Complete weird tales of.., p.992
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 992
The insulted gods gazed upon her with astonishment as she lifted her small head and sent an indifferent glance like an arrow at random among them. Then, not further noticing them, and absolutely indifferent to the button-eyed one, she strolled leisurely out of Olympus with her slightly disconcerted captive and disappeared from their view along the southern corridor. But once out of their range of vision her hot wrath returned.
“It was abominable,” she said in a low, tense voice, “ — your going off that way, when I told you the whole evening would be spoiled for me without you! I am hurt and angry, Jim.”
But his smouldering wrath also flickered into flame now.
“You had Grismer, didn’t you!” he said. “What do you care whether I am with you or not?”
“What do you mean? Yes, of course I had him. What has that to do with you?”
He replied with light insolence:
“Nothing. I’m not your husband.”
His words fell like a blow: she caught her breath with the hurt of them; then:
“Is that why you have avoided me?” she demanded in a tone of such concentrated passion that the unexpected flare-up startled him. It surprised her, too: for, all at once, in her heart something contracted agonizingly, and a surge of furious resentment flooded her, almost strangling speech.
“Why are you indifferent? Why are — are you unkind?” she stammered. “I’ve just found you again after all these years, haven’t I? What do other people matter to us? Why should Oswald interfere between you and me? You and I haven’t had each other for years! I — I can’t stand it — to have you unkind — indifferent — to have you leave me this way when I want you — so desperately — —”
“I didn’t leave you,” he retorted sullenly. “You went away with — the man you married — —”
“Don’t speak of him that way!” she interrupted hotly. “Nobody speaks of that affair at all!”
“Why not? You did marry him, didn’t you?”
“What of it!” she flamed back. “What has that to do with you and me! Why do you refer to it? It’s my personal affair, anyway!”
He turned toward her, exasperated:
“If you think,” he said, “that your behaviour with Grismer means nothing to me, you’d better undeceive yourself! ... Or I’ll do it for you in a way you can’t mistake!”
“Undeceive me?” she repeated uneasily. “How do you mean?”
“By making a fight for you myself,” he said, “by doing my best to get you back!”
“I don’t know what you mean, Jim,” she repeated, her grey eyes intent on his flushed face.... “Do you believe you have been insulted by what I did? Is that what you mean?”
He did not answer. They walked on, slowly pacing the deserted corridor. Her head was lowered now; her lips a trifle tremulous.
“I — didn’t suppose you’d take — what I did — that way,” she said unsteadily. “I — respect and love you.... I supposed I was at liberty — to dispose of — myself. I didn’t imagine you cared — very much — —”
Suddenly he freed his arm from her clasped fingers and passed it around her waist; and she caught her breath and placed her hand tightly over his to hold it there.
“You adorable boy,” she whispered, “am I forgiven? And you do care for me, don’t you, Jim?”
“Care for you!” he repeated in a low, menacing voice. “I care for nobody else in the world, Steve!”
She laughed happily, yielding confidently to his embrace, responding swiftly and adorably and with a frank unreserve that told a more innocent story than his close caress and boyish heart on fire confirmed.
And, for the moment, she let him have his way, gaily enduring and humorously content with a reconciliation somewhat exaggerated and over-demonstrative on his part.
But presently his lips on her flushed face, on her hair, on her throat, disconcerted her, and her own lips parted in dismayed and laughing protest at an ardour entirely new to her.
He merely kissed her fragrant mouth into silence, looking steadily into her grey eyes now widening with perplexed and troubled inquiry.
“I love you,” he said. “I want you back. Now, do you understand, Steve? I love you! I love you!”
Confused, crushed hotly in his embrace, she stared blankly at him for one dizzy instant; then, in silence, she twisted her supple body backward and aside, and with both nervous hands broke loose the circle of his arms.
They were both rather white now; her breath came and went irregularly, checked in her throat with a little sob at intervals. She leaned back against the wall, one jewelled hand against her breast, looking aside and away from where he stood.
“I told you,” he said, unsteadily.
She remained silent, keeping her gaze resolutely averted.
“You understand now, don’t you?” he asked.
She nodded.
Then he caught her in his arms again, and she threw back her lovely head, looking at him with frightened eyes, defending her lips with a bare, jewelled arm across them.
He laughed breathlessly and kissed the partly clenched fingers.
“Don’t,” she whispered, her grey eyes brilliant with fear.
“Do you understand that I am in love with you, Steve?”
“Let me go, Jim — —”
“Do you?”
“Don’t kiss me — that way — —”
“Do you believe me?”
“I don’t want to! — —” Suddenly she turned terribly white in his arms, swayed a moment against him. He released her, steadied her; she passed one arm through his, leaning heavily on him.
“Are you faint, Steve?” he whispered.
“A — little. It’s nothing. The air here is stifling.... I’m tired.” ... She dropped her head against his shoulder. Her lids were half closed as they descended the steps, he guiding her.
It seemed to her an interminable descent. She felt as though she were falling through space into a glittering, roaring abyss. In their box sat Helen and Grayson, gossiping gaily together and waiting for another dance to begin. Cleland warned Stephanie in a whisper, and she lifted her head and straightened up with an effort.
