Chambers Robert William
The Dark Star

CHAPTER XXVII
FROM FOUR TO FIVE

The Princess Mistchenka and Rue Carew had retired to their respective rooms for that hour between four and five in the afternoon, which the average woman devotes to cat-naps or to that aimless feminine fussing which must ever remain a mystery to man.

The afternoon had turned very warm; Neeland, in his room, lay on the lounge in his undershirt and trousers, having arrived so far toward bathing and changing his attire.

No breeze stirred the lattice blinds hanging over both open windows; the semi-dusk of the room was pierced here and there by slender shafts of sunlight which lay almost white across the carpet and striped the opposite wall; the rue Soleil d’Or was very silent in the July afternoon.

And Neeland lay there thinking about all that had happened to him and trying to bring it home to himself and make it seem plausible and real; and could not.

For even now the last ten days of his life seemed like a story he had read concerning someone else. Nor did it seem to him that he personally had known all those people concerned in this wild, exaggerated, grotesque story. They, too, took their places on the printed page, appearing, lingering, disappearing, reappearing, as chapter succeeded chapter in a romance too obvious, too palpably sensational to win the confidence and credulity of a young man of today.

Fed to repletion on noisy contemporary fiction, his finer perception blunted by the daily and raucous yell of the New York press, his imagination too long over-strained by Broadway drama and now flaccid and incapable of further response to its leering or shrieking appeal, the din of twentieth-century art fell on nerveless ears and on a brain benumbed and sceptical.

And so when everything that he had found grotesque, illogical, laboured, obvious, and clamorously redundant in literature and the drama began to happen and continued to happen in real life to him – and went on happening and involving himself and others all around him in the pleasant July sunshine of 1914, this young man, made intellectually blasé, found himself without sufficient capacity to comprehend it.

There was another matter with which his mind was struggling as he lay there, his head cradled on one elbow, watching the thin blue spirals from his cigarette mount straight to the ceiling, and that was the metamorphosis of Rue Carew.

Where was the thin girl he remembered – with her untidy chestnut hair and freckles, and a rather sweet mouth – dressed in garments the only mission of which was to cover a flat chest and frail body and limbs whose too rapid growth had outstripped maturity?

To search for her he went back to the beginning, where a little girl in a pink print dress, bare-legged and hatless, loitered along an ancient rail fence and looked up shyly at him as he warned her to keep out of range of the fusillade from the bushes across the pasture.

He thought of her again at the noisy party in Gayfield on that white night in winter; visualised the tall, shy, overgrown girl who danced with him and made no complaint when her slim foot was trodden on. And again he remembered the sleigh and the sleighbells clashing and tinkling under the moon; the light from her doorway, and how she stood looking back at him; and how, on the mischievous impulse of the moment, he had gone back and kissed her–

At the memory an odd sensation came over him, scaring him a little. How on earth had he ever had the temerity to do such a thing to her!

And, as he thought of this exquisite, slender, clear-eyed young girl who had greeted him at the Paris terminal – this charming embodiment of all that is fresh and sweet and fearless – in her perfect hat and gown of mondaine youth and fashion, the memory of his temerity appalled him.

Imagine his taking an unencouraged liberty now!

Nor could he dare imagine encouragement from the Rue Carew so amazingly revealed to him.

Out of what, in heaven’s name, had this lovely girl developed? Out of a shy, ragged, bare-legged child, haunting the wild blackberry tangles in Brookhollow?

Out of the frail, charmingly awkward, pathetic, freckled mill-hand in her home-made party clothes, the rather sweet expression of whose mouth once led him to impudent indiscretion?

Out of what had she been evolved – this young girl whom he had left just now standing beside her boudoir door with the Princess Naïa’s arm around her waist? Out of the frightened, white-lipped, shabby girl who had come dragging her trembling limbs and her suitcase up the dark stairway outside his studio? Out of the young thing with sagging hair, crouched in an armchair beside his desk, where her cheap hat lay with two cheap hatpins sticking in the crown? Out of the fragile figure buried in the bedclothes of a stateroom berth, holding out to him a thin, bare arm in voiceless adieu?

