Complete weird tales of.., p.859
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 859
But Halkett remained silent; and he did not repeat the question.
“After all,” he said, presently, “this entire business is incredible. Diplomacy will find a way out of it.” And, after a moment’s silence: “You don’t think so?”
“No.”
Presently Halkett turned and looked back through the gathering dusk.
“I wonder,” he said, “whether they’ll get their car out tonight?”
“They’ll have to go back to Ausone for aid,” said Warner.
“Do you still mean to put me up at Saïs?”
“Certainly. You don’t expect your friends back there to assault the inn, do you?”
“No,” said Halkett, laughing. “They don’t do things that way just yet.”
Warner snapped his whip, caught the curling lash, let it free, twirled it, and, snapped it again, whistling cheerfully a gay air from his student days — a tune he had not thought of before in years.
“I believe,” he said, frankly hopeful, “that you and I are going to have another little party with those fellows before this matter is ended.”
“I’m sure of it,” said Halkett quietly.
A few moments later Warner, still whistling his joyous air, pointed toward a cluster of tiny lights far ahead in the dark valley.
“Saïs,” he said; and resumed his song blithely:
“Gai, gai, mariez-vous!
C’est un usage
Fort sage.
Gai, gai, mariez-vous,
Le mariage est si doux!—”
“Like a bird it is!” he added ironically.
“By the way, you’re not married, are you?” inquired Halkett uneasily.
“Oh, Lord! No! Why the unmerited suspicion?”
“Nothing much. I just thought that after getting you into this scrape I shouldn’t dare face your wife.”
Then they both laughed heartily. They were already on excellent terms. Already acquaintance was becoming an unembarrassed friendship.
Warner flourished his whip and continued to laugh:
“I have no serious use for women. To me the normal and healthy woman is as naïve as the domestic and blameless cat, whose first ambition is for a mate, whose second is to be permanently and agreeably protected, and whose ultimate aim is to acquire a warm basket by the fireside and fill it full of kittens! ... No; I’m not married. Don’t worry, Halkett.”
He whistled another bar of his lively song:
“Women? Ha! By the way, I’ve a bunch of them here in Saïs, all painting away like the devil and all, no doubt laying plans for that fireside basket. It’s the only thing a woman ever really thinks about, no matter what else she pretends to be busy with. I suppose it’s natural; also, it’s natural for some men to shy wide of such things. I’m one of those men. So, Halkett, as long as you live, you need never be afraid of offending any wife of mine!”
“Your sentiments,” said Halkett, mockingly serious, “merely reveal another bond between us. I thank God frequently that I am a bachelor.”
“Good,” said Warner with emphasis. And he chanted gayly, as he drove, “Gai, gai, marions-nous—” in a very agreeable baritone voice, while the lights of Saïs grew nearer and brighter among the trees below.
“I never saw a girl worth the loss of my liberty,” he remarked. “Did you, Halkett? And,” he continued, “to be tied up to a mentally deficient appendage with only inferior intellectual resources, and no business or professional occupation — to be tied fast to something that sits about to be entertained, and that does nothing except nourish itself and clothe itself, and have babies! — It’s unthinkable, isn’t it?”
“It’s pretty awful.... Of course if a woman came along who combined looks and intellect and professional self-sufficiency — —”
“You don’t find them combined. Take a slant at my class. That’s the only sort who even pretend to anything except vacuous idleness. There are no Portias, Halkett. There never were. If there were, I’d take a chance myself, I think. But a man who marries the young girl of today has on his hands an utterly useless incubus. No wonder he sometimes makes experiments elsewhere. No wonder he becomes a rainbow chaser. But he’s like a caged squirrel in a wheel; the more he runs around looking for consolation the less progress he makes.
