Complete weird tales of.., p.672
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 672
“That is monstrous!” said Langdon, very red. “When a man’s really in love — —”
“Nonsense! Men are flirts — every one of them!”
She laughed, made him a little gesture of adieu, refused to let him follow her, and coolly sauntered off among the trees, heedless of his remonstrances at being left to himself.
He watched her until she disappeared, then, with misgivings, walked toward a tennis court, where the four men were playing a rather dawdling and indifferent game and keeping a lively eye out for the advent of some girl.
They appeared to be rather good-looking fellows, not in any way extraordinary, remarkable neither for symmetry of feature nor of limb.
Langdon stood at the edge of the court looking at them and secretly comparing their beauty with such charms as he was shyly inclined to attribute to himself. There could be no doubt that he compared favourably with them. If he was some, they were not so much.
One, a tall young fellow with blond, closely clipped hair, nodded pleasantly to him, and presently came over to speak to him.
“I suppose you are a new recruit. Glad to see you. We’re all anxious to have enough men captured to get up two ball nines. My name is Reginald Willett.”
“Mine is Curtis Langdon.”
“Come over and meet the others,” said Willett pleasantly.
Langdon followed him, and was presently on excellent terms with James Carrick, De Lancy Smith, and Alphonso W. Green, amiable, clean cut, everyday young fellows.
To them he related the circumstances of his capture, and they all laughed heartily. Then he told them that he was here merely on probation for a day or two, naïvely displaying the yellow ribbon.
Willett laughed. “Oh, that’s all right. They usually say that. We all came in on probation; the Regents couldn’t agree, and some girl always swings the deciding vote as a special favour to herself.”
“You don’t think they’ll kick me out?”
“Not much!” laughed Willett. “First of all, your captor would object — not necessarily for sentimental reasons, but because she caught you; you are hers, her game; she says to herself: ‘A poor thing, but mine own!’ and hangs to you like grim death. Besides, no woman ever lets any man loose voluntarily. And women haven’t changed radically, Mr. Langdon. Don’t worry; you can stay, all right.”
“Here comes Betty Challis,” said Carrick, glancing at Alphonso W. Green. “It’s you for a stroll, I guess.”
Mr. Green looked conscious; more conscious still when the pretty Miss Challis strolled up, presented him with a bouquet, and stood for a few moments conversing with everybody, perfectly at her ease. Other girls came up and engaged the young men in lively conversation. Presently Miss Challis made a play for hers:
“Would you care to canoe, Mr. Green?” she asked casually, turning to him with a slight blush which she could not control.
Green blushed, too, and consented in a low voice.
As they were departing, Miss Vining rode up on horseback, leading another horse, which De Lancy Smith, at her request, nimbly mounted; and away they galloped down a cool forest road, everybody looking after them.
Miss Darrell cut out and roped Willett presently and took him to walk in the direction of a pretty cascade.
A charming girl, a Miss Trenor, arrived with a hammock, book, and bon-bons, and led Carrick away somewhere by virtue of a previous agreement, and the remaining girls pretended not to care, and strolled serenely off in pretty bunches, leaving Langdon standing, first on one foot, then on the other, waiting to be spoken to.
Abandoned, he wandered about the tennis court, kicking the balls moodily. Tiring of this, he sat down under a tree and twirled his thumbs.
Once or twice some slender figure passed, glancing brightly at him, and he looked as shyly receptive as he could, but to no purpose. Gloom settled over him; hunger tormented him; he gazed disconsolately at the yellow ribbon in his button-hole, and twiddled his thumbs.
And all the while, from the shadow of a distant cave, Ethra was watching him with great content. She knew he was hungry; she let him remain so. By absent treatment she was reducing him to a proper frame of mind.
The word had been passed that he was Ethra’s quarry; mischievous bright eyes glanced at him, but no lips unclosed to speak to him; little feet strolled near him, even lingered a moment, but trotted on.
His sentiments varied from apathy to pathos, from self-pity to mortification, from hungry despair to an indignation no longer endurable.
He had enough of it — plenty. Anger overwhelmed him; hunger smothered sentiment; he rose in wrath and stalked off toward a girl who was strolling along, reading a treatise on eugenics.
“Will you be good enough to tell me how to get out?” he asked.
“Out?” she repeated. “Have you a pass to go out?”
“No, I haven’t. Where do I obtain one?”
“Only the girl who captured you can give you a pass,” she said, amused.
“Very well; where can I find her?”
“Who was it netted you?”
“A Miss Leslie,” he snapped.
“Oh! Ethra Leslie’s cave is over in those rocks,” said the girl, “among those leafy ledges.”
“Thanks,” he said briefly, and marched off, scowling.
Ethra saw him coming, and his stride and expression scared her. Not knowing exactly what to do, and not anticipating such a frame of mind in him, she turned over in her hammock and pretended to be asleep, as his figure loomed up in the mouth of the cave.
“Miss Leslie!” His voice was stentorian.
She awoke languidly, and did it very well, making a charming picture as she sat up in her hammock, a trifle confused, sweet blue eyes scarcely yet unclosed.
