Probably, if you were to try it, they'd appreciate a bit of gall. Itwould show 'em you'd got pep. You go down there and try walkingstraight in. They can't eat you. It makes me sick when I see allthose poor devils hanging about outside these offices, waiting to getnoticed and nobody ever paying any attention to them. You push theoffice-boy in the face if he tries to stop you, and go in and make'em take notice. And, whatever you do, don't leave your name andaddress! That's the old, moth-eaten gag they're sure to try to pullon you. Tell 'em there's nothing doing. Say you're out for a quickdecision! Stand 'em on their heads!"Jill got up, fired by this eloquence. She called for her check.
"Good-bye," she said. "I'm going to do exactly as you say. Where canI find you afterwards?" she said to Nelly.
"You aren't really going?""I am!"Nelly scribbled on a piece of paper.
"Here's my address. I'll be in all evening.""I'll come and see you. Good-bye, Mr Brown. And thank you.""You're welcome!" said Mr Brown.
Nelly watched Jill depart with wide eyes.
"Why did you tell her to do that?" she said.
"Why not?" said Mr Brown. "I started something, didn't I? Well, Iguess I'll have to be leaving, too. Got to get back to rehearsal.
Say, I like that friend of yours, Nelly. There's no yellow streakabout her! I wish her luck!"
Chapter 10
1.
THE offices of Messrs Goble and Cohn were situated, like everythingelse in New York that appertains to the drama, in the neighborhood ofTimes Square. They occupied the fifth floor of the Gotham Theatre onWest Forty-second Street. As there was no elevator in the buildingexcept the small private one used by the two members of the firm,Jill walked up the stairs, and found signs of a thriving businessbeginning to present themselves as early as the third floor, wherehalf a dozen patient persons of either sex had draped themselves likeroosting fowls upon the banisters. There were more on the fourthfloor, and the landing of the fifth, which served the firm as awaiting-room, was quite full. It is the custom of theatricalmanagers--the lowest order of intelligence, with the possibleexception of the _limax maximus_ or garden slug, known to science--toomit from their calculations the fact that they are likely every dayto receive a large number of visitors, whom they will be obliged tokeep waiting; and that these people will require somewhere to wait.
Such considerations never occur to them. Messrs Goble and Cohn hadprovided for those who called to see them one small bench on thelanding, conveniently situated at the intersecting point of threedraughts, and had let it go at that.
Nobody, except perhaps the night-watchman, had ever seen this benchempty. At whatever hour of the day you happened to call, you wouldalways find three wistful individuals seated side by side with theireyes on the tiny ante-room where sat the office-boy, thetelephone-girl, and Mr Goble's stenographer. Beyond this was the doormarked "Private," through which, as it opened to admit some careless,debonair, thousand-dollar-a-week comedian who sauntered in with ajaunty "Hello, Ike!" or some furred and scented female star, the rankand file of the profession were greeted, like Moses on Pisgah, with afleeting glimpse of the promised land, consisting of a large desk anda section of a very fat man with spectacles and a bald head or ayounger man with fair hair and a double chin.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Saturday, November 3, 2012
here's a chance I've been hoping for
"Bob, here's a chance I've been hoping for," said Shad, when Bob interpreted to him the Indians' plan. "Do you think they would be willing to let me go with them until their return here, if I gave them some tobacco?"
"They's no tellin', Shad, how long they'll be away," suggested Bob.
"But I want to go if they'll let me go. Please ask them," insisted Shad.
"But they may not be findin' deer, an' if they don't find un they won't be comin' back here till th' end o' winter. You don't want t' be with un th' rest o' th' winter, Shad; 'twill be rougher cruisin' than with us," Bob warned.
"Ask them. I'm going if they'll have me along;" and Shad displayed in his tone a suggestion of resentment that Bob should question the advisability of anything upon which he had determined.
The Indians discussed the matter at some length before finally giving Bob an affirmative decision.
"They says you can go, Shad, but they'll not promise t' be back here for two months, whatever, an' when they does they'll come t' th' river tilt with you," said Bob.
"Good! It'll give me some change of experience, and the chance to study their life and customs that I've wanted;" and Shad was elated with the prospect.
