Complete weird tales of.., p.613
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 613
“Fifty!” she counted excitedly, her hands beating time to the counting; “ — fifty-one — two — three — four — m-m-m — sixty!” — and she whirled around to face him with an impulsively triumphant gesture which terminated in a swift curtsey, arms flung wide apart.
“Voila!” she said, breathlessly, “I’ve paid my bet! Am I not a good sport, Harlequin? Own that I am and I will forgive your outrageous impudence!”
“You are a most excellent sport, madame!” he conceded, grinning.
Relief from the tension cooled her cheeks; she laughed bewitchingly and looked at him, exultant, unafraid.
“I frightened you well with my desperate counting, didn’t I? You completely forgot to do — anything, didn’t you? Voyons! Admit it!”
“You completely terrorized me,” he admitted.
“Besides,” she said, “while I was so busily counting the seconds aloud you couldn’t very well have kissed me, could you? That was strategy. You couldn’t have managed it, could you?”
“Not very easily.”
“I really did nonplus you, didn’t I?” she insisted, aware of his amusement.
“Oh, entirely,” he said. “I became an abject idiot.”
She stood breathing more evenly now, the pretty colour coming and going in her cheeks. Considering him, looking alternately at his masked eyes and at his expressive lips where a kind of silent and infernal mirth still flickered, a sudden doubt assailed her. And presently, with a dainty shrug, she turned and glanced down through the gilt lattice toward the floor below.
“I suppose,” she said, tauntingly, “you hope I’ll believe that you refrained from kissing me out of some belated consideration for decency. But I know perfectly well that I perplexed you, and confused you and intimidated you.”
“This is, of course, the true solution of my motives in not kissing you.”
She turned toward him:
“What motive?”
“My motive for not kissing you. My only motive was consideration for you, and for the sacred conventions of Sainte Grundy.”
“I believe,” she said scornfully, “you are really trying to make me think that you could have done it, and didn’t!”
“You are too clever to believe me a martyr to principle, madame!”
She looked at him, stamped her foot till the bangles clashed.
“Why didn’t you kiss me, then? — if you wish to spoil my victory?”
“You yourself have told me why.”
“Am I wrong? Could you — didn’t I surprise you — in fact, paralyse you — with astonishment?”
He laughed delighted; and she stamped her ringing foot again.
“I see,” she said; “I am supposed to be doubly in your debt, now. I’d rather you had kissed me and we were quits!”
“It isn’t too late you know.”
“It is too late. It’s all over.”
“Madame, I have fifty-nine other minutes in which to meet your kindly expressed wishes. Did you forget?”
“What!” she exclaimed, aghast.
“One hour less one minute is still coming to me.”
“Am I — have I — is this ridiculous performance going to happen again?” she asked, appalled.
“Fifty-nine times,” he laughed, doubling one spangled leg under the other and whirling on his toe till he resembled a kaleidoscopic teetotum. Then he drew his sword, cut right and left, slapped it back into its sheath, and bowed his wriggling bow, one hand over his heart.
“Don’t look so troubled, madame,” he said. “I release you from your debt. You need never pay me what you owe me.”
Up went her small head, fiercely, under its flashing hair:
“Thank you. I pay my debts!” she said crisply.
“You decline to accept your release?”
“Yes, I do! — from you!”
“You’ll see this thing through! — if it takes all winter?”
“Of course;” trying to smile, and not succeeding.
He touched her arm and pointed out across the hot, perfumed gulf to the gilded clock on high:
“You have seen it through! It is now one minute to midnight. We have been here exactly one hour, lacking a minute, since our bet was on.... And I’ve wanted to kiss you all the while.”
Confused, she looked at the clock under its elaborate azure and ormolu foliations, then turned toward him, still uncertain of her immunity.
“Do you mean that you have really used the hour as you saw fit?” she asked. “Have I done my part honestly? — Like a good sportsman? Have I really?”
He bowed, laughingly:
“I cheerfully concede it. You are a good sport.”
“And — all that time—” she began— “all that time — —”
“I had my chances — sixty of them.”
“And didn’t take them?”
“Only wanted to — but didn’t.”
“You think that I — —”
“A woman never forgets a man who has kissed her. I took the rather hopeless chance that you might remember me without that. But it’s a long shot. I expect that you’ll forget me.”
“Do you want me to remember you?” she asked, curiously.
“Yes. But you won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“I know — from the expression of your mouth, perhaps. You are too pretty, too popular to remember a poor Harlequin.”
“But you never have seen my face? Have you?”
“No.”
“Then why do you continually say that I am pretty?”
“I can divine what you must be.”
“Then — how — why did you refrain from—” She laughed lightly, and looked up at him, mockingly. “Really, Harlequin, you are funny. Do you realise it?”
She laughed again and the slight flush came back into her cheeks.
“But you’re nice, anyway.... Perhaps if you had seen my face you might have let me go unkissed all the quicker.... Masks cover horrible surprises.... And, then again, if you had seen it, perhaps you might never have let me go at all!” she added, audaciously.