And Neeland lay there thinking, his head on his elbow, the other arm extended – from the fingers of which the burnt-out cigarette presently fell to the floor.

He thought to himself:

“She is absolutely beautiful; there’s no denying that. It’s not her clothes or the way she does her hair, or her voice, or the way she moves, or how she looks at a man; it’s the whole business. And the whole bally business is a miracle, that’s all. Good Lord! And to think I ever had the nerve – the nerve!”

He swung himself to a sitting posture, sat gazing into space for a few moments, then continued to undress by pulling off one shoe, lighting a cigarette, and regarding his other foot fixedly.

That is the manner in which the vast majority of young men do their deepest thinking.

However, before five o’clock he had scrubbed himself and arrayed his well constructed person in fresh linen and outer clothing; and now he sauntered out through the hallway and down the stairs to the rear drawing-room, where a tea-table had been brought in and tea paraphernalia arranged. Although the lamp under the kettle had been lighted, nobody was in the room except a West Highland terrier curled up on a lounge, who, without lifting his snow-white head, regarded Neeland out of the wisest and most penetrating eyes the young man had ever encountered.

Here was a personality! Here was a dog not to be approached lightly or with flippant familiarity. No! That small, long, short-legged body with its thatch of wiry white hair was fairly instinct with dignity, wisdom, and uncompromising self-respect.

“That dog,” thought Neeland, venturing to seat himself on a chair opposite, “is a Presbyterian if ever there was one. And I, for one, haven’t the courage to address him until he deigns to speak to me.”

He looked respectfully at the dog, glanced at the kettle which had begun to sizzle a little, then looked out of the long windows into the little walled garden where a few slender fruit trees grew along the walls in the rear of well-kept flower beds, now gay with phlox, larkspur, poppies, and heliotrope, and edged with the biggest and bluest pansies he had ever beheld.

On the wall a Peacock butterfly spread its brown velvet and gorgeously eyed wings to the sun’s warmth; a blackbird with brilliant yellow bill stood astride a peach twig and poured out a bubbling and incessant melody full of fluted grace notes. And on the grass oval a kitten frisked with the ghosts of last month’s dandelions, racing after the drifting fluff and occasionally keeling over to attack its own tail, after the enchanting manner of all kittens.

A step behind him and Neeland turned. It was Marotte, the butler, who presented a thick, sealed envelope to him on his salver, bent to turn down the flame under the singing silver kettle, and withdrew without a sound.

Neeland glanced at the letter in perplexity, opened the envelope and the twice-folded sheets of letter paper inside, and read this odd communication:

Have I been fair to you? Did I keep my word? Surely you must now, in your heart, acquit me of treachery – of any premeditated violence toward you.

I never dreamed that those men would come to my stateroom. That plan had been discussed, but was abandoned because it appeared impossible to get hold of you.

And also – may I admit it without being misunderstood? – I absolutely refused to permit any attempt involving your death.

When the trap shut on you, there in my stateroom, it shut also on me. I was totally unprepared; I was averse to murder; and also I had given you my word of honour.

Judge, then, of my shame and desperation – my anger at being entrapped in a false position involving the loss in your eyes of my personal honour!

It was unbearable: and I did what I could to make it clear to you that I had not betrayed you. But my comrades do not yet know that I had any part in it; do not yet understand why the ship was not blown to splinters. They are satisfied that I made a mistake in the rendezvous. And, so far, no suspicion attaches to me; they believe the mechanism of the clock failed them. And perhaps it is well for me that they believe this.

It is, no doubt, a matter of indifference to you how the others and I reached safety. I have no delusions concerning any personal and kindly feeling on your part toward me. But one thing you can not – dare not – believe, and that is that I proved treacherous to you and false to my own ideas of honour.

And now let me say one more thing to you – let me say it out of a – friendship – for which you care nothing – could not care anything. And that is this: your task is accomplished. You could not possibly have succeeded. There is no chance for recovery of those papers. Your mission is definitely ended.

Now, I beg of you to return to America. Keep clear of entanglement in these events which are beginning to happen in such rapid succession in Europe. They do not concern you; you have nothing to do with them, no interest in them. Your entry into affairs which can not concern you would be insulting effrontery and foolish bravado.