Partly because of the earnest solicitation of his Indian friends, but chiefly in the hope of dissuading Shad from his determination, Bob remained in the Indian camp the remainder of the week. While they still maintained a degree of reserve toward Shad, Bob was treated in every respect as one of them.
Manikawan made him the object of her particular attention. She waited upon him as the Indian women wait upon their lords, anticipating his needs.
In expectation of his coming she had, after her return from the river tilt, made for him a beautiful coat of caribou skins. The hair, left on the skins, made a warm lining, while the outside of the coat, tanned as soft and white as chamois, was decorated with designs painted in colours. Attached to it was a hood of wolfskin.
Accompanying the coat was a pair of long, close-fitting buckskin leggings, and a pair of buckskin moccasins, both decorated, and the whole comprising the typical winter suit of a Nascaupee hunter.
Manikawan's attentions were extremely irritating to Bob, but he could not well avoid them, and to have declined to accept the gift which she had made especially for him in anticipation of his coming, would have caused her keen disappointment. So he accepted them and donned them, to her evident delight.
"Shad," said Bob, on the Sunday evening after their arrival "I has t' start back in th' mornin', an' you better be goin' with me."
"No," insisted Shad, "I'll stick to the Indians for a while."
The following morning Bob bade them adieu.
"Take care of yourself, old man," said Shad. "I'll see you in a month or so."
"I hopes so, Shad, an' you take care o' yourself, now. I'm fearin' t' leave you, Shad."
"Oh, I know how to look out for myself," declared Shad. "Don't worry about me."
Turning to Manikawan, who stood mutely waiting for the word of farewell that she hoped Bob would bestow upon her, he said, in the Indian tongue:
"They's no tellin', Shad, how long they'll be away," suggested Bob.
"But I want to go if they'll let me go. Please ask them," insisted Shad.
"But they may not be findin' deer, an' if they don't find un they won't be comin' back here till th' end o' winter. You don't want t' be with un th' rest o' th' winter, Shad; 'twill be rougher cruisin' than with us," Bob warned.
"Ask them. I'm going if they'll have me along;" and Shad displayed in his tone a suggestion of resentment that Bob should question the advisability of anything upon which he had determined.
The Indians discussed the matter at some length before finally giving Bob an affirmative decision.
"They says you can go, Shad, but they'll not promise t' be back here for two months, whatever, an' when they does they'll come t' th' river tilt with you," said Bob.
"Good! It'll give me some change of experience, and the chance to study their life and customs that I've wanted;" and Shad was elated with the prospect.
Partly because of the earnest solicitation of his Indian friends, but chiefly in the hope of dissuading Shad from his determination, Bob remained in the Indian camp the remainder of the week. While they still maintained a degree of reserve toward Shad, Bob was treated in every respect as one of them.
Manikawan made him the object of her particular attention. She waited upon him as the Indian women wait upon their lords, anticipating his needs.
In expectation of his coming she had, after her return from the river tilt, made for him a beautiful coat of caribou skins. The hair, left on the skins, made a warm lining, while the outside of the coat, tanned as soft and white as chamois, was decorated with designs painted in colours. Attached to it was a hood of wolfskin.
Accompanying the coat was a pair of long, close-fitting buckskin leggings, and a pair of buckskin moccasins, both decorated, and the whole comprising the typical winter suit of a Nascaupee hunter.
Manikawan's attentions were extremely irritating to Bob, but he could not well avoid them, and to have declined to accept the gift which she had made especially for him in anticipation of his coming, would have caused her keen disappointment. So he accepted them and donned them, to her evident delight.
"Shad," said Bob, on the Sunday evening after their arrival "I has t' start back in th' mornin', an' you better be goin' with me."
"No," insisted Shad, "I'll stick to the Indians for a while."
The following morning Bob bade them adieu.
"Take care of yourself, old man," said Shad. "I'll see you in a month or so."
"I hopes so, Shad, an' you take care o' yourself, now. I'm fearin' t' leave you, Shad."
"Oh, I know how to look out for myself," declared Shad. "Don't worry about me."
Turning to Manikawan, who stood mutely waiting for the word of farewell that she hoped Bob would bestow upon her, he said, in the Indian tongue:
The doctor pursed his lips
The doctor pursed his lips. "None," he delivered judicially. "If one were able to recall one's childhood--at the age of about twelve or thirteen--when the artistic impulse so often goes into abeyance and one begins to think in a troubled, monstrous way about God and Hell, one might get something like the mind of this place."
