The Streets of Ascalon

His hand closed slightly over hers; for a moment or two the pressure left her restless, ill at ease; but she made no movement. And gradually the contact stirred something within her to vague response. A strange sense of rest subtly invaded her; and she remained silent and motionless, looking down at the still lake below.

"What is the barrier?" he asked quietly.

"There is no barrier to your friendship – if you care to offer it, now that you know me."

"But I don't know you. And I care for more than your friendship even after the glimpse I have had of you."

"I – care only for friendship, Mr. Quarren."

"Could you ever care for more?"

"No… I don't wish to… There is nothing higher."

"Could you – if there were?"

But she remained silent, disturbed, troubled once more by the light weight of his hand over hers which seemed to be awaking again the new senses that his touch had discovered so long ago – and which had slumbered in her ever since. Was this acquiescence, this listless relaxation, this lassitude which was becoming almost painful – or sweet – she did not understand which – was this also a part of friendship? Was it a part of anything intellectual, spiritual, worthy? – this deepening emotion which, no longer vague and undefined, was threatening her pulses, her even breathing – menacing the delicate nerves in her hand so that already they had begun to warn her, quivering —

She withdrew her hand, sharply, and straightened her shoulders with a little quick indrawn breath.

"I've got to tell you something," she said abruptly – scarcely knowing what she was saying.

"What, Strelsa?"

"I'm going to marry Langly Sprowl. I've said I would."

Perhaps he had expected it. For a few moments the smile on his face became fixed and white, then he said, cheerfully:

"I'm going to fight for you all the same."

"What!" she exclaimed, crisply.

"Fight hard, too," he added. "I'm on my mettle at last."

"You have no chance, Mr. Quarren."

"With —him?" He shrugged his contempt. "I don't consider him at all – "

"I don't care to hear you speak that way!" she said, hotly.

"Oh, I won't. A man's an ass to vilify his rival. But I wasn't even thinking of him, Strelsa. My fight is with you – with your unknown self behind that barrier. Garde à vous!"

"I decline the combat, Monsieur," she said, trying to speak lightly.

"Oh, I'm not afraid of you– the visible you that I'm looking at and which I know something about. That incarnation of Strelsa Leeds will fight me openly, fairly – and I have an even chance to win – "

"Do you think so?" she said, lip between her teeth.

"Don't you?"

"No."

"I do… But it's your unknown self I'm afraid of, Strelsa. God alone knows what it may do to both of us."

"There is no other self! What do you mean?"

"There are two others – not this intellectual, friendly, kindly, visible self that offers friendship and accepts it – not even the occult, aloof, spiritual self that I sometimes see brooding in your gray eyes – "

"There is no other!" she said, flushing and rising to her feet.

"Is it dead?"

"It never lived!"

"Then," he said coolly, "it will be born as sure as I stand here! – born to complete the trinity." He glanced out over the lake, then swung around sharply: "You are wrong. It has been born. And that unknown self is hostile to me; and I know it!"

They walked toward the house together, silent for a while. Then she said: "I think we have talked some nonsense. Don't you?"

"You haven't."

"You're a generous boy; do you know it?"

"You say so."

"Oh, I'll cheerfully admit it. If you weren't you'd detest me – perhaps despise me."

"Men don't detest or despise a hurt and frightened child."

"But a selfish and cowardly woman? What does a man of your sort think of her?"

"I don't know," he said. "Whatever you are I can't help loving you."

She strove to laugh but her mouth suddenly became tremulous. After a while when she could control her lips she said:

"I want to talk some more to you – and I don't know how; I don't even know what I want to say except that – that – "

"What, Strelsa?"

"Please be – kind to me." She smiled at him, but her lips still quivered.

He said after a moment: "I couldn't be anything else."

"Are you very sure?"

"Yes."

"It means a great deal to me," she said.

They reached the house, but the motor party had not yet returned. Tea was served to them on the veranda; the fat setter came and begged for tastes of things that were certain to add to his obesity; and he got them in chunks and bolted them, wagging.

An hour later the telephone rang; it was Molly on the wire and she wanted to speak to Quarren. He could hear her laughing before she spoke:

"Ricky dear?"

"Yes."

"Am I an angel or otherwise?"

"Angel always – but why particularly at this instant?"

"Stupid! Haven't you had her alone all the after-noon?"

"Yes – you corker!"

"Well, then!"

"Molly, I worship you."

"Et après?"

"I'll double that! I adore you also!"

"Content! What are you two doing?"

"Strelsa and I have been taking tea."

"Oh, is it 'Strelsa' already?"

"Very unwillingly on her part."

"It isn't 'Ricky,' too, is it?"

"Alas! not yet!"

"No matter. The child is horribly lonely and depressed. What do you think I've done, very cleverly?"

"What?"

"Flattered Jim and his driving until I induced him to take us all the way to North Linden. We can't possibly get back until dinner. But that's not all."

"What more, most wonderful of women?"

"I've got him with us," she said with satisfaction. "I made Jim stop and pick him up. I knew he was planning to drop in on Strelsa. And I made it such a personal matter that he should come with us to see some fool horses at Acremont that he couldn't wriggle out of it particularly as Strelsa is my guest and he's rather wary of offending me. Now, Ricky, make the best of your time because the beast is dining with us. I couldn't avoid asking him."

"Very well," said Quarren grimly.

He went back to the veranda where Strelsa sat behind the tea-table in her frail pink gown looking distractingly pretty and demure.

"What had Molly to say to you all that time?" she asked.

"Was I long away?"

"Yes, you were!"

"I'm delighted you found the time too long – "

"I did not say so! If you think it was short I shall warn Jim Wycherly how time flies with you and Molly… Oh, dear! Is that a mosquito?"

"I'm afraid it is," said Quarren.

"Then indoors I go!" exclaimed Strelsa indignantly. "You may come with me or remain out here and be slowly assassinated."

And she went in, rather hastily, calling to him to close the screen door.

Quarren glanced around the deserted drawing-room. Through the bay-window late afternoon sunlight poured flooding the room with a ruddy glory.

"I wonder if there's enough of this celestial radiance to make a new aureole for you?" he said.

"So my old one is worn out, is it?"

"I meant to offer you a double halo."

"You do say sweet things – for a rather obstinate young man," she said, flashing a laughing side glance at him. Then she walked slowly through the sunshine into the dimmer music-room, and found a seat at the piano. Her mood changed; she became gay, capricious, even a trifle imperative:

"Please lean on the piano." He did so, inquiringly.

"Otherwise," she said, "you'd have attempted to seat yourself on this bench; and there isn't room for both of us without crowding."

"If you moved a little – "

"But I won't," she said serenely, and dropped her slim hands on the key-board.

She sang one or two modern songs, and he took second part in a pleasant, careless, but acceptable barytone.

"The old ones are the best," she commented, running lightly through a medley ranging from "The Mikado" to "Erminie," the "Black Hussar," and "The Mascotte." They sang the "gobble duet" from the latter fairly well:

She"When on your manly form I gazeA sense of pleasure passes o'er me";He"The murmured music of your voiceIs sweeter far than liquid honey!"

And so on through the bleating of his sheep and the gobbling of her turkeys until they could scarcely sing for laughing.

Then the mood of the absurd seized her; and she made him sing "Johnny Schmoker" with her until they could scarcely draw breath for the eternal refrain:

"Kanst du spielen?"

and the interminable list of musical instruments so easily mastered by that Teutonic musician.

"I want to sing you a section of one of those imbecile, colourless, pastel-tinted and very precious Debussy things," she exclaimed; and did