Complete weird tales of.., p.978
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 978
There was a pause, broken abruptly by the sudden quavering appeal of Janet at the door once more:
“Mr. Cleland! Th’ young lady is all over the house, sor! In her pajaymis and naked feet, running wild-like and ondacent — —”
Cleland stepped to the door:
“Where’s that child?”
“In the butler’s pantry, sor — —”
“I’m up here!” came a clear voice from the landing above. Cleland, Janet and Meacham raised their heads.
The child, in her pyjamas, elbows on the landing rail, smiled down upon them through her thick shock of burnished hair. Her lips were applied to an orifice in an orange; her slim fingers slowly squeezed the fruit; her eyes were intently fixed on the three people below.
When Cleland arrived at the third floor landing, he found Stephanie Quest in the nursery, cross-legged on her bed. As he entered, she wriggled off, and, in rose-leaf pyjamas and bare feet, dropped him the curtsey which she had been taught by Mrs. Westlake.
But long since she had taken Cleland’s real measure; in her lovely grey eyes a thousand tiny devils danced. He held out his arms and she flung herself into them.
When he seated himself in a big chintz arm-chair, she curled up on his knees, one arm around his neck, the other still clutching her orange.
“Steve, isn’t it rather nice to wake up in bed in your own room under your own roof? Or, of course if you prefer Mrs. Westlake’s — —”
“I don’t. I don’t — —” She kissed him impulsively on his freshly-shaven cheek, tightened her arm around his neck.
“You know I love you,” she remarked, applying her lips to the orange and squeezing it vigorously.
“I don’t believe you really care much about me, Steve.”
Her grey eyes regarded him sideways while she sucked the orange; contented laughter interrupted the process; then, suddenly both arms were around his neck, and her bewitching eyes looked into his, deep, very deeply.
“You know I love you, Dad.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Don’t you really know it?”
“Do you, really, Steve?”
There was a passionate second of assurance, a slight sigh; the little head warm on his shoulder, vague-eyed, serious, gazing out at the early April sunshine.
“Tell me about your little boy, Dad,” she murmured presently.
“You know he isn’t very little, Steve. He’s fourteen, nearly fifteen.”
“I forgot. Goodness!” she said softly and respectfully.
“He seems little to me,” continued Cleland, “but he wouldn’t like to be thought so. Little girls don’t mind being considered youthful, do they?”
“Yes, they do! You are teasing me, Dad.”
“Am I to understand that I have a ready-made, grown-up family, and no little child to comfort me?”
With a charming little sound in her throat like a young bird, she snuggled closer, pressing her cheek against his.
“Tell me,” she murmured.
“About what, darling?”
“About your lit — about your boy.”
She never tired hearing about this wonderful son, and Cleland never tired of telling about Jim, so they were always in accord on that subject.
Often Cleland tried to read in the gravely youthful eyes uplifted to his the dreamy emotions which his narrative evoked — curiosity, awe, shy delight, frank hunger for a playmate, doubt that this wonder-boy would condescend to notice her, wistfulness, loneliness — the delicate tragedy of solitary souls.
Always her gaze troubled him a little, because he had not yet told his son of what he had done — had not written to him concerning the advent of this little stranger. He had thought that the best and easiest way was to tell Jim when he met him at the railroad station, and, without giving the boy time to think, brood perhaps, perhaps worry, let him see little Stephanie face to face.
It seemed the best way to John Cleland. But, at moments, lying alone, sleepless in the night, he became horribly afraid.
It was about that time that he received a letter from Miss Rosalinda Quest:
DEAR MR. CLELAND:
Will you bring the child out to Bayford, or shall I call to see her when business takes me into town?
I want to see her, so take your choice.
Yours truly,
ROSALINDA QUEST.
This brusque reminder that Stephanie was not entirely his upset Cleland. But there was nothing to do about it except to write the lady a civil invitation to call.
Which she did one morning a week later. She wore battle-grey tweeds and toque, and a Krupp steel equipment of reticule and umbrella; and she looked the fighter from top to toe.
When Cleland came down to the drawing-room with Stephanie. Miss Quest greeted him with perfunctory civility and looked upon Stephanie with unfeigned amazement.
“Is that my niece?” she demanded. And Stephanie, who had been warned of the lady and of the relationship, dropped her curtsey and offered her slender hand with the shy but affable smile instinctive in all children.
But the grey, friendly eyes and the smile did instantly a business for the child which she never could have foreseen; for Miss Quest lost her colour and stood quite dumb and rigid, with the little girl’s hand grasped tightly in her grey-gloved fingers.
Finally she found her voice — not the incisive, combative, precise voice which Cleland knew — but a feminine and uncertain parody on it:
“Do you know who I am, Stephanie?”
“Yes, ma’am. You are my Aunt Rosalinda.”
Miss Quest took the seat which Cleland offered and sat down, drawing the child to her knee. She looked at her for a long while without speaking.
Later, when Stephanie had been given her congé, in view of lessons awaiting her in the nursery, Miss Quest said to Cleland, as she was going:
“I’m not blind. I can see what you are doing for her — what you have done. The child adores you.”