"Thirteen. You put them at that already?... These people, you think, were religious?"
"Intensely. In that personal way that gives death a nightmare terror. And as for the fading of the artistic impulse, they've left not a trace of the paintings and drawings and scratchings of the Old Stone people who came before them."
"Adults with the minds of thirteen-year-old children. Thirteen-year-old children with the strength of adults--and no one to slap them or tell them not to.... After all, they probably only thought of death now and then. And they never thought of fuel. They supposed there was no end to that. So they used up their woods and kept goats to nibble and kill the new undergrowth. DID these people have goats?"
"I don't know," said the doctor. "So little is known."
"Very like children they must have been. The same unending days. They must have thought that the world went on for ever-just as they knew it--like my damned Committee does.... With their fuel wasting away and the climate changing imperceptibly, century by century.... Kings and important men followed one another here for centuries and centuries.... They had lost their past and had no idea of any future.. .. They had forgotten how they came into the land... When I was a child I believed that my father's garden had been there for ever....
"This is very like trying to remember some game one played when one was a child. It is like coming on something that one built up with bricks and stones in some forgotten part of the garden...."
"The life we lived here," said the doctor, "has left its traces in traditions, in mental predispositions, in still unanalyzed fundamental ideas."
"Archaeology is very like remembering," said Sir Richmond. "Presently we shall remember a lot more about all this. We shall remember what it was like to live in this place, and the long journey hither, age by age out of the south. We shall remember the sacrifices we made and the crazy reasons why we made them. We sowed our corn in blood here. We had strange fancies about the stars. Those we brought with us out of the south where the stars are brighter. And what like were those wooden gods of ours? I don't remember.... But I could easily persuade myself that I had been here before."
They stood on the crest of the ancient wall and the setting sun cast long shadows of them athwart a field of springing wheat.
"Perhaps we shall come here again," the doctor carried on Sir Richmond's fancy; "after another four thousand years or so, with different names and fuller minds. And then I suppose that this ditch won't be the riddle it is now."
"Life didn't seem so complicated then," Sir Richmond mused. "Our muddles were unconscious. We drifted from mood to mood and forgot. There was more sunshine then, more laughter perhaps, and blacker despair. Despair like the despair of children that can weep itself to sleep.... It's over.... Was it battle and massacre that ended that long afternoon here? Or did the woods catch fire some exceptionally dry summer, leaving black hills and famine? Or did strange men bring a sickness--measles, perhaps, or the black death? Or was it cattle pest? Or did we just waste our woods and dwindle away before the new peoples that came into the land across the southern sea? I can't remember...."
"Thirteen. You put them at that already?... These people, you think, were religious?"
"Intensely. In that personal way that gives death a nightmare terror. And as for the fading of the artistic impulse, they've left not a trace of the paintings and drawings and scratchings of the Old Stone people who came before them."
"Adults with the minds of thirteen-year-old children. Thirteen-year-old children with the strength of adults--and no one to slap them or tell them not to.... After all, they probably only thought of death now and then. And they never thought of fuel. They supposed there was no end to that. So they used up their woods and kept goats to nibble and kill the new undergrowth. DID these people have goats?"
"I don't know," said the doctor. "So little is known."
"Very like children they must have been. The same unending days. They must have thought that the world went on for ever-just as they knew it--like my damned Committee does.... With their fuel wasting away and the climate changing imperceptibly, century by century.... Kings and important men followed one another here for centuries and centuries.... They had lost their past and had no idea of any future.. .. They had forgotten how they came into the land... When I was a child I believed that my father's garden had been there for ever....
"This is very like trying to remember some game one played when one was a child. It is like coming on something that one built up with bricks and stones in some forgotten part of the garden...."
"The life we lived here," said the doctor, "has left its traces in traditions, in mental predispositions, in still unanalyzed fundamental ideas."
"Archaeology is very like remembering," said Sir Richmond. "Presently we shall remember a lot more about all this. We shall remember what it was like to live in this place, and the long journey hither, age by age out of the south. We shall remember the sacrifices we made and the crazy reasons why we made them. We sowed our corn in blood here. We had strange fancies about the stars. Those we brought with us out of the south where the stars are brighter. And what like were those wooden gods of ours? I don't remember.... But I could easily persuade myself that I had been here before."
