Complete weird tales of.., p.619
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 619
“I mean the one man?” insisted Mrs. Sprowl encouragingly.
“Which, please?”
“Nonsense! There was one, I suppose.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.... Your nephew, Langly, was exceedingly amiable — —”
“He’s a plain beast,” said his aunt, bluntly. “I didn’t mean him.”
“He was very civil to me,” insisted Strelsa, colouring.
“Probably he didn’t have a chance to be otherwise. He’s a rotter, child. Ask anybody. I know perfectly well what he’s been up to. I’m sorry you went on the Yulan. He had no business to ask you — or any other nice girl — or anybody at all until that Reno scandal is officially made respectable. If it were not for his money—” She stopped a moment, adding cynically— “and if it were not for mine — certain people wouldn’t be tolerated anywhere, I suppose.... How did you like Sir Charles?”
“Oh, he is charming!” she said warmly.
“You like him?”
“I almost adore him.”
“Why not adore him entirely?”
Strelsa laughed frankly: “He hasn’t asked me to, for one reason. Besides — —”
“No doubt he’ll do it.”
The girl shook her head, still smiling:
“You don’t understand at all. There isn’t the slightest sentiment between us. He’s only thoroughly nice and agreeable, and he and I are most companionable. I hope nobody will be silly enough to hint anything of that sort to him. It would embarrass him dreadfully.”
Mrs. Sprowl’s smile was blandly tolerant:
“The man’s in love with you. Didn’t you know it?”
“But you are mistaken, dear Mrs. Sprowl. If it were true I would know it, I think.”
“Nonsense! He told me so.”
“Oh,” said Strelsa in amazed consternation. She added: “If it is so I’d rather not speak of it, please.”
Mrs. Sprowl eyed her with shifty but keen intelligence. “Little idiot,” she thought; but her smile remained bland and calmly patronising.
For a second or two longer she studied the girl cautiously, trying to make up her mind whether there was really any character in Strelsa’s soft beauty — anything firmer than material fastidiousness; anything more real than a natural and dainty reticence. Mrs. Sprowl could ride rough-shod over such details. But she was too wise to ride if there was any chance of a check from higher sources.
“If you married him it would be very gratifying to me,” she said pleasantly. “Come; let’s discuss the matter like sensible women. Shall we?”
Many people would not have disregarded such a wish. Strelsa flushed and lifted her purple-gray eyes to meet the little green ones scanning her slyly.
“I am sorry,” she said, “but I couldn’t discuss such a thing, you see. Don’t you see I can’t, dear Mrs. Sprowl?”
“Pooh! Rubbish! Anybody can discuss anything,” rejoined the old lady with impersonal and boisterous informality. “I’m fond of you. Everybody knows it. I’m fond of Sir Charles. He’s a fine figure of a man. You match him in everything, except wealth. It’s an ideal marriage — —”
“Please don’t! — I simply cannot — —”
“Ideal,” repeated Mrs. Sprowl loudly— “an ideal marriage — —”
“But when there is no love — —”
“Plenty! Loads of it! He’s mad about you — crazy! — —”
“I — meant — on my part — —”
“Good God!” shouted the old lady, beating the air with pudgy hands— “isn’t it luck enough to have love on one side? What does the present generation want! I tell you it’s ideal, perfect. He’s a good man as men go, and a devilish handsome — —”
“I know — but — —”
“And he’s got money!” shouted the old lady— “plenty of it I tell you! And he has the entrée everywhere on the Continent — in England — everywhere! — which Dankmere has not! — if you’re considering that little whelp!”
Stunned, shrinking from the dreadful asthmatic noises in Mrs. Sprowl’s voice, Strelsa sat dumb, wincing under the blows of sound, not knowing how to escape.
“I’m fond of you!” shrieked the old lady— “I can be of use to you and I want to be. That’s why I asked you to tea! I want to make you happy — and Sir Charles, too! What the devil do you suppose there is in it for me except to oblige hi — you both?”
