Complete weird tales of.., p.974
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 974
So the child skulked about, alternately ignored or whined over, cursed or caressed, petted or beaten, sometimes into insensibility.
Otherwise she followed them about instinctively, like a crippled kitten.
Then there came one stifling night in that earthly hell called a New York tenement, when little Stephanie Quest, tortured by prickly heat, gasping for the relief which the western lightning promised, crept out to the fire escape and lay there gasping like a minnow.
Fate, lurking in the reeking room behind her, where her drugged parents lay in merciful stupor, unloosed a sudden breeze from the thunderous west, which blew the door shut with a crash. It did not awaken the man. But, among other things, it did jar loose a worn-out gas jet.... That was the verdict, anyway.
Pluris est oculatus testis unus quam auriti decem.
But, as always, the Most High remained silent, offering no testimony to the contrary.
This episode in the career of Stephanie Quest happened in the days of the Great Administration, an administration not great in the sense of material national prosperity, great only in spirit and in things of the mind and soul.
Even the carpenter, Albrecht Schmidt, across the hallway in the tenement, rose to the level of some unexplored spiritual stratum, for he had a wife and five children and only his wages, and he did not work every week.
“Nein,” he said, when approached for contributions toward the funeral, “I haff no money for dead people. I don’t giff, I don’t lend. Vat it iss dot Shakespeare says? Don’t neffer borrow und don’t neffer lend noddings.... But I tell you what I do! I take dot leedle child!”
The slim, emaciated child, frightened white, had flattened herself against the dirty wall of the hallway to let the policemen and ambulance surgeon pass.
The trampling, staring inmates of the tenement crowded the stairs, a stench of cabbage and of gas possessed the place.
The carpenter’s wife, a string around her shapeless middle, and looking as though she might add to her progeny at any minute, came to the door of her two-room kennel.
“Poor little Stephanie,” she said, “you come right in and make you’self at home along of us!”
And, as the child did not stir, seemingly frozen there against the stained and battered wall, the carpenter said:
“Du! Stephanie! Hey you, Steve! Come home und get you some breakfast right away quick!”
“Is that their kid?” inquired a policeman coming out of the place of death and wiping the sweat from his face.
“Sure. I take her in.”
“Well, you’ll have to fix that matter later — —”
“I fix it now. I take dot little Steve for mine — —”
The policeman yawned over the note book in which he was writing.
“It ain’t done that way, I’m tellin’ you! Well, all right! You can keep her until the thing is fixed up — —” He went on writing.
The carpenter strode over to the child; his blond hair bristled, his beard was fearsome and like an ogre’s. But his voice trembled with Teuton sentiment.
“You got a new mamma, Steve!” he rumbled. “Now, you run in und cry mit her so much as you like.” He pulled the little girl gently toward his rooms; the morbid crowd murmured on the stairs at the sight of the child of suicides.
“Mamma, here iss our little Steve alretty!” growled Schmidt. “Now, py Gott! I got to go to my job! A hellofa business iss it! Schade — immer — schade! Another mouth to feed, py Gott!”
FOREWORD
ON THE CHRISTMAS-TIDE train which carried homeward those Saint James schoolboys who resided in or near New York, Cleland Junior sat chattering with his comrades in a drawing-room car entirely devoted to the Saint James boys, and resounding with the racket of their interminable gossip and laughter.
The last number of their school paper had come out on the morning of their departure for Christmas holidays at home; every boy had a copy and was trying to read it aloud to his neighbour; shrieks of mirth resounded, high, shrill arguments, hot disputes, shouts of approval or of protest.
“Read this! Say, did you get this!” cried a tall boy named Grismer. “Jim Cleland wrote it! What do you know about our own pet novelist — —”
“Shut up!” retorted Cleland Junior, blushing and abashed by accusation of authorship.
“He wrote it all right!” repeated Grismer exultantly. “Oh, girls! Just listen to this mush about the birds and the bees and the bright blue sky — —”
“Jim, you’re all right! That’s the stuff!” shouted another. “The girl in the story’s a peach, and the battle scene is great!”
“Say, Jim, where do you get your battle stuff?” inquired another lad respectfully.
“Out of the papers, of course,” replied Cleland Junior. “All you have to do is to read ’em, and you can think out the way it really looks.”
The only master in the car, a young Harvard graduate, got up from his revolving chair and came over to Cleland Junior.
The boy rose immediately, standing slender and handsome in the dark suit of mourning which he still wore after two years.
“Sit down, Jim,” said Grayson, the master, seating himself on the arm of the boy’s chair. And, as the boy diffidently resumed his seat: “Nice little story of yours, this. Just finished it. Co you still think of making writing your profession?”
“I’d like to, sir.”
“Many are called, you know,” remarked the master with a smile.
“I know, sir. I shall have to take my chance.”
Phil Grayson, baseball idol of the Saint James boys, and himself guilty of several delicate verses in the Century and Scribner’s, sat on the padded arm of the revolving chair and touched his slight moustache thoughtfully.