I beg you to heed this warning. I know you to be personally courageous; I suppose that fear of consequences would not deter you from intrusion into any affair, however dangerous; but I dare hope that perhaps in your heart there may have been born a little spark of friendliness – a faint warmth of recognition for a woman who took some slight chance with death to prove to you that her word of honour is not lightly given or lightly broken.

So, if you please, our ways part here with this letter sent to you by hand.

I shall not forget the rash but generous boy I knew who called me

Scheherazade.

CHAPTER XXVIII
TOGETHER

He sat there, holding the letter and looking absently over it at the little dog who had gone to sleep again. There was no sound in the room save the faint whisper of the tea-kettle. The sunny garden outside was very still, too; the blackbird appeared to doze on his peach twig; the kitten had settled down with eyes half closed and tail tucked under flank.

The young man sat there with his letter in his hand and eyes lost in retrospection for a while.

In his hand lay evidence that the gang which had followed him, and through which he no longer doubted that he had been robbed, was now in Paris.

And yet he could not give this information to the Princess Naïa. Here was a letter which he could not show. Something within him forbade it, some instinct which he did not trouble to analyse.

And this instinct sent the letter into his breast pocket as a light sound came to his ears; and the next instant Rue Carew entered the further drawing-room.

The little West Highland terrier looked up, wagged that section of him which did duty as a tail, and watched her as Neeland rose to seat her at the tea-table.

“Sandy,” she said to the little dog, “if you care to say ‘Down with the Sultan,’ I shall bestow one lump of sugar upon you.”

“Yap-yap!” said the little dog.

“Give it to him, please–” Rue handed the sugar to Neeland, who delivered it gravely.

“That’s because I want Sandy to like you,” she added.

Neeland regarded the little dog and addressed him politely:

“I shouldn’t dare call you Sandy on such brief acquaintance,” he said; “but may I salute you as Alexander? Thank you, Alexander.”

He patted the dog, whose tail made a slight, sketchy motion of approval.

“Now,” said Rue Carew, “you are friends, and we shall all be very happy together, I’m sure… Princess Naïa said we were not to wait. Tell me how to fix your tea.”

He explained. About to begin on a buttered croissant, he desisted abruptly and rose to receive the Princess, who entered with the light, springy step characteristic of her, gowned in one of those Parisian afternoon creations which never are seen outside that capital, and never will be.

“Far too charming to be real,” commented Neeland. “You are a pretty fairy story, Princess Naïa, and your gown is a miracle tale which never was true.”

He had not dared any such flippancy with Rue Carew, and the girl, who knew she was exquisitely gowned, felt an odd little pang in her heart as this young man’s praise of the Princess Mistchenka fell so easily and gaily from his lips. He might have noticed her gown, as it had been chosen with many doubts, much hesitation, and anxious consideration, for him.

She flushed a little at the momentary trace of envy:

“You are too lovely for words,” she said, rising. But the Princess gently forced her to resume her seat.

“If this young man has any discrimination,” she said, “he won’t hesitate with the golden apple, Ruhannah.”

Rue laughed and flushed:

“He hasn’t noticed my gown, and I wore it for him to notice,” she said. “But he was too deeply interested in Sandy and in tea and croissants–”

“I did notice it!” said Neeland. And, to that young man’s surprise and annoyance, his face grew hot with embarrassment. What on earth possessed him to blush like a plow-boy! He suddenly felt like one, too, and turned sharply to the little dog, perplexed, irritated with himself and his behaviour.

Behind him the Princess was saying:

“The car is here. I shan’t stop for tea, dear. In case anything happens, I am at the Embassy.”

“The Russian Embassy,” repeated Rue.

“Yes. I may be a little late. We are to dine here en famille at eight. You will entertain James–

“James!” she repeated, addressing him. “Do you think Ruhannah sufficiently interesting to entertain you while I am absent?”

But all his aplomb, his lack of self-consciousness, seemed to be gone; and Neeland made some reply which seemed to him both obvious and dull. And hated himself because he found himself so unaccountably abashed, realising that he was afraid of the opinions that this young girl might entertain concerning him.

