Complete weird tales of.., p.621
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 621
Thought dragged, then halted with her steps as she dropped onto the seat before the dresser and took her throbbing head in her hands. Cheeks and lips grew hotter; she was aware of strange senses dawning; of strange nerves signalling; stranger responses — of a subtle fragrance in her breath so strange that she became conscious of it.
She straightened up staring at her flushed reflection in the glass while through and through her shot new pulses, and every breath grew tremulously sweet to the verge of pain as she recoiled dismayed from the unknown.
Unknown still! — for she crouched there shrinking from the revelation — from the restless wonder of the awakening, wilfully deaf, blind, ignorant, defying her other self with pallid flashes of self-contempt.
Then fear came — fear of him, fear of herself, defiance of him, and defiance of this other self, glimpsed only as yet, and yet already dreaded with every instinct. But it was a losing battle. Truth is very patient. And at last she looked Truth in the eyes.
So, after all, she was what she had understood others were or must one day become. Unawakened, pure in her inherent contempt for the lesser passion; incredulous that it could ever touch her; out of nothing had sprung the lower menace, full armed, threatening her — out of a moment’s lassitude, a touch of a man’s hand, and his lips on hers! And now all her life was already behind her — childhood, girlhood, wifehood — all, all behind her now; and she, a stranger even to herself, alone on an unknown road; an unknown world before her.
With every instinct inherent and self-inculcated, instincts of modesty, of reticence, of self-control, of pride, she quivered under this fierce humiliation born of self-knowledge — knowledge scornfully admitted and defied with every breath — but no longer denied.
She was as others were — fashioned of that same and common clay, capable of the lesser emotions, shamefully and incredibly conscious of them — so keenly, so incomprehensibly, that, at one unthinkable instant, they had obscured and were actually threatening to obliterate the things of the mind.
Was this the evolution that her winter’s idleness and gaiety and the fatigues of pleasure had been so subtly preparing for her? Was that strange moment, at the door, the moment that man’s enemy had been awaiting, to find her unprepared?
Wretched, humiliated, she bowed her head above the flowers and silver on her dresser — the fairest among the Philistines who had so long unconsciously thanked God that she was not like other women in the homes of Gath and in the sinful streets of Ascalon.
* * *
CHAPTER VI
STRELSA WAS NO longer at home to Quarren, even over the telephone. He called her up two or three times in as many days, ventured to present himself at her house twice without being received, and finally wrote her a note. But at the end of the month the note still remained unanswered.
However, there was news of her, sometimes involving her with Langly Sprowl, but more often with Sir Charles Mallison. Also, had Quarren not dropped out of everything so completely, he might easily have met her dozens of times in dozens of places. But for a month now he had returned every day from his office to his room in the Legation, and even the members of that important diplomatic body found his door locked, after dinner, though his light sometimes brightened the transom until morning.
Westguard, after the final rupture with his aunt, had become a soured hermit — sourer because of the low motives of the public which was buying his book by the thousands and reading it for the story, exclusively.
His aunt had cast him off; to him she was the overfed embodiment of society, so it pleased him to consider the rupture as one between society and himself. It tasted of martyrdom, and now his own public had vulgarly gone back on him according to his ideals: nobody cared for his economics, his social evils, his moral philosophy; only what he considered the unworthy part of his book was eagerly absorbed and discussed. The proletariat had grossly betrayed him; a hermit’s exemplary but embittered career was apparently all that remained for his declining years.
So, after dinner, he, too, retired to seclusion behind bolted doors, pondering darkly on a philosophic novel which should be no novel at all but a dignified and crushing rebuke to mankind — a solid slice of moral cake thickly frosted with social economics, heavy with ethical plums, and without any story to it whatever.
Meanwhile his book had passed into the abhorred class of best sellers.
As for Lacy and O’Hara, both had remarked Quarren’s abrupt retirement and his absence from that section of the social puddle which he was accustomed to embellish and splash in. O’Hara, inclining more toward sporting circles, noticed Quarren’s absence less; but Lacy, after the first week, demanded an explanation at the dinner-table.
“You spoiled a party for Mrs. Lannis,” he said— “and Winnifred Miller was almost in tears over the charity tableaux — —”
“I wrote them both in plenty of time, Jack.”
“Yes. But who is there to take your place? Whatever you touch is successful. Barent Van Dyne made a dub of himself.”
“They must break in another pup,” said Quarren, amused.
“You mean that you’re chucking the whole bally thing for keeps?”
“Practically.”
“Why?” asked O’Hara, looking up blankly.
“Oh,” said Quarren laughing, “I’m curious to find out what business I really am in. Until this week I’ve never had time to discover that I was trying to be a broker in real estate. And I’ve just found out that I’ve been one for almost three years, and never knew it.”
“One’s own company is the best,” growled Westguard. “The monkey people sicken you and the public make you ill. Solitude is the only remedy.”
“Not for me,” said Quarren; “I could breakfast, lunch, and dine with and on the public; and I’m laying plans to do it.”
