Complete weird tales of.., p.645
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 645
“Poor Karl,” she said, smiling.
“No,” said Quarren, “that’s the worst of it. His aunt has settled a million on him.... I tell you, Strelsa, the rich convert has less honour among the poor than the dingiest little ‘dip’ among the gorgeous corsairs of Wall Street.
“I don’t know how it happens, but Christ was never yet successfully preached from Fifth Avenue, and the millionaire whose heart bleeds for the poor needs a sterner surgeon than a complacent conscience to really stop the hemorrhage.”
“Rich men do good, Rix,” she said thoughtfully.
“But not by teaching or practising the thrift of celestial insurance — not by admonition to orthodoxy and exhortation to worship a Creator who sees to it that no two people are created equal. There is only one thing the rich can give to the poor for Christ’s sake; and even that will always be taken with suspicion and distrust. No; there are only two ways to live: one is the life of self-discipline; the other is to actually imitate the militant Son of Man whose faith we pretend to profess — but whose life-history we merely parody, turning His crusade into a grotesque carnival. I know of no third course consistent.”
“To lead an upright life within bounds where your lines have fallen, or to strip and go forth militant,” she mused. “There is no third course, as you say.... Do you know, Rix, that I have become a wonderfully happy sort of person?”
“So have I,” he said, laughingly.
“It’s just because we have something to do, isn’t it?”
“That — and the leisure which the idle never have. It seems like a paradox, doesn’t it? — to say that the idle never have any time to themselves.”
“I know what you mean. I expect to work rather hard the rest of my life,” she said seriously, “and yet I can foresee lots and lots of most delicious leisure awaiting me.”
“Do you foresee anything else, pretty prophetess?”
“What else do you mean?”
“Well, for example, you will be alone here all winter.”
“Do you mean loneliness?” she asked, smiling. “I don’t expect to suffer from that. Molly will be here all winter and — you will write to me—” she turned to him— “won’t you, Rix?”
“Certainly. Besides I’m coming up to see you every week.”
“Every week!” she repeated, taken a little aback but smiling her sweet, confused smile. “Do you realise what you are so gaily engaging to do?”
“Perfectly. I’m going to build up here.”
“What!”
“Of course.”
“A — a house?”
He looked at her, hesitated, then looking away:
“Either a house or — an addition.”
“An addition?”
“If you’ll let me, Strelsa — some day.”
She understood him then. The painful colour stole into her cheeks, faintly burning, and she closed her eyes for a moment to endure it, sitting silent, motionless, her little sun-tanned hands tightly clasped on her knees.
Then, unclosing her eyes she looked at him, delicate lips tightening.
“I thought our relations were to remain on a higher plane,” she said steadily.
“Our relations are to remain what you desire them to be, dear.”
“I desire them to be what they are — always.”
“Then that is my wish also,” he said with a smile so genuine and gay that, a little confused by his acquiescence, her own response was slow. But presently her smile dawned, a little tremulous and uncertain, and her gray eyes remained wistful though the lips curled deliciously.
“I would do anything in the world for you, Rix, except — that,” she said in a low voice.
“I know you would, you dear girl.”
“Don’t you really believe it?”
“Of course I do!”
“But — I can’t do that — ever. It would — would spoil you for me.... What in the world would I do if you were spoiled for me, Rix? I haven’t anybody else.... What would I do here — all alone? I couldn’t stay — I wouldn’t know what to do — where to go in the world.... It would be lonely — lonely — —”
She bent her head, and remained so, gray eyes fixed on her clasped fingers. For a long while she sat bowed over, thinking; once or twice she lifted her eyes to look at him, but her gaze always became confused and remote; and he did not offer to break the silence.
At last she looked up with a movement of decision, her face clearing.
“You understand, don’t you, Rix?” she said, rising.
He nodded, rising also; and they descended the steps together and walked slowly away toward Witch-Hollow.
From the hill-top they noticed one of Sprowl’s farm-waggons slowly entering the drive, followed on foot by several men and a little girl. Her blond hair and apron fluttered in the breeze. She was too far away for them to see that she was weeping.
“I wonder what they’ve got in that waggon?” said Quarren, curiously.
Strelsa’s gaze became indifferent, then passed on and rested on the blue range of hills beyond.
“Isn’t it wonderful about Chrysos,” she said.
“The quaint little thing,” he said almost tenderly. “She told Molly what happened — how she sat down under a fence to tie wild strawberries for Sir Charles, and how, all at once, she realised what his going out of her life meant to her — and how the tears choked her to silence until she suddenly found herself in his arms.... Can you see it as it happened, Strelsa? — as pretty a pastoral as ever the older poets—” He broke off abruptly, and she looked up, but he was still smiling as though the scene of another man’s happiness, so lightly evoked, were a visualisation of his own. And again her gray eyes grew wistful as though shyly pleading for his indulgence and silently asking his pardon for all that she could never be to him or to any man.
