Complete weird tales of.., p.612
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 612
“Jingling, fluttering, gems clashing musically, the Byzantine dancer, besieged by adorers, deftly evaded their pressing gallantries.”
After her like a flash sped Harlequin: for an instant, just ahead of him, she appeared in plain sight, glimmering brightly against the green and swaying tapestry of living leaves and flowers, then even as her pursuers looked at her, she vanished before their very eyes.
They ran about distractedly hunting for her, Turk, Drum Major, Indian Chief, and Charles the First, then reluctantly gave up the quest and drifted off to seek for another ideal. All women are ideal under the piquant promise of the mask.
A pretty shepherdess, lingering near, whispered close to Quarren’s shoulder behind her fan:
“Check to you, Harlequin! That golden dancer was the only girl in town who hasn’t taken any pains to meet you!”
He turned his head, warily, divining Molly Wycherly under the disguise, realising, too, that she recognised him.
“You’ll never find her now,” laughed the shepherdess. “Besides she does not care a rap about meeting a mere Harlequin. It’s refreshing to see you so thoroughly snubbed once in a while.” And she danced gaily away, arms akimbo, her garlanded crook over her shoulder; and her taunting laughter floated back to him where he stood irresolute, wondering how the golden dancer could have so completely vanished.
Suddenly he recollected going over the house before its completion with Jim Wycherly, who had been his own architect, and the memory of a certain peculiarity in the construction of the ball-room flashed into his mind. The only possible explanation for her disappearance was that somebody had pointed out to her the low door behind the third pillar, and she was now in the gilded swallow’s-nest aloft.
It was a whim of Wycherly — this concealed stair — he recalled it perfectly now — and, parting the living tapestry of blossoms, he laid his hand on the ivory and gilded paneling, pressing the heart of one carved rose after another, until with a click! a tiny door swung inward, revealing a narrow spiral of stairs, lighted rosily by electricity.
He stepped inside, closed the door, and listened, then mounted noiselessly. Half way up he caught the aroma of a cigarette; and, a second later he stepped out onto a tiny latticed balcony, completely screened.
The golden dancer, who evidently had been gazing down on the carnival scene below from behind the lattice, whirled around to confront him in a little flurry of cigarette smoke.
For a moment they faced each other, then:
“How did you know where to find me, Harlequin?”
“I’d have died if I hadn’t found you, fairest, loveliest — —”
“That is no answer! Answer me!”
“Why did you flee?” he asked. “Answer that, first.”
She glanced at her cigarette and shrugged her shoulders:
“You see why I fled, don’t you? Now answer me.”
The Harlequin presented the hilt of his sword which was set with a tiny mirror.
“You see why I fled after you,” he said, “don’t you?”
“All the same,” she insisted, smilingly, “I have been informed on excellent authority that I am the only one, except the family, who knows of this balcony. And here comes a Harlequin blundering in! You are not Mr. Wycherly; and you’re certainly not Molly.”
“Alas! My ultimate ends are not as shapely.”
“Then who are you?” She added, laughing: “They’re shapely enough, too.”
“I am only a poor wandering, love-smitten Harlequin—” he said, “scorned, despised, and mocked by beauty — —”
“Love-smitten?” she repeated.
“Can you doubt it, now?”
She laughed gaily and leaned back against the balcony’s velvet rail:
“You lose no time in declaring yourself, do you, Harlequin? — that is, if you are hinting that I have smitten you with the pretty passion.”
“Through and through, beautiful dancer — —”
“How do you know that I am beautiful under this mask?”
“I know many things. That’s my compensation for being only a poor mountebank of a Harlequin — magic penetration — the clairvoyance of radium.”
“Did you expect to find me at the top of those cork-screw stairs?”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“Inference. Every toad hides a jewel in its head. So I argued that somewhere in the ugliness of darkest Philistia a gem must be hidden; and I’ve searched for years — up and down throughout the haunts of men from Gath to Ascalon. And — behold! My quest is ended at your pretty feet! — Rose-Diamond of the World!”
He sank lithely on one knee; she laughed deliciously, looking down at his masked face.
“Who are you, Harlequin? — whose wits and legs seem to be equally supple and symmetrical?”
“Tell it not in Gath; Publish it not in the streets of Ascalon; I am that man for whom you were destined before either you or I were born. Are you frightened?”
The Byzantine dancer laughed and shook her head till all the golden metal on her was set chiming.
He said, still on one knee at her feet:
“Exquisite phantom of an Empire dead, from what emblazoned sarcophagus have you danced forth across our modern oceans to bewitch the Philistia of to-day? Who clothed you in scarlet delicately? Who put ornaments of gold upon your apparel — —”
“You court me with Scripture as smoothly as Heaven’s great Enemy,” she said— “and to your own ends, as does he. Are you leagued with him, O agile and intrusive Harlequin, to steal away my peace of mind?”
Lithely, silently he leaped up to the balustrade and, gathering his ankles under him, squatted there, cross-legged, peering sideways at her through the slanting eye-holes.
“If that screen behind you gives way,” she warned him, “you will have accomplished your last harlequinade.”
