Complete weird tales of.., p.650
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 650
He glanced up at the awning gay with yellow and white stripes.
“Macy’s,” she admitted guiltily; “I’ll starve you at dinner to-night to pay for it.”
He looked at her rather queerly, she thought.
“There are things I’d starve for — and people.”
“And awnings, cousin?”
“Yours.”
“That’s very nice and gallant and obvious,” she said in such a tormenting tone that he broke out almost impatiently:
“Japonette, can’t you ever take me seriously?”
“I hope not, cousin.”
For an instant the smile remained stamped on their lips; then the slight strain became perceptible, a moment only, for she turned lightly away and seated herself on the edge of a big hanging seat.
“More Macy,” she nodded ruefully. “We’ll all have to fast to-morrow.... You may sit here, too, if you wish.’”
A family of starlings were nesting in the cornices of the roof across the way, and the two young people watched the old birds for a while flying to the park and returning with food for their invisible young.
“Horrid, isn’t it?” observed Diana. “But that’s the way of things. No sooner are you married and happy than — zip! the scene changes, and you turn into a wretched purveyor of nourishment for the next generation. Carpe diem!”
“Cede Deo! It’s probably good fun,” commented Edgerton.
“What? Slaving for others just when you are all ready for real happiness?”
“That’s happiness, or nobody would do it — not even those birds.”
“It’s instinct!”
“Maybe with birds. Instincts are all right for birds, but we humans are usually arrested when we follow our instincts.”
She laughed. “That is true; it’s neither instinct nor happiness that makes us slaves to babies: — it’s duty.”
“If that were all it is,” he said, “the state would be nourishing the majority of infants. No; it’s probably fun, Diana. That’s the only possible explanation.”
She shrugged her dainty shoulders and looked at the westering sun above Staten Island; and in the gesture she seemed, in pantomime, to discard all feminine duties, cares, and responsibilities forever. Then as she rested there, cheek on hand, her blue eyes grew vaguer.
“I am glad you came into our lives,” she said; “I mean it this time.”
“I am glad, too,” he said seriously.
“You are now; I can see that.... How soon will you be sorry?”
“Why?”
She turned toward him.
“How soon will the novelty tire you?”
“I have not considered you as a novelty.”
“But I am; I’m a mechanical toy. My paint soon comes off, cousin.”
“You’re my own kin. There’s no novelty, as you call it, in kinship, nothing evanescent.”
She said: “Do you really and deliberately desire to stand by that extremely tenuous and attenuated tie? An attitude of that sort entails duties. You may have much to overlook in us — even much to forgive. Are you aware of your responsibilities?”
“I assumed them when I asked to be admitted to your partnership.”
“Why did you ask to join?”
“The real reason?”
She hesitated, looking at him.
“Yes, the real one.”
“You.”
“What exactly do you mean by that answer?”
“I don’t know, myself, Japonette,” he said laughingly; “I’ve tried to analyze it, too. The instinct of relationship may have counted.”
“I hope it did,” said she.
“I hope so. God knows, and men are selfish.... And that counted, too.”
“What?”
“Selfishness.”
“I don’t believe there is very much in you.”
“That is where your heart is still a child’s heart, Japonette.”
“Oh, I’m no altruist, but there’s selfishness and selfishness.... What were we talking about? Oh! why you desired to join — —”
“No, we got past that.”
“Oh, yes; well, then, you say it was because of me. Why?”
“I told you I didn’t know exactly why; but the root of it all was you.... And when you told me about some people who had come here — that fellow who spoke about a housekeeper — —”
“Jim Edgerton!”
“What!”
“I believe — but you can’t be as nice as that! You simply can’t!”
“Oh, I’m not nice,” he protested, reddening; but she interrupted:
“You are! I certainly believe you thought that Silvie and I required somebody masculine in our vicinity — to throw the housekeeping man downstairs, for example. Did you?”
“No. I only — —”
“Did you?”
“Of course not.”
“Do you know,” she said seriously, “you’re a perfect dear in one way, and I don’t know what you are in others. Now be flattered, for that makes you interesting. And you know it’s all up with a woman who finds a man interesting.”
She was laughing at him now, and he scarcely knew how to take what she said except to take it with a grin.
“You’re a terrible torment, Diana,” he said. “My value in my own estimation, since I’ve known you, has fluctuated between a dollar and a half and thirty cents.”
“You said you had two dollars! I believe you’re one of these wealthy men who are always singing poor!”
“How many other kinds of things do you think I am?” he asked resignedly.
“I don’t know. I think I’ll amuse myself by finding out.”
“Meanwhile,” he said, smiling, “remember I am always what I was when I first set eyes on you — no! — the next second after I had seen you.”
“A lightning change, cousin?”
“Like lightning, Diana.”
“The lightning of the gods?”
“Diana’s own shaft.... ‘The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night,’ but I stand betwixt the rising sun of Japan and — you, Diana. Somebody’s shot me, that’s all.”
“You are perfectly delightful, but do you realize that I’m dissecting you all the while?”