“Th-thank you, but — —”
“I’ll bet a shilling that Molly Wycherly let you go about with any little spindle-shanked pill who came hanging around! — And I told her what were my wishes — —”
“Please — oh, please, Mrs. Sprowl — —”
“Yes, I did! It’s a good match! I want you to consider it! — I insist that — —”
“Mrs. Sprowl!” exclaimed Strelsa, pink with confusion and resentment, “I am obliged to you for the interest you display, but it is a matter — —”
“What!”
“I am really — grateful — but — —”
“Answer me, child. Has that cursed nephew of mine made any impression on you? Answer me!”
“Not the kind you evidently mean!” said Strelsa, helplessly.
“Is there anybody else?”
The outrageous question silenced the girl for a moment. Angry, she still tried to be gentle; tried to remember the age, and the excellent intentions of this excited old lady; and she answered in a low voice:
“I care for no man in particular, unless it be Sir Charles — and — —”
“And who?”
“Mr. Quarren, I think,” she said.
Mrs. Sprowl’s jowl grew purple with fury:
“You — has that boy had the impudence — damn him — —”
Strelsa sprang to her feet.
“I really cannot remain—” she said with decision, but the old lady only bawled:
“Sit down! Sit down!”
“I will not!”
“Sit down!” she roared in a passion. “What the devil — —”
Strelsa, a little pale, started to pass her — then halted, astounded: for the old lady had burst into a passion of choking gasps. Whether the terrible sounds she made were due to impotent rage or asthma, Strelsa, confused, shocked, embarrassed, but still angry, had no notion; and while Mrs. Sprowl coughed fatly, she stood still, catching muffled fragments of reproaches directed at people who flouted friendship; who had no consideration for age, and no gratitude, no tenderness, no pity.
“I — I am grateful,” faltered Strelsa, “only I cannot — —”
“I wanted to be a mother to you! I’ve tried to be,” wheezed the old lady in a fresh paroxysm; and beat the air.
For one swift instant the girl remembered what her real mother had been to her; and her heart hardened.
“I care only for your friendship, Mrs. Sprowl; I do not wish you to do anything for me; can we not be friends on that basis?”
Mrs. Sprowl swabbed her inflamed eyes and peered around the corner of the handkerchief.
“Come here, my dear,” she said.
Strelsa went, slowly; and Mrs. Sprowl enveloped her like a fleshy squid, panting.
“I only wanted to be good to you, Strelsa. I’m just an old fool I suppose — —”
“Oh, please don’t — —”
“That’s all I am, child, just a sentimental old fool. The poor man’s adoration of you touched my heart — and you do like him a little, don’t you?”
“Very much.... Thank you for — for wishing happiness to me. I really don’t mean to be ungrateful; I have a horror of ingratitude. It’s only that — the idea never occurred to me; and I am incapable of doing such a thing for material reasons, unless — I also really cared for a man — —”
“Of course, child. Maybe you will care for him some day. I won’t interfere any more.... Only — don’t lose your heart to any of these young jackals fawning around your skirts. Every set is full of ‘em. They’re nothing but the capering chorus in this comic opera.... And — don’t be angry — but I am an older and wiser woman than you, and I am fond of you, and it’s my duty to tell you that any of the lesser breed — take young Quarren for example — are of no real account, even in the society which they amuse.”
“I would scarcely class Mr. Quarren with the sort you mention — —”
“Why not? He’s of no importance.”
“Because he is kind, considerate, and unusually intelligent and interesting; and he is very capable of succeeding in whatever he undertakes,” said Strelsa, slowly.