“Mr. Langdon!” she exclaimed in soft surprise.
He looked her squarely, menacingly, in the eyes.
“I suppose,” he said, “that all this is a grim parody on the past when women did the waiting until it was men’s pleasure to make the next move. I suppose that my recent appraisement parallels the social inspection of a debutante — that my present hunger is paying for the wistful intellectual starvation to which men once doomed your sex; that my isolation represents the isolation from all that was vital in the times when women’s opportunities were few and restricted; that my probation among you symbolises the toleration of my sex for whatever specimen of your sex they captured and set their mark on as belonging to them, and on view to the world during good behaviour.”
He stared at her flushed face, thoughtfully.
“The allegory is all right,” he said, “but you’ve cast the wrong man for the goat. I’m going.”
“Y-you can’t go,” she stammered, colouring painfully, “unless I give you a pass.”
“I see; it resembles divorce. My sex had to give yours a cause for escape, or you couldn’t escape. And in here you must give me a pass to freedom, or I remain here and starve. Is that it?”
She crimsoned to her hair, but said nothing.
“Give me that pass,” he said.
“If I do every girl here will gossip — —”
“I don’t care what they say. I’m going.”
She sat very still in the hammock, eyes vacant, chin on hand, considering. It was not turning out as she had planned. She had starved him too long.
“Mr. Langdon,” she said in a low voice, “if it is only because you are hungry — —”
“I’m not; I’m past mere hunger. You disciplined me because I took a human and natural interest in the pretty inhabitants of this new world. And I told you that I never would have entered it except for you. But you made me pay for a perfectly harmless and happy curiosity. Well, I’ve starved and paid. Now I want to go. . . . Either I go or there’ll be something doing — because I won’t remain here and go hungry much longer.”
“S-something — doing?” she faltered.
“Exactly. With the first — —”
“You can go if you wish,” she said, flushing scarlet and springing out of the hammock.
He waited, jaws set, while she seated herself at a table and wrote out the pass.
“Thank you,” he said, in such a rage that he could scarcely control his voice.
She may not have heard him; she sat rigid at the table, looking very hard into space — sat motionless as he took a curt leave of her, never turning her head — listened to his tread as he strode off through the ferns, then laid her brow between snowy hands which matched the face that trembled in them.
As for him, he swung away along the path by which he had come, unstrung by turns, by turns violently desiring her unhappiness, and again anticipating approaching freedom with reckless satisfaction.
Then a strange buoyancy came over him as he arrived in sight of the gate, where the red-haired girl sat on a camp stool, yawning and knitting a silk necktie — for eventualities, perhaps; perhaps for herself, Lord knows. She lifted her grey eyes as he came swinging up — deep, clear, grey eyes that met his and presently seemed ready to answer his. So his eyes asked; and, after a long interval, came the reply, as though she had unconsciously been waiting a long, long while for the question.
“I suppose you will wish to keep this,” he said in a low voice, offering her the pass. “You will probably desire to preserve it under lock and key.”
She rose to her slender height, took it in her childish hands, hesitated, then, looking up at him, slowly tore the pass to fragments and loosed them from her palm into the current of the south wind blowing.
“That does not matter,” she said, “if you are going to love me.”
There was a moment’s silence, then she held out her left hand. He took it; with her right hand, standing on tiptoe, she reached up and unbarred the gates. And they passed out together into the infernal splendour of the sunset forest.
* * *
X
THE RIOTS IN London culminated in an episode so cataclysmic that it sobered the civilised world. Young Lord Marque, replying to a question in the House of Lords, said: “As long as the British peerage can summon muscular vigour sufficient to keep a monocle in its eye and extract satisfaction from a cigarette, no human woman in the British Empire shall ever cast a bally ballot for any bally purpose whatever. What!”
And the House of Lords rose to its wavering legs and cheered him with an enthusiasm almost loud enough to be heard above ordinary conversation.
But that unwise and youthful and masculine defiance was the young man’s swan-song. A male suffragette rushed with the news to Miss Pondora Bottomly; Lord Marque was followed as he left the house; and that very afternoon he was observed fleeing in a series of startled and graceful bounds through Regent Park, closely pursued by several ladies of birth, maturity, and fashion carrying solid silver hair-brushes.
The Queen, chronicling the somewhat intimate and exclusive affair a week later, mentioned that: “Among those present was the lovely Lady Diana Guernsey wearing tweeds, leather spats, and waving a Directoire Banner embroidered with the popular device, ‘Votes for Women,’ in bright yellow and bottle green on an old rose ground;” and that she had far outdistanced the aged Marchioness of Dingledell, Lady Spatterdash, the Hon. Miss Mousely, the Duchess of Rolinstone, Baroness Mosscroppe, and others; and that, when last seen, she and the Earl of Marque were headed westward. A week later no news of either pursuer or pursued having been received, considerable uneasiness was manifested in court and suffragette circles, and it was freely rumoured that Lady Guernsey had made a rather rash but thoroughly characteristic vow that she would never relinquish the trail until she had forced Lord Marque to eat his own words, written in frosting upon a plum cake of her own manufacture.