They stood on the crest of the ancient wall and the setting sun cast long shadows of them athwart a field of springing wheat.
"Perhaps we shall come here again," the doctor carried on Sir Richmond's fancy; "after another four thousand years or so, with different names and fuller minds. And then I suppose that this ditch won't be the riddle it is now."
"Life didn't seem so complicated then," Sir Richmond mused. "Our muddles were unconscious. We drifted from mood to mood and forgot. There was more sunshine then, more laughter perhaps, and blacker despair. Despair like the despair of children that can weep itself to sleep.... It's over.... Was it battle and massacre that ended that long afternoon here? Or did the woods catch fire some exceptionally dry summer, leaving black hills and famine? Or did strange men bring a sickness--measles, perhaps, or the black death? Or was it cattle pest? Or did we just waste our woods and dwindle away before the new peoples that came into the land across the southern sea? I can't remember...."
For awhile there was silence between us
For awhile there was silence between us, then Leo said —“Do you remember, Horace, when we lay upon the Rocking Stone where her cloak fell upon me —” as he said the words the breath caught in his throat —“how the ray of light was sent to us in farewell, and to show us a path of escape from the Place of Death? Now I think that it has been sent again in greeting to point out the path to the Place of Life where Ayesha dwells, whom we have lost awhile.”
“It may be so,” I answered shortly, for the matter was beyond speech or argument, beyond wonder even. But I knew then, as I know now that we were players in some mighty, predestined drama; that our parts were written and we must speak them, as our path was prepared and we must tread it to the end unknown. Fear and doubt were left behind, hope was sunk in certainty; the fore-shadowing visions of the night had found an actual fulfilment and the pitiful seed of the promise of her who died, growing unseen through all the cruel, empty years, had come to harvest.
No, we feared no more, not even when with the dawn rose the roaring wind, through which we struggled down the mountain slopes, as it would seem in peril of our lives at every step; not even as hour by hour we fought our way onwards through the whirling snow-storm, that made us deaf and blind. For we knew that those lives were charmed. We could not see or hear, yet we were led. Clinging to the yak, we struggled downward and homewards, till at length out of the turmoil and the gloom its instinct brought us unharmed to the door of the monastery, where the old abbot embraced us in his joy, and the monks put up prayers of thanks. For they were sure that we must be dead. Through such a storm, they said, no man had ever lived before.
It was still mid-winter, and oh! the awful weariness of those months of waiting. In our hands was the key, yonder amongst those mountains lay the door, but not yet might we set that key within its lock. For between us and these stretched the great desert, where the snow rolled like billows, and until that snow melted we dared not attempt its passage. So we sat in the monastery, and schooled our hearts to patience.
Still even to these frozen wilds of Central Asia spring comes at last. One evening the air felt warm, and that night there were only a few degrees of frost. The next the clouds banked up, and in the morning not snow was falling from them, but rain, and we found the old monks preparing their instruments of husbandry, as they said that the season of sowing was at hand. For three days it rained, while the snows melted before our eyes. On the fourth torrents of water were rushing down the mountain and the desert was once more brown and bare, though not for long, for within another week it was carpeted with flowers. Then we knew that the time had come to start.
“But whither go you? Whither go you?” asked the old abbot in dismay. “Are you not happy here? Do you not make great strides along the Path, as may be known by your pious conversation? Is not everything that we have your own? Oh! why would you leave us?”
“It may be so,” I answered shortly, for the matter was beyond speech or argument, beyond wonder even. But I knew then, as I know now that we were players in some mighty, predestined drama; that our parts were written and we must speak them, as our path was prepared and we must tread it to the end unknown. Fear and doubt were left behind, hope was sunk in certainty; the fore-shadowing visions of the night had found an actual fulfilment and the pitiful seed of the promise of her who died, growing unseen through all the cruel, empty years, had come to harvest.