“You once said — —”
“Never mind that,” she interrupted hastily; and blushed until it infuriated her to calmness. And to heal the sting with the cause of it she said:
“You’re perfectly right, cousin; any man who can endure our scalpel will be worth seizing and dragging to the parson. But — you are perfectly safe for a while. It takes a lifetime to properly dissect a man of your sort. I’ll be eighty before I make up my mind about you.”
“Eighty years is not beyond the statute of limitations.”
“You’d marry me at eighty! Do you know you’re beginning to trouble me? I told you I was thoroughly feminine, and susceptible to flattery. I am; it’s too bad I’m so intelligent that I’ve really got to satisfy that intelligence by spending years and years in dissecting you. Otherwise, I’d run away with you now.”
“In your Japanese silks and little straw sandals?”
“Oh, yes, if you were sentimental enough to insist.”
“I would.”
She shrugged. “I knew you were a dreamer — captivated by a vision. Suppose you had to see me pinning on store curls?”
“I’d help pin ’em.”
“Well, there are plenty of other things to disillusion you. I adore onions.”
“So do I,” he said.
They laughed together.
She was near enough for him to be aware of the faint scent of her breath, or it may have been a fragrance from her gown which stirred slightly in the evening breeze, or the delicate fresh perfume of her hair and skin — something indefinable, some exquisite emanation of youth which had stolen subtly into his senses — something of her, and as distinctly and inviolably hers as the occult atmosphere of a virgin planet.
“Cousin,” she said, “I thought we were to remove our masks in the family circle. They seem to be on as closely as ever.”
He looked at her a moment.
“We never will remove them,” he said.
“Never?”
“Never, Japonette.”
“Why not?”
“Because, for example, in my case I want you to believe me everything I’d like to be. I know what I am. All people know what they are.... Does anybody ever really unmask? ... Could they if they wished to? There would be only another mask beneath.... We can’t ever get rid of masks.... I don’t care how hard we try, how honestly we try, how intimate two people become, how deeply they may love — there’s always a mask, and it grows there; and our own eyes are the slits. Even a mother with her first born in her arms looks down into its eyes in vain — those blue and transparent veils of a secret soul which sits behind them, impenetrable, inviolable.”
After a silence she said:
“Silvette was right; you are a poet, Jim.... How dusky it is growing over the river. Silvette is probably superintending dinner preparations. Shall we go down?”
CHAPTER V
DE MOTU PROPRIO
THEY ARRIVED AT Adriutha two days later in a roaring downpour of June rain. A maid conducted Silvette and Diana to their rooms, a valet piloted Edgerton to another wing of the house devoted to bachelors’ quarters over the vast billiard room.
At the eastern end of the house Silvette stood beside the window while the maid assigned to them undressed her. Diana, already in her pajamas and sandals, lay flat on the bed, one knee crossed over, swinging her slim, bare foot and looking out at the rain.
It was a wet outlook across the meadows, over a low range of rocky and wooded hills, behind which the invisible sun had already set. In the drenched foreground, beyond the meadow’s matted edge, the Deerfield River tossed and foamed, swollen a deeper amber by the rain — a wide, swift stream set with spray-dashed bowlders, and bordered alternately by ledges dripping with verdure and sandy stretches full of low rain-beaten willows. The world, through its limpid veil of rain, looked like a silvery aquarelle framed by a window.
Tea was presently served. Silvette in her silk lounging suit came over and seated herself on the edge of the bed; the maid finished drawing the bath, and retired until again summoned.
“Well,” sighed Silvette, pouring the tea, “here we are, Di. How do you feel about it now?”
“Depressed,” said Diana briefly.
“So do I, somehow.... I wish we were back in New York, with just enough to live on.”
Diana swung her foot gently, but made no reply.
Presently she kicked off her sandal, lay thinking a moment, and then sat up and accepted the cup of tea offered by her sister. They sipped their tea in silence for a while, nibbled toast and cakes until sufficiently refreshed.
“After all,” observed Silvette, “what we are doing for a living is purely a matter of personal taste. It ought not to depress us.”
“We should have told him! That is the only thing that worries me,” remarked Diana. “Still, it is really none of his business what we do for a living.”
“After all,” repeated Silvette, “what is there to tell him? Keno, Nevada, has nothing to learn from New York in frivolity, I fancy. There are several pretty women in every set who’d starve if they didn’t play cards better than their neighbors.”
“I rather wish we’d told him about our year there; yet, what is there to tell? Probably it resembled plenty of years with which he is perfectly familiar.”
“Do we have to account to Jim Edgerton anyway?” asked Silvette impatiently.
“He wanted to come with us,” mused Diana. “When he wants to go, he’ll go fast enough, I fancy. It isn’t what he might think, or his possible disapproval, that worries me; it’s that he ought to have been told more about us in the beginning.... But how were we to tell him?”
“He didn’t ask, did he?”
“No; but, somehow or other, we ought to have put him au courant, and then he could have had his choice about recognizing the relationship or ignoring it. That’s what bothers me a little.”
“How could we possibly have told him all about ourselves the first afternoon we ever set eyes on him?”
