The Green Mouse
destruction to my peace of mind," he said again.
"You--don't think that you love me, do you?" she asked. "That would be
too--too perfect a climax.... _Do_ you?" she asked curiously.
"I--think so."
"Do--do you _know_ it?" He gazed bravely at her: "Yes."
She flung up both arms joyously, then laughed aloud:
"Oh, the wonder of it! It is too perfect, too beautiful! You really love
me? Do you? Are you _sure_?"
"Yes.... Will you try to love me?"
"Well, you know that sirens don't care for people.... I've already been
engaged two or three times.... I don't mind being engaged to you."
"Couldn't you care for me, Flavilla?"
"Why, yes. I do.... Please don't touch me; I'd rather not. Of course, you
know, I couldn't really love you so quickly unless I'd been subjected to
one of those Destyn-Carr machines. You know that, don't you? But," she
added frankly, "I wouldn't like to have you get away from me. I--I feel
like a tender-hearted person in the street who is followed by a lost
cat----"
"What!"
"Oh, I _didn't_ mean anything unpleasant--truly I didn't. You know how
tenderly one feels when a poor stray cat comes trotting after one----"
He got up, mad all through.
"_Are_ you offended?" she asked sorrowfully. "When I didn't mean anything
except that my heart--which is rather impressionable--feels very warmly
and tenderly toward the man who swam after me.... Won't you understand,
please? Listen, we have been engaged only a minute, and here already is
our first quarrel. You can see for yourself what would happen if we ever
married."
"It wouldn't be machine-made bliss, anyway," he said.
That seemed to interest her; she inspected him earnestly.
"Also," he added, "I thought you desired to take a sportsman's chances?"
"I--do."
"And I thought you didn't want to marry the man you ought to marry."
"That is--true."
"Then you certainly ought not to marry me--but, will you?"
"How can I when I don't--love you."
"You don't love me because you ought not to on such brief
acquaintance.... But _will_ you love me, Flavilla?"
She looked at him in silence, sitting very still, the bright hair veiling
her cheeks, the fish's tail curled up against her side.
"_Will_ you?"
"I don't know," she said faintly.
"Try."
"I--am."
"Shall I help you?"
Evidently she had gazed at him long enough; her eyes fell; her white
fingers picked at the seaweed pods. His arm closed around her; nothing
stirred but her heart.
"Shall I help you to love me?" he breathed.
"No--I am--past help." She raised her head.
"This is all so--so wrong," she faltered, "that I think it must be
right.... Do you truly love me?... Don't kiss me if you do.... Now I
believe you.... Lift me; I can't walk in this fish's tail.... Now set me
afloat, please."
He lifted her, walked to the water's edge, bent and placed her in the
sea. In an instant she had darted from his arms out into the waves,
flashing, turning like a silvery salmon.
"Are you coming?" she called back to him.
He did not stir. She swam in a circle and came up beside the rock. After
a long, long silence, she lifted up both arms; he bent over. Then, very
slowly, she drew him down into the water.
* * * * *
"I am quite sure," she said, as they sat together at luncheon on the
sandspit which divides Northport Bay from the s.w. of Oyster Bay, "that
you and I are destined for much trouble when we marry; but I love you so
dearly that I don't care."
"Neither do I," he said; "will you have another sandwich?"
And, being young and healthy, she took it, and biting into it, smiled
adorably at her lover.
OTHER BOOKS BY
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
It was Mr. Chambers himself who wrote of the caprices of the Mystic
Three--Fate, Chance, and Destiny--and how it frequently happened that a
young man "tripped over the maliciously extended foot of Fate and fell
plump into the open arms of Destiny." Perhaps it was due to one of the
pranks of the mystic sisters that Mr. Chambers himself should lay down
his brush and palette and take up the pen. Mr. Chambers studied art in
Paris for seven years. At twenty-four his paintings were accepted at the
Salon; at twenty-eight he had returned to New York and was busy as an
illustrator for _Life, Truth_, and other periodicals. But already the
desire to write was coursing through him. The Latin Quarter of Paris,
where he had studied so long, seemed to haunt him; he wanted to tell its
story. So he did write the story and, in 1893, published it under the
title of "In the Quarter." The same year he published another book, "The
King in Yellow," a grewsome tale, but remarkably successful. The easel
was pushed aside; the painter had become writer.
Writing of Mr. Chambers's novel of last fall
THE DANGER MARK
in _The Bookman_, Dr. Frederic Taber Cooper said, "In this last field
(the society novel) it would seem as though Mr. Chambers had, at length,
found himself; and the fact that the last of the four books is the best
and most sustained and most honest piece of work he has yet done affords
solid ground for the belief that he has still better and maturer volumes
yet to come. There is no valid reason why Mr. Chambers should not
ultimately be remembered as the novelist who left behind him a
comprehensive human comedy of New York."