In the gilded balcony opposite, the orchestra had now ceased playing; the whirl and noise of the dancers filled the immense momentary quiet. Then soft chimes from the great clock sounded midnight amid cries of, “Unmask! masks off, everybody!”
The Harlequin turned and drawing the black vizard from his face, bent low and saluted her hand; and she, responding gaily with a curtsey, looked up into the features of an utter stranger.
She stood silent a moment, the surprised smile stamped on her lips; then, in her turn, she slipped the mask from her eyes.
“Voila!” she cried. “C’est moi!”
After a moment he said, half to himself;
“I knew well enough that you must be unusual. But I hadn’t any idea — any — idea — —”
“Then — you are not disappointed in me, monsieur?”
“My only regret is that I had my hour, and wasted it. Those hours never sound twice for wandering harlequins.”
“Poor Harlequin!” she said saucily— “I’m sorry, but even your magic can’t recall a vanished hour! Poor, poor Harlequin! You were too generous to me!”
“And now you are going to forget me,” he said. “That is to be my reward.”
“Why — I don’t think — I don’t expect to forget you. I suppose I am likely to know you some day.... Who are you, please? Somebody very grand in New York?”
“My name is Quarren.”
There was a silence; she glanced down at the ball-room floor through the lattice screen, then slowly turned around to look at him again.
“Have you ever heard of me?” he asked, smiling.
“Yes.”
“Are you disappointed?”
“Y-es. Pleasantly.... I supposed you to be — different.”
He laughed:
“Has the world been knocking me very dreadfully to you, Mrs. Leeds?”
“No.... One’s impressions form without any reason — and vaguely — from — nothing in particular. — I thought you were a very different sort of man. — I am glad you are not.”
“That is charming of you.”
“It’s honest. I had no desire to meet the type of man I supposed you to be. Am I too frank?”
“No, indeed,” he said, laughing, “but I’m horribly afraid that I really am the kind of man you imagined me.”
“You are not.”
“How do you know?”
“No,” she said, shaking her pretty head, “you can’t be.”
He said, quoting her own words amiably: “I’m merely one of the necessary incidents of any social environment — like flowers and champagne — —”
“Mr. Quarren!”
In her distress she laid an impulsive hand on his sleeve; he lifted it, laid it across the back of his own hand, and bowing, saluted it lightly, gaily.
“I am not offended,” he said; “ — I am what you supposed me.”
“Please don’t say it! You are not. I didn’t know you; I was — prejudiced — —”
“You’ll find me out sooner or later,” he said laughing, “so I might as well admit that your cap fitted me.”
“It doesn’t fit!” she retorted; “I was a perfect fool to say that!”
“As long as you like me,” he returned, “does it make any difference what I am?”
“Of course it does! I’m not likely to find a man agreeable unless he’s worth noticing.”
“Am I?”
“Oh, gentle angler, I refuse to nibble. Be content that an hour out of my life has sped very swiftly in your company!”
She turned and laid her hand on the little gilt door. He opened it for her.
“You’ve been very nice to me,” she said. “I won’t forget you.”
“You’ll certainly forget me for that very reason. If I hadn’t been nice I’d have been the exception. And you would have remembered.”
She said with an odd smile:
“Do you suppose that pleasant things have been so common in my life that only the unpleasant episode makes any impression on my memory?”
“To really remember me as I want you to, you ought to have had something unpardonable to forgive me.”
“Perhaps I have!” she said, daringly; and slipped past him and down the narrow stairs, her loup-mask fluttering from her elbow.
At the foot of the stairs she turned, looking back at him over her bare shoulder:
“I’ve mortally offended at least three important men by hiding up there with you. That is conceding something to your attractions, isn’t it?”
“Everything. Will you let me find you some supper — and let the mortally offended suitors sit and whistle a bit longer?”
“Poor suitors — they’ve probably been performing heel-tattoos for an hour.... Very well, then — I feel unusually shameless to-night — and I’ll go with you. But don’t be disagreeable to me if a neglected and glowering young man rushes up and drags me away by the back hair.”
“Who for example?”
“Barent Van Dyne, for instance.”
“Oh, we’ll side-step that youthful Knickerbocker,” said Quarren, gaily. “Leave it to me, Mrs. Leeds.”
“To behave so outrageously to Mr. Van Dyne is peculiarly horrid and wicked of me,” she said. “But you don’t realise that — and — the fact remains that you did not take your forfeit. And I’ve a lot to make up for that, haven’t I?” she added so naïvely that they both gave way to laughter unrestrained.
The light touch of her arm on his, now guiding him amid the noisy, rollicking throngs, now yielding to his guidance, ceased as he threaded a way through the crush to a corner, and seated her at a table for two.
In a few moments he came back with all kinds of delectable things; went for more, returned laden, shamelessly pulled several palms between them and the noisy outer world, and seated himself beside her.
With napkin and plate on the low table beside her, she permitted him to serve her. As he filled her champagne glass she lifted it and looked across it at him:
“How did you discover my identity?” she asked. “I’m devoured by curiosity.”
“Shall I tell you?”
