Complete weird tales of.., p.620
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 620
“Oh, we are all that. Nothing more serious threatens you than impending slumber?”
“I said I was tired, not sleepy. I’m wide awake but horribly lazy — and inclined to slump. Where are you; at the Legation?”
“At the Founders’ Club — foundered.”
“What are you doing there?”
“Absolutely nothing. Reading the Evening Post.”
“You are dining out I suppose?”
“No.”
She reflected until he spoke again, asking if she was still there.
“Oh, yes; I’m trying to think whether I want you to come around and share a solitary dinner with me. Do I want you?”
“Just a little — don’t you?”
“Do you want to come?”
“Yes.”
“Very much?”
“I can’t tell you how much — over the telephone.”
“That sounds both humble and dangerous. Which do you mean to be?”
“Humble — and very, very grateful, dear lady. May I come?”
“I — don’t know. Dinner was announced a quarter of an hour ago.”
“It won’t take me three minutes — —”
“If it takes you more you’ll ring my door-bell in vain, young man.”
“I’ll start now! Good — —”
“‘Do you remember our first toast?’ he asked, smiling.”
“Wait! I haven’t decided. Really I’m simply stupid with the accumulated fatigues of two months’ frivolity. Do you mind my being stupid?”
“You know I don’t — —”
“Shame on you! That was not the answer. Think out the right one on your way over. À bien tôt!”
She had been in the drawing-room only a few moments, looking at the huge white orchids that Langly Sprowl had sent and which her butler was arranging, when Quarren was announced; and she partly turned from the orchids, extending her hand behind her in a greeting more confident and intimate than she had ever before given him.
“Look at these strange, pansy-shaped Brazilian flowers,” she said. “Kindly observe that they are actually growing out of that ball of moss and fibre.”
She had retained his hand for a fraction of a second longer than conventional acquaintance required, giving it a frank and friendly pressure. Now, loosing it, she found her own fingers retained, and drew them away with a little laugh of self-consciousness.
“Sentiment before dinner implies that you’ll have no room for it after dinner. Here is your cocktail.”
“Do you remember our first toast?” he asked, smiling.
“No.”
“The toast to friendship?”
“Yes; I remember it.”
She touched her lips to her glass, not looking at him. He watched her. After a moment she raised her eyes, met his gaze, returned it with one quite as audacious:
“I am drinking that same toast again — after many days,” she said.
“With all that it entails?”
She nodded.
“Its chances, hazards, consequences?”
She laughed, then, looking at him, deliberately sipped from her glass, the defiant smile in her eyes still daring him and Chance and Destiny together.
When he took her out she was saying: “I really can’t account for my mood to-night. I believe that seeing you again is reviving me. I was beastly stupid.”
“My soporific society ought to calm, not exhilarate you.”
“It never did, particularly. What a long time it is since we have seen each other. I am glad you came.”
Seated, she asked the butler to remove the flowers which interrupted her view of Quarren.
“You haven’t said anything about my personal appearance,” she observed. “Am I very much battered by my merry bouts with pleasure?”
“Not much.”
“You wretch! Do you mean to say that I am marked at all?”
“You look rather tired, Mrs. Leeds.”
“I know I do. By daylight it’s particularly visible.... But — do you mind?”
Her charming head was bent over her grapefruit: she lifted her gray eyes under level brows, looking across the table at him.
“I mind anything that concerns you,” he said.
“I mean — are you disappointed because I’m growing old and haggard?”
“I think you are even more beautiful than you were.”
She laughed gaily and continued her dinner. “I had to drag that out of you, poor boy. But you see I’m uneasy; because imprudence is stamping the horrid imprint of maturity on me very rapidly; and I’m beginning to keep a more jealous eye on my suitors. You were one. Do you deny your guilt?”
“I do not.”
“Then I shall never release you. I intend to let no guilty man escape. Am I very much changed, Mr. Quarren?” she said a trifle wistfully.
He did not answer immediately. After a few moments she glanced at him again and met his gaze.
“Well?” she prompted him, laughing; “are you not neglecting your manners as a declared suitor?”
“You have changed.”
“What a perfect pill you are!” she exclaimed, vexed— “you’re casting yourself for the rôle of the honest friend — and I simply hate it! Young sir, do you not understand that I’ve breakfasted, lunched and dined too long on flattery to endure anything more wholesome? If you can’t lie to me like a gentleman and a suitor your usefulness in my entourage is ended.”
He said: “Do you want me to talk shop with you? I get rather tired of my trade, sometimes. It’s my trade to lie, you know.”
She looked up, quickly, but he was smiling.
They remained rather silent after that. Coffee was served at table; she lighted a cigarette for him and, later, one for herself, strolling off into the drawing-room with it between her fingers, one hand resting lightly on her hip.
She seemed to have an inclination to wander about or linger before the marble fireplace and blow delicate rings of smoke at her own reflection in the mirror.
