Complete weird tales of.., p.634
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 634
“About the man you are determined to marry I have no further word to say. You know in what repute he is held in your world, and you believe that its censure is unjust. There is good in every man, perhaps, and perhaps the good in this man may show itself only in response to the better qualities in you.
“Somehow, without trying, you almost instantly evoke the better qualities in me. You changed my entire life; do you know it? I myself scarcely comprehended why. Perhaps the negative sweetness in you concentrated and brought out the positive strength so long dormant in me. All I know clearly is that you came into my life and found a fool wasting it, capering about in a costume half livery, half motley. My ambition was limited to my cap and bells; my aspirations never reached beyond the tip of my bauble. Then I saw you — and, all by themselves, my rags of motley fell from me, and something resembling a man stepped clear of them.
“I am trying to make out of myself all that there is in me to develop. It is not much — scarcely more than the ability to earn a living.
“I have come to care for nothing more than the right to look this sunny world straight in the face. Until I knew you I had scarcely seen it except through artificial light — scarce heard its voice; for the laughter of your world and the jingle of my cap and bells drowned it in my ass’s ears.
“I could tell you — for in dark moments I often believe it — that there is only one thing that counts in the world — one thing worth having, worth giving — love!
“But in my heart I know it is not so; and the romancers are mistaken; and so is the heart denied.
“Better and worth more than love of man or woman is the mind’s silent approval — whether given in tranquillity or accorded in dumb anguish.
“Strelsa dear, I shall always care for you; but I have discovered that love is another matter — higher or lower as you will — but different. And I do not think I shall be able to love the girl who does what you are decided to do. And that does not mean that I criticise you or blame you, or that my sympathy, affection, interest, in you will be less. On the contrary all these emotions may become keener; only one little part will die out, and that without changing the rest — merely that mysterious, curious, elusive and illogical atom in the unstable molecule, which we call love — and which, when separated, leaves the molecule changed only in name. We call it friendship, then.
“And this is, I think, what you would most desire. So when you do what you have determined to do, I will really become toward you what you are — and have always been — toward me. And could either of us ask for more?
“Only — forgive me — I wish it had been Sir Charles — or almost any other man. But that is for your decision. Strelsa governs and alone is responsible to Strelsa.
“Meanwhile do not doubt my affection — do not fear unkindness, judgment, or criticism. I wish I were what you cared for most in the world — after the approval of your own mind. I wish you cared for me not only as you do but with all that has never been aroused in you. For without that I am helpless to fight for you.
“So, in your own way, you will live life through, knowing that in me you will always have an unchanged friend — even though the lover died when you became a wife. Is all clear between us now?
* * *
“If you are ever in town, or passing through to Newport or Bar Harbour, stop and inspect our gallery.
“It is really quite pretty and some of the pictures are excellent. You should see it now — sunlight slanting in through the dusty bay-window, Dankmere at a long polished table doing his level best to assemble certain old prints out of a portfolio containing nearly a thousand; pretty little Miss Vining, pencil in hand, checking off at her desk the reference books we require in our eternal hunt for information; I below stairs in overalls if you please, paint and varnish stained, a jeweller’s glass screwed into my left eye, examining an ancient panel which I strongly hope may have been the work of a gentleman named Bronzino — for its mate is almost certainly the man in armour in the Metropolitan Museum.
“Strelsa, it is the most exciting business I ever dreamed of. And the beauty of it is that it leads out into everything — stretches a thousand sensitive tentacles which grasp at knowledge of beauty everywhere — whether it lie in the sombre splendour of the tapestries of Bayeux, of Italy, of Flanders; or deep in the woven magnificence of some dead Sultan’s palace rug; or in the beauty of the work of silversmiths, goldsmiths, of sculptors in ivory or in wood long dead; or in the untinted marbles of the immortal masters.
“Never before did I understand how indissolubly all arts are linked, how closely and eternally knit together in the vast fabric fashioned by man from the beginning of time, and in the cryptograms of which lie buried all that man has ever thought and hoped.
* * *
“My cat, Daisy, recently presented the Dankmere Galleries with five squeaking kittens of assorted colour and design. Their eyes are now open.
“Poor Daisy! It seems only yesterday when, calmly purring on my knee, she heard for the first time in her innocent life a gentleman cat begin an intermezzo on the back fence.
“Never before had Daisy heard such amazing language: she rose, astounded, listening; then, giving me one wild glance, fled under the piano. I shied an empty bottle at the moon-lit minstrel; and I supposed that Daisy approved. But man supposes and cat proposes and — Daisy’s kittens are certainly ornamental. Dankmere carries one in each pocket, Daisy trotting at his heels with an occasional little exclamation of solicitude and pride.
“Really we’re a funny lot here in the Dankmere Galleries — not superficially business-like perhaps, for we close at five and have tea in the extension, Dankmere, Miss Vining, I, Daisy, and her young ones — Daisy and the latter taking their nourishment together in a basket which Miss Vining has lined with blue silk.