“I love her exactly as though she were my own,” he said, flushing.
“That’s plain enough, too.... Well, I shall be just. She is yours. I don’t suppose there ever will be a corner in her heart for me.... I could love her, too, if I had the time.”
“Is not what you renounce in her only another sacrifice to the noble work in which you are engaged?”
“Rubbish! I like my work. But it does do a lot of good. And it’s quite true that I can not do it and give my life to Stephanie Quest. And so — —” she shrugged her trim shoulders— “I can scarcely expect the child to care a straw for me, even if I come to see her now and then.”
Cleland said nothing. Miss Quest marched to the door, held open by Meacham, turned to Cleland:
“Thank God you got her,” she said. “I failed with Harry; I don’t deserve her and I dare not claim responsibility. But I’ll see that she inherits what I possess — —”
“Madame! I beg you will not occupy yourself with such matters. I am perfectly able to provide sufficiently — —”
“Good Lord! Are you trying to tell me again how to draw my will?” she demanded.
“I am not. I am simply requesting you not to encumber this child with any unnecessary fortune. There is no advantage to her in any unwieldy inheritance; there is, on the contrary, a very real and alarming disadvantage.”
“I shall retain my liberty to think as I please, do as I please, and differ from you as often as I please,” she retorted hotly.
They glared upon each other for a moment; Meacham’s burnt-out gaze travelled dumbly from one to the other.
Suddenly Miss Quest smiled and stretched out her hand to Cleland.
“Thank God,” she said again, “that it is you who have the child. Teach her to think kindly of me, if you can. I’ll come sometimes to see her — and to disagree with you.”
Cleland, bare-headed, took her out to her taxicab. She smiled at him when it departed.
CHAPTER V
THERE CAME THE time when Easter vacation was to be reckoned with. Cleland wrote to Jim that he had a surprise for him and that, as usual, he would be at the station to meet the school train.
During the intervening days, at moments fear became an anguish. He began to realize what might happen, what might threaten his hitherto perfect understanding with his only son.
He need not have worried.
Driving uptown in the limousine beside his son, their hands still tightly interlocked, he told him very quietly what he had done, and why. The boy, astonished, listened in silence to the end. Then all he said was:
“For heaven’s sake, Father!”
There was not the faintest hint of resentment, no emotion at all except a perfectly neutral amazement.
“How old is she?”
“Eleven, Jim.”
“Oh. A kid. Does she cry much?”
“They don’t cry at eleven,” explained his father, laughing in his relief. “You didn’t squall when you were eleven.”
“No. But this is a girl.”
“Don’t worry, old chap.”
“No. Do you suppose I’ll like her?”
“Of course, I hope you will.”
“Well, I probably sha’n’t notice her very much, being rather busy.... But it’s funny.... A kid in the house! ... I hope she won’t get fresh.”
“Be nice to her, Jim.”
“Sure.... It’s funny, though.”
“It really isn’t very funny, Jim. The little thing has been dreadfully unhappy all her life until I — until we stepped in.”
“We?”
“You and I, Jim. It’s our job.”
After a silence the boy said:
“What was the matter with her?”
“Starvation, cruelty.”
The boy’s incredulous eyes were fastened on his father’s.
“Cold, hunger, loneliness, neglect. And drunken parents who beat her so mercilessly that once they broke two of her ribs.... Don’t talk about it to her, Jim. Let the child forget if she can.”
“Yes, sir.”
The boy’s eyes were still dilated with horror, but his features were set and very still.
“We’ve got to look out for her, old chap.”
“Yes,” said the boy, flushing.
Cleland Senior, of course, expected to assist at the first interview, but Stephanie was not to be found.
High and low Janet searched; John Cleland, troubled, began a tour of the house, calling:
“Steve! Where are you?”
Jim, in his room, unstrapping his suitcase, felt rather than heard somebody behind him; and, looking up over his shoulder saw a girl.
She was a trifle pale; dropped him a curtsey:
“I’m Steve,” she said breathlessly.
Boy and girl regarded each other in silence for a moment; then Jim offered his hand:
“How do you do?” he said, calmly.
“I — I’m very well. I hope you are, too.”
Another pause, during a most intent mutual inspection.
“My tennis bat,” explained Jim, with polite condescension, “needs to be re-strung. That’s why I brought it down from school.... Do you play tennis?”
“No.”
Cleland Senior, on the floor below, heard the young voices mingling above him, listened, then quietly withdrew to the library to await events.
Janet looked in later.
“Do they like each other?” he asked in a low, anxious voice.
“Mr. Cleland, sor, Miss Steve is on the floor listenin’ to that blessed boy read thim pieces he has wrote in the school paper! Like two lambs they do be together, sor, and the fine little gentleman and little lady they are, God be blessed this April day!”
After a while he went upstairs, cautiously, the soft carpet muffling his tread.
Jim, seated on the side of his bed, was being worshipped, permitting it, accepting it. Stephanie, cross-legged on the floor, adored him with awed, uplifted gaze, her clasped hands lying in her lap.