She said mechanically:
“I’m going home; I’m very tired.”
Helen and Grayson rose and the former came toward her inquiringly.
Stephanie smiled:
“Jim will take me back,” she said. “Don’t let me disturb your pleasure. And tell Oswald I was very sleepy.... And not to come to the studio for a day or two. Good night, dear.”
She made a humorously tired little gesture of farewell to Grayson also, and, taking Cleland’s arm again, sauntered with him toward the lobby.
“Get your overcoat and my wraps,” she said in a colourless, even voice. “I have a car outside. Here’s the call-check. I’ll wait over there for you.”
Her car, a toy limousine, was ultimately found. Cleland redeemed his overcoat and her wrap. When he came back for her she smiled at him, suffered him to swathe her in the white silk cloak, and, laying her dainty hand lightly on his sleeve, went out with him into the lamp-lit grey of dawn.
“You are feeling better,” he said as they seated themselves in the limousine and the little car rolled away southward.
“Yes. It was the stifling atmosphere there, I suppose.”
“It was horribly close,” he assented.
They remained silent for a while. Then, abruptly:
“Have I made you angry, Steve?” he asked.
She looked up and laughed:
“You adorable boy,” she said.
“You don’t mind if I’m in love with you?” he asked.
“I haven’t any mind. I can’t seem to think.... But I don’t think you’d better kiss me until I collect my senses again.... Please don’t, Jim.”
They became silent again until the car drew up before her door. She had two keys in her cloak pocket; she paused to give the chauffeur an order, turning to ask Cleland whether he didn’t want the car to take him to the Hotel Rochambeau.
“Thanks; it’s only a step. I had rather walk.”
So the car drove away; Cleland opened the front door for her, then her own studio door. She felt around the corner in the darkness and switched on the electric bulb in a standing lamp.
“Good night, Steve,” he said, taking her hand in both of his.
“Good night.... Unless you care to talk to me for a little while.”
“It’s four o’clock in the morning.”
“I can’t sleep — I know that.”
He said in a low voice:
“Besides, I am very much in love with you. I think I had better go back.”
“Oh.... Do you think so?”
“Don’t you?”
“I told you that I haven’t recovered enough sense to think.”
She crossed the threshold and walked into the studio, dropping her cloak across a chair; and presently halted before the empty fireplace, gazing into its smoke-blackened depths.
For a few moments she stood there in a brown study — a glittering, exquisite figure in the subdued light which fell in tiny points of fire on gem and ring, bracelet and girdle, and tipped the gilded sandals on her little naked feet with sparks of living flame.
Then she turned her charming young head and looked across at him where he stood on the threshold.
“What do you think?” she said. “Ought you to go?”
“I ought to. But I don’t think I shall.”
“No, don’t go,” she said with a little laugh. “After all, if we’re not to remain brother and sister any longer, there’s a most fascinating novelty in your being here.”
He came in and closed the door. She made room for him on the sofa and he flung his coat across her cloak and seated himself.
“Now,” she said, dropping one silken knee over the other and clasping her hands around it, “how much can we care for each other without being silly? You know I have a dreadful intuition that I’d better not kiss you any more. Not that I don’t adore you as much as I always did — —”
She turned squarely around and looked at him out of her lovely eyes:
“You took me by surprise. I didn’t understand. Then, suddenly I lost my senses and became panicky. I was scared stiff, Jim — you kissed me so many times — —”
He reddened and looked down. Under his eyes her bare foot hung in its golden sandal — an exquisite, snowy little foot, quite perfectly fashioned to match her hands’ soft symmetry.
“If you loved me,” he said, “you would not care how many times I kissed you.”
“But you kept on — and you kissed my eyes and throat — —”
“You wouldn’t care what I did if you loved me.”
“But they were unusual places to be kissed. I was scared. Did you think me ridiculous? It was rather startling, you know. It was such a complete novelty.”
She admitted it so naïvely that he laughed in spite of his chagrin.
“Steve,” he said, “I don’t know what to do about it. I’m falling more deeply in love with you every moment; and you are merely kind and sweet and friendly about it — —”
“I’m intensely interested!” she said.
“Interested,” he repeated; “yes, that describes it.”
“A girl couldn’t help being interested when a man she had always adored as a brother suddenly takes her into his arms and kisses her in unusual places,” she said, “ — and does it a great number of times — —”
“Probably you kept count,” he said with boyish sarcasm.
She laughed outright:
“I wish I had. It was a perfectly shameless performance. If you ever do it again I shall keep count — out loud!”
“Is that all you’ll do?”
“What else is there to do?” she inquired, smiling a trifle uneasily.
“You might find it in your heart to respond.”
“How can my heart hold any more of you than it does and always has?” she asked with pretty impatience.
“Can’t you love me?”
“I don’t know how to any more than I do.”
“But you did not find it agreeable when I kissed you.”
“I — don’t know what I felt.... We always kissed.” She began to laugh. “I enjoyed that; but I don’t think you did, always. You sometimes looked rather bored, Jim.”
