Complete weird tales of.., p.879
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 879
The lad, Henri, came up, armed with a stable fork, and followed by the head gardener, Maurice, shouldering a fowling piece and marshaling in his wake half a dozen others — grooms, under-gardeners, and a lad or two employed about the place.
They beat the shrubbery for an hour; then Warner left them to explore the wooded strip along the base of the wall with their flashlights and lanterns, and went back to the stable where lay Asticot, badly in need of bandages and protracted repose.
Vignier met Warner at the stable door.
“Has he come to?” inquired the latter, who had begun to feel a little worried.
“Monsieur Warner, that voyou is a most frightful wreck. Out of neither eye is he able to perceive me; what he wears upon his shoulders does not, to me, resemble a head at all.”
“He is conscious, then?”
“Entirely. He lies upon his blanket and inquires for you at intervals.”
“What?”
“It is true. ‘Oh, my mother!’ he whimpers. ‘What a horrible beating I have had from that American! Oh, my sister, I am battered into a boudin! Ou est-il, donc, ce Monsieur sans remords? I have need of conversing with him. I wish to behold him who has brought me to this pitiable ditch of misery! I do not desire another beating! It is I, Asticot, who informs you!’ And that, Monsieur Warner, is what this voyou affreux continues to repeat in the harness room where I have locked him in. Would Monsieur care to inspect the swine?”
Warner nodded and entered the stable; Vignier fitted a key to the harness room and opened the door.
A lantern burned there brightly. Under it squatted Asticot on his blanket. Neither eye was entirely closed, for there was a ratty glitter under the puffed lids, and he lost no time in whining out that he did not desire to be beaten any more by “that gentleman there” — pointing a shaking finger straight at Warner.
“Vignier,” said Warner, “bring me a chair, close the door, and then go and find something to bandage this rascal. Bring a tub and hot water, also!”
And when the chair was fetched and the door closed, Warner seated himself and surveyed the battered ruffian with grim satisfaction.
“You murderous young sewer rat,” he said calmly, “out with the whole business, now! Do you hear? I meant to catch one of you and find out for myself what you’re up to. Now, tell me, and tell me quick, and don’t lie, or I’ll start in on you again — —”
He half rose from his chair, and Asticot shrieked.
“What were you doing here?” snapped out Warner.
“M-m’sieu’ — it was but a peaceful reconnoissance in search of — of information — —” stuttered Asticot in terror.
“What information? — You rat!”
“M-m-m’sieu’ — I swear to you on the cross of my mother — —”
“Stop that! Go on! Go on faster! What information?”
“T-t-to f-find out if l-la fille, Philippa, had taken refuge with M-madame la Comtesse — —”
“Who wants that information?”
“I s-swear to you — —”
“Quick! Who wants it!”
“Monsieur Wildresse — —”
“Why?”
“Je n’en sais rien — —”
“You lying Apache! Why?”
“M’sieu’, he pays us, the Squelette and me, to do his jobs for him, but he has never made confidants of us. I swear it. I don’t know why he desires to seize the girl, Philippa!”
“He does mean to seize her, then?”
“Alas — —”
“Does he?”
Asticot’s entire body jerked from sheer fright.
“Yes — yes, he does! God knows it is not in me to lie to M’sieu’. God knows I do not ever desire another beating such as M’sieu’ has been pleased to bestow upon me. I affirm it — I, Asticot — that I am the devoted servant of M’sieu’ and will most thankfully betray anybody to him — —”
“Be quiet!”
“M’sieu’ does not believe me! Yet, I speak only truth. I will diligently serve M’sieu’ if he permits — —”
“Serve me? Why?”