“Ricky is a nice boy; but what does he undertake?” asked Mrs. Sprowl with good-natured contempt. “He undertakes the duties, obligations, and details of a useful man in the greater household, which make him acceptable to us; and I’m bound to say that he does ’em very well. But outside of that he’s a nobody. And I’ll tell you just what he’ll turn into; shall I? Society’s third chief bottlewasher in succession. We had one, who evolved us. He’s dead. We have another. He’s still talking. When he ultimately evaporates into infinity Ricky will be his natural successor. Do you want that kind of a husband?”
“Did you suppose — —”
“Don’t get angry, Strelsa? I didn’t suppose anything. Ricky, like every other man, dangles his good-looking, good-humoured self in your vicinity. You’re inclined to notice him. All I mean is that he isn’t worth your pains.... Now you won’t be offended by a plain-spoken old woman who wishes only your happiness, will you, my child?”
“No,” said Strelsa, wearily, beginning to feel the fatigue of the scene.
She took her leave a few moments afterward, very unhappy because two of the pleasantest incidents in her life had been badly, if not hopelessly, marred. But Langly Sprowl was not one of them.
* * *
That hatchet-faced and immaculate gentleman, divining possibly that Strelsa might be with his aunt, arrived shortly after her departure; learned of it from a servant, and was turning on his heel without even asking for Mrs. Sprowl, when the thought occurred to him that possibly she might know Strelsa’s destination.
When a servant announced him he found his aunt quite herself, grim, ready for trouble, her small green eyes fairly snapping.
They indulged in no formalities, being alone together, and caring nothing for servants’ opinions. Their greeting was perfunctory; their inquiries civil. Then there ensued a short silence.
“Which way did Mrs. Leeds go?” he asked, busily twisting his long moustache.
“None of your business,” rejoined his aunt.
He looked up in slight surprise, recognised a condition of things which, on second thought, surprised him still more. Because his aunt had never before noticed his affairs — had not even commented on the Ledwith matter to him. He had always felt that she disliked him too thoroughly to care.
“I don’t think I understood you,” he said, watching her out of shifting eyes which protruded a trifle.
“I think you will understand me before I’ve done with you,” returned his aunt, grimly. “It’s a perfectly plain matter; you’ve the rest of the female community to chase if you choose. Go and chase ’em for all I care — hunt from here to Reno if you like! — but I have other plans for Strelsa Leeds. Do you understand? I’ve put my private mark on her. There’s no room for yours.”
Langly’s gaze which had not met hers — and never met anybody’s for more than a fraction of a second — shifted. He continued his attentions to his moustache; his eyes roved; he looked at but did not see a hundred things in a second.
“You don’t know where she’s gone?” he inquired with characteristic pertinacity and an indifference to what she had said, absolutely stony.
“Do you mean trouble for that girl?”
“I do not.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you want to marry her?”
“I said that I was considering nothing in particular. We are friends.”
“Keep away from her! Do you understand?”
“I really don’t know whether I do or not. I suppose you mean Sir Charles.”
Mrs. Sprowl turned red:
“Suppose what you like, you cold-blooded cad! But by God! — if you annoy that child I’ll empty the family wash all over the sidewalk! And let the public pick it over!”
He rested his pale, protuberant eyes on her for a brief second:
“Will any of your finery figure in it? Any relics or rags once belonging to the late parent of Sir Charles?”
Her features were livid; her lips twisted, tortured under the flood of injuries which choked her. Not a word came. Exhausted for a moment she sat there grasping the gilded arms of her chair, livid as the dead save for the hell blazing in her tiny green eyes.
“I fancy that settles the laundry question,” he said, while his restless glance ceaselessly swept the splendid room and his lean, sunburnt hand steadily caressed his moustache. Then, as though he had forgotten something, he rose and walked out. A footman invested him with hat and overcoat. A moment later the great doors clicked.
In the silence of the huge house there was not a sound except the whispers of servants; and these ceased presently.
All alone, amid the lighted magnificence of the vast room sat the old woman hunched in her chair, bloodless, motionless as a mass of dead flesh. Even the spark in her eyes was gone, the lids closed, the gross lower lip pendulous. Later two maids, being summoned, accompanied her to her boudoir, and were dismissed. Her social secretary, a pretty girl, came and left with instructions to cancel invitations for the evening.