“In the evenings sometimes Miss Vining remains and dines with Dankmere and myself at some near restaurant; and after dinner Karl Westguard comes in and reads the most recent chapter of his novel — or perhaps Dankmere plays and sings old-time songs for us — or, if the heat makes us feel particularly futile, I perform some of those highly intellectual tricks which once made me acceptable among people I now seldom or never see.
“‘In the evenings sometimes Miss Vining remains and dines with Dankmere and myself at some near restaurant.’”
“Miss Vining, as I have already told you in other letters, is a sweet, sincere girl with no pretence to anything out of the ordinary yet blessed with a delicate sense of honour and incidentally of humour.
“She is quite alone in the world, and, now that she has made up her mind about Dankmere and me I can see that she shyly enjoys our including her in our harmless informalities.
“Westguard is immensely interested in her as a ‘type,’ and he informs me that he is ‘studying’ her. Which is more or less bosh; but Karl loves to take himself seriously.
“Nobody you know has been to see us. It may be because your world is out of town, but I’m beginning to believe that the Dankmere Galleries need expect no patronage from that same world. Friendship usually fights shy of the frontiers of business. Old acquaintanceship is forgot very quickly when one side or the other has anything to sell. Only those thrifty imitations of friends venture near in quest of special privilege; and not getting it, go, never to return. Ubi amici, ibi opes!
* * *
“When you pass through this furnace of Ascalon called New York will you stop among the Philistines long enough to take a cup of tea with us? — I’ll show you the pictures; Dankmere will play ‘Shannon Water’ for you; Miss Vining will talk pretty platitudes to you, Daisy will purr for you, and the painted eyes of Dankmere’s ancestors will look down approvingly at you from the wall; and all our little world will know that the loveliest and best of all the greater world is breaking bread with us under our roof, and that one for once, unlike man’s dealings with your celestial sisters, our entertainment of you will not be wholly unawares.
“R. S. Quarren.”
The basement workshop was aromatic with the odours of solvents, mediums, and varnishes when he returned from posting his letter to Strelsa. His old English mentor had departed for good, leaving him to go forward alone in his profession.
And now, as he stood there, looking out into the sunny backyard, for the first time he felt the silence and isolation of the place, and his own loneliness. Doubt crept in whispering the uselessness of working, of saving, of self-denial, of laying by anything for a future that already meant nothing of happiness to him.
For whom, after all, should he save, hoard, gather together, economise? Who was there to labour for? For whom should he endure?
He cared nothing for women; he had really never cared for any woman excepting only this one. He would never marry and have a son. He had no near or distant relatives. For whose sake, then, was he standing here in workman’s overalls? What business had he here in the basement of a shabby house in midsummer? Did there remain any vague hope of Strelsa? Perhaps. Hope is the last of one’s friends to die. Or was it for himself that he was working now to provide against those evil days “when the keepers of the house shall tremble”? Perhaps he was unconsciously obeying nature’s first law.
And yet, slowly within him grew a certainty that these reasons were not the real ones — not the vital impulse that moved his hand steadily through critical and delicate moments as he bent, breathless, over the faded splendours of ancient canvases. No; somehow or other he had already begun to work for the sake of the work itself — whatever that really meant. That was the basic impulse — the occult motive; and, somehow he knew that, once aroused, the desire to strive could never again in him remain wholly quiescent.
* * *
Both Dankmere and Miss Vining had gone to lunch, presumably in different directions; Daisy and her youngsters, having been nourished, were asleep; there was not a sound in the house except the soft rubbing of tissue-paper where Quarren was lightly removing the retouching varnish from a relined canvas. Presently the front door-bell rang.
Quarren rinsed his hands and, still wearing overalls and painter’s blouse, mounted the basement stairs and opened the front door. And Mrs. Sprowl supported by a footman waddled in, panting.
“Tell your master I want to see him,” she said— “I don’t mean that fool of an Englishman; I mean Mr. Quar — Good Lord! Ricky, is that you? Here, get me a chair — those front steps nearly killed me. Long ago I swore I’d never enter a house which was not basement-built and had an elevator!... Hand me one of those fans. And if there’s any water in the house not swarming with typhoid germs, get me a glass of it.”
He brought her a tumbler of spring water; she panted and gulped and fanned and panted, her little green eyes roaming around her.
Presently she dismissed the footman, and turned her heavily flushed face on Quarren. The rolls of fat crowded the lace on her neck, perspiration glistened under her sparklike eyes.
“How are you?” she inquired.
He said, smilingly, that he was well.
“You don’t look it. You look gaunt.... Well, I never thought you’d come to this — that you had it in you to do anything useful.”
“I believe I’ve heard you say so now and then,” he said with perfect good-humour.
“Why not? Why should I have thought that your talents amounted to more than ornaments?”
“No reason to suppose so,” he admitted, amused.
“Not the slightest. Talent usually damns people to an effortless existence. And yours was a pleasant one, too. You had a good time, didn’t you?”
“Oh, very.”
“There was nothing to do except to come in, kiss the girls all around, and make faces to amuse them, was there?”
“Not much more,” he admitted, laughing.
Mrs. Sprowl’s little green eyes travelled all over the walls.