He stood a little distance behind her, watching her, and she nodded affably to him in the glass:
“I’m quite changed; you are right. I’m not as nice as I was when I first knew you.... I’m not as contented; I’m restless — I wasn’t then.... Amusement is becoming a necessity to me; and I’m not particular about the kind — as long as it does amuse me. Tell me something exciting.”
“A cradle song is what you require.”
“How impudent of you. I’ve a mind to punish you by retiring to that same cradle. I’m dreadfully cross, too. Do you realise that?”
“I realise how tired you are.”
“And — I’ll never again be rested,” she said thoughtfully, looking at her mirrored self. “I seem to understand that, now, for the first time.... Something in me will always remain a little tired. I wonder what. Do you know?”
“Conscience?” he suggested, laughing.
“Do you think so? I thought it was my heart.”
“Have you acquired one?”
She laughed, too, then glanced at him askance in the glass, and turned around toward him, still smiling.
“I believe I didn’t have any heart when I first knew you. Did I?”
“I believe not,” he said lightly. “Has one germinated?”
“I really don’t know. What do you think?”
He took her cigarette from her and tossed it, with his own, into the fire. She seated herself on a sofa and bent toward the blaze, her dimpled elbows denting her silken knees, her chin balanced between forefinger and thumb.
Presently she said, not looking at him: “Somehow, I’ve changed. I’m not the woman you knew. I’m beginning to realise it. It seems absurd: it was only a few weeks ago. But the world has whirled very swiftly. Each day was a little lifetime in itself; a week a century condensed; Time became only a concentrated essence, one drop of which contained eons of experience.... I wonder whether my silly head was turned a little.... People said too much to me: there were too many of them — and they came too near.... And do you know — looking back at it now as I sit here talking to you — I — it seems absurd — but I believe that I was really a trifle lonely at times.”
She interlaced her fingers and rested her chin on the back of them.
“I thought of you on various occasions,” she added.
He was leaning against the mantel, one foot on the fender.
Her eyes rested on that foot, then lifted slowly until they remained fixed on his face which was shadowed by his hand as though to shield his eyes from the bracket light.
For a time she sat motionless, considering him, interested in his silence and abstraction — in the set of his shoulders, and the unconscious grace of him. Light, touching his short blond hair, made it glossy like a boy’s where his hand had disarranged it above the forehead. Certainly it was very pleasant to see him again — agreeable to be with him — not exactly restful, perhaps, but distinctly agreeable — for even in the frequent silences that had crept in between them there was no invitation to repose of mind. On the contrary, she was perfectly conscious of a reserve force now awaking — of a growing sense of freshness within her; of physical renewal, of unsuspected latent vigour.
“Are you attempting to go to sleep, Mr. Quarren?” she inquired at last.
He dropped his hand, smiling: she made an instinctive move — scarcely an invitation, scarcely even perceptible. But he came over and seated himself on the arm of the lounge beside her.
“Your letters,” he said, “did a lot for me.”
“I wrote very few.... Did they really interest you?”
“A lot.”
“How?”
“They helped that lame old gaffer, Time, to limp along toward the back door of Eternity.”
“How do you mean?”
“Otherwise he would never have stirred a step — until to-night.”
“That is very gallant of you, Mr. Quarren — but a little sentimental — isn’t it?”
“Do you think so?”
“I don’t know. I’m a poor judge of real sentiment — being unaccustomed to it.”
“How many men made you declarations?”
“Oh; is that real sentiment? I thought it was merely love.”
He looked at her. “Don’t,” he said. “You mustn’t harden. Don’t become like the rest.”
She said, amused, or pretending to be: “You are clever; I have grown hard. To-day I can survey, unmoved, many, many things which I could not even look at yesterday. But it makes life more interesting. Don’t you think so?”
“Do you, Mrs. Leeds?”
“I think so.... A woman might as well know the worst truths about life — and about men.”
“Not about men.”
“Do you prefer her to remain a dupe?”
“Is anybody happy unless life dupes them?”
“By ‘life’ you mean ‘men.’ You have the seraglio point of view. You probably prefer your women screened and veiled.”
“We are all born veiled. God knows why we ever tear the film.”
“Mr. Quarren — are you becoming misanthropic?” she exclaimed, laughing. But under his marred eyes of a boy she saw shadows, and the pale induration already stamped on the flesh over the cheek-bones.
“What have you been doing with yourself all these weeks?” she asked, curiously.
“Working at my trade.”
“You seem thinner.”
“Fewer crumbs have fallen from the banquet, perhaps. I keep Lent when I must.”
“You are beginning to speak in a way that you know I dislike — aren’t you?” she asked, turning around in her seat to face him.
He laughed.
“You make me very angry,” she said; “I like you — I’m quite happy with you — and suddenly you try to tell me that my friendship is lavished on an unworthy man; that my taste is low, and that you’re a kind of a social jackal — an upper servant ——
“I feed on what the pack leaves — and I wash their fragile plates for them,” he said lightly.
“What else?” she asked, furious.