“No, Halkett, this whole marriage business is a pitiable fizzle. Until both parties to a marriage contract are financially independent, intellectually self-sufficient, and properly equipped to earn their own livings by a business or a trade or a profession — and until, if a mistake has been made, escape from an ignoble partnership is made legally easy — marriage will remain the sickly, sentimental, pious fraud which a combination of ignorance, superstition, custom, and orthodoxy have made it.
“I’m rather eloquent on marriage, don’t you think so?”
“Superbly!” said Halkett, laughing. “But, do you know, Warner, your very eloquence betrays the fact that you have thought as much about it as the unfortunate sex you have so eloquently indicted.”
“What’s that?” demanded Warner wrathfully.
“I’m sorry to say it, but you are exactly the sort of man to fall with a tremendous flop.”
“If ever I fall — —”
“You fell temporarily this afternoon.”
“With that painted, grey-eyed — —”
“Certainly, with the girl Philippa. Come, old chap, you were out with her a long while! What did you two talk about? Love?”
“No, you idiot — —”
“You didn’t even mention the word ‘love’? Be honest, old chap!”
Warner began to speak, checked himself.
“Didn’t you or she even mention the subject?” persisted Halkett with malicious delight.
But Warner was too angry to speak, and the Englishman’s laughter rang out boyishly under the stars. To look at them one would scarcely believe they had been a target for bullets within the hour.
“You don’t suppose,” began Warner, “that — —”
“No, no!” cried Halkett. “ — Not with that girl. I’m merely proving my point. You’re too eloquent concerning women not to have spent a good deal of time in speculating about them. You even speculated concerning Philippa. The man who mourns the scarcity of Portias wouldn’t be likely to care for one if he met her. You’re just the man to fall in love with everything you denounce in a girl. And I have no doubt I shall live to witness that sorrowful spectacle.”
Warner had to laugh.
“You are rather a terrifying psychologist,” he said. “You almost make me believe I have a streak of romance in me.”
“Oh, we all have that, Warner. We call it by other names — cleverness, logic, astuteness, intelligence — but we all have it in us, and it is revealed in every man who marries a woman for love.... Believe me, no normal man ever lived who was not, at some brief moment in his life, in love with some woman. Maybe he ignored it and it never came again; maybe he strangled it and went on about more serious business; maybe it died a natural but early death. But once, before he died, he must have had a faint, brief glimpse of it. And that was the naissance of the latent germ of romance in him — ephemeral, perhaps, but inevitably to be born before it died.”
Warner waved his whip and snapped it maliciously:
“So you have been in love, have you?”
“Why? Because I, also, am suspiciously eloquent?”
“That’s the reason — according to you.”
Halkett smiled slightly.
“Perhaps I have been,” he said.... “Hello! Is this your inn?” as they drew up before the lighted windows of a two-story building standing close to the left-hand edge of the highway, under the stars.
“Here we are at the Golden Peach,” nodded Warner, as the door opened and a smiling peasant lad came out with a: “Bon soir, Monsieur Warner! Bon soir, messieurs!” And he took the horse’s head while they descended.
That night, lying awake on his bed in the Inn of the Golden Peach, Halkett heard the heavy rush of a southbound automobile passing under his window with the speed of an express train.
And he wondered whether the spongy morass by the little brook still held the long, grey touring car imprisoned.
He got up, went to his window and leaned out. Far away down the road the tail lamps of the machine twinkled, dwindled to sparks, and were engulfed in the invisible.
“More trouble south of me,” he thought. But he returned to his bed and lay there, tranquil in the knowledge that when he started south alone on the morrow the envelope would not be on his person.
After a while he rose again, walked to the door connecting his room with Warner’s, and opened it cautiously.
“I’m awake,” said Warner in a low voice.
“Did you hear that car?”
“Yes. Was it the one that chased us?”
“I only guess so. Listen, Warner! When I go south tomorrow, what are you going to do with that envelope until I send a man back for it?”