No, we feared no more, not even when with the dawn rose the roaring wind, through which we struggled down the mountain slopes, as it would seem in peril of our lives at every step; not even as hour by hour we fought our way onwards through the whirling snow-storm, that made us deaf and blind. For we knew that those lives were charmed. We could not see or hear, yet we were led. Clinging to the yak, we struggled downward and homewards, till at length out of the turmoil and the gloom its instinct brought us unharmed to the door of the monastery, where the old abbot embraced us in his joy, and the monks put up prayers of thanks. For they were sure that we must be dead. Through such a storm, they said, no man had ever lived before.
It was still mid-winter, and oh! the awful weariness of those months of waiting. In our hands was the key, yonder amongst those mountains lay the door, but not yet might we set that key within its lock. For between us and these stretched the great desert, where the snow rolled like billows, and until that snow melted we dared not attempt its passage. So we sat in the monastery, and schooled our hearts to patience.
Still even to these frozen wilds of Central Asia spring comes at last. One evening the air felt warm, and that night there were only a few degrees of frost. The next the clouds banked up, and in the morning not snow was falling from them, but rain, and we found the old monks preparing their instruments of husbandry, as they said that the season of sowing was at hand. For three days it rained, while the snows melted before our eyes. On the fourth torrents of water were rushing down the mountain and the desert was once more brown and bare, though not for long, for within another week it was carpeted with flowers. Then we knew that the time had come to start.
“But whither go you? Whither go you?” asked the old abbot in dismay. “Are you not happy here? Do you not make great strides along the Path, as may be known by your pious conversation? Is not everything that we have your own? Oh! why would you leave us?”
Friday, November 2, 2012
For several minutes Reginald Clarke followed with keen delight each delicate curve her graceful limb
For several minutes Reginald Clarke followed with keen delight each delicate curve her graceful limbs described. Then--was it that she grew tired, or that the stranger's persistent scrutiny embarrassed her?--the music oozed out of her movements. They grew slower, angular, almost clumsy. The look of interest in Clarke's eyes died, but his whole form quivered, as if the rhythm of the music and the dance had mysteriously entered into his blood.
He continued his stroll, seemingly without aim; in reality he followed, with nervous intensity, the multiform undulations of the populace, swarming through Broadway in either direction. Like the giant whose strength was rekindled every time he touched his mother, the earth, Reginald Clarke seemed to draw fresh vitality from every contact with life.
He turned east along Fourteenth street, where cheap vaudevilles are strung together as glass-pearls on the throat of a wanton. Gaudy bill-boards, drenched in clamorous red, proclaimed the tawdry attractions within. Much to the surprise of the doorkeeper at a particularly evil-looking music hall, Reginald Clarke lingered in the lobby, and finally even bought a ticket that entitled him to enter this sordid wilderness of decollete art. Street-snipes, a few workingmen, dilapidated sportsmen, and women whose ruined youth thick layers of powder and paint, even in this artificial light, could not restore, constituted the bulk of the audience. Reginald Clarke, apparently unconscious of the curiosity, surprise and envy that his appearance excited, seated himself at a table near the stage, ordering from the solicitous waiter only a cocktail and a programme. The drink he left untouched, while his eyes greedily ran down the lines of the announcement. When he had found what he sought, he lit a cigar, paying no attention to the boards, but studying the audience with cursory interest until the appearance of Betsy, the Hyacinth Girl.
When she began to sing, his mind still wandered. The words of her song were crude, but not without a certain lilt that delighted the uncultured ear, while the girl's voice was thin to the point of being unpleasant. When, however, she came to the burden of the song, Clarke's manner changed suddenly. Laying down his cigar, he listened with rapt attention, eagerly gazing at her. For, as she sang the last line and tore the hyacinth-blossoms from her hair, there crept into her voice a strangely poignant, pathetic little thrill, that redeemed the execrable faultiness of her singing, and brought the rude audience under her spell.
Clarke, too, was captivated by that tremour, the infinite sadness of which suggested the plaint of souls moaning low at night, when lust preys on creatures marked for its spoil.
The singer paused. Still those luminous eyes were upon her. She grew nervous. It was only with tremendous difficulty that she reached the refrain. As she sang the opening lines of the last stanza, an inscrutable smile curled on Clarke's lips. She noticed the man's relentless gaze and faltered. When the burden came, her singing was hard and cracked: the tremour had gone from her voice.