“Mon Dieu, M’sieu’, have I not been most horribly beaten by M’sieu’? I, Asticot, who am not unacquainted with the Boxe and the Savate — I have been rendered insensible! With weapons? No! Without weapons! Yes, with the empty hands of M’sieu’. Why should I not admire? Why should I not experience gratitude that I am alive? Am I an imbecile to court further destruction? Non, alors; I am not crazy. God forbid I should ever again experience the hand of M’sieu’ upon my coat collar! And if — —”
“You listen to me!” interrupted Warner. “Vermin of your sort that Wildresse hires for a few francs stand no chance when military law is proclaimed. Either side would push you against a wall on sight. Do you understand?”
“Mon Dieu, M’sieu’ — —”
“There are just two safe places for you: Biribi or prison. Which do you prefer?”
“I? Oh, my God! I have served in the Battalion de Biribi! Not that, M’sieu’ — —”
“All right; La Nouvelle — —”
Asticot emitted a muffled shriek, huddled his ragged knees within his arms, and sat rocking and whimpering and blubbering with fright under the lantern until an impatient gesture from Warner startled him dumb.
“Like all your kind, you don’t like to be hurt, do you?” inquired Warner, disgusted. “Yet, for twenty francs — for ten — yes, for five — you could be hired to do murder; couldn’t you?”
“I — I would b-be happy to do it for nothing to oblige M’sieu’ — —”
“I haven’t a doubt of it. The only thing you understand is fear.... Where is Wildresse?”
“M’sieu’ doubtless knows.”
“Never mind what I know. Answer!”
“Le vieux — —”
“Who?”
“Le Père Wildresse — he has taken to the woods — —”
“Where?”
“Le forêt d’Ausone.”
“Why?”
“It is because of the girl Philippa. It is evident to Squelette and to me that he fears her. Why? I tell you frankly I do not know. If I knew — —”
“Go on!”
Asticot turned his battered visage toward Warner. A leer stretched his swollen mouth.
“If we knew what he is afraid of, Squelette and I, we would make him sing!” he said coolly.
“Blackmail him?”
“Naturally.”
“I understand. And if you ever had a chance to get behind my back with a thoroughly trustworthy knife — eh, Asticot?”
“No,” said the ruffian naïvely, “I should be afraid to do that.” He squinted silently at Warner out of his puffy eyes for a few moments, then, shaking his head: “No,” he repeated; “never again. I should make of the job only a bungle; I should be too horribly afraid.”
Warner got up from his chair.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “I shall go with you to the Forest of Ausone and you shall find the Père Wildresse for me and I shall have a little chat with him.”
“Do you mean to slay him, M’sieu’? It would be safer, I think. I could do it for you, if you wish, when his back is turned. When one is annoyed by anybody, it saves much trouble to knock him on the head at once. If I could once get him down,” he added cheerfully, “I would take him by both ears and beat his head on the ground until his coco cracked.”
“Really?”
“Certainly. Supposition that an individual bores M’sieu’. What to do? M’sieu’ reflects; M’sieu’ rubs his head in perplexity — crac! There is his devoted friend, Asticot! Why had you not before thought of your humble friend and grateful? Asticot! To be sure! A word to him and the job is done, discreetly, without any tapage. And M’sieu’, contented, I trust, with his honest and devoted Asticot, may remember in his bounty that times are hard and that one must eat and drink — yes, even poor Asticot among the rest.”
“Yes, Asticot. But after you’re dead such necessities won’t trouble you.”
“M-m’sieu’!”
“I’ve got my eye on you. Do you know what that means?”
Stammering and stuttering, the ruffian admitted that he did know.
“Very well. They’ll bring you a tin tub full of hot water, some clothing which I bestow upon you, some salves and bandages. Afterward, they’ll give you some straw to sleep on, and then they’ll lock the door. What I’ll do with you or to you I don’t know yet. But I’ll know by morning.”
Vignier knocked at the door. Behind him came a stableboy with a tub.
“Take care of that rat,” said Warner briefly; and went out into the night.