He glanced coolly over his shoulder:
“How far is it to the floor below, do you suppose?”
“Far enough to make a good harlequin out of a live one,” she said.... “Please be careful; I really mean it.”
“Child,” he said solemnly, “do you suppose that I mind falling a hundred feet or so on my head? I’ve already fallen infinitely farther than that this evening.”
“And it didn’t kill you?” she exclaimed, clasping her hands, dramatically.
“No. Because our destiny must first be accomplished before I die.”
“Ours?”
“Yours and mine, pretty dancer! I’ve already fulfilled my destiny by falling in love with you at first sight. That was a long fall, wasn’t it?”
“Very. Am I to fulfil mine in a similar manner?”
“You are.”
“Will it — kill me, do you think?”
“I don’t think so. Try it.”
“Will it hurt? — this terrible fall? And how far must I descend to fall in love with you?”
“Sometimes falling in love does hurt,” he said gravely, “when the fall is a long one.”
“Is this to be a long one?”
“You may think so.”
“Then I decline to tumble. Please go somewhere about your business, Master Harlequin. I’m inclined to like you.”
“Dancer, my life’s business is wherever you happen to be.”
“Why are you so sure?”
“Magic,” he said seriously. “I deal in it.”
“Wonderful! Your accomplishments overwhelm me. Perhaps, through the aid of magic, you can even tell me who I am!”
“I think I can.”
“Is that another threat of magic?”
“It’s a bet, too, if you like.”
“Are you offering to bet me that, before I unmask, you will be able to discover who I am?”
“Yes. Will you make it a wager?” She stood, silent, irresolute, cautious but curious; then:
“Do you mean that you can find out who I am? Now? Here in this balcony?”
“Certainly.”
“That is sheer nonsense,” she said with decision. “I’ll bet you anything you like.”
“What stakes?”
“Why there’s nothing to bet except the usual, is there?”
“You mean flowers, gloves, stockings, bon-bons?”
“Yes.”
The Harlequin, smiling at her askance, drew from the hilt of his lathe-sword a fresh cigarette, lighted it, looked across at the level chandelier, and sent a ring of smoke toward the twinkling wilderness of prisms hanging in mid-air.
“Let’s be original or perish,” he said. “I’ll bet you a day out of my life against a day out of yours that I discover who you are in ten minutes.”
“I won’t accept such a silly wager! What would you do with me for a day?”
The Harlequin bent his masked head. Over his body the lozenges of scarlet and gold slid crinkling as though with suppressed and serpentine mirth.
“What are you laughing at?” she demanded half vexed, half amused.
“Your fears, pretty dancer.”
“I am not afraid!”
“Very well. Prove it! I have offered to bet you a day out of my life that I’ll tell you who you are. Are you afraid to wager a day out of yours that I can’t do it?”
She shook her head so that the burnished locks clustered against her cheeks, and all over her slim figure the jingling gold rang melodiously.
“I haven’t long to live,” she observed. “A day out of life is too much to risk.”
“Why don’t you think that you have long to live?”
“I haven’t. I know it.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know.... Besides, I don’t wish to live very long.”
“You don’t wish to live long?”
“Only as long as I’m young enough to be forgetful. Old age is a horror — in some cases. I don’t desire ever to be forty. After forty they say one lives on memory. I don’t wish to.”
Through the slits of his mask his curious eyes watched her steadily.
“You’re not yet twenty-four,” he said.
“Not quite. That is a good guess, Harlequin.”
“And you don’t want to live to be old?”
“No, I don’t wish to.”
“But you are rather keen on living while you’re young.”
“I’ve never thought much about it. If I live, it’s all right; if I die, I don’t think I’ll mind it.... I’m sure I shouldn’t.”
Her cigarette had gone out. She tossed it aside and daintily consented to exchange cigarettes with him, offering her little gold case.
“You’re carefully inspecting my initials, aren’t you?” she observed, amused. “But that monogram will not help you, Master Harlequin.”
“Marriage alters only the final initial. Are you, by any unhappy chance — —”
“That’s for you to find out! I didn’t say I was! I believe you are making me tell you things!”
She threw back the lustrous hair that shadowed her cheeks and leaned forward, her shadowed eyes fixed intently upon him through the apertures of her golden mask.
“I’m beginning to wonder uneasily who you may be, Monsieur Harlequin! You alarm me a little.”
“Aha!” he said. “I’ve told you I deal in magic! That you don’t know who I am, even after that confession, makes me reasonably certain who you are.”
“You’re trying to scare me,” she said, disdainfully.
“I’ll do it, yet.”
“I wonder.”
“You’ll wonder more than ever in a few moments.... I’m going to tell you who you are. But first of all I want you to fix the forfeit — —”
“Why — I don’t know.... What do you want of me?” she asked, mockingly.
“Whatever you care to risk.”
“Then you’ll have to name it. Because I don’t particularly care to offer you anything.... And please hasten — I’ll be missed presently — —”
“Won’t you bet one day out of your life?”
“No, I won’t. I told you I wouldn’t.”