So they came across fields and down through fragrant lanes to Witch-Hollow, where the fat setter gambolled ponderously around them with fat barkings and waggings, and where Molly, sewing on the porch, smoothed the frail and tiny garment over her knee and raised her pretty head to survey them with a smiling intelligence that made Strelsa blush.
“It isn’t so!” she found an opportunity to whisper into Molly’s ear. “If you look at us that way you’ll simply make him miserable and break my heart.”
Molly glanced after Quarren who had wandered indoors to find a cigarette in the smoking-room.
“If you don’t marry that delectable young man,” she said, “I’ll take a stick and beat you, Strelsa.”
“I don’t want to — I don’t want to!” protested the girl, getting possession of Molly’s hands and covering them with caresses. And, resting her soft lips on Molly’s fingers, she looked at her; and the young matron saw tears glimmering under the soft, dark lashes.
“I can’t love him — that way,” whispered the girl. “I would if I could.... I couldn’t care for him more than I do.... And — and it terrifies me to think of losing him.”
“Losing him?”
“Yes — by doing what you — what he — wishes.”
“You think you’ll lose him if you marry him?”
“I — yes. It would spoil him for me — spoil everything for me in the world — —”
“Well, you listen to me,” said Molly, exasperated. “When he has stood a certain amount of this silliness from you he’ll really and actually turn into the sexless comrade you think you want. But he’ll go elsewhere for a mate. There are plenty suitable in the world. If you’d never been born there would have been another for him. If you passed out of his life there would some day be another.
“Will we women never learn the truth? — that at best we are incidental to man, but that, when we love, man is the whole bally thing to us?
“Let him escape and you’ll see, Strelsa. You’ll get, perhaps, what you’re asking for now, but he’ll get what he is asking for, too — if not from you, from some girl of whom you and I and he perhaps have never heard.
“But she exists; don’t worry. And any man worth his title is certain to encounter her sooner or later.”
The girl, flushed, dumb, watched her out of wide gray eyes in which the unshed tears had dried. The pretty matron slowly shook her head:
“Because you once bit into tainted fruit you laid the axe to the entire orchard. What nonsense! Rottenness is the exception; soundness the rule. But you concluded that the hazard of bad fortune — that the unhappy chance of your first and only experience — was not an exception but the universal rule.... Very well; think it! He’ll get over it some time, but you never will, Strelsa. You’ll remember it all your life.
“For I tell you that we women who go to our graves without having missed a single pang — we who die having known happiness and its shadow which is sorrow — the happiness and sorrow which come through love of man alone — die as we should die, in deep content of destiny fulfilled — which is the only peace beyond all understanding.”
The girl lowered her head and, resting her cheek on Molly’s shoulder, looked down at the baby garment on her knees.
“That also?” she whispered.
“Yes.... Unless we pass that way, also, we can never die content.... But until a month ago I did not know it.... Strelsa — Strelsa! Are you never going to know what love can be?”
The girl rose slowly, flushing and whitening by turns, and stood a moment, her hands covering her eyes.
And standing so:
“Do you think he will go away — from me — some day?”
“Yes; he will go — unless — —”
“Must it be — that way?”
“It will be that way, Strelsa.”
“I had never thought of that.”
“Think of it as the truth. It will be so unless you love him in his own fashion — and for his own sake. Try — if you care for him enough to try.... And if you do, you will love him for your own sake, too.”
“I — I had thought of — of giving myself — for his sake — because he wishes it.... I don’t believe I’ll be — much afraid — of him. Do you?”
Molly’s wise sweet eyes sparkled with silent laughter. Then without another glance at the tall, young girl before her she picked up her sewing, drew the needle from the hem, and smoothed out the lace embroidery on her knees.
After a while she said:
“Jim’s returning on the noon train. Will you and Rix be here to luncheon?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, ask him; I have my orders to give if you’ll stay.”
Strelsa walked into the house; Quarren, still hunting about for a cigarette, looked up as she entered the smoking-room.
“Where the dickens does Jim keep his cigarettes?” he asked. “Do you know, Strelsa?”
“You poor boy!” she exclaimed laughingly, “have you been searching all this time? The wonder is that you haven’t perished. Why didn’t you ask me for one when we were at — our house?”
“Your house?” he corrected, smiling.
Her gray eyes met his with a frightened sort of courage.
“Our house — if you wish—” But her lips had begun to tremble and she could not control them or force from them another word for all her courage.
He came over to where she stood, one slim hand resting against the wall; and she looked back bravely into his keen eyes — the clear, direct, questioning eyes of a boy.
“I — I will — marry you,” she said.
A swift flush touched his face to the temples.
“Don’t you — want me?” she said, tremulously.
“If you love me, Strelsa.”
“Isn’t it enough — that you — love — —”
“No, dear.”
She lost her colour.
“Rix! Don’t you want me?” she faltered.
“Not unless you want me, Strelsa.”