“To be a writer,” Jim condescended to explain, “a man has got to work like the dickens, study everything you ever heard of, go out and have adventures, notice everything that people say and do, how they act and walk and talk. It’s a very interesting profession, Steve.... What are you going to be?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, “ — nothing, I suppose.”
“Don’t you want to be something? Don’t you want to be celebrated?”
She thought, hesitatingly, that it would be pleasant to be celebrated.
“Then you’d better think up something to do to make the world notice you.”
“I shouldn’t know what to do.”
“Father says that the thing you’d rather do to amuse yourself is the proper profession to take up. What do you like to do?”
“Ought I to try to write, as you do?”
“You mustn’t ask me. Just think what you’d rather do than anything else.”
The girl thought hard, her eyes fixed on him, her brows slightly knitted with the effort at concentration.
“I — I’d honestly really rather just be with dad — and you — —”
The boy laughed:
“I don’t mean that!”
“No, I know. But I can’t think of anything.... Perhaps I could learn to act in a play — or do beautiful dances, or draw pictures —— ?” her voice continuing in the rising inflection of inquiry.
“Do you like to draw and dance and act in private theatricals?”
“Oh, I never acted in a play or danced folk-dances, except in school. And I never had things of my own to make pictures with — except once I had a piece of blue chalk and I made pictures on the wall in the hall.”
“What hall?”
“It was a very dirty hall. I was punished for making pictures on the wall.”
“Oh,” said the boy, soberly.
After a moment the boy jumped up:
“I’m hungry. I believe luncheon is nearly ready. Come on, Steve!”
The child could scarcely speak from pride and happiness when the boy condescended to take her hand and lead her out of that enchanted place into the magic deeps below.
At nine-thirty that evening Stephanie made the curtsey which had been taught her, to Cleland Senior, and was about to repeat the process to Cleland Junior, when the latter laughed and held out his hand.
“Good night, Steve,” he said reassuringly. “You’ve got to be a regular girl with me.”
She took his hand, held it, drew closer. To his consternation, he realized that she was expecting to kiss him, and he hastily wrung her hand and sat down.
The child’s face flushed: she turned to Cleland Senior for the kiss to which he had accustomed her. Her lips were quivering, and the older man understood.
“Good night, darling,” he said, drawing her close into his arms, and whispered in her ear gaily: “You’ve scared him, Steve. He’s only a boy, you know.”
Her head, buried against his shoulder, concealed the starting tears.
“You’ve scared him,” repeated Cleland Senior. “All boys are shy about girls.”
Suddenly it struck her as funny; she smiled; the tears dried in her eyes. She twisted around, and, placing her lips against the elder man’s ear, she whispered:
“I’m afraid of him, but I do like him!”
“He likes you, but he’s a little afraid of you yet.”
That appealed to her once more as exquisitely funny. She giggled, snuggled closer, observed by Jim with embarrassment and boredom. But he was too polite to betray it.
Stephanie, with one arm around Cleland’s neck, squeezed herself tightly against him and recounted in a breathless whisper her impressions of his only son:
“I do like him so much, Dad! He talked to me upstairs about his school and all the boys there. He was very kind to me. Do you think I’m too little for him to like me? I’m growing rather fast, you know. I’d do anything for him, anything. I wish you’d tell him that. Will you?”
“Yes, I will, dear. Now, run upstairs to Janet.”
“Shall I say good night to Jim again?”
“If you like. But don’t kiss him, or you’ll scare him.”
They both had a confidential and silent fit of laughter over this; then the child slid from his knees, dropped a hasty, confused curtsey in Jim’s direction, turned and scampered upstairs. And a gale of laughter came floating out of the nursery, silenced as Janet shut the door.
The subdued glow of a lamp fell over father and son; undulating strata of smoke drifted between them from the elder man’s cigar.
“Well, Jim?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Do you like her?”
“She’s a — funny girl.... Yes, she’s a rather nice little kid.”
“We’ll stand by her, won’t we, Jim?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Make up to her the lost days — the cruellest injustice that can be inflicted — the loss of a happy childhood.”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right, old chap. Now, tell me all about yourself and what has happened since you wrote.”
“I had a fight.”
“With whom, Jim?”
“With Oswald Grismer, of the first form.”
“What did he do to you?” inquired his father.
“He said something — about a girl.”
“What girl?”
“I don’t know her.”
“Go on.”
“Nothing.... Except I told him what I thought of him.”
“For what? For speaking disrespectfully about a girl you never met?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh. Go on.”
“Nothing more, sir.... Except that we mixed it.”
“I see. Did you — hold your own?”
“They said — I think I did, sir.”
“Grismer is — your age? Younger? Older?”
“Yes, sir, older.”
“How do you and he weigh in?”
“He’s — I believe — somewhat heavier.”
“First form boy. Naturally. Well, did you shake hands?”
“No, sir.”
“That’s bad, Jim.”
“I know it. I — somehow — couldn’t.”
“Do it next term. No use to fight unless to settle things.”
The boy remained silent, and his father did not press the matter.