“They’ll turn your stomach — —”
“Oh, dry up, Karl!” said O’Hara; “there’s a medium between extremes where you can get a good sportin’ chance at anythin’ — horse, dog, girl — anythin’ you fancy. You’d like some of my friends, now, Ricky! — they’re a good sort, all game, all jolly, all interestin’ as hell — —”
“I don’t want to meet any cock-fighters,” growled Westguard.
“They’re all right, too — but there are all kinds of interestin’ people in my circles — writers like Karl, huntin’ people, a professional here and there — and then there’s that fascinatin’ Mrs. Wyland-Baily, the best trap-shot — —”
“Trap-shot,” repeated Westguard in disgust, and took his cigar and himself into seclusion.
Quarren also pushed back his chair, preparing to rise.
“Doin’ anythin’?” inquired O’Hara, desiring to be kind. “Young Calahan and the Harlem Mutt have it out at the Cataract Club to-night,” he added persuasively.
“Another time, thanks,” said Quarren: “I’ve letters to write.”
* * *
He wrote them — all the business letters he could think of, concentrating his thoughts as much as possible. Afterward he lay down on the lounge with a book, and remained there for an hour, although he changed books every few minutes. This was becoming a bad habit. But it was difficult reading although it ranged from Kipling to the Book of Common Prayer; and at last he gave it up and, turning over buried his head in the cushions.
This wouldn’t do either: he racked his brain for further employment, found excuses for other business letters, wrote them, then attacked a pile of social matters — notes and letters heretofore deliberately neglected to the ragged edge of decency.
He replied to them all, and invariably in the negative.
It gave him something to do to go out to the nearest lamp post and mail his letters. But when again he came back into his room the silence there left him hesitating on his threshold.
But he went in and locked his door, and kept his back turned to the desk where pen and ink were tempting him as usual, and almost beyond endurance now. And at last he weakened, and wrote to her once more:
* * *
“My dear Mrs. Leeds —
“I feel sure that your failure to answer my note of last week was unintentional.
“Some day, when you have a moment, would you write me a line saying that you will be at home to me?
“Very sincerely yours, “Richard Stanley Quarren.”
He took this note to the nearest District Messenger Office; then returned to his room.
After an interminable time the messenger reported for the signature. Mrs. Leeds was not at home and he had left the note as directed.
* * *
The night was a white one. He did not feel very well when he sat scanning the morning paper over his coffee. Recently he had formed the custom of reading two columns only in the paper — Real Estate News and Society. In the latter column Strelsa usually figured.
She figured as usual this morning; and he read the fulsome stuff attentively. Also there was a flourish concerning an annual event at the Santa Regina.
And Quarren read this very carefully; and made up his mind as he finished the paragraph.
The conclusion he came to over his coffee and newspaper materialised that afternoon at a Charity Bazaar, where, as he intended, he met Strelsa Leeds face to face. She said, coolly amiable:
“Have you been away? One never sees you these days.”
“I have been nowhere,” he said, pleasantly.
She shook her pretty head in reproof:
“Is it good policy for a young man to drop out of sight? Our world forgets over-night.”
He laughed: “Something similar has been intimated to me by others — but less gently. I’m afraid I’ve offended some people.”
“Oh, so you have already been disciplined?”
“Verbally trounced, admonished, and still smarting under the displeasure of the powers that reign. They seem to resent my Sunday out — yet even their other domestics have that. And it’s the first I’ve taken in three years. I think I’ll have to give notice to my Missus.”
“The spectre of servitude still seems to obsess your humour,” she observed indifferently.
“I am that spectre, Mrs. Leeds.”
“You certainly look pallid enough for any disembodied rôle. You have not been ill, by any chance?” — carelessly.
“Not at all, thank you. Rude health and I continue to link arms.”
“Then it is not by chance that you absent yourself from the various festivities where your part is usually supposed to be a leading one?”
“All cooks eventually develop a distaste for their own concoctions,” he explained gravely.
She lifted her eyebrows: “Yet you are here this afternoon.”
“Oh, yes. Charity has not yet palled on my palate — perhaps because I need so much myself.”
“I have never considered you an object of charity.”
“Then I must draw your kind attention to my pitiable case by doing a little begging.... Could I ask your forgiveness, for example? And perhaps obtain it?”
Her face flushed. “I have nothing to forgive you, Mr. Quarren,” she said with decision.
“Do you mean that?”
“Certainly.”
“I scarcely know how to take your — generosity.”
“I offer none. There is no occasion for generosity or for the exercise of any virtue, cardinal or otherwise. You have not offended me, nor I you — I trust.... Have I?”
“No,” he said.
Men came up to speak to her; one or two women nodded to her from nearby groups which presently mingled, definitely separating her from Quarren unless either he or she chose to evade the natural trend of things. Neither made the effort. Then Sir Charles Mallison joined her, and Quarren, smilingly accepting that gentleman’s advent as his own congé, took his leave of Strelsa and went his way — which chanced, also, to be the way of Mrs. Lester Caldera, very fetching in lilac gown and hat.
Susanne Lannis, lips slightly curling, looked after them, touching Strelsa’s elbow:
“Cyrille simply cannot let Ricky alone,” she said. “The bill-posters will find a fence for her if she doesn’t come to her senses.”
