Robert W. Chambers

“ There came a day late in April when, knee deep in palmetto scrub, the Dryad and Jones stood leaning upon their nets and scanning the wilderness for the swift-winged forest phantom they had sought so long. Ajax was on the wing; glimpse after glimpse they had of him, a pale shadow in the sun, a misty spot in the shadow, then nothing but miles of palmetto scrub and the pink stems of tall pines.
Suddenly an Ajax darted into the sunny glade where they stood, and a ragged, faded brother Ajax fluttered up from the ground and, Ajax-like, defied the living lightning. ”

“ Decoy a butterfly? Decoy the forest phantom drunk with the exhilaration of his own mad flight! It was the invention of a new sport.
Scarcely appearing to move at all, so cautious was his progress, Jones slowly drew near the basking and battle-tattered creature that had once been Ajax. There was a swift drop of the silken net, a flutter, and all was over. In the palm of Jones's hand, dead, lay the faded and torn insect with scarce a vestige of former beauty on the motionless wings. ”

“ No; you must listen—for the veil of romance is rent and we are face to face in the living world! Do you think a real man cares what title you wear, if you but wear his name? Countess that you are not—if you say you are not—but woman that you are, is there anything in Heaven or earth that can make love more than love? Veil your beautiful true eyes with romance, and answer me; look with clear, untroubled eyes upon throbbing, pulsating life ”

“ To Ellis and the grey-eyed dragon, and to Professor Rawson, who had crawled to a dry spot on the ridge, there was a dreadful fascination in watching that swaying pyramid of Jones, Lohengrin, and swan tottering landward, knee-deep through the flood. The pyramid swayed dangerously at times; but the girl in the tin armour clasped Jones around the neck and clung to the off leg of the swan, and Jones staggered on, half-strangled by the arm and buffeted by the flapping bird, until his oozing shoes struck dry land. ”

“ In her eyes an enchanted world lay just beyond his studio's threshold; a bright, warm, mellow wonderland, indistinct in the golden lamplight, where only a detail here and there half revealed a figured tapestry or carved foliation—perhaps some soft miracle of ancient Eastern weaving on the floor, perhaps a mysterious marble shape veiled in ruddy shadow—enough to set her youthful imagination on fire, enough to check her breath and start the pulses racing as she turned the key in her own door and reëntered the white dusk of her own life once more. ”

“ Smith sauntered out to the terrace, looked at the sky, sniffed the roses, and sat down in the shadow of a cherry tree, cocking his feet up and resting his novel on his knees. Several hours later, aroused by the mellow clash of harness and noise of wheels, he looked out over the terrace wall just in time to catch a glimpse of the victoria of his neighbour, gold and green livery, strawberry roans, flashing wheels and all; and quite alone under her brilliant sunshade, the dark-haired girl whom Kingsbury had decided to marry as soon as he could arrange to fall in love with her. ”

“ Paris is a forest of pink and white chestnut blossoms under which the inhabitants sit without their hats.
Paris is a collection of vistas; at the end of every vista is a misty masterpiece of architecture; on the summit of every monument is a masterpiece of sculpture.
Paris is a city of several millions of inhabitants, every inhabitant holding both hands out to you for a tip.
Paris is a park, smothered in foliage, under which asphalted streets lead to Paradise.
Paris is a sanitarium so skillfully conducted that nobody can tell the patients from the physicians ”

“ Friendly little forest birds came around, dropping from twig to branch; two chipmunks crept into the case of eggs to fill their pouched chops with the oats that the eggs were packed in. The young men watched them lazily.
"The simpler life is the true existence," commented Ellis, drawing a long, deep breath.
"What the devil is the simpler life?" demanded Jones, with so much energy that the chipmunks raced away in mad abandon, and the flock of black-capped birds scattered to neigbouring branches, remarking in unison, "Chick-a-dee-dee-dee." ”

“ A few minutes later a gentle, mellow, muffled monotone vibrated in the evening air. It was the swan-song of Professor Rawson.
Ellis laid fresh logs on the blaze, lighted a cigarette, and returned to his seat beside Molly Sandys, who sat, swathed in her poncho, leaning back against the base of a huge pine.
"Jones is right," he said; "the simple life—the older and simpler emotions, the primal desire—is a state of mind." ”