A maid arrived with a choice of headache remedies; then, with the aid of another, disrobed her mistress and got her into bed.
Their offices accomplished, they were ordered to withdraw but to leave one light burning. It glimmered over an old-fashioned photograph on the wall — the portrait of a British officer taken in the days when whiskers, “pill-box,” and frogged frock-tunic were cultivated in Her British Majesty’s Service.
From where she lay she looked at him; and Sir Weyward Mallison stared back at her through his monocle.
* * *
Strelsa at home, unpinning her hat before the mirror, received word over the telephone that Mrs. Sprowl, being indisposed, regretfully recalled the invitations for the evening.
The girl’s first sensation was relief, then self-reproach, quite forgetting that if Mrs. Sprowl’s violent emotions had made that redoubtable old woman ill, they had also thoroughly fatigued the victim of her ill-temper and made her very miserable.
She wrote a perfunctory note of regret and civil inquiry and dispatched it, then surrendered herself to the ministrations of her maid.
The luxury of dining alone for the first time in months, appealed to her. She decided that she was not to be at home to anybody.
Langly Sprowl called about six, and was sent away. Strelsa, curled up on a divan, could hear the staccato racket that his powerful racing-car made in the street outside. The informality of her recent host aboard the Yulan did not entirely please her. She listened to his departure with quiet satisfaction.
“Strelsa, curled upon a divan ... listened to his departure with quiet satisfaction.”
Although it was not her day, several people came and went. Flowers from various smitten youths arrived; orchids from Sprowl; nothing from Quarren. Then for nearly two hours she slept where she lay and awakened laughing aloud at something Quarren had been saying in her dream. But what it was she could not recollect.
At eight her maid came and hooked her into a comfortable and beloved second-year gown; dinner was announced; she descended the stairway in solitary state, still smiling to herself at Quarren’s forgotten remark, and passed by the library just as the telephone rang there.
It may have been a flash of clairvoyance — afterward she wondered exactly what it was that made her say to her maid very confidently:
“That is Mr. Quarren. I’ll speak to him.”
It was Mr. Quarren. The amusing coincidence of her dream and her clairvoyance still lingering in her mind, she went leisurely to the telephone and said:
“I don’t understand how I knew it was you. And I’m not sure why I came to the ‘phone, because I’m not at home to anybody. But what was it you said to me just now?”
“When?”
“A few minutes ago while I was asleep?”
“About eight o’clock?”
She laughed: “It happened to be a few minutes before eight. How did you know that? I believe you did speak to me in my dream. Did you?”
“I did.”
“Really?”
“I said something aloud to you about eight o’clock.”
“How odd! Did you know I was asleep? But you couldn’t — —”
“No, of course not. I was merely thinking of you.”
“You were — you happened to be thinking of me? And you said something aloud about me?”
“About you — and to you.”
“How delightfully interesting! What was it, please?”
“Oh, I was only talking nonsense.”
“Won’t it bear repetition?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Mr. Quarren! How maddening! I’m dying with curiosity. I dreamed that you said something very amusing to me and I awoke, laughing; but now I simply cannot recollect what it was you said.”
“I’ll tell you some day.”
“Soon? Would you tell me this evening?”
“How can I?”
“That’s true. I’m not at home to anybody. So you can’t drop in, can you?”
“You are not logical; I could drop in because I’m not anybody — —”
“What!”
“I’m not anybody in particular — —”
“You know if you begin to talk that way, after all these days, I’ll ring off in a rage. You are the only man in the world to whom I’m at home even over the telephone, and if that doesn’t settle your status with me, what does?... Are you well, Mr. Quarren?”
“Thank you, perfectly. I called you up to ask you about yourself.”
“I’m tired, somehow.”