He continued his stroll, seemingly without aim; in reality he followed, with nervous intensity, the multiform undulations of the populace, swarming through Broadway in either direction. Like the giant whose strength was rekindled every time he touched his mother, the earth, Reginald Clarke seemed to draw fresh vitality from every contact with life.
He turned east along Fourteenth street, where cheap vaudevilles are strung together as glass-pearls on the throat of a wanton. Gaudy bill-boards, drenched in clamorous red, proclaimed the tawdry attractions within. Much to the surprise of the doorkeeper at a particularly evil-looking music hall, Reginald Clarke lingered in the lobby, and finally even bought a ticket that entitled him to enter this sordid wilderness of decollete art. Street-snipes, a few workingmen, dilapidated sportsmen, and women whose ruined youth thick layers of powder and paint, even in this artificial light, could not restore, constituted the bulk of the audience. Reginald Clarke, apparently unconscious of the curiosity, surprise and envy that his appearance excited, seated himself at a table near the stage, ordering from the solicitous waiter only a cocktail and a programme. The drink he left untouched, while his eyes greedily ran down the lines of the announcement. When he had found what he sought, he lit a cigar, paying no attention to the boards, but studying the audience with cursory interest until the appearance of Betsy, the Hyacinth Girl.
When she began to sing, his mind still wandered. The words of her song were crude, but not without a certain lilt that delighted the uncultured ear, while the girl's voice was thin to the point of being unpleasant. When, however, she came to the burden of the song, Clarke's manner changed suddenly. Laying down his cigar, he listened with rapt attention, eagerly gazing at her. For, as she sang the last line and tore the hyacinth-blossoms from her hair, there crept into her voice a strangely poignant, pathetic little thrill, that redeemed the execrable faultiness of her singing, and brought the rude audience under her spell.
Clarke, too, was captivated by that tremour, the infinite sadness of which suggested the plaint of souls moaning low at night, when lust preys on creatures marked for its spoil.
The singer paused. Still those luminous eyes were upon her. She grew nervous. It was only with tremendous difficulty that she reached the refrain. As she sang the opening lines of the last stanza, an inscrutable smile curled on Clarke's lips. She noticed the man's relentless gaze and faltered. When the burden came, her singing was hard and cracked: the tremour had gone from her voice.
Alexander took her two hands from his shoulders and swung them back and forth in his own
Alexander took her two hands from his shoulders and swung them back and forth in his own, laughing his big blond laugh.
“I’m growing older, my dear; that’s what you feel. Now, may I show you something? I meant to save them until tomorrow, but I want you to wear them to-night.” He took a little leather box out of his pocket and opened it. On the white velvet lay two long pendants of curiously worked gold, set with pearls. Winifred looked from the box to Bartley and exclaimed:—
“Where did you ever find such gold work, Bartley?”
“It’s old Flemish. Isn’t it fine?”
“They are the most beautiful things, dear. But, you know, I never wear earrings.”
“Yes, yes, I know. But I want you to wear them. I have always wanted you to. So few women can. There must be a good ear, to begin with, and a nose” — he waved his hand — “above reproach. Most women look silly in them. They go only with faces like yours — very, very proud, and just a little hard.”
Winifred laughed as she went over to the mirror and fitted the delicate springs to the lobes of her ears. “Oh, Bartley, that old foolishness about my being hard. It really hurts my feelings. But I must go down now. People are beginning to come.”
Bartley drew her arm about his neck and went to the door with her. “Not hard to me, Winifred,” he whispered. “Never, never hard to me.”
Left alone, he paced up and down his study. He was at home again, among all the dear familiar things that spoke to him of so many happy years. His house to-night would be full of charming people, who liked and admired him. Yet all the time, underneath his pleasure and hopefulness and satisfaction, he was conscious of the vibration of an unnatural excitement. Amid this light and warmth and friendliness, he sometimes started and shuddered, as if some one had stepped on his grave. Something had broken loose in him of which he knew nothing except that it was sullen and powerful, and that it wrung and tortured him. Sometimes it came upon him softly, in enervating reveries. Sometimes it battered him like the cannon rolling in the hold of the vessel. Always, now, it brought with it a sense of quickened life, of stimulating danger. To-night it came upon him suddenly, as he was walking the floor, after his wife left him. It seemed impossible; he could not believe it. He glanced entreatingly at the door, as if to call her back. He heard voices in the hall below, and knew that he must go down. Going over to the window, he looked out at the lights across the river. How could this happen here, in his own house, among the things he loved? What was it that reached in out of the darkness and thrilled him? As he stood there he had a feeling that he would never escape. He shut his eyes and pressed his forehead against the cold window glass, breathing in the chill that came through it. “That this,” he groaned, “that this should have happened to ME!”