“I’ve thought it all out, old chap. I shall take one of my new canvases, lay the envelope on it, cover envelope and canvas with a quarter of an inch of Chinese White, and when the enamel is dry I shall paint on it. By the way, did you do your telephoning to your satisfaction?”
“Entirely, thank you.”
“You got your man?”
“I did,” said Halkett. “He’s on his way here now. Good night. I’ll sleep like a fox, old chap!”
“Good night,” said Warner cheerily, enamored with his invention for the safety of the envelope, as well as with the entire adventure.
That night, while they both slept, far away southward, on a lonely road in the Vosges, the car which had rushed by under their windows was now drawn up on the edge of the road.
Four men sat in it, waiting.
Just as dawn broke, what they awaited came up out of the south — a far, faint rattle announced it, growing rapidly louder; and a motor cyclist, riding without lights, shot out of the grey obscurity, trailing a comet’s tail of dust.
Head-on he came, like a streak, caught sight suddenly of the motionless car and of four men standing up in it, ducked and flattened out over his handlebars as four revolvers poured forth streams of fire.
Motor cycle and rider swerved into the ditch with a crash; the latter, swaying wide in his saddle, was hurled a hundred feet further through the air, landing among the wild flowers on the bank above.
He was the man to whom Halkett had telephoned.
He seemed to be very young — an Englishman — with blood on his fair hair, and his blue eyes partly open.
They searched him thoroughly; and when they could find nothing more they lifted him between two of them; two others carried the wrecked motor cycle out across the fields toward the slope of a wooded mountain.
After ten minutes or so, two of the men returned to the car, drew a couple of short, intrenching spades from the tool box, and went away again across the fields toward the misty woods.
A throstle in a thorn bush had been singing all the while.
CHAPTER V
HALKETT HAD NOT slept well; all night long in the garden under his window the nightingales had been very noisy. When he slept, sinister dreams had assailed him; cocks crowed at sunrise, cowbells tinkled, outside his drawn blinds a refreshed and garrulous world was awakening; and the happy tumult awoke him, too.
He was bathed, shaved, and dressed, and downstairs before Warner awoke at all; and he began to rove about the place which, by daylight, did not look at all like what he had imagined it to be the night before.
The Inn of the Golden Peach was one of those cream-tinted stucco houses built into and around a series of haphazard garden walls which inclosed flower and fruit gardens, cow-barns and stables. Its roof and wall copings were covered with red tiles, weather-faded to a salmon tint; two incredible climbing rosebushes nearly covered the front with delicate, salmon-pink blossoms, and, in the rear, flowers bloomed along stone-edged borders — masses of white clove pinks, rockets, poppies, heliotrope, reseda, portulaca, and pansies — a careless riot of color, apparently, yet set with that instinctive good taste which seldom fails in France and is common alike to aristocrat and peasant.
Beyond the strawberry beds were fruit trees, peach, cherry, plum, and apricot — the cherries hanging ripe and deeply crimson among dark green leaves, the apricots already golden, peaches and plums delicately painted with a bloom which promised approaching maturity.
Everywhere the grass grew thick and intensely green, though it was not very neatly kept; water ran out of a stone trough and made a dancing little rivulet over a bed of artificially set stones among which grew ferns. Beyond stood a trellised summerhouse, with iron tables and chairs painted green.
On the edge of the watering trough, Halkett seated himself in the sun. An immaculate tiger cat sat on the garden walk a few paces away, polishing her countenance with the velvet side of one forepaw, and occasionally polishing the paw with a delicate pink tongue.
Once or twice she looked at Halkett without any apparent interest; now and then she glanced up with more interest at the side of the house where, under the kitchen door, in a big basket-cage, a jay hopped about, making a scuffling noise among his cracked maize and rye straw.
However, the cat proved entirely susceptible to flattery, responded graciously to polite advances, and presently relapsed into a purring doze on his knee.
It was very still in the garden, too early even for butterflies to be abroad. The kitchen door remained closed; smoke had just begun to rise from one chimney.