“Who?” asked Strelsa, as one or two people laughed guardedly.
“Why, Cyrille Caldera. Elle s’affiche, ma chère!”
“Mrs. Caldera!” repeated the girl, surprised.
“And Ricky! Are you blind, Strelsa? It’s been on for two weeks or more. And she’d better not play too confidently with Ricky. You can usually forecast what a wild animal will do, never how a trained one is going to behave.”
“Such scandal!” laughed Chrysos Lacy. “How many of us can afford to turn our backs to the rest of the cage even for an instant? Sir Charles, I simply don’t dare to go away. Otherwise I’d purchase several of those glittering articles yonder — whatever they are. Do you happen to know?”
“Automatic revolvers. The cartridges are charged with Japanese perfumes. Did you never see one?” he asked, turning to Strelsa. But she was not listening; and he transferred his attention to Chrysos.
Several people moved forward to examine the pretty and apparently deadly little weapons; Sir Charles was called upon to explain the Japanese game of perfumes, and everybody began to purchase the paraphernalia, pistols, cartridges, targets, and counters.
Sir Charles came back, presently, to where Strelsa still stood, listlessly examining laces.
“All kinds of poor people have blinded themselves making these pretty things,” she said, as Sir Charles came up beside her. “My only apparent usefulness is to buy them, I suppose.”
He offered her one of the automatic pistols.
“It’s loaded,” he cautioned her, solemnly.
“What an odd gift!” she said, surprised, taking it gingerly into her gloved hand. “Is it really for me? And why?”
“Are you timid about firearms?” he asked, jestingly.
“No.... I don’t know anything about them — except to keep my finger away from the trigger. I know enough to do that.”
He supposed that she also was jesting, and her fastidious handling of the weapon amused him. And when she asked him if it was safe to carry in her muff, he assured her very gravely that she might venture to do so. “Turn it loose on the first burglar,” he added, “and his regeneration will begin in all the forty-nine odours of sanctity.”
Strelsa smiled without comprehending. Cyrille Caldera was standing just beyond them, apparently interested in antique jewellery, trying the effect of various linked gems against her lilac gown, and inviting Quarren’s opinion of the results. Their backs were turned; Ricky’s blond head seemed to come unreasonably close to Cyrille’s at moments. Once Mrs. Caldera thoughtlessly laid a pretty hand on his arm as though in emphasis. Their unheard conversation was evidently amusing them.
Strelsa’s smile remained unaltered; people were coming constantly to pay their respects to her; and they lingered, attracted and amused by her unusual gaiety, charm, and wit.
Her mind seemed suddenly to have become crystal clear; her gay retorts to lively badinage, and her laughing epigrams were deliciously spontaneous. A slight exhilaration, without apparent reason, was transforming her, swiftly, into an incarnation entirely unknown even to herself.
Conscious of a wonderful mood never before experienced, perfectly aware of her unusual brilliancy and beauty, surprised and interested in the sudden revelation of powers within her still unexercised, she felt herself, for the first time in her life, in contact with things heretofore impalpable — and, in spirit, with delicate fingers, she gathered up instinctively those intangible threads with which man is guided as surely as though driven in chains of steel.
And all the while she was aware of Quarren’s boyish head bending almost too near to Cyrille Caldera’s over the trays of antique jewels; and all the while she was conscious of the transfiguration in process — that not only a new self was being evolved for her out of the débris of the old, but that the world itself was changing around her — and a new Heaven and a new earth were being born — and a new hell.
That evening she fought it out with herself with a sort of deadly intelligence. Alone in her room, seated, and facing her mirrored gaze unflinchingly, she stated her case, minutely, to herself from beginning to end; then called the only witness for the prosecution — herself — and questioned that witness without mercy.
Did she care for Quarren? Apparently. How much? A great deal. Was she in love with him? She could not answer. Wherein did he differ from other men she knew — Sir Charles, for example? She only knew that he was different. Perhaps he was nobler? No. More intelligent? No. Kinder? No. More admirable? No. More gentle, more sincere, less selfish? No. Did he, as a man, compare favorably with other men — Sir Charles for example? The comparison was not in Quarren’s favor.
Wherein, then, lay her interest in him? She could not answer. Was she perhaps sorry for him? Very. Why? Because she believed him capable of better things. Then the basis of her regard for him was founded on pity. No; because from the beginning — even before he had unmasked — she had been sensible of an interest in him different from any interest she had ever before felt for any man.
This uncompromisingly honest answer silenced her mentally for some moments; then she lifted her resolute gray eyes to the eyes of the mirrored witness:
If that is true, then the attraction was partly physical? She could not answer. Pressed for a statement she admitted that it might be that.
Then the basis of her regard for him was ignoble? She found pleasure in his intellectual attractions. But the basis had not been intellectual? No. It had been material? Yes. And she had never forgotten the light pressure of that masked Harlequin’s spangled arm around her while she desperately counted out the seconds of that magic minute forfeited to him? No; she had never forgotten. It was a sensation totally unknown to her before that moment? Yes. Had she experienced it since that time? Yes. When? When he first told her that he loved her. And afterward? Yes. When?