On New Year’s day a thaw set in, and during the night torrents of rain fell. In the morning, the morning of Alexander’s departure for England, the river was streaked with fog and the rain drove hard against the windows of the breakfast-room. Alexander had finished his coffee and was pacing up and down. His wife sat at the table, watching him. She was pale and unnaturally calm. When Thomas brought the letters, Bartley sank into his chair and ran them over rapidly.
“I’m growing older, my dear; that’s what you feel. Now, may I show you something? I meant to save them until tomorrow, but I want you to wear them to-night.” He took a little leather box out of his pocket and opened it. On the white velvet lay two long pendants of curiously worked gold, set with pearls. Winifred looked from the box to Bartley and exclaimed:—
“Where did you ever find such gold work, Bartley?”
“It’s old Flemish. Isn’t it fine?”
“They are the most beautiful things, dear. But, you know, I never wear earrings.”
“Yes, yes, I know. But I want you to wear them. I have always wanted you to. So few women can. There must be a good ear, to begin with, and a nose” — he waved his hand — “above reproach. Most women look silly in them. They go only with faces like yours — very, very proud, and just a little hard.”
Winifred laughed as she went over to the mirror and fitted the delicate springs to the lobes of her ears. “Oh, Bartley, that old foolishness about my being hard. It really hurts my feelings. But I must go down now. People are beginning to come.”
Bartley drew her arm about his neck and went to the door with her. “Not hard to me, Winifred,” he whispered. “Never, never hard to me.”
Left alone, he paced up and down his study. He was at home again, among all the dear familiar things that spoke to him of so many happy years. His house to-night would be full of charming people, who liked and admired him. Yet all the time, underneath his pleasure and hopefulness and satisfaction, he was conscious of the vibration of an unnatural excitement. Amid this light and warmth and friendliness, he sometimes started and shuddered, as if some one had stepped on his grave. Something had broken loose in him of which he knew nothing except that it was sullen and powerful, and that it wrung and tortured him. Sometimes it came upon him softly, in enervating reveries. Sometimes it battered him like the cannon rolling in the hold of the vessel. Always, now, it brought with it a sense of quickened life, of stimulating danger. To-night it came upon him suddenly, as he was walking the floor, after his wife left him. It seemed impossible; he could not believe it. He glanced entreatingly at the door, as if to call her back. He heard voices in the hall below, and knew that he must go down. Going over to the window, he looked out at the lights across the river. How could this happen here, in his own house, among the things he loved? What was it that reached in out of the darkness and thrilled him? As he stood there he had a feeling that he would never escape. He shut his eyes and pressed his forehead against the cold window glass, breathing in the chill that came through it. “That this,” he groaned, “that this should have happened to ME!”
On New Year’s day a thaw set in, and during the night torrents of rain fell. In the morning, the morning of Alexander’s departure for England, the river was streaked with fog and the rain drove hard against the windows of the breakfast-room. Alexander had finished his coffee and was pacing up and down. His wife sat at the table, watching him. She was pale and unnaturally calm. When Thomas brought the letters, Bartley sank into his chair and ran them over rapidly.
When at last we plunged into the town itself
When at last we plunged into the town itself, clambering over fallen masonry and shrinking from the oppressive nearness and dwarfing height of omnipresent crumbling and pitted walls, our sensations again became such that I marvel at the amount of self-control we retained. Danforth was frankly jumpy, and began making some offensively irrelevant speculations about the horror at the camp — which I resented all the more because I could not help sharing certain conclusions forced upon us by many features of this morbid survival from nightmare antiquity. The speculations worked on his imagination, too; for in one place — where a debris-littered alley turned a sharp corner — he insisted that he saw faint traces of ground markings which he did not like; whilst elsewhere he stopped to listen to a subtle, imaginary sound from some undefined point — a muffled musical piping, he said, not unlike that of the wind in the mountain caves, yet somehow disturbingly different. The ceaseless five-pointedness of the surrounding architecture and of the few distinguishable mural arabesques had a dimly sinister suggestiveness we could not escape, and gave us a touch of terrible subconscious certainty concerning the primal entities which had reared and dwelt in this unhallowed place.