In the peaceful silence nothing stirred; there was no breeze, no sound save the trickle of water among fern fronds.
Then, from nowhere apparently, into this golden tranquillity came a nun — no, not a nun, but one of those Grey Daughters of St. Vincent de Paul, who have “for their monastery the houses of the sick, for a cell a hired room, for a cloister the city streets, for a veil modesty.”
In her white cornette, or pointed coiffe, with its starched wings, her snowy collarette, wide sleeves, grey apron, and grey-blue habit, she became instantly the medieval incarnation which vitalized the old garden and the ancient wall, so that the centuries they had witnessed were born again there where their spirit had returned, clothed in the costume which they had known so well.
The soeur de charité had not seen Halkett; she passed lightly, swiftly, along the flowering borders with scissors and ozier basket, bending here to gather the white clove pinks, kneeling there to snip off pansies.
And it was only when the grey cat leaped from Halkett’s knees and advanced toward the Sister of Charity with a little mew of recognition that she turned, still kneeling, caught sight of Halkett, and remained looking at him, one delicate white hand resting on the purring cat.
Halkett was on his feet, his hat under his arm, now, and he bade her good-morning with that pleasant deference which marks such men immediately for what they are.
She smiled faintly from the transparent shadow of her white cornette.
“Flowers are all so lovely,” she said, “it is never easy for me to choose. They are for my school, you know?” — with a slight rising inflection. But evidently this young man did not know, so she added, “I am Sister Eila,” and smiled again, when it was apparent that he had never heard of Sister Eila.
“I am English,” he said, “ — traveling through France on business. I arrived last night to visit my friend, Mr. Warner. My name is Halkett.”
She nodded and snipped a few more pansies.
“May I help you, Sister? If you don’t mind telling me what flowers you desire — —”
“Merci, Monsieur. Pansies, if you please. The children see odd little faces in their petals, and it amuses them.”
Down on his knees beside the border, the grey cat seated between them, Halkett picked pansies and laid them in rows in her ozier basket.
“Of course,” he said, “your school is a charity school.”
“For the poor, of course. My children are those of the quarrymen.”
“You do not teach them alone?”
“Oh, no. Sister Félicité teaches with me. And then, of course, we are together when, during the vacation, hospital service is required of us.”
“Is there a quarry hospital?”
“Yes, Monsieur. It is more like an ambulance where first aid is given. The hospital at Ausone takes our sick.” Still kneeling, she looked up at the slender fruit trees beyond, and the sunlight fell full on the most exquisite young face that Halkett had ever seen. Whether it was her unexpected beauty that gave him a little shock, or the sudden idea that in her features there was a haunting resemblance to somebody he had seen, perhaps met, he did not know.
Sometimes in the first glimpse of a face we recognize the living substance of her to whom we have aspired, and of whom we have dreamed. But she has never existed except in the heart which created her until we unconsciously endow another with all we dreamed she was.
He went on gathering flowers to fill her basket.
“I wonder,” she said musingly, “whether any of those apricots are ripe. One of my children is convalescent, and she really needs a little fresh fruit.”
So Halkett rose, threaded his way through the flowers, and looked carefully among the branches for a ripe apricot. He found two, and Sister Eila laid them together in the corner of her basket, which was now full.
He walked with her to the garden door, which was set solidly under an arch in the wall. There she looked up, smiling, as she said in English:
“Is not our country of Saïs very lovely, Mr. Halkett?”
“Yes, indeed, it is,” he replied, also smiling in his surprise. “But, Sister Eila, you are English, are you not?”
“Irish — but brought up in France.” ... Her face grew graver; she said very quietly: “Is it true there is any danger of war? The children are talking; it is evident that the quarrymen must be discussing such things among themselves. I thought I’d ask you — —”
“I’m afraid,” he said, “that there is some slight chance of war, Sister.”
“Here in France?”