This is another novel of society life like "The Fighting Chance" and "The
Firing Line." The chief characters in the story are a boy and a girl,
inheritors of a vast fortune, whose parents are dead, and who have been
left in the guardianship of a large Trust Company. They are brought up
with no companions of their own age and are a unique pair when turned
out, on coming of age, into New York society--two children educated by a
great machine, possessors of fabulous wealth, with every inherited
instinct for good and evil set free for the first time. The fact that the
girl has acquired the habit of dropping a little cologne on a lump of
sugar and nibbling it when tired or depressed gives an indication of the
struggle that the children have before them, a struggle of their own, in
the midst of their luxurious surroundings, more vital, more real,
perhaps, than any that Mr. Chambers has yet depicted. It is a tense,
powerful, highly dramatic story, handling a delicate subject without
offense to the taste or the judgment of the most critical reader.
Mr. Chambers's third novel of society life is
THE FIRING LINE
Its scenes are laid principally at Palm Beach, and no more distinct yet
delicately tinted picture of an American fashionable resort, in the full
blossom of its brief, recurrent glory, has ever been drawn. In this book,
Mr. Chambers's purpose is to show that the salvation of society lies in
the constant injection of new blood into its veins. His heroine, the
captivating Shiela Cardross, of unknown parentage, yet reared in luxury,
suddenly finds herself on life's firing line, battling with one of the
most portentous problems a young girl ever had to face. Only a master
writer could handle her story; Mr. Chambers does it most successfully.
THE YOUNGER SET
is the second of Mr. Chambers's society novels. It takes the reader into
the swirling society life of fashionable New York, there to wrestle with
that ever-increasing evil, the divorce question. As a student of life,
Mr. Chambers is thorough; he knows society; his pictures are so accurate
that he enables the reader to imbibe the same atmosphere as if he had
been born and brought up in it. Moreover, no matter how intricate the
plot may be or how great the lesson to be taught, the romance in the
story is always foremost. For "The Younger Set," Mr. Chambers has
provided a hero with a rigid code of honor and the grit to stick to it,
even though it be unfashionable and out of date. He is a man whom
everyone would seek to emulate.
The earliest of Mr. Chambers's society novels is
THE FIGHTING CHANCE
It is the story of a young man who has inherited with his wealth a
craving for liquor, and a girl who has inherited a certain rebelliousness
and a tendency toward dangerous caprice. The two, meeting on the brink of
ruin, fight out their battles--two weaknesses joined with love to make a
strength.
It is sufficient to say of this novel that more than five million people
have read it. It has taken a permanent place among the best fiction of
the period.
SPECIAL MESSENGER
is the title of Mr. Chambers's novel just preceding "The Danger Mark." It
is the romance of a young woman spy and scout in the Civil War. As a
special messenger in the Union service, she is led into a maze of
critical situations, but her coolness and bravery and winsome personality
always carry her on to victory. The story is crowded with dramatic
incident, the roar of battle, the grim realities of war; and, at times,
in sharp contrast, comes the tenderest of romance. It is written with an
understanding and sympathy for the viewpoint of the partisans on both
sides of the conflict.
THE RECKONING
is a novel of the Revolutionary War. It is the fourth, chronologically,
of a series of which "Cardigan" and "The Maid-at-Arms" were the first
two. The third has not yet been written. These novels of New York in the
Revolutionary days are another striking example of the enthusiasm which
Mr. Chambers puts into his work. To write an accurate and successful
historical novel, one must be a historian as well as a romancer. Mr.
Chambers is an authority on New York State history during the Colonial
period. And, if the hours spent in poring over old maps and reading up
old records and journals do not show, the result is always apparent. The
facts are not obtrusive, but they are there, interwoven in the gauzy woof
of the artist's imagination. That is why these romances carry conviction
always, why we breathe the very air of the period as we read them.
IOLE
Another splendid example of the author's versatility is this farcical,
humorous satire on the _art nouveau_ of to-day, Mr. Chambers, with all
his knowledge of the artistic jargon, has in this little novel created a
pious fraud of a father, who brings up his eight lovely daughters in the
Adirondacks, where they wear pink pajamas and eat nuts and fruit, and
listen to him while he lectures them and everybody else on art. It is
easy to imagine what happens when several rich and practical young New
Yorkers stumble upon this group. Everybody is happy in the end.
One might run on for twenty books more, but there is not space enough
more than to mention "The Tracer of Lost Persons," "The Tree of Heaven,"
"Some Ladies in Haste," and Mr. Chambers's delightful nature books for
children, telling how _Geraldine_ and _Peter_ go wandering through
"Outdoor-Land," "Mountain-Land," "Orchard-Land," "River-Land," "Forest-
Land," and "Garden-Land." They, in turn, are as different from his novels
in fancy and conception as each of his novels from the other.
Mr. Chambers is a born optimist. The labor of writing is a natural
enjoyment to him. In reading anything he has written, one is at once
impressed with the ease with which it moves along. There is no straining
after effects, no affectations, no hysteria; but always there is a
personality, an individuality that appeals to the best side of the
reader's nature and somehow builds up a personal relation between him and
the author. Perhaps it is this consummate skill, this remarkable ability
to win the reader that has enabled Mr. Chambers to increase his audience
year after year, until it now numbers millions; and it is only just that
critics should, as they frequently do, proclaim him "the most popular
writer in the country."