too, I’m afraid. If nobody knows her everybody knows about that wretched boy she married.”
Quarren added: “I have always understood that the girl did not want to marry him. It was her mother’s doings.”
O’Hara scowled. “I also have heard that the mother engineered it.... What was Mrs. Leeds’s name? I forget — —”
“Strelsa Lanark,” said Quarren who never forgot anything.
“Ugh,” grunted Westguard. “Fancy a mother throwing her daughter at the head of a boy like Reggie Leeds! — as vicious and unclean a little whelp as ever — Oh, what’s the use? — and de mortius nihil — et cetera, cock-a-doodle-do!”
“That poor girl had two entire years of him,” observed Lacy. “She doesn’t look more than twenty now — and he’s been in — been dead two years. Good Heavens! What a child she must have been when she married him!”
Westguard nodded: “She had two years of him — and I suppose he seldom drew a perfectly sober breath.... He dragged her all over the world with him — she standing for his rotten behaviour, trying to play the game with the cards hopelessly stacked against her. Vincent Wier met them in Naples; Mallison ran across them in Egypt; so did Lydon in Vienna. They said it was heartbreaking to see her trying to keep up appearances — trying to smile under his nagging or his drunken insults in public places. Lydon told me that she behaved like a brick — stuck to Reggie, tried to shield him, excuse him, make something out of the miserable pup who was doing his best to drag her to his own level and deprave her. But I guess she was too young or too unhappy or something, because there’s no depravity in the girl who was here a few minutes ago. I’ll swear to that.”