She drew a long unsteady breath. Suddenly the tears sprang to her eyes, and she held out both hands to him, blindly.
“I — do love you,” she whispered.... “I’ll give what you give.... Only you must teach me — not to be — afraid.”
Her cheek lay close to his shoulder; his arms drew her nearer. And, after he had waited a long while, her gray eyes, which had been watching his face, slowly closed, and she lifted her lips toward his.
THE END
Japonette
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
TO
ETHEL AND LUCILLE FOREMAN
CHAPTER I
IN FORMA PAUPERIS
THE FAILURE OF the old-time firm of Edgerton, Tennant & Co. was unusual only because it was an honest one — the bewildered creditors receiving a hundred cents on a dollar from property not legally involved.
Edgerton had been dead for several years; the failure of the firm presently killed old Tennant, who was not only old in years, but also old in fashion — so obsolete, in fact, were the fashions he clung to that he had used his last cent in a matter which he regarded as involving his personal honor.
The ethically laudable but materially ruinous integrity of old Henry Tennant had made matters rather awkward for his orphaned nieces. Similar traditions in the Edgerton family — of which there now remained only a single representative, James Edgerton 3d — devastated that young man’s inheritance so completely that he came back to the United States, via Boston, on a cattle steamer and arrived in New York the following day with two dollars in loose silver and a confused determination to see the affair through without borrowing.
He walked from the station to the nearest of his clubs. It was very early, and the few club servants on duty gazed at him with friendly and respectful sympathy.
In the visitors’ room he sat down, wrote out his resignation, drew up similar valedictories to seven other expensive and fashionable clubs, and then picked up his two suit cases again, declining with a smile the offered assistance from Read, the doorman who had been in service there as long as the club had existed.
“Mr. Edgerton,” murmured the old man, “Mr. Inwood is in the Long Room, sir.”
Edgerton thought a moment, then walked to the doorway of the Long Room and looked in. At the same time Inwood glanced up from his newspaper.
“Hello!” he exclaimed; “is that you, Edgerton?”
“Who the devil do you think it is?” replied Edgerton amiably.
They shook hands. Inwood said:
“What’s the trouble — a grouch, a hangover, or a lady?”
Edgerton laughed, placed his suit cases on the floor, and seated himself in a corner of the club window for the first time in six months — and for the last time in many, many months to come.
“It’s hot in town,” he observed. “How are you, Billy?”
“Blooming. Accept from me a long, cold one with a permanent fizz to it. Yes? No? A Riding Club cocktail, then? What? Nix for the rose-wreathed bowl?”
Edgerton shook his head. “Nix for the bowl, thanks.”
“Well, you won’t mind if I ring for first-aid materials, will you?”
The other politely waved his gloved hand.
A servant arrived and departed with the emergency order. Inwood pushed an unpleasant and polychromatic mess of Sunday newspapers aside and reseated himself in the leather chair.
“I’m terribly sorry about what happened to you, Jim,” he said. “So is everybody. We all thought it was to be another gay year of that dear Paris for you — —”
“I thought so, too,” nodded Edgerton; “but what a fellow thinks hasn’t anything to do with anything. I’ve found out that.”
Inwood emptied his glass and gazed at the frost on it, sentimentally.
“The main thing,” he said, “is for your friends to stand by you — —”
“No; the main thing is for them to stand aside — kindly, Billy — while I pass down and out for a while.”
“My dear fellow — —”
“While I pass out,” repeated Edgerton. “I may return; but that will be up to me — and not up to them.”
“Well, what good is friendship?”
“Good to believe in — no good otherwise. Let it alone and it’s the finest thing in the world; use it, and you will have to find another name for it.”
He smiled at Inwood.
“Friendship must remain always the happiest and most comforting of all — theories,” he said. “Let it alone; it has a value inestimable in its own place — no value otherwise.”
Inwood began to laugh.
“Your notion concerning friends and friendship isn’t the popular one.”
“But my friends will sleep the sounder for knowing what are my views concerning friendship.”
“That’s cynical and unfair,” began the other, reddening.
“No, it’s honest; and you notice that even my honesty puts a certain strain on our friendship,” retorted Edgerton, still laughing.
“You’re only partly in earnest, aren’t you?”
“Oh, I’m never really in earnest about anything. That’s why Fate extended an unerring and iron hand, grasped me by the slack of my pants, shook me until all my pockets turned inside out, and set me down hard on the trolley tracks of Destiny. Just now I’m crawling for the sidewalk and the skirts of Chance.”
He laughed again without the slightest bitterness, and looked out of the window.
The view from the club window was soothing: Fifth Avenue lay silent and deserted in the sunshine of an early summer morning.
Inwood said: “The papers — everybody — spoke most glowingly of the way your firm settled with its creditors.”
“Oh, hell! Why should ordinary honesty make such a stir in New York? Don’t let’s talk about it; I’m going home, anyway.”
“Where?”
“To my place.”
“It’s been locked up for over a year, hasn’t it?”