“I’m going,” said the Princess. “Au revoir, dear; good-bye, James–”

She looked at him keenly when he turned to face her, smiled, still considering him as though she had unexpectedly discovered a new feature in his expressive face.

Whatever it was she discovered seemed to make her smile a trifle more mechanical; she turned slowly to Rue Carew, hesitated, then, nodding a gay adieu, turned and left the room with Neeland at her elbow.

“I’ll tuck you in,” he began; but she said:

“Thanks; Marotte will do that.” And left him at the door.

When the car had driven away down the rue Soleil d’Or, Neeland returned to the little drawing-room where Rue was indulging Sandy with small bits of sugar.

He took up cup and buttered croissant, and for a little while nothing was said, except to Sandy who, upon invitation, repeated his opinion of the Sultan and snapped in the offered emolument with unsatiated satisfaction.

To Rue Carew as well as to Neeland there seemed to be a slight constraint between them – something not entirely new to her since they had met again after two years.

In the two years of her absence she had been very faithful to the memory of his kindness; constant in the friendship which she had given him unasked – given him first, she sometimes thought, when she was a little child in a ragged pink frock, and he was a wonderful young man who had taken the trouble to cross the pasture and warn her out of range of the guns.

He had always held his unique place in her memory and in her innocent affections; she had written to him again and again, in spite of his evident lack of interest in the girl to whom he had been kind. Rare, brief letters from him were read and reread, and laid away with her best-loved treasures. And when the prospect of actually seeing him again presented itself, she had been so frankly excited and happy that the Princess Mistchenka could find in the girl’s unfeigned delight nothing except a young girl’s touching and slightly amusing hero-worship.

But with her first exclamation when she caught sight of him at the terminal, something about her preconceived ideas of him, and her memory of him, was suddenly and subtly altered, even while his name fell from her excited lips.

Because she had suddenly realised that he was even more wonderful than she had expected or remembered, and that she did not know him at all – that she had no knowledge of this tall, handsome, well-built young fellow with his sunburnt features and his air of smiling aloofness and of graceful assurance, almost fascinating and a trifle disturbing.

Which had made the girl rather grave and timid, uncertain of the estimation in which he might hold her; no longer so sure of any encouragement from him in her perfectly obvious attitude of a friend of former days.

And so, shyly admiring, uncertain, inclined to warm response at any advance from this wonderful young man, the girl had been trying to adjust herself to this new incarnation of a certain James Neeland who had won her gratitude and who had awed her, too, from the time when, as a little girl, she had first beheld him.

She lifted her golden-grey eyes to him; a little unexpected sensation not wholly unpleasant checked her speech for a moment.

This was odd, even unaccountable. Such awkwardness, such disquieting and provincial timidity wouldn’t do.

“Would you mind telling me a little about Brookhollow?” she ventured.

Certainly he would tell her. He laid aside his plate and tea cup and told her of his visits there when he had walked over from Neeland’s Mills in the pleasant summer weather.

Nothing had changed, he assured her; mill-dam and pond and bridge, and the rushing creek below were exactly as she knew them; her house stood there at the crossroads, silent and closed in the sunshine, and under the high moon; pickerel and sunfish still haunted the shallow pond; partridges still frequented the alders and willows across her pasture; fireflies sailed through the summer night; and the crows congregated in the evening woods and talked over the events of the day.

“And my cat? You wrote that you would take care of Adoniram.”

“Adoniram is an aged patriarch and occupies the place of honour in my father’s house,” he said.

“He is well?”

“Oh, yes. He prefers his food cut finely, that is all.”

“I don’t suppose he will live very long.”

“He’s pretty old,” admitted Neeland.

She sighed and looked out of the window at the kitten in the garden. And, after an interval of silence:

“Our plot in the cemetery – is it – pretty?”

“It is beautiful,” he said, “under the great trees. It is well cared for. I had them plant the shrubs and flowers you mentioned in the list you sent me.”

“Thank you.” She lifted her eyes again to him. “I wonder if you realise how – how splendid you have always been to me.”

Surprised, he reddened, and said awkwardly that he had done nothing. Where was the easy, gay and debonaire assurance of this fluent young man? He was finding nothing to say to Rue Carew, or saying what he said as crudely and uncouthly as any haymaker in Gayfield.