Marque may have heard of this vow, and perhaps entertained lively doubts concerning Lady Diana’s abilities as a pastry cook. At any rate, he kept straight on westward in a series of kangaroo-like leaps until darkness mercifully blotted out the picture.
Remaining in hiding under a hedge long enough to realise that London was extremely unsafe for him, he decided to continue west as far as the United States, consoling himself with the certainty that his creditors would have forced his emigration anyway before very long, and that he might as well take the present opportunity to pick out his dollar princess while in exile.
But circumstances altered his views; the great popular feminine upheaval in America was now in full swing; the eugenic principle had been declared; all human infirmity and degenerate imperfections were to be abolished through marriages based no longer upon sentiment and personal inclination, but upon the scientific selection of mates for the purpose of establishing the ideally flawless human race.
This was a pretty bad business for Lord Marque. The day after his arrival he was a witness of the suffragette riots when the Mayor, the Governor, and every symmetrical city, county, and State official was captured and led blushing to the marriage license bureau. He had seen the terrible panic in Long Acre, where thousands of handsome young men were being chased in every direction by beautiful and swift-footed suffragettes. From his window in the Hotel Astor he had gazed with horror upon this bachelors’ St. Bartholomew, and, distracted, had retired under his bed for the balance of the evening, almost losing consciousness when a bell-hop knocked at his door with a supply of towels.
Only one thought comforted him; the ocean rolled majestically between the Lady Diana, her pastry, and the last of the house of Marque.
Never should that terrible and athletic young woman discover his whereabouts if he had to remain away from London forever; never, never would he eat that pastry!
As he lay under his bed, stroking his short moustache and occasionally sneezing, he remembered with a shudder his flight from those solid silver hair-brushes through Regent’s Park; he recalled how, behind him, long after the heavier feminine aristocracy had given up the chase, one youthful, fleet, supple, and fearsome girl had hung to his trail — a tall, lithe, incarnation of her goddess namesake.
She had been too far away for him to distinguish her features; only in Liverpool, where one dark night he ventured out to buy a copy of the Queen and eagerly read the details of the function, did he learn the name of his closest pursuer.
Later, furtively haunting the smoking room on the Caramania, he learned from the gossip there of Lady Diana’s vow that she would never rest until Lord Marque had eaten her plum cake with its frosted inscription — this inscription consisting of the flippant words of his own rash speech delivered in the upper house of Parliament.
Now, lying on his back under the bed, while outside in Long Acre the dreadful work was going on, he lighted a cigarette and pondered the situation. He didn’t believe that Lady Diana would attempt to trail him to America. That was one comfort. But, in view of the suffragette disturbances going on outside his windows, he saw little prospect of a dollar princess for the present. Meanwhile, how was he to exist?
The vague and British convictions concerning the rapid accumulation of wealth on a “ranch” of any kind comforted Marque. He also believed them.
And three months later he had managed to survive a personal acquaintance with the following episodes:
First, one large revolver bullet through hat with request to answer affably when addressed by white men.
Second, one infuriated cow.
Third, one indigestion incubated by cumulative series of pie and complicated by attentions from one large centipede.
Fourth, one contusion from a Montana boot with suggestion concerning monocle.
Fifth, one 45-70 Winchester projectile severing string of monocle, accompanied by laughter and Navajo blanket.
Sixth, comprehensive corporal casualties incident upon international altercation concerning relative importance of Guy Fawkes and July 4th.
Seventh, physical debility due to excessive local popularity following personal encounter with one rustler.
Eighth, complete prostration in consequence of frequent attempts to render thanks for toasts offered him at banquet in celebration of his impending departure for the East.
Ninth, general collapse following bump of coal and forcible ejection from freight train near Albany, New York.
* * *
XI
THE DUTIES OF young Lord Marque, the new man on the Willett estate at Caranay, left him at leisure only after six o’clock, his day being almost entirely occupied in driving a large lawn mower.
Life, for John Marque — as he now called himself — had become exquisitely simple; eating, sleeping, driving a lawn mower — these three manly sports so entirely occupied the twenty-four hours that he had scarcely time to do much weeding — and no time at all to sympathise with himself because he was too busy by day and too sleepy at night.
Sundays he might have taken off for the purpose of condoling with himself, had it not been for the new telephone operator.
She was a recent incumbent at the railroad station — a tall, clear-skinned, yellow-haired girl of twenty-five who sat at her desk all day saying in a low, prettily modulated voice, “hello — hello — hello — hello” to unseen creatures of whom John Marque wotted not.
Three things concerning her he had noticed: She wore pink gingham; she never seemed to see him when he came down to the little sunburnt platform and seated himself on the edge, feet dangling over the rails; he had never seen her except when she was seated at the pine table which was ornamented by her instrument and switchboard. She had a bed-room and kitchen in the rear. But he never saw her go into them or emerge; never saw her except seated at her switchboard, either reading or sewing, or, with the silvery and Greek-like band encircling her hair and supporting the receiver close to her small ears, repeating in her low, modulated voice: hello — hello — hello — hello.