“One’s profession, Jim, ought to be one’s ruling passion. To choose a profession, choose what you most care to do in your leisure moments. That should be your business in life.”
The boy said:
“I like about everything, Mr. Grayson, but I think I had rather write than anything else.”
John Belter, a rotund youth, listening and drawing caricatures on the back of the school paper, suggested that perhaps Cleland Junior was destined to write the Great American Novel.
Grayson said pleasantly:
“It was the great American ass who first made inquiries concerning the Great American Novel.”
“Oh, what a knock!” shouted Oswald Grismer, delighted.
But young Belter joined in the roars of laughter, undisturbed, saying very coolly:
“Do you mean, sir, that the Great American Novel will never be written, or that it has already been written several times, or that there isn’t any such thing?”
“I mean all three, Jack,” explained Grayson, smiling. “Let me see that caricature you have been so busy over.”
“It’s — it’s you, sir.”
“What of it?” retorted the young master. “Do you think I can’t laugh at myself?”
He took the paper so reluctantly tendered:
“Jack, you are a terror! You young rascal, you’ve made me look like a wax-faced clothing dummy!”
“Tribute to your faultless apparel, sir, and equally faultless features — —”
A shriek of laughter from the boys who had crowded around to see; Grayson himself laughing unfeignedly and long; then the babel of eager, boyish voices again, loud, emphatic, merciless in discussion of the theme of the moment.
Into the swaying car and down the aisle came a negro in spotless white, repeating invitingly:
“First call for luncheon, gentlemen! Luncheon served in the dining car forward!”
His agreeable voice was drowned in the cheering of three dozen famished boys, stampeding.
Cleland Junior came last with the master.
“I hope you’ll have a happy holiday, Jim,” said Grayson, with quiet cordiality.
“I’m crazy to see father,” said the boy. “I’m sure I’ll have a good time.”
At the vestibule he stepped aside, but the master bade him precede him.
And as the fair, slender boy passed out into the forward car, the breeze ruffling his blond hair, and his brown eyes still smiling with the anticipation of home coming, he passed Fate, Chance, and Destiny, whispering together in the corner of the platform. But the boy could not see them; could not know that they were discussing him.
CHAPTER I
AN AVERAGE NEW York house on a side street in winter is a dark affair; daylight comes reluctantly and late into the city; the south side of a street catches the first winter sun rays when there are any; the north side remains shadowy and chilly.
Cleland Senior’s old-fashioned house stood on the north side of 80th Street; and on the last morning of Cleland Junior’s Christmas vacation, while the first bars of sunshine fell across the brown stone façades on the opposite side of the street, the Clelands’ breakfast room still remained dim, bathed in the silvery gray dusk of morning.
Father and son had finished breakfast, but Cleland Senior, whose other names were John and William, had not yet lighted the cigar which he held between thumb and forefinger and contemplated in portentous silence. Nor had he opened the morning paper to read paragraphs of interest to Cleland Junior, comment upon them, and encourage discussion, as was his wont when his son happened to be home from school.
The house was one of those twenty-foot brown stone houses — architecturally featureless — which was all there was to New York architecture fifty years ago.
But John William Cleland’s dead wife had managed to make a gem of the interior, and the breakfast room on the second floor front, once his wife’s bedroom, was charming with its lovely early American furniture and silver, and its mellow, old-time prints in colour.
Cleland Junior continued to look rather soberly at the familiar pictures, now, as he sat in silence opposite his father, his heart of a boy oppressed by the approaching parting.
“So you think you’ll make writing a profession, Jim?” repeated John Cleland, not removing his eyes from the cigar he was turning over and over.
“Yes, father.”
“All right. Then a general education is the thing, and Harvard the place — unless you prefer another university.”
“The fellows are going to Harvard — most of them,” said the boy.
“A boy usually desires to go where his school friends go.... It’s all right, Jim.”
Cleland Junior’s fresh, smooth face of a school boy had been slowly growing more and more solemn. Sometimes he looked at the prints on the wall; sometimes he glanced across the table at his father, who still sat absently turning over and over the unlighted cigar between his fingers. The approaching separation was weighing on them both. That, and the empty third chair by the bay window, inclined them to caution in speech, lest memory strike them suddenly, deep and unawares, and their voices betray their men’s hearts to each other — which is not an inclination between men.
Cleland Senior glanced involuntarily from the empty chair to the table, where, as always, a third place had been laid by Meachem, and, as always, a fresh flower lay beside the service plate.
No matter what the occasion, under all circumstances and invariably Meachem laid a fresh blossom of some sort beside the place which nobody used.
Cleland Senior gazed at the frail cluster of frisia in silence.
Through the second floor hallway landing, in the library beyond, the boy could see his suitcase, and, lying against it, his hockey stick. Cleland Senior’s preoccupied glance also, at intervals, reverted to these two significant objects. Presently he got up and walked out into the little library, followed in silence by Cleland Junior.
There was a very tall clock in that room, which had been made by one of the Willards many years before the elder Cleland’s birth; but it ticked now as aggressively and bumptiously as though it were brand new.
