THE GREEN MOUSE
By
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR BY
EDMUND FREDERICK
1910
TO
MY FRIEND
JOHN CORBIN
Folly and Wisdom, Heavenly twins,
Sons of the god Imagination,
Heirs of the Virtues--which were Sins
Till Transcendental Contemplation
Transmogrified their outer skins--
Friend, do you follow me? For I
Have lost myself, I don't know why.
Resuming, then, this erudite
And decorative Dedication,--
Accept it, John, with all your might
In Cinquecentic resignation.
You may not understand it, quite,
But if you've followed me all through,
You've done far more than I could do.
PREFACE
To the literary, literal, and scientific mind purposeless fiction is
abhorrent. Fortunately we all are literally and scientifically inclined;
the doom of purposeless fiction is sounded; and it is a great comfort to
believe that, in the near future, only literary and scientific works
suitable for man, woman, child, and suffragette, are to adorn the
lingerie-laden counters in our great department shops.
It is, then, with animation and confidence that the author politely
offers to a regenerated nation this modern, moral, literary, and highly
scientific work, thinly but ineffectually disguised as fiction, in
deference to the prejudices of a few old-fashioned story-readers who
still survive among us.
R. W. C.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. An Idyl of the Idle
II. The Idler
III. The Green Mouse
IV. An Ideal Idol
V. Sacharissa
VI. In Wrong
VII. The Invisible Wire
VIII. "In Heaven and Earth"
IX. A Cross-town Car
X. The Lid Off
XI. Betty
XII. Sybilla
XIII. The Crown Prince
XIV. Gentlemen of the Press
XV. Drusilla
XVI. Flavilla
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"She almost wished some fisherman might come into view"
"'Those squirrels are very tame,' she observed calmly"
"'Are you not terribly impatient?' she inquired"
"The lid of the basket tilted a little.... Then a plaintive voice said
'Meow-w!'"
"'I'm afraid,' he ventured, 'that I may require that table for cutting'"
"'Perhaps,' he said, 'I had better hold your pencil again'"
I
AN IDYL OF THE IDYL
_In Which a Young Man Arrives at His Last Ditch and a Young Girl Jumps
Over It_
Utterly unequipped for anything except to ornament his environment, the
crash in Steel stunned him. Dazed but polite, he remained a passive
observer of the sale which followed and which apparently realized
sufficient to satisfy every creditor, but not enough for an income to
continue a harmlessly idle career which he had supposed was to continue
indefinitely.
He had never earned a penny; he had not the vaguest idea of how people
made money. To do something, however, was absolutely necessary.
He wasted some time in finding out just how much aid he might expect from
his late father's friends, but when he understood the attitude of society
toward a knocked-out gentleman he wisely ceased to annoy society, and
turned to the business world.
Here he wasted some more time. Perhaps the time was not absolutely
wasted, for during that period he learned that he could use nobody who
could not use him; and as he appeared to be perfectly useless, except for
ornament, and as a business house is not a kindergarten, and furthermore,
as he had neither time nor money to attend any school where anybody could
teach him anything, it occurred to him to take a day off for minute and
thorough self-examination concerning his qualifications and even his
right to occupy a few feet of space upon the earth's surface.
Four years at Harvard, two more in postgraduate courses, two more in
Europe to perfect himself in electrical engineering, and a year at home
attempting to invent a wireless apparatus for intercepting and
transmitting psychical waves had left him pitifully unfit for wage
earning.
There remained his accomplishments; but the market was overstocked with
assorted time-killers.
His last asset was a trivial though unusual talent--a natural manual
dexterity cultivated since childhood to amuse himself--something he never
took seriously. This, and a curious control over animals, had, as the
pleasant years flowed by, become an astonishing skill which was much more
than sleight of hand; and he, always as good-humored as well-bred, had
never refused to amuse the frivolous, of which he was also one, by
picking silver dollars out of space and causing the proper card to fall
fluttering from the ceiling.
Day by day, as the little money left him melted away, he continued his
vigorous mental examination, until the alarming shrinkage in his funds
left him staring fixedly at his last asset. Could he use it? Was it an
asset, after all? How clever was he? Could he face an audience and
perform the usual magician tricks without bungling? A slip by a careless,
laughing, fashionable young amateur amusing his social equals at a house
party is excusable; a bungle by a hired professional meant an end to hope
in that direction.
So he rented a suite of two rooms on Central Park West, furnished them
with what remained from better days, bought the necessary paraphernalia
of his profession, and immured himself for practice before entering upon
his contemplated invasion of Newport, Lenox, and Bar Harbor. And one very
lovely afternoon in May, when the Park from his windows looked like a
green forest, and puff on puff of perfumed air fluttered the curtains at
his opened windows, he picked up his gloves and stick, put on his hat,
and went out to walk in the Park; and when he had walked sufficiently he
sat down on a bench in a flowery, bushy nook on the edge of a bridle
path.