His hands were slightly discolored, and one had bled at the knuckles. He went directly to the room, changed his linen, made a careful toilet with a grimace of retrospective disgust, then adjusting and brushing out his crumpled attire, took a look at himself in the glass and discovered no incriminating evidence of his recent pugilistic activity.
But when he went downstairs he discovered that the family had retired; lights flickered low in the west drawing-room, a lamp remained burning in the staircase hall, but the remainder of the house was dark.
As he stood at the drawing-room door, undecided whether to carry the hallway lamp to the library and find a book, or to return to his room and bed, a slight noise on the stairway attracted his attention.
Philippa, in boudoir robe and slippers, her chestnut hair in two braids, sat on the carpeted stairs looking down at him through the spindles.
“What on earth are you doing there?” he demanded, smiling up at her.
“You have been away over two hours!”
“I know it: I’m so sorry — —”
“You said you were going to find a wrap for me. You didn’t return.”
“I’m sorry, Philippa. I was detained at the garage — a matter which had to be arranged with Vignier.... You should go back to bed.”
“I was in bed.”
“Why did you get up?”
“I wished to find out whether you had come in.”
“But, Philippa,” he protested laughingly, “you don’t feel that you have to sit up for me, do you? — As though we were ma — —” He checked himself abruptly, and she caught him up where he had stopped.
“Yes, I do feel that way!” she said emphatically. “When the only man a girl has in the whole world goes out and doesn’t return, is it not natural for that girl to sit up until he does return?”
“Yes,” he said, rather hastily, “I suppose it is. Speak low, or people can hear you. You see I’m all right, so now you had better go to bed — —”
“Jim! I don’t want to go to bed.”
“Why not?” he demanded in a guarded voice.
“I am lonely.”
“Nonsense, Philippa! You can’t be lonely with real friends so near. Don’t sit up any longer.”
She sighed, gathered her silken knees into her arms, and shrugged her shoulders like a spoiled child.
“I am lonely,” she insisted. “I miss Ariadne.”
“We’ll go and call on her tomorrow — —”
“I want her now. I’ve a mind to put on a cloak and some shoes and go down to the inn and get her.”
“Come!” he said. “You don’t want the servants to hear you and see you sitting on the stairs when the household is in bed and asleep.”
“Is there any indiscretion in my sitting on the stairs?”
“Oh, no, I suppose not!”
“Very well. Let me sit here, then. Besides, I never have time enough to talk to you — —”
“You have all day!”
“The day is not long enough. Even day and night together would be too short. Even the years are going to be too brief for me, Jim! How can I live long enough with you to make up for the years without you!” she explained a trifle excitedly; but she subsided as he made a quick gesture of caution.
“It won’t do to sit there and converse so frankly,” he said. “Nobody overhearing you would understand either you or me.”
The girl nodded. One heavy braid fell across her shoulder, and she took the curling, burnished ends between her fingers and began to rebraid them absently. After a moment she sighed, bent her head and looked down at him between the spindles.
“I am sorry I have annoyed you,” she whispered.
“You didn’t.”
“Oh, I did! It wouldn’t do to have people think — what — couldn’t be true.... But, Jim, can’t you forgive a girl who is entirely alone in the world, clinging to every moment of companionship with her closest friend? And can’t you understand her being afraid that something might happen to him — to take him away — and the most blessed friendship that — that she ever even dreamed of in — in the dreadful solitude which was her youth?”
“You dear child — of course I understand.... I never have enough of you, either. Your interest and friendship and loyalty are no warmer than are mine for you.... But you mustn’t become morbid; nothing is going to alter our regard for each other; nothing is going to happen to either you or me.” He laughed. “So you really need not sit up nights for me, if I happen to be out.”
She laughed too, framed her cheeks in her hands, and looked down at him with smiling, humorous eyes which grew subtly tender.
“You do care for me, Jim?”
“Why should I deny it?”
“Why should I? I don’t. I know I care for you more than everything else in the world ——
“Philippa!”
“Yes, Jim?”