“Then — one hour. Just a single hour?”
“An hour?”
“Yes, sixty minutes, payable on demand: If I win, you will place at my disposal one entire hour out of your life. Will you dare that much, pretty dancer?”
She laughed, looked up at him; then readjusting her mask, she nodded disdainfully. “Because,” she observed, “it is quite impossible for you ever to guess who I am. So do your very worst.”
He sprang from the balustrade, landing lightly, his left hand spread over his heart, his bi-corne flourished in the other.
“You are Strelsa Leeds!” he said in a low voice.
The golden dancer straightened up to her full height, astounded, and a bright flood of colour stained her cheeks under the mask’s curved edge.
“It — it is impossible that you should know—” she began, exasperated. “How could you? Only one person knew what I was to wear to-night! I came by myself with my maid. It — it is magic! It is infernal — abominable magic — —”
She checked herself, still standing very straight, the gorgeous, blossom-woven cloth-of-gold rippling; the jewels shooting light from the fillet that bound her hair.
After a silence:
“How did you know?” she asked, striving to smile through the flushed chagrin. “It is perfectly horrid of you — anyhow — —”
Curiosity checked her again; she stood gazing at him in silence, striving to pierce the eye-slits of that black skin-mask — trying to interpret the expression of the mischievous mobile mouth below it — or, perhaps the malice was all in those slanting slits behind which two strange eyes sparkled steadily out at her from the shadow.
“Strelsa Leeds,” he repeated, and flourished one hand in graceful emphasis as she coloured hotly again. And he saw the teeth catch at her under lip.
“It is outrageous,” she declared. “Tell me instantly who you are!”
“First,” he insisted, mischievously, “I claim the forfeit.”
“The — the forfeit!” she faltered.
“Did you not lose your wager?”
She nodded reluctantly, searching the disguised features before her in vain for a clew to his identity. Then, a trifle uneasily:
“Yes, of course I lost my wager. But — I did not clearly understand what you meant by an hour out of my life.”
“It is to be an hour at my disposal,” he explained with another grotesque bow. “I think that was the wager?”
“Y-yes.”
“Unless,” he remarked carelessly, “you desire the — ah — privilege and indisputable prerogative of your delightful sex.”
“The privilege of my sex? What is that?” she asked, dangerously polite.
“Why, to change your divine mind — repudiate the obligation — —”
“Harlequin!”
“Madame?” with an elaborate and wriggling bow.
“I pay what I owe — always.... Always! Do you understand?”
The Harlequin bowed again in arabesques, very low, yet with a singular and almost devilish grace:
“Madame concedes that the poor Harlequin has won his wager?”
“Yes, I do — and you don’t appear to be particularly humble, either.”
“Madame insists on paying?” he inquired suavely.
“Yes, of course I do!” she said, uneasily. “I promised you an hour out of my life. Am I to pay it now?”
“You pay by the minute — one minute a day for sixty days. I am going to take the first minute now. Perhaps I may ask for the other fifty-nine, also.”
“How?”
“Shall I show you how?”
“Very well.”
“A magic pass or two, first,” he said gaily, crooking one spangled knee and spinning around. Then he whipped out his lathe-sword, held it above his head, coolly passed a glittering arm around her waist, and looked down into her flushed face.
“You will have to count out the sixty seconds,” he said. “I shall be otherwise occupied, and I can’t trust myself to do two things at once.”
“What are you about to do? Sink through a trap-door with me?”
“I am about to salute you with the magic kiss. After that you’ll be my Columbine forever.”
“That is not included in the bet! Is it?” she asked in real consternation.
“I may do as I please with my hour, may I not?”
“Was it the bet that you were to be at liberty to — to kiss me?”
“I control absolutely an hour out of your life, do I not? I may use it as I please. You had better count out sixty seconds.”
She looked down, biting her lip, and touched one hand against her cheeks, alternately, as though to cool them with the snowy contact.
He waited in silence for her reply.
“Very well,” she said resolutely, “if you elect to use the first minute of your hour as frivolously as that, I must submit, I suppose.”
And she began to count aloud, rapidly: “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, ni — —”
Her face was averted; he could see the tip of one small ear all aflame. Presently she ventured a swift glance around at him and saw that he was laughing.
“Ten, eleven, twelve,” she counted nervously, still watching him; “thirteen, fourteen, fifteen—” panic threatened her; she doubled both hands in the effort of self-control and timed her counting as though the rapid beating of the tempo could hasten her immunity— “sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, one, two, three — —”
“Play fair!” he exclaimed.
“I am trying to. Can’t I say it that way up to ten, and then say thirty?”
“Oh, certainly. I’ve still half a minute. You’d better hurry! I may begin at any moment.”
“Four — five — six — seven — m-m-m — thirty!” she cried, and the swift numbers fled from her lips fairly stumbling over one another, tumbling the sequence of hurrying numerals into one breathless gasp of: “Forty!”
His arm slid away from her waist; he stepped backward, and stood, watching her, one finger crooked, supporting his chin, the ironical smile hovering ever on his lips.