“ As for Helen, sometime known as brown-eyes, she rose to her slim height, all glittering in tin armour, and gave Jones a smile of heavenly gratitude that shot him through and through his Norfolk jacket.
"Don't look!" said Professor Rawson, in a voice which, between the emotions of recent terror and present bashfulness, had dwindled to a squeak. "Don't look; I'm going to jump." And jump she did, taking to the water with a trifle less grace than the ordinary Rhine-maiden. ”

“ The Dryad, receiving no reply, looked around and beheld Jones, net poised, advancing on tiptoe across the green.
"What is it—a snake?" inquired the Dryad in an unsteady voice.
"It is The White Devil!" whispered Jones.
The Dryad's skirts were short enough as it was, but she hastily picked them up. She had a right to. "Does it bite?" she whispered, looking carefully around in the grass. But all she could see was a strangely beautiful butterfly settled on a blue wild blossom which swayed gently in the wind on the edge of the jungle. So she dropped her skirts. She had a right to. ”

“ Day after day, guarding the long, white road, the Dryad saw the phantom pass—always flying north; day after day in the dim forest, the hurrying, pale-winged, tireless creatures fled away, darting always along some fixed yet invisible aërial path. Nothing lured them, neither the perfumed clusters of the China-berry, nor the white forest flowers; nothing checked them, neither the woven curtain of creepers across the forest barrier, nor the jungle walled with palms.
To the net of the Dryad and of Jones had fallen half a thousand jewelled victims ”

“ Helen! Ask Mr. Jones to make some coffee. Oh, thank you, Mr. Jones! Isn't this perfectly delicious! So simple, so primitive, so sincere"—she looked at Ellis—"so jolly. If the simple life is only a state of mind I can understand how easy it is to follow it to sheerest happiness." And in a low voice, to Ellis: "Can you find happiness in it, too?"
Across the fire Helen called softly to them: "Do you want some toasted cheese, too? Mr. Jones knows how to make it."
A little later, Jones, toasting bread and cheese, heard a sweet voice softly begin the Swan-Song. It was Helen. ”

“ Smith saw what was coming and tried to dodge, but the silk line whistled on the back-cast, and the next moment his cap was snatched from his head and deposited some twenty feet out in the centre of the pool.
The amazement of the fair angler was equal to his own as she looked hastily back over her shoulder and discovered him on the wall.
There is usually something undignified about a man whose hat has been knocked off; to laugh is as fatal as to show irritation ”

“ Molly turned scarlet as Miss Gay and Jones looked up in pure amazement from the farther side of the camp-fire.
"Don't you know how to make love?" she whispered in a fierce little voice; "don't you? If you don't I am going off to bed."
"Molly!" That was better—in fact, it was so low that she could scarcely hear him. But she said: "Doesn't Helen Gay look charming in her tin armour? She is the dearest, sweetest girl, Mr. Ellis. She's my cousin. Do you think her pretty?" ”

“ Smith retired to his room to bathe, clothed himself in snowy linen and fresh tennis flannels, and descended again, book under his arm, to saunter forth through heavy tangles of cinnamon-tinted Flemish roses and great sweet-scented peonies, musing on love and fate.
"Kingsbury and his theories! The Countess of Semois will think him crazy. She'll think us both crazy! And I am not sure that we're not; youth is madness; half the world is lunatic! ”

“ A sucking sound filled the woods; millions of tiny bubbles purred in the shallow overflow; here and there dead branches stirred, swung and floated.
"Our camp is going to be an island pretty soon," observed Ellis; "just look at——"
But Jones caught him by the arm. "What is that?" he demanded shakily. "Are there things like that in these woods?"
At the same instant Ellis caught sight of something in midstream bearing down on them in a smother of foam—an enormous lizard-like creature floundering throat-deep in the flood.
"What is it, Ellis? Look! It's got a tail ten feet long! ”

“ Now, part of this story is to be vague as a mirrored face at dusk; and part is to be as precise as the reflection of green trees in the glass of the stream; and all is to be as capricious as the flight of that wonderful butterfly of the South which is called Ajax by the reverent, and The White Devil by the profane. Incidentally, it is the story of Jones and the Dryad.
The profession of Jones was derided by the world at large. He collected butterflies; and it may be imagined what the American public thought of him when they did not think he was demented. ”