“You know — people happening to overhear you might not understand — —”
“I don’t care! It’s the truth!” She rose, bent over the banister to look down at him, discovered that he was not annoyed, smiled adorably.
“Good night! I shall sleep happily!” she whispered, gathering her boudoir robe around her.
At the top of the stairs she turned, leaned over, kissed the palm of one slim hand to him, and disappeared with a subdued and faintly mischievous laugh, leaving in his eyes of an artist a piquant, fleeting, and charming picture.
But upon his mind the impression she left began to develop more slowly — the impression of a young girl— “clean as a flame,” as he had once said of her — a lovely and delicate personality absolutely in keeping with the silken boudoir gown she wore — in keeping with the carven and stately beauty of her environment in this ancient house.
Philippa not only fitted into the very atmosphere of such a place; it seemed as though she must have been born in it, so perfectly was she a harmonious part of it, so naturally and without emphasis.
Centuries had coördinated, reconciled, and made a mellow ensemble of everything within this house — the walls, the wainscot, mantels, lusters, pictures and frames, furniture and dimmed upholstery.
In the golden demi-light of these halls Philippa moved as though she had known no other — and in the sunlight of music room or terrace she belonged as unquestioned as the sunlight itself; and in lamplit spaces where soft shadows framed her, there also she belonged as certainly as the high, dim portraits of great ladies and brave gentlemen peering down at her through their delicate veils of dust.
Thinking of these things beside the open window of his bedroom, he looked out into the south and east and saw in the sky the silvery pencilings of searchlights on the Barrier Forts, shifting, sweeping in wide arcs, or tremblingly concentrated upon the clouds.
There was no sound in the fragrant darkness, not a breath of air, not a leaf stirring.
His inclination was not to sleep, but to think about Philippa; and he sat there, a burned-out cigarette between his fingers, his eyes fixed so persistently on the darkness that after a while he became conscious of what his concentration was delicately evoking there — her face, and the grey eyes of her, shadowy, tender, clear as a child’s.
CHAPTER XXVI
WARNER AWOKE WITH a start; somebody was knocking on his door. As he sat up in bed, the solid thudding of the cannonade filled the room — still very far away, but deeper and with a heavier undertone which set the windows slightly vibrating.
The knocking on his door sounded again insistently.
“All right!” he called, throwing on a bathrobe and finding his slippers.
The rising sun had not yet freed itself from the mist that lay over hill and plain; wide, rosy beams spread to the zenith and a faint glow tinged the morning fog, but the foreground of woods and fields was still dusky and vague, and his room full of shadows.
He tied the belt of his robe and opened the door. In the semi-obscurity of the corridor stood Philippa, hair disordered, wrapped in her chamber robe.
“Jim,” she said, “the telephone in the lower hall has been ringing like mad. It awoke me. I lay and listened to it, but nobody seemed to hear it, so I went down. It’s a Sister of Charity — Sister Eila — who desires to speak to you.”
“I’ll go at once — thank you, Philippa — —”
“And, Jim?” She was trotting along beside him in her bare feet and bedroom slippers as he started for the stairs. “When you have talked to her, I think you ought to see what is happening on the Ausone road.”
“What is happening?” he demanded, descending the stairs.
She kept pace with him, one hand following the stair rail:
“There are so many people and carts and sheep and cattle, all going south. And just now two batteries of artillery went the other way toward Ausone. They were going at a very fast trot — with gendarmes galloping ahead to warn the people to make room — —”
“When did you see this?”
“Now, out of that window as I stood knocking at your door.”
“All right,” he said briefly, picking up the telephone. “Are you there, Sister Eila? Yes; it is Warner speaking.”
“Mr. Warner, where can I communicate with Captain Halkett?”
“I don’t know, Sister.”
“Could you find out?”
“I haven’t any idea. He has not written me since he left.”
“He left no address with you?”
“None. I don’t imagine he knew where he could be found. Is it anything important?”