Nevertheless, our scientific and adventurous souls were not wholly dead, and we mechanically carried out our program of chipping specimens from all the different rock types represented in the masonry. We wished a rather full set in order to draw better conclusions regarding the age of the place. Nothing in the great outer walls seemed to date from later than the Jurassic and Comanchian periods, nor was any piece of stone in the entire place of a greater recency than the Pliocene Age. In stark certainty, we were wandering amidst a death which had reigned at least five hundred thousand years, and in all probability even longer.
As we proceeded through this maze of stone-shadowed twilight we stopped at all available apertures to study interiors and investigate entrance possibilities. Some were above our reach, whilst others led only into ice-choked ruins as unroofed and barren as the rampart on the hill. One, though spacious and inviting, opened on a seemingly bottomless abyss without visible means of descent. Now and then we had a chance to study the petrified wood of a surviving shutter, and were impressed by the fabulous antiquity implied in the still discernible grain. These things had come from Mesozoic gymnosperms and conifers — especially Cretaceous cycads — and from fan palms and early angiosperms of plainly Tertiary date. Nothing definitely later than the Pliocene could be discovered. In the placing of these shutters — whose edges showed the former presence of queer and long-vanished hinges — usage seemed to be varied — some being on the outer and some on the inner side of the deep embrasures. They seemed to have become wedged in place, thus surviving the rusting of their former and probably metallic fixtures and fastenings.
After a time we came across a row of windows — in the bulges of a colossal five-edged cone of undamaged apex — which led into a vast, well-preserved room with stone flooring; but these were too high in the room to permit descent without a rope. We had a rope with us, but did not wish to bother with this twenty-foot drop unless obliged to — especially in this thin plateau air where great demands were made upon the heart action. This enormous room was probably a hall or concourse of some sort, and our electric torches showed bold, distinct, and potentially startling sculptures arranged round the walls in broad, horizontal bands separated by equally broad strips of conventional arabesques. We took careful note of this spot, planning to enter here unless a more easily gained interior were encountered.
Nevertheless, our scientific and adventurous souls were not wholly dead, and we mechanically carried out our program of chipping specimens from all the different rock types represented in the masonry. We wished a rather full set in order to draw better conclusions regarding the age of the place. Nothing in the great outer walls seemed to date from later than the Jurassic and Comanchian periods, nor was any piece of stone in the entire place of a greater recency than the Pliocene Age. In stark certainty, we were wandering amidst a death which had reigned at least five hundred thousand years, and in all probability even longer.
As we proceeded through this maze of stone-shadowed twilight we stopped at all available apertures to study interiors and investigate entrance possibilities. Some were above our reach, whilst others led only into ice-choked ruins as unroofed and barren as the rampart on the hill. One, though spacious and inviting, opened on a seemingly bottomless abyss without visible means of descent. Now and then we had a chance to study the petrified wood of a surviving shutter, and were impressed by the fabulous antiquity implied in the still discernible grain. These things had come from Mesozoic gymnosperms and conifers — especially Cretaceous cycads — and from fan palms and early angiosperms of plainly Tertiary date. Nothing definitely later than the Pliocene could be discovered. In the placing of these shutters — whose edges showed the former presence of queer and long-vanished hinges — usage seemed to be varied — some being on the outer and some on the inner side of the deep embrasures. They seemed to have become wedged in place, thus surviving the rusting of their former and probably metallic fixtures and fastenings.
After a time we came across a row of windows — in the bulges of a colossal five-edged cone of undamaged apex — which led into a vast, well-preserved room with stone flooring; but these were too high in the room to permit descent without a rope. We had a rope with us, but did not wish to bother with this twenty-foot drop unless obliged to — especially in this thin plateau air where great demands were made upon the heart action. This enormous room was probably a hall or concourse of some sort, and our electric torches showed bold, distinct, and potentially startling sculptures arranged round the walls in broad, horizontal bands separated by equally broad strips of conventional arabesques. We took careful note of this spot, planning to enter here unless a more easily gained interior were encountered.
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