“ Me, again, belly down, peering hungrily over the bank of a stream, attempting [Pg 165] to snatch a trout with a bare hook, my glasses slipping off repeatedly, the spectre of starvation scourging on me. Me, once more, frantic with indigestion and mosquitoes, lurking under a blanket, the root of a tree bruising my backbone; me in the morning, done up, shaving in icy water and cutting my chin; me, half shaved, searching for a scrap of nourishment, gauntly prowling among cold and greasy fry-pans! Ellis! Which is the simpler life, in Heaven's name? ”

“ Long, slender, swallow-tailed wings, tinted with pearl and primrose, crossed with ashy stripes and double-barred with glowing crimson—this is the shy, forest-haunting creature that the Dryad sought to snare, and sought in vain.
Sometimes, standing on the long, white shell roads, where myriads of glittering dragon-flies sailed, far away a pale flash would catch the sun for an instant; and "Ready! Look out!" would cry the Dryad. Vanity! Swifter than a swallow the Ajax passed, a pearly blurr against the glare of the white road ”

“ The sound of wheels again broke the thread of his sleepy meditation; their dog-cart was at the gate; and presently he perceived Kingsbury, hatted and gloved to perfection, get in, take the reins from the coachman, loop his whip, assume the posture popularly attributed to pupils of Howlett, and go whirling away through the lazy sunshine of a perfect Belgian afternoon.
"The beast has lunched without me," muttered Smith, yawning and looking at his watch. Then he got up, stretched, tinkled the bell, and when the doll-faced maid arrived, requested an omelet à la Semois and a bottle of claret. ”

“ And he rose with decision and walked straight to the kitchen, where a stony-faced individual sat amid the culinary ruins, a statue of despair.
"What I want you to do," said Seabury, "is to fix up a salad and some of the cold duck, and attend to the champagne. Meanwhile I think I'll go downstairs; I have an engagement to kill a man."
However, a moment later he thought better of it; she was standing by the mirror—his own mirror—touching her eyes with her lace handkerchief and patting her hair with the prettiest, whitest hands. ”

“ For nearly half an hour I had dodged about there in front of my own house, too stupid to suspect, too stupid even to recognize my own pig in the disguised and capricious porker shying and caracolling about in the moonlight. Good heavens! Van Dieman was right. A man who helps to steal his own pig is fit for nothing but Paris or a sanitarium. ”

“ Fate slaps your face midway in a pretty romance. All right. But when I make a record of the matter I pick, choose, sort, re-assort my box of words, and when things are going too rapidly I wink at Fate with my tongue in my cheek and round up everybody so amiably that nobody knows exactly what did happen—and nobody even stops to think because everybody has already finished the matter in their own minds to their own satisfaction. ”

“ He turned squarely on Smith: "As for you, if you were the sort of American that you ought to be you would pick out some ornamental and wholesome young Belgian aristocrat and marry her in the shortest time that decency permits! That's what you'd do if you had a scintilla of patriotism in your lazy make-up!"
"No, I wouldn't——"
"You would! Look at yourself—a great, hulking, wealthy, idle young man, who stands around in puddles catching fish while Europe runs off our loveliest women under your bovine nose. Shame on you! Have you no desire to be up and doing?" ”

“ Ellis took off his cap; Jones did the same.
"I saw your signs," said Ellis, pleasantly. Jones whispered to him: "The taller one is a corker!" and Ellis replied under his breath: "The other is attractive, too."
"You admit that you deliberately trespassed?" inquired the shorter girl very gravely.
"Not upon you—only upon what you call your property," said Ellis, gaily. "You see, we really need the trout in our business—which is to keep soul and body on friendly terms."
No answering smile touched the pretty grey eyes fixed on his. She said gravely: "I am very sorry that this has happened." ”

“ But it was a frightened and vexed voice that answered almost tearfully: "If you pull too hard on the pasteboard legs something dreadful may happen. I—this dragon is—is about the only clothing I have on!"
Ellis dropped the flipper, seized it again, and gazed into the scared eyes of Jones.
"For Heaven's sake, go easy," he hissed, "or the thing will come apart!"
Jones, in a cold perspiration, stood knee-deep in the flood, not daring to touch the flipper again.
"You help here," he whispered, hoarsely. "If she stands up, now, you can support her to camp, can't you?" ”