Few people disturbed the leafy privacy; a policeman sauntering southward
noted him, perhaps for future identification. The spectacle of a well-
built, well-groomed, and fashionable young man sitting moodily upon a
park bench was certainly to be noted. It is not the fashion for
fashionable people to sit on park benches unless they contemplate self,
as well as social, destruction.
So the policeman lingered for a while in the vicinity, but not hearing
any revolver shot, presently sauntered on, buck-skinned fist clasped
behind his broad back, squinting at a distant social gathering composed
entirely of the most exclusive nursemaids.
The young man looked up into the pleasant blue above, then his
preoccupied gaze wandered from woodland to thicket, where the scarlet
glow of Japanese quince mocked the colors of the fluttering scarlet
tanagers; where orange-tinted orioles flashed amid tangles of golden
Forsythia; and past the shrubbery to an azure corner of water, shimmering
under the wooded slope below.
That sense of languor and unrest, of despondency threaded by hope which
fair skies and sunshine and new leaves bring with the young year to the
young, he felt. Yet there was no bitterness in his brooding, for he was a
singularly generous young man, and there was no vindictiveness mixed with
the memories of his failures among those whose cordial respect for his
father had been balanced between that blameless gentleman's wealth and
position.
A gray squirrel came crawling and nosing through the fresh grass; he
caught its eyes, and, though the little animal was plainly bound
elsewhere on important business, the young man soon had it curled up on
his knee, asleep.
For a while he amused himself by using his curious power, alternately
waking the squirrel and allowing it to bound off, tail twitching, and
then calling it back, slowly but inexorably to climb his trousers and
curl up on his knee and sleep an uncanny and deep sleep which might end
only at the young man's pleasure.
He, too, began to feel the subtle stillness of the drowsing woodland;
musing there, caressing his short, crisp mustache, he watched the purple
grackle walking about in iridescent solitude, the sun spots waning and
glowing on the grass; he heard the soft, garrulous whimper of waterfowl
along the water's edge, the stir of leaves above.
He thought of various personal matters: his poverty, the low ebb of his
balance at the bank, his present profession, his approaching début as an
entertainer, the chances of his failure. He thought, too, of the
astounding change in his life, the future, vacant of promise, devoid of
meaning, a future so utterly new and blank that he could find in it
nothing to speculate upon. He thought also, and perfectly impersonally,
of a girl whom he had met now and then upon the stairs of the apartment
house which he now inhabited.
Evidently there had been an ebb in her prosperity; the tumble of a New
Yorker's fortune leads from the Avenue to the Eighties, from thence
through Morristown, Staten Island, to the West Side. Besides, she painted
pictures; he knew the aroma of fixitive, siccative, and burnt sienna; and
her studio adjoined his sky drawing-room.
He thought of this girl quite impersonally; she resembled a youthful
beauty he had known--might still know if he chose; for a man who can pay
for his evening clothes need never deny himself the society he was bred
to.
She certainly did resemble that girl--she had the same bluish violet
eyes, the same white and deeply fringed lids, the same free grace of
carriage, a trifle too boyish at times--the same firmly rounded, yet
slender, figure.
"Now, as a matter of fact," he mused aloud, stroking the sleeping
squirrel on his knee, "I could have fallen in love with either of those
girls--before Copper blew up."
Pursuing his innocuous meditation he nodded to himself: "I rather like
the poor one better than any girl I ever saw. Doubtless she paints
portraits over solar prints. That's all right; she's doing more than I
have done yet.... I approve of those eyes of hers; they're like the eyes
of that waking Aphrodite in the Luxembourg. If she would only just look
at me once instead of looking through me when we pass one another in the
hall----"
The deadened gallop of a horse on the bridle path caught his ear. The
horse was coming fast--almost too fast. He laid the sleeping squirrel on
the bench, listened, then instinctively stood up and walked to the
thicket's edge.
What happened was too quick for him to comprehend; he had a vision of a
big black horse, mane and tail in the wind, tearing madly, straight at
him--a glimpse of a white face, desperate and set, a flutter of loosened
hair; then a storm of wind and sand roared in his ears; he was hurled,
jerked, and flung forward, dragged, shaken, and left half senseless,
hanging to nose and bit of a horse whose rider was picking herself out of
a bush covered with white flowers.
Half senseless still, he tightened his grip on the bit, released the
grasp on the creature's nose, and, laying his hand full on the forelock,
brought it down twice and twice across the eyes, talking to the horse in
halting, broken whispers.
When he had the trembling animal under control he looked around; the girl
stood on the grass, dusty, dirty, disheveled, bleeding from a cut on the
cheek bone; the most bewildered and astonished creature he had ever
looked upon.
"It will be all right in a few minutes," he said, motioning her to the
bench on the asphalt walk. She nodded, turned, picked up his hat, and,
seating herself, began to smooth the furred nap with her sleeve, watching