Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1275
She made a little effort to smile at herself in the mirror, but her courage could not carry her as far as that. So, with a quick, quaint gesture of adieu, she turned and walked rapidly out into the hallway.
Miss Garcide was in bed, sneezing patiently. “I won’t be out for weeks,” said the poor lady, “so you will have to amuse yourself alone.”
Miss Castle kissed her and went away lightly down the polished stairs to the great hall.
The steward came up to wish her good-morning, and to place the resources of the club at her disposal.
“I don’t know,” she said, hesitating at the veranda door; “I think a sun-bath is all I care for. You may hang a hammock under the maples, if you will. I suppose,” she added, “that I am quite alone at the club?”
“One gentleman arrived this morning,” said the steward— “Mr. Crawford.”
She looked back, poised lightly in the doorway through which the morning sunshine poured. All the color had left her face. “Mr. Crawford,” she said, in a dull voice.
“He has gone out after trout,” continued the steward, briskly; “he is a rare rod, ma’am, is Mr. Crawford. He caught the eight-pound fish — perhaps you noticed it on the panel in the billiard-room.”
Miss Castle came into the hall again, and stepped over to the register. Under her signature, “Miss Castle and maid,” she saw “J. Crawford, New York.” The ink was still blue and faint.
She turned and walked out into the sunshine.
The future was no longer a gray, menacing future; it had become suddenly the terrifying present, and its shadow fell sharply around her in the sunshine.
Now all the courage of her race must be summoned, and must respond to the summons. The end of all was at hand; but when had a Castle ever flinched at the face of fate under any mask?
She raised her resolute head; her eyes matched the sky — clear, unclouded, fathomless.
In hours of deep distress the sound of her own voice had always helped her to endure; and now, as she walked across the lawn bareheaded, she told herself not to grieve over a just debt to be paid, not to quail because life held for her nothing of what she had dreamed.
If there was a tremor now and then in her low voice, none but the robins heard it; if she lay flung face downward in the grasses, under the screen of alders by the water, there was no one but the striped chipmunk to jeer and mock.
“Now listen, you silly girl,” she whispered; “he cannot take away the sky and the sunshine from you! He cannot blind and deafen you, silly! Cry if you must, you little coward! — you will marry him all the same.”
Suddenly sitting up, alert, she heard something singing. It was the river flowing close beside her.
She pushed away the screen of leaves and stretched out full length, looking down into the water.
A trout lay there; his eyes were shining with an opal tint, his scarlet spots blazed like jewels.
And as she lay there, her bright hair tumbled about her face, she heard, above the river’s monotone, a sharp, whiplike sound — swis-s-sh — and a silvery thread flashed out across her vision. It was a fishing-line and leader, and the fisherman who had cast it was standing fifty feet away up-stream, hip-deep in the sunlit water.
Swish! swish! and the long line flew back, straightened far behind him, and again lengthened out, the single yellow-and-gilt fly settling on the water just above the motionless trout, who simply backed off down-stream.
But there were further troubles for the optimistic angler; a tough alder stem, just under water, became entangled in the line; the fisherman gave a cautious jerk; the hook sank into the water-soaked wood, buried to the barb.
“Oh, the deuce!” said the fisherman, calmly.
Before she could realize what he was about, he had waded across the shallows and seized the alder branch. A dash of water showered her as he shook the hook free; she stood up with an involuntary gasp and met the astonished eyes of the fisherman.
He was a tall, sunburned young fellow, with powerful shoulders and an easy, free-limbed carriage; he was also soaking wet and streaked with mud.
“Upon my word,” he said, “I never saw you! Awf’lly sorry; hope I haven’t spoiled your sport — but I have. You were fishing, of course?”
“No, I was only looking,” she said. “Of course I’ve spoiled your sport.”
“Not at all,” he said, laughing; “that alder twig did for me.”
“But there was a trout lying there — I saw him; and the trout saw me, so of course he wouldn’t rise to your cast. And I’m exceedingly sorry,” she ended, smiling in spite of herself.
Her hair was badly rumpled; she had been crying, and he could see it, but he had never looked upon such tear-stained, smiling, and dishevelled loveliness.
As he looked and marvelled, her smile died out; it came to her with a distinct shock that this water-logged specimen of sun-tanned manhood must be Crawford.
“Are you?” she said, scarcely aware that she spoke.
“What?” he asked, puzzled.
“Mr. Crawford?”
“Why, yes — and, of course, you are Miss Castle,” he replied, smiling easily. “I saw your name in the guest-book this morning. Awf’lly glad you came, Miss Castle; hope you’ll let me show you where the big fellows lie.”
“You mean the fish,” she said, with composure.
The shock of suddenly realizing that this man was the man she had to marry confused her; she made an effort to get things back into proper perspective, for the river was swimming before her eyes, and in her ears rang a strangely pleasant voice — Crawford’s — saying all sorts of good-humored things, which she heard but scarcely comprehended.
Instinctively she raised her hands to touch her disordered hair; she stood there naïvely twisting it into shape again, her eyes constantly reverting to the sun-tanned face before her.
“And I have the pleasure of knowing your guardian, Mr. Garcide, very slightly — in a business way,” he was saying, politely.
“Ophir Steel,” she said.
He laughed.
“Oh, we are making a great battle,” he said. “I’m only hoping we may come to an understanding with Mr. Garcide.”
“I thought you had already come to an understanding,” she observed, calmly.
“Have we? I hope so; I had not heard that,” he said, quickly. “How did you hear?”
Without warning she flushed scarlet to her neck; and she was as amazed as he at the surging color staining her white skin.
She could not endure that — she could not face him — so she bent her head a little in recognition of his presence and stepped past him, out along the river-bank.
He looked after her, wondering what he could have said.
She wondered, too, and her wonder grew that instead of self-pity, repugnance, and deep dread, she should feel such a divine relief from the terror that had possessed her.
Now at least she knew the worst. This was the man!
She strove to place him, to recall his face. She could not. All along she had pictured Crawford as an older man. And this broad-shouldered, tanned young fellow was Crawford, after all! Where could her eyes have been? How absurd that her indifference should have so utterly blinded her!
She stood a moment on the lawn, closing her eyes.
Oh, now she had no difficulty in recalling his face — in fact the difficulty was to shut it out, for it was before her eyes, open or shut — it was before her when she entered her bedroom and sank into a cushioned chair by the breezy window. And she took her burning cheeks in both hands and rested her elbows on her knees.
Truly terror had fled. It shamed her to find herself thanking God that her fate was to lie in the keeping of this young man. Yet it was natural, too, for the child had nigh died of horror, though the courage of the Castles had held her head high in the presence of the inevitable. And now suddenly into her gray and hopeless future, peopled by the phantoms of an old man, stepped a living, smiling young fellow, with gentle manners and honest speech, and a quick courtesy which there was no mistaking.
She had no mother — nobody to talk to — so she had long ago made a confidante of her own reflection in the looking-glass. And to the mirror she now went, meeting the reflected eyes shyly, yet smiling with friendly sympathy:
“Silly! to frighten yourself! It is all over now. He’s young and tall and sunburned. I don’t think he knows a great deal — but don’t be frightened, he is not a bit dreadful, … only … it is a pity, … but I suppose he was in love with me, … and, after all, it doesn’t matter, … only I am … sorry … for him.… If he had only cared for a girl who could love him!… I don’t suppose I could, … ever!… But I will be very kind to him, … to make up.”
III
She saw him every day; she dined at the club table now.
Miss Garcide’s hay-fever increased with the ripening summer, and she lay in her room with all the windows closed, sneezing and reading Anthony Trollope.
When Miss Castle told her that Mr. Crawford was a guest at the club, Miss Garcide wept over her for an hour.
“I feel like weeping, too,” said Miss Castle, tremulously— “but not over myself.”
“Dot over hib?” inquired Miss Garcide.
“Yes, over him. He ought to marry a girl who could fall in love with him.”
Meanwhile Crawford was dining every evening with her at the great club table, telling her of the day’s sport, and how a black bear had come splashing across the shallows within a few rods of where he stood fishing, and how the deer had increased, and were even nibbling the succulent green stalks in the kitchen garden after nightfall.
During the day she found herself looking forward to his return and his jolly, spirited stories, always gay and humorous, and never tiresome, technical, nor conceited, although for three years he had held the club cup for the best fish taken on Sagamore water.
She took sun-baths in her hammock; she read novels; she spent hours in reverie, blue eyes skyward, arms under her head, swayed in her hammock by the delicious winds of a perfect June.
All her composure and common-sense had returned. She began to experience a certain feeling of responsibility for Crawford — a feeling almost maternal.
“He’s so amusingly shy about speaking,” she told Miss Garcide; “I suppose he’s anxious and bashful. I think I’ll tell him that it is all arranged. Besides, I promised Mr. Garcide to speak. I don’t see why I don’t; I’m not a bit embarrassed.”
But the days went shining by, and a new week dawned, and Miss Castle had not taken pity upon her tongue-tied lover.
“Oh, this is simply dreadful,” she argued with herself. “Besides, I want to know how soon the man expects to marry me. I’ve a few things to purchase, thank you, and if he thinks a trousseau is thrown together in a day, he’s a — a man!”
That evening she determined to fulfil her promise to Garcide as scrupulously as she kept all her promises.
She wore white at dinner, with a great bunch of wild iris that Crawford had brought her. Towards the end of the dinner she began to be frightened, but it was the instinct of the Castles to fight fear and overcome it.
“I’m going to walk down to the little foot-bridge,” she said, steadily, examining the coffee in her tiny cup; “and if you will stroll down with your pipe, I … I will tell you something.”
“That will be very jolly,” he said. “There’s a full moon; I mean to have a try at a thumping big fish in the pool above.”
She nodded, and he rose and attended her to the door.
Then he lighted a cigar and called for a telegram blank.
This is what he wrote:
“James J. Crawford, 318 New Broad Street, N.Y.:
“I am at the Sagamore. When do you want me to return?
“James H. Crawford.”
The servant took the bit of yellow paper. Crawford lay back smoking and thinking of trout and forests and blue skies and blue eyes that he should miss very, very soon.
Meanwhile the possessor of the blue eyes was standing on the little foot-bridge that crossed the water below the lawn.
A faint freshness came upward to her from the water, cooling her face. She looked down into that sparkling dusk which hangs over woodland rivers, and she saw the ripples, all silvered, flowing under the moon, and the wild-cherry blossoms trembling and quivering with the gray wings of moths.
“Surely,” she said, aloud— “surely there is something in the world besides men. I love this — all of it! I do indeed. I could find happiness here; I do not think I was made for men.”
For a long while she stood, bending down towards the water, her whole body saturated with the perfume from the fringed milkweed. Then she raised her delicate nose a trifle, sniffing at the air, which suddenly became faintly spiced with tobacco smoke.
Where did the smoke come from? She turned instinctively. On a rock up-stream stood young Crawford, smoking peacefully, and casting a white fly into the dusky water. Swish! the silk line whistled out into the dusk.
After a few moments’ casting, she saw him step ashore and saunter towards the bridge, where she was standing; then his step jarred the structure and he came up, cap in one hand, rod in the other.
“I thought perhaps you might like to try a cast,” he said, pleasantly. “There’s a good-sized fish in the pool above; I raised him twice. He’ll scale close to five pounds, I fancy.”
“Thank you,” said Miss Castle; “that is very generous of you, because you are deliberately sacrificing the club loving-cup if I catch that fish.”
He said, laughing: “I’ve held the cup before. Try it, Miss Castle; that is a five-pound fish, and the record this spring is four and a half.”
She took the rod; he went first and she held out her hand so that he could steady her across the stones and out into the dusk.
“My skirts are soaked with the dew, anyway,” she said. “I don’t mind a wetting.”
He unslung his landing-net and waited ready; she sent the line whirling into the darkness.
“To the right,” he said.
For ten minutes she stood there casting in silence. Once a splash in the shadows set his nerves quivering, but it was only a muskrat.
“By-the-way,” she said, quietly, over her shoulder, “I know why you and I have met here.”
And as Crawford said nothing she reeled in her line, and held out her hand to him as a signal that she wished to come ashore.
He aided her, taking the rod and guiding her carefully across the dusky stepping-stones to the bank.
She shook out her damp skirts, then raised her face, which had grown a trifle pale.
“I will marry you, Mr. Crawford,” she said, bravely,— “and I hope you will make me love you. Mr. Garcide wishes it.… I understand … that you wish it. You must not feel embarrassed, … nor let me feel embarrassed. Come and talk it over. Shall we?”
There was a rustic seat on the river-bank; she sat down in one corner.
His face was in shadow; he had dropped his rod and landing-net abruptly. And now he took an uncertain step towards her and sat down at her side.
“I want you to make me love you,” she said, frankly; “I hope you will; I shall do all I can to help you. But — unless I do — will you remember that? — I do not love you.” As he was silent, she went on: “Take me as a comrade; I will go where you wish. I am really a good comrade; I can do what men do. You shall see! It will be pleasant, I think.”
After a little while he spoke in a low voice which was not perfectly steady: “Miss Castle, I am going to tell you something which you must know. I do not believe that Mr. Garcide has authorized me to offer myself to you.”
“He told me that he desired it,” she said. “That is why he brought us together. And he also said,” she added, hastily, “that you were somewhat bashful. So I thought it best to make it easy for us both. I hope I have.”
Crawford sat motionless for a long while. At last he passed his hands over his eyes, leaning forward and looking into her face.
“I’ve simply got to be honest with you,” he said; “I know there is a mistake.”
“No, there is no mistake,” she said, bending her head and looking him in the eyes— “unless you have made the mistake — unless,” she said, quickly— “you do not want me.”
“Want you!” he stammered, catching fire of a sudden— “want you, you beautiful child! I love you if ever man loved on earth! Want you?” His hand fell heavily on hers, and closed. For an instant their palms lay close together; her heart almost stopped; then a swift flame flew to her face and she struggled to withdraw her fingers twisted in his.
“You must not do that,” she said, breathlessly. “I do not love you — I warned you!”
He said: “You must love me! Can’t you understand? You made me love you — you made me! Listen to me — it is all a mistake — but it is too late now. I did not dare even think of you — I have simply got to tell you the truth — I did not dare think of you — I must say it — and I can’t understand how I could ever have seen you and not loved you. But when you spoke — when I touched you—”
“Please, please,” she said, faintly, “let me go! It is not a mistake; I — I am glad that you love me; I will try to love you. I want to — I believe I can—”
“You must!”
“Yes, … I will.… Please let me go!”
Breathless and crimson, she fell back into her corner, staring at him. He dropped his arm on the back of the rustic seat.
Presently he laughed uncertainly, and struck his forehead with his open hand.
“It’s a mistake,” he said; “and if it is a mistake, Heaven help the other man!”
She watched him with curious dismay. Never could she have believed that the touch of a man’s hand could thrill her; never had she imagined that the words of a man could set her heart leaping to meet his stammered vows. A new shame set her very limbs quaking as she strove to rise. The distress in her eyes, the new fear, the pitiful shyness, called to him for mercy.
For a miracle he understood the mute appeal, and he took her hand in his quietly and bade her good-night, saying he would stay and smoke awhile.