The father wandered about for a while, perhaps with the vague idea of finding a match for his cigar; the son’s clear gaze followed his father’s restless movements until the clock struck the half hour.
“Father?”
“Yes, dear — yes, old chap?” — with forced carelessness which deceived neither.
“It’s half past nine.”
“All right, Jim — any time you’re ready.”
“I hate to go back and leave you all alone here!” broke out the boy impulsively.
It was a moment of painful tension.
Cleland Senior did not reply; and the boy, conscious of the emotion which his voice had betrayed, and suddenly shy about it, turned his head and gazed out into the back yard.
Father and son still wore mourning; the black garments made the boy’s hair and skin seem fairer than they really were — as fair as his dead mother’s.
When Cleland Senior concluded that he was able to speak in a perfectly casual and steady voice, he said:
“Have you had a pretty good holiday, Jim?”
“Fine, father!”
“That’s good. That’s as it should be. We’ve enjoyed a pretty good time together, my son; haven’t we?”
“Great! It was a dandy vacation!”
There came another silence. On the boy’s face lingered a slight retrospective smile, as he mentally reviewed the two weeks now ending with the impending departure for school. Certainly he had had a splendid time. His father had engineered all sorts of parties and amusements for him — schoolboy gatherings at the Ice Rink; luncheons and little dances in their own home, to which school comrades and children of old friends were bidden; trips to the Bronx, to the Aquarium, to the Natural History Museum; wonderful evenings at home together.
The boy had gone with his father to see the “Wizard of Oz,” to see Nazimova in “The Comet” — a doubtful experiment, but in line with theories of Cleland Senior — to see “The Fall of Port Arthur” at the Hippodrome; to hear Calvé at the Opera.
Together they had strolled on Fifth Avenue, viewed the progress of the new marble tower then being built on Madison Square, had lunched together at Delmonico’s, dined at Sherry’s, motored through all the parks, visited Governor’s Island and the Navy Yard — the latter rendezvous somewhat empty of interest since the great battle fleet had started on its pacific voyage around the globe.
Always they had been together since the boy returned from Saint James school for the Christmas holidays; and Cleland Senior had striven to fill every waking hour of his son’s day with something pleasant to be remembered.
Always at breakfast he had read aloud the items of interest — news concerning President Roosevelt — the boy’s hero — and his administration; Governor Hughes and his administration; the cumberous coming of Mr. Taft from distant climes; local squabbles concerning projected subways. All that an intelligent and growing boy ought to know and begin to think about, Cleland Senior read aloud at the breakfast table — for this reason, and also to fill in every minute with pleasant interest lest the dear grief, now two years old, and yet forever fresh, creep in between words and threaten the silences between them with sudden tears.
But two years is a long, long time in the life of the young — in the life of a fourteen-year-old boy; and yet, the delicate shadow of his mother still often dimmed for him the sunny sparkle of the winter’s holiday. It fell across his clear young eyes now, where he sat thinking, and made them sombre and a deeper brown.
For he was going back to boarding school; and old memories were uneasily astir again; and Cleland Senior saw the shadow on the boy’s face; understood; but now chose to remain silent, not intervening.
So memory gently enveloped them both, leaving them very still together, there in the library.
For the boy’s mother had been so intimately associated with preparations for returning to school in those blessed days which already had begun to seem distant and a little unreal to Cleland Junior — so tenderly and vitally a part of them — that now, when the old pain, the loneliness, the eternal desire for her was again possessing father and son in the imminence of familiar departure, Cleland Senior let it come to the boy, not caring to avert it.
Thinking of the same thing, both sat gazing into the back yard. There was a cat on the whitewashed fence. Lizzie, the laundress — probably the last of the race of old-time family laundresses — stood bare-armed in the cold, pinning damp clothing to the lines, her Irish mouth full of wooden clothes-pins, her parboiled arms steaming.
At length Cleland Senior’s glance fell again upon the tall clock. He swallowed nothing, stared grimly at the painted dial where a ship circumnavigated the sun, then squaring his big shoulders he rose with decision.
The boy got up too.
In the front hall they assisted each other with overcoats; the little, withered butler took the boy’s luggage down the brown-stone steps to the car. A moment later father and son were spinning along Fifth Avenue toward Forty-second Street.
As usual, this ordeal of departure forced John Cleland to an unnatural, off-hand gaiety at the crisis, as though the parting amounted to nothing.
“Going to be a good kid in school, Jim?” he asked, casually humorous.
The boy nodded and smiled.
“That’s right. And, Jim, stick to your Algebra, no matter how you hate it. I hated it too.... Going to get on your class hockey team?”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Right. Try for the ball team, too. And, Jim?”
“Yes, father?”
“You’re all right so far. You know what’s good and what’s bad.”
“Yes, sir.”
“No matter what happens, you can always come to me. You thoroughly understand that.”
“Yes, father.”
“You’ve never known what it is to be afraid of me, have you?”
The boy smiled broadly; said no.
“Never be afraid of me, Jim. That’s one thing I couldn’t stand. I’m always here. All I’m here on earth for is you! Do you really understand me?”