“I take out the unfledged for a social airing; I exercise the mature; I smooth the plumage of the aged; I apply first aid to the socially injured; lick the hands that feed me, as in duty bound; tell my brother jackals which hands to lick and which to snap at; curl up and go to sleep in sunny boudoirs without being put out into the backyard; and give first-class vaudeville performances at a moment’s notice, acting as manager, principals, chorus, prompter, and carpenter.”
He laughed so gaily into her unsmiling eyes that suddenly she lost control of herself and her fingers closed tight.
“What are you saying!” she said, fiercely. “Are you telling me that this is the kind of a man I care enough for to write to — to think about — think about a great deal — care enough about to dine with in my own house when I denied myself to everybody else! Is that all you are after all? And am I finding my level by liking you?”
He said, slowly: “I could have been anything — I could be yet — if you — —”
“If you are not anything for your own sake you will never be for anybody’s!” she retorted.... “I refuse to believe that you are what you say, anyway. It hurts — it hurts — —”
“It only hurts me, Mrs. Leeds — —”
“It hurts me! I do like you. I was glad to see you — you don’t know how glad. Your letters to me were — were interesting. You have always been interesting, from the very first — more so than many men — more than most men. And now you admit to me what kind of a man you really are. If I believe it, what am I to think of myself? Can you tell me?”
Flushed, exasperated by she knew not what, and more and more in earnest every moment, she leaned forward looking at him, her right hand tightening on the arm of the sofa, the other clenched over her twisted handkerchief.
“I could stand anything! — my friendship for you could stand almost anything except what you pretend you are — and what other malicious tongues will say if you continue to repeat it! — And it has been said already about you! Do you know that? People do say that of you. People even say so to me — tell me you are worthless — warn me against — against — —”
“What?”
“Caring — taking you seriously! And it’s because you deliberately exhibit disrespect for yourself! A man — any man is what he chooses to be, and people always believe him what he pretends to be. Is there any harm in pretending to dignity and worth when — when you can be the peer of any man? What’s the use of inviting contempt? This very day a woman spoke of you with contempt. I denied what she said.... I’d rather they’d say anything else about you — that you had vices — a vigorous, wilful, unmanageable man’s vices! — than to say that of you!”
“What?”
“That you amount to nothing.”
“Do you care what they say, Mrs. Leeds?”
“Of course! It strikes at my own self-respect!”
“Do you care — otherwise?”
“I care — as a friend, naturally — —”
“Otherwise still?”
“No!”
“Could you ever care?”
“No,” she said, nervously.
She sat breathing faster and more irregularly, watching him. He looked up and smiled at her, rested so, a moment, then rose to take his leave.
She stretched out one arm toward the electric bell, but her fingers seemed to miss it, and remained resting against the silk-hung wall.
“Are you going?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Must you?”
“I think I’d better.”
“Very well.”
He waited, but she did not touch the bell button. She seemed to be waiting for him to go; so he offered his hand, pleasantly, and turned away toward the hall. And, rising leisurely, she descended the stairs with him in silence.
“Good-night,” he said again.
“Good-night. I am sorry you are going.”
“Did you wish me to remain a little longer?”
“I — don’t know what I wish....”
Her cheeks were deeply flushed; the hand he took into his again seemed burning.
“It’s fearfully hot in here,” she said. “Please muffle up warmly because it’s bitter weather out doors” — and she lifted the other hand as though unconsciously and passed her finger tips over his fur collar.
“Do you feel feverish?”
“A little. Do you notice how warm my hand is?”
“You haven’t caught malaria in the tropics, have you?”
“No, you funny man. I’m never ill. But it’s odd how burning hot I seem to be — —”
She looked down at her fingers which still lay loosely across his.
They were silent for a while. And, little by little it seemed to her as though within her a curious stillness was growing, responsive to the quiet around her — a serenity stealing over her, invading her mind like a delicate mist — a dreamy mental lethargy, soothing, obscuring sense and thought.
Vaguely she was aware of their contact. He neither spoke nor stirred; and her palm burned softly, meltingly against his.
At last he lifted her hand and laid his lips to it in silence. Small head lowered, she dreamily endured his touch — a slight caress over her forehead — the very ghost of contact; suffered his cheek against hers, closer, never stirring.
Thought drifted, almost dormant, lulled by infinite and rhythmical currents which seemed to set her body swaying, gently; and, listless, non-resistant, conscious of the charm of it, she gradually yielded to the sorcery.
Then, like a shaft of sunlight slanting through a dream and tearing its fabric into tatters, his kiss on her lips awoke her.
She strove to turn her mouth from his — twisted away from him, straining, tearing her body from his arms; and leaned back against the stair-rail, gray eyes expressionless as though dazed. He would have spoken, but she shook her head and closed both ears with her hands; nor would she even look at him, now.
Sight and hearing sealed against him; pale, expressionless, she stood there awaiting his departure. And presently he opened the iron and glass door; a flurry of icy air swept her; she heard the metallic snap of the spring lock, and opened her heavy eyes.
Deadly tired she turned and ascended the stairs to her bedroom and locked the door against her maid.