“Please.”
“I’ll take a tumble in your estimation if I tell you.”
“I don’t think you will. Try it anyway.”
“Very well then. Somebody told me.”
“And you let me bet with you! And you bet on a certainty!”
“I did.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed reproachfully, “is that good sportsmanship, Mr. Quarren?”
“No; very bad. And that was why I didn’t take the forfeit. Now you understand.”
She sat considering him, the champagne breaking in her glass.
“Yes, I do understand now. A good sportsman couldn’t take a forfeit which he won betting on a certainty.... That wasn’t a real wager, was it?”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“If it had been, I — I don’t suppose you’d have let me go.”
“Indeed not!”
They laughed, watching each other, curiously.
“Which ought to teach me never again to make any such highly original and sporting wagers,” she said. “Anyway, you were perfectly nice about it. Of course you couldn’t very well have been otherwise. Tell me, did you really suppose me to be attractive? You couldn’t judge. How could you — under that mask?”
“Do you think that your mouth could have possibly belonged to any other kind of a face except your own?” he said coolly.
“Is my mouth unusual?”
“Very.”
“How is it unusual?”
“I haven’t analysed the matter, but it is somehow so indescribable that I guessed very easily what the other features must be.”
“Oh, flattery! Oh, impudence! Do you remember when Falstaff said that the lion could always recognise the true prince? Shame on you, Mr. Quarren. You are not only a very adroit flatterer but a perfectly good sportsman after all — and the most gifted tormentor I ever knew in all my life. And I like you fine!” She laughed, and made a quick little gesture, partly arrested as he met her more than half way, touching the rim of his glass to hers. “To our friendship,” he said.
“Our friendship,” she repeated, gaily, “if the gods speed it.”
“ — And — its consequences,” he added. “Don’t forget those.”
“What are they likely to be?”
“Who knows? That’s the gamble! But let us recognise all kinds of possibilities, and drink to them, too. Shall we?”
“What do you mean by the consequences of friendship?” she repeated, hesitating.
“That is the interesting thing about a new friendship,” he explained. “Nobody can ever predict what the consequences are to be. Are you afraid to drink to the sporting chances, hazards, accidents, and possibilities of our new friendship, Mrs. Leeds? That is a perfectly good sporting proposition.”
She considered him, interested, her eyes full of smiling curiosity, perfectly conscious of the swift challenge of his lifted glass.
After a few seconds’ hesitation she struck the ringing rim of her glass against his:
“To our new friendship, Monsieur Harlequin!” she said lightly— “with every sporting chance, worldly hazard, and heavenly possibility in it!”
“‘To our new friendship, Monsieur Harlequin!’ she said lightly.”
For the first time the smile faded from his face, and something in his altered features arrested her glass at her very lips.
“How suddenly serious you seem,” she said. “Have I said anything?”
He drained his glass; after a second she tasted hers, looked at him, finished it, still watching him.
“Really,” she said; “you made me feel for a moment as though you and I were performing a solemn rite. That was a new phase of you to me — that exceedingly sudden and youthful gravity.”
He remained silent. Into his mind, just for a second, and while in the act of setting the glass to his lips, there had flashed a flicker of pale clairvoyance. It seemed to illumine something within him which he had never believed in — another self.
For that single instant he caught a glimpse of it, then it faded like a spark in a confused dream.
He raised his head and looked gravely across at Strelsa Leeds; and level-eyed, smiling, inquisitive, she returned his gaze.
Could this brief contact with her have evoked in him a far-buried something which had never before given sign of existence? And could it have been anything resembling aspiration that had glimmered so palely out of an ordered and sordid commonplace personality which, with all its talent for frivolity, he had accepted as his own?
Without reason a slight flush came into his cheeks.
“Why do you regard me so owlishly?” she asked, amused. “I repeat that you made me feel as though we were performing a sort of solemn rite when we drank our toast.”
“You couldn’t feel that way with such a thoroughly frivolous man as I am. Could you?”
“I’m rather frivolous myself,” she admitted, laughing. “I really can’t imagine why you made me feel so serious — or why you looked as though you were. I’ve no talent for solemnity. Have you?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “What a terrible din everybody is making! How hot and stifling it is here — with all those cloying gardenias.... A man said, this evening, that this sort of thing makes for anarchy.... It’s rather beastly of me to sit here criticising my host’s magnificence.... Do you know — it’s curious, too — but I wish that, for the next hour or two, you and I were somewhere alone under a good wide sky — where there was no noise. It’s an odd idea, isn’t it, Mrs. Leeds. And probably you don’t share it with me.”
She remained silent, thoughtful, her violet-gray eyes humorously considering him.
“How do you know I don’t?” she said at last. “I’m not enamoured of noise, either.”
“There’s another thing,” he went on, smiling— “it’s rather curious, too — but somehow I’ve a sort of a vague idea that I’ve a lot of things to talk to you about. It’s odd, isn’t it?”
“Well you know,” she reminded him, “you couldn’t very well have a lot of things to talk to me about considering the fact that we’ve known each other only an hour or so.”