“I’m getting well paid back,” he said.
This seemed to afford her infinite delight; there was malice in her grey eyes now, and a hint of pretty mockery in her laughter.
“To think,” she said, “that James Cleland should ever become sentimental with poor little Stephanie Quest! What an unbending! What condescension! What a come-down! Oh, Jim, if I’ve really got you at last I’m going to raise the very devil with you!”
“You’re doing it.”
“Am I? I hope I am! I mean to torment you! Why, when I think of the long, long years of childish adoration and awe — of the days when I tagged after you, grateful to be noticed, thankful when you found time for me — —” She clapped her hands together delightedly, enchanted with his glum and reddening face. For what she said was the truth; he knew it, though she did not realize how true it had been — and meant merely to exaggerate.
“Also,” she said, “you leave me quite alone for three whole years when you could have come back at the end of two!”
His face darkened and he bit his lip.
“You’re quite right,” he said in a quiet voice. “A girl couldn’t very well fall in love with that sort of man.”
There was a silence. She had been enjoying her revenge, but she had not expected him to take it so seriously.
He sat there with lowered head, considering, gnawing at his under-lip in silence. She had not intended to hurt him. She was inexperienced enough with him to be worried. His features seemed older, leaner, full of unfamiliar shadows — disturbingly aloof and stern.
She hesitated — the swift, confused memory of an hour before checking her for an instant, then she leaned toward him, quite certain of what would happen — silent and curious as he drew her into his arms.
She was very silent, too, listening to his impetuous, broken avowal — suffering his close embrace, his lips on her eyes and mouth and throat once more. The enormous novelty of it preoccupied her; the intense interest in his state of mind. Her curiosity held her spellbound, too, and unresponsive but fascinated.
She lay very quietly in his arms, her lovely head resting on his shoulder, sometimes with eyes closed, sometimes watching him, meeting his eyes with a faint smile.
Contact with him no longer frightened her. Her mind was clear, busy with this enormous novelty, searching for the reason of it, striving to understand his passion which she shyly recognized with an odd feeling of pride and tenderness, but to which there was nothing in her that responded — nothing more than tender loyalty and the old love she had always given him.
The grey tranquillity of her eyes, virginal and clear — the pulseless quiet of the girl chilled him.
“You don’t love me, Steve, do you?”
“Not — as you — wish me to.”
“Can’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is there any chance?”
She looked out across the studio, considering, and her grey eyes grew vague and remote.
“I don’t know, Jim.... I think that something has been left out of me.... Whatever it is. I don’t know how to love — fall in love — as you wish me to. I don’t know how to go about it. Perhaps it’s because I’ve never thought about it. It’s never occupied my mind.”
“Then,” he burst out, “how in God’s name did you ever come to marry!”
She looked up at him gravely:
“That is very different,” she said.
“Then you are in love with him!”
“I told you that he fascinates me.”
“Is it love?” he asked violently.
“I don’t know.”
“You must know! You’ve got a mind!”
“It doesn’t explain what I feel for him. I can’t put it into words.”
He drew her roughly to him, bent over her, looked into her eyes, and kissed her lips again and again.
“Can’t you love me, Steve? Can’t you?” he stammered.
“I — want to. I wish I did — the way you want me to.”
“Will you try?”
“I don’t know how to try.”
“Do your lips on mine mean nothing to you?”
“Yes.... You are so dear.... I am wonderfully contented — and not afraid.”
After a moment she released herself, laughed, and sat up, adjusting her hair with one hand and resting against his shoulder.
“A fine scandal if Helen should come in,” she remarked. “It’s odd to think of myself as married. And that’s another thing, Jim. It never occurred to me until now, but I’ve no business to give myself up to you as I have to-night.” She leaned forward on one elbow, musing for a while, then, lifting her head with a troubled smile: “But what is a girl to do when her brother suddenly turns into her lover? Must she forbid him to kiss her? And refrain from kissing him? — —” She flung one arm around his neck impulsively. “I won’t forbid you! I would have to if I were in love with you in the same way. But I’m not and I don’t care what you do. And whatever you do, I adore anyway.”
A key rattled in the lock; she sprang to her feet and went toward the door. Helen came in, and she saw Grayson and Grismer standing in the hallway.
“Come in everybody!” she cried. “Shall we all have breakfast before we part? Don’t you think it would be delightful, Phil? Don’t you, Oswald? And you know we could take up the rugs and dance while the coffee is boiling. Wait! I’ll turn on the music-box! — —”
Helen and Grayson deliberately began a tango; Grismer came over to where Cleland was standing:
“They’re still dancing in the Garden,” he said pleasantly. “Did you and Stephanie get enough of it?”
CHAPTER XX
CLELAND, BEING YOUNG, required sleep, and it was not until noon that he awoke.
Cool-headed retrospection during tubbing and dressing increased his astonishment at the manner in which he had spent his first day in New York after the years of absence. For into that one day had been crowded a whole gamut of experience and of sensations that seemed incredible when he thought them over.