He looked up, exasperated, and met her eyes squarely. And Rue Carew blushed.

They both looked elsewhere at once, but in the girl’s breast a new pulse beat; a new instinct stirred, blindly importuning her for recognition; a new confusion threatened the ordered serenity of her mind, vaguely menacing it with unaccustomed questions.

Then the instinct of self-command returned; she found composure with an effort.

“You haven’t asked me,” she said, “about my work. Would you like to know?”

He said he would; and she told him – chary of self-praise, yet eager that he should know that her masters had spoken well of her.

“And you know,” she said, “every week, now, I contribute a drawing to the illustrated paper I wrote to you about. I sent one off yesterday. But,” and she laughed shyly, “my nostrils are no longer filled with pride, because I am not contented with myself any more. I wish to do – oh, so much better work!”

“Of course. Contentment in creative work means that we have nothing more to create.”

She nodded and smiled:

“The youngest born is the most tenderly cherished – until a new one comes. It is that way with me; I am all love and devotion and tenderness and self-sacrifice while fussing over my youngest. Then a still younger comes, and I become like a heartless cat and drive away all progeny except the newly born.”

She sighed and smiled and looked up at him:

“It can’t be helped, I suppose – that is, if one’s going to have more progeny.”

“It’s our penalty for producing. Only the newest counts. And those to come are to be miracles. But they never are.”

She nodded seriously.

“When there is a better light I should like to show you some of my studies,” she ventured. “No, not now. I am too vain to risk anything except the kindest of morning lights. Because I do hope for your approval–”

“I know they’re good,” he said. And, half laughingly: “I’m beginning to find out that you’re a rather wonderful and formidable and overpowering girl, Ruhannah.”

“You don’t think so!” she exclaimed, enchanted. “Do you? Oh, dear! Then I feel that I ought to show you my pictures and set you right immediately–” She sprang to her feet. “I’ll get them; I’ll be only a moment–”

She was gone before he discovered anything to say, leaving him to walk up and down the deserted room and think about her as clearly as his somewhat dislocated thoughts permitted, until she returned with both arms full of portfolios, boards, and panels.

“Now,” she said with a breathless smile, “you may mortify my pride and rebuke my vanity. I deserve it; I need it; but Oh! – don’t be too severe–”

“Are you serious?” he asked, looking up in astonishment from the first astonishing drawing in colour which he held between his hands.

“Serious? Of course–” She met his eyes anxiously, then her own became incredulous and the swift colour dyed her face.

“Do you like my work?” she asked in a fainter voice.

“Like it!” He continued to stare at the bewildering grace and colour of the work, turned to another and lifted it to the light:

“What’s this?” he demanded.

“A monotype.”

“You did it?”

“Y-yes.”

He seemed unable to take his eyes from it – from the exquisite figures there in the sun on the bank of the brimming river under an iris-tinted April sky.

“What do you call it, Rue?”

“Baroque.”

He continued to scrutinise it in silence, then drew another carton prepared for oil from the sheaf on the sofa.

Over autumn woods, in a windy sky, high-flying crows were buffeted and blown about. From the stark trees a few phantom leaves clung, fluttering; and the whole scene was possessed by sinuous, whirling forms – mere glimpses of supple, exquisite shapes tossing, curling, flowing through the naked woodland. A delicate finger caught at a dead leaf here; there frail arms clutched at a bending, wind-tossed bough; grey sky and ghostly forest were obsessed, bewitched by the winnowing, driving torrent of airy, half seen spirits.

“The Winds,” he said mechanically.

He looked at another – a sketch of the Princess Naïa. And somehow it made him think of vast skies and endless plains and the tumult of surging men and rattling lances.

“A Cossack,” he said, half to himself. “I never before realised it.” And he laid it aside and turned to the next.

“I haven’t brought any life studies or school drawings,” she said. “I thought I’d just show you the – the results of them and of – of whatever is in me.”

“I’m just beginning to understand what is in you,” he said.

“Tell me – what is it?” she asked, almost timidly.

“Tell you?” He rose, stood by the window looking out, then turned to her:

“What can I tell you?” he added with a short laugh. “What have I to say to a girl who can do —these– after two years abroad?”