“There were two other afternoons; one is just ending.... I don’t know; I might easily have created a situation in which it would have seemed natural enough to mention our programme to him.”
“Why didn’t you, Di?”
“Cowardice,” said the girl frankly; and she stretched herself out flat on the bed again.
“Do you think as much of Jim Edgerton’s opinion as that?”
“I seem to.... I didn’t want to take the risk of his disapproval. I’m beginning to realize that we’ve been dishonest with him.”
“That is an ugly word, little sister.”
“I don’t know any way to soften it. A girl is either honest or the contrary. I was not honest with Jim Edgerton.”
“He might not disapprove, after all. He is no provincial.”
“Yes — and he might disapprove. Men of his kind who stand for almost anything in outsiders are finicky about their own relatives. They really don’t care what imprudence other people commit; they may even admire it — even do it themselves — but there’s a difference as soon as it involves one of the family. I’ve an idea he is like that.”
“Isn’t it stretching a thin tie of kinship too far to speak of Jim Edgerton and ourselves in a family sense? Are you and I not rather inclined to abuse that word cousin, Diana?”
“He first used it to us,” she said warmly; “it is his choice. He’s a very impulsive and generous boy; do you know it?”
“Yes, I do.... Isn’t it a thousand pities?”
“What about?”
“His losing everything — being so wretchedly poor.... And our being poor, too.”
“Yes,” said Diana simply.
“And he’ll never, never recoup. He is full of talent, and nothing else. What a pity! He isn’t the successful sort. It’s a pity, isn’t it, Di?”
“Yes.”
“Because he is already quite mad about you, Di — he’s a perfect boy about you... How can men of his age retain their niceness and charm and freshness, after what they usually pass through. With all his undesirable wisdom and his masculine worldly experiences, he’s practically as innocent as we are.”
Diana suddenly sat up cross-legged on the bed and gathered her ankles in her hands.
“‘I wonder just how innocent we really are,’ she said.”
“I wonder just how innocent we really are,” she said, “with all those things which we have been obliged to know about in our higher education? And — speaking of education — there was our last year in Keno. That year did some curious things to us. Do you realize our development, our worldly evolution since the beginning of last year — how familiar we became with that doubtful worldly wisdom which is supposed to be part of the make-up of a woman of the world? ... Do you realize that it was a year of laissez faire, of revelation, of laxity and acquiescence in relaxation, a year of paradox, of ceremony sans façon, of schooling oneself to overlook and accept, of an education in morals and their immoral variations? How aloof have we kept ourselves from what we have learned to tolerate? — and how much was due to fastidiousness, how much to expediency, how much to common sense, and how much to spiritual conviction?”
“Does your conscience really trouble you?” asked Silvette anxiously.
“No; only in regard to Jim Edgerton. I’d rather he knew how we regard life before he reclaims relationship in public; that’s all.”
Silvette said: “We are merely wiser; merely less provincial and more honest and tolerant of a world that isn’t any too goody-goody. We’ve learned to distinguish between mock modesty, false shame, hypocrisy, and honest conviction. Take Keno, for instance; before we lived there we were inclined to look askance on what the world accepts with indifference and perfect good nature. I mean, on the rather lurid gayeties of a little world where attractive divorcées make up the bulk of society — where the eternal cry in the ballroom is ’Change partners! Ladies change!’ — and where nobody plays cards except for stakes. After all, Keno is merely a section of New York temporarily transplanted. He’d probably feel at home there.”
Diana turned, deliberately rolled across the bed, landing lightly on her feet.
“All right,” she said; “only, some day somebody will tell Jim Edgerton that those two cousins of his are outpacing propriety. We’re just a dash too pretty, Silvie, and we’ve simply got to be careful. There’s one enemy you and I will always have to reckon with — our own sex.”
She walked to the window, looked out, and stood watching the rain, her childish mouth troubled. And, presently, speaking again without turning around:
“Our programme, as we have arranged it, was to be a general one — to win out, go in for everything, play the game as hard as it can be played, meet the gayer world face to face squarely, and take from it honestly all it has to offer.”
“Except love.”
“Except — that.”
“Love, per se, we can’t afford,” said Silvette gayly; “however, it may even be included. Who knows? Material masculine eligibility need not necessarily exclude that agreeable passion, need it? Many a worthy heart beats beneath the waistcoat of the plutocrat.”
“The chances are against any deal in hearts, as far as we are concerned.”
“You’re not thinking of Jim Edgerton, are you, Di?”
Diana stood, hands clasped behind her back, staring at the rain. Suddenly she pivoted on her sandals.
“Yes, I am thinking of him. I’m thinking of him all the time.”
“That is very unwise,” said Silvette gently.
“I am thinking of him, but it’s only thinking.... I like him. I never liked any man better, or as well, perhaps.... And I’ve known him three days. Give me a day or two grace, and I’ll stop thinking about him.”
“You were quite mad over young Inwood in Keno,” mused Silvette.
“Yes.... I realize that I like men. I enjoy them; if I had my way, I’d carry on like the deuce with every man who took my fancy, before I come to the final decision and spoil life for myself.”