“Umph,” she snorted, “I suppose these are some of Dankmere’s heirlooms. I never fancied that little bounder — —”
“Wait!”
“What!”
“Wait a moment. I like Dankmere, and he isn’t a bounder — —”
“He is one!”
“Keep that opinion to yourself,” he said bluntly.
The old lady’s eyes blazed. “I’m damned if I do!” she retorted— “I’ll say what — —”
“Not here! You mustn’t be uncivil here. You know well enough how to behave when necessary; and if you don’t do it I’ll call your carriage.”
For fully five minutes Mrs. Sprowl sat there attempting to digest what he had said. The process was awful to behold, but she accomplished it at last with a violent effort.
“Ricky,” she said, “I didn’t come here to quarrel with you over an Englishman who — of whom I — have my personal opinion.”
He laughed, leaned over and deliberately patted her fat wrist; and she glared at him somewhat as a tigress inspects a favourite but overgrown and presuming cub.
“I don’t know why you came,” he said, “but it was nice of you anyway and I am glad to see you.”
“If that’s true,” she said, “you’re one of mighty few. The joy which people feel in my presence is usually exhibited when I’m safely out of their houses, or they are out of mine.”
She laughed at that; and he did too; and she gulped her glass of water empty and refused more.
“Ricky,” she began abruptly, “you’ve been up to that Witch-Hollow place of Molly’s?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what the devil is going on there?”
“Aviation,” he said blandly.
“What else? Don’t evade an answer! I can’t get anything out of that little idiot, Molly; I can’t worm anything out of Sir Charles; I can’t learn anything from Strelsa Leeds; and as for Langly he won’t even answer my letters.
“Now I want to know what is going on there? I’ve been as short with Strelsa as I dare be — she’s got to be led with sugar. I’ve almost ordered her to come to me at Newport — but she doesn’t come.”
“She’s resting,” said Quarren coolly.
“Hasn’t she had time to rest in that dingy, dead-and-alive place? And what keeps Langly there? He has nothing to look at except a few brood-mares. Do you suppose he has the bad taste to hang around waiting for Chester Ledwith to get out and Mary Ledwith to return? Or is it something else that glues him there — with the Yulan in the North River?”
Quarren shrugged his lack of interest in the subject.
“If I thought,” muttered the old lady— “if I imagined for one moment that Langly was daring to try any of his low, cold-blooded tricks on Strelsa Leeds, I’d go up there myself — I’d take the next train and tell that girl plainly what kind of a citizen my charming nephew really is!”
Quarren was silent.
“Why the dickens don’t you say something?” she demanded. “I want to know whether I ought to go up there or not. Have you ever observed — have you ever suspected that there might be anything between Langly and Strelsa Leeds? — any tacit understanding — any interest on her part in him?... Why don’t you answer me?”
“You know,” he said, “that it’s none of your business what I believe.”
“Am I to take that impudence literally?”
“Exactly as I said it. You asked improper questions; I am obliged to remind you that you cannot expect me to answer them.”
“Why can’t you speak of Langly?”
“Because what concerns him does not concern me.”
“I thought you were in love with Strelsa,” she said bluntly.
“If I were, do you imagine I’d discuss it with you?”
“I’ll tell you what!” she shouted, purple with rage, “you might do a damn sight worse! I’d — I’d rather see her your wife than his! — and God knows what he wants of her at that — as Mary Ledwith has first call or the world will turn Langly out of doors!”
Quarren, slightly paler, looked at her in silence.
“I tell you the world will spit in his face,” she said between her teeth, “if he doesn’t make good with Mary Ledwith after what he’s done to her and her husband.”
“He has too much money,” said Quarren. “Besides there’s an ordinance against it.”
“You watch and see! Some things are too rotten to be endured — —”
“What? I haven’t noticed any either abroad or here. Anyway it doesn’t concern me.”
“Don’t you care for that girl?”
“We are friends.”
“Friends, eh!” she mimicked him wickedly, plying her fan like a madwoman; “well I fancy I know what sort of friendship has made you look ten years older in half a year. Oh, Ricky, Ricky!” — she added with an abrupt change of feeling— “I’m sorry for you. I like you even when you are impertinent to me — and you know I do! But I — my heart is set on her marrying Sir Charles. You know it is. Could anything on earth be more suitable? — happier for her as well as for him? Isn’t he a man where Langly is a — a toad, a cold-blooded worm! — a — a thing!
“I tell you my heart’s set on it; there is nothing else interests me; I think of nothing else, care for nothing else — —”
“Why?”
“What?” she said, suddenly on her guard.
“Why do you care for it so much?”
“Why? That is an absurd question.”
“Then answer it without taking time to search for any reason except the real one.”
“Ricky, you insolent — —”
“Never mind. Answer me; why are you so absorbed in this marriage?”
She said with a calmly contemptuous shrug: “Because Sir Charles is deeply in love with her, and I am fond of them both.”
“Is that sufficient reason for such strenuous and persistent efforts on your part?”
“That — and hatred for Langly,” she said stolidly.