Sheer happiness kept her silent. She had not dared hope for such approval. Even now she dared not permit herself to accept it.

“I have so much to say,” she ventured, “and such an appalling amount of work before I can learn to say it–”

“Your work is – stunning!” he said bluntly.

“You don’t think so!” she exclaimed incredulously.

“Indeed I do! Look at what you have done in two years. Yes, grant all your aptitude and talents, just look what you’ve accomplished and where you are! Look at you yourself, too – what a stunning, bewildering sort of girl you’ve developed into!”

“Jim Neeland!”

“Certainly, Jim Neeland, of Neeland’s Mills, who has had years more study than you have, more years of advantage, and who now is an illustrator without anything in particular to distinguish him from the several thousand other American illustrators–”

“Jim! Your work is charming!”

“How do you know?”

“Because I have everything you ever did! I sent for the magazines and cut them out; and they are in my scrapbook–”

She hesitated, breathless, smiling back at him out of her beautiful golden-grey eyes as though challenging him to doubt her loyalty or her belief in him.

It was rather curious, too, for the girl was unusually intelligent and discriminating; and Neeland’s work was very, very commonplace.

His face had become rather sober, but the smile still lurked on his lips.

“Rue,” he said, “you are wonderfully kind. But I’m afraid I know about my work. I can draw pretty well, according to school standards; and I approach pretty nearly the same standards in painting. Probably that is why I became an instructor at the Art League. But, so far, I haven’t done anything better than what is called ‘acceptable.’”

“I don’t agree with you,” she said warmly.

“It’s very kind of you not to.” He laughed and walked to the window again, and stood there looking out across the sunny garden. “Of course,” he added over his shoulder, “I expect to get along all right. Mediocrity has the best of chances, you know.”

“You are not mediocre!”

“No, I don’t think I am. But my work is. And, do you know,” he continued thoughtfully, “that is very often the case with a man who is better equipped to act than to tell with pen or pencil how others act. I’m beginning to be afraid that I’m that sort, because I’m afraid that I get more enjoyment out of doing things than in explaining with pencil and paint how they are done.”

But Rue Carew, seated on the arm of her chair, slowly shook her head:

“I don’t think that those are the only alternatives; do you?”

“What other is there?”

She said, a little shyly:

“I think it is all right to do things if you like; make exact pictures of how things are done if you choose; but it seems to me that if one really has anything to say, one should show in one’s pictures how things might be or ought to be. Don’t you?”

He seemed surprised and interested in her logic, and she took courage to speak again in her pretty, deprecating way:

“If the function of painting and literature is to reflect reality, a mirror would do as well, wouldn’t it? But to reflect what might be or what ought to be requires something more, doesn’t it?”

“Imagination. Yes.”

“A mind, anyway… That is what I have thought; but I’m not at all sure I am right.”

“I don’t know. The mind ought to be a mirror reflecting only the essentials of reality.”

“And that requires imagination, doesn’t it?” she asked. “You see you have put it much better than I have.”

“Have I?” he returned, smiling. “After a while you’ll persuade me that I possess your imagination, Rue. But I don’t.”

“You do, Jim–”

“I’m sorry; I don’t. You construct, I copy; you create, I ring changes on what already is; you dissect, I skate over the surface of things – Oh, Lord! I don’t know what’s lacking in me!” he added with gay pretence of despair which possibly was less feigned than real. “But I know this, Rue Carew! I’d rather experience something interesting than make a picture of it. And I suppose that confession is fatal.”

“Why, Jim?”

“Because with me the pleasures of reality are substituted for the pleasures of imagination. Not that I don’t like to draw and paint. But my ambition in painting is and always has been bounded by the visible. And, although that does not prevent me from appreciation – from understanding and admiring your work, for example – it sets an impregnable limit to any such aspiration on my part–”

His mobile and youthful features had become very grave; he stood a moment with lowered head as though what he was thinking of depressed him; then the quick smile came into his face and cleared it, and he said gaily:

“I’m an artistic Dobbin; a reliable, respectable sort of Fido on whom editors can depend; that’s all. Don’t feel sorry for me,” he added, laughing; “my work will be very much in demand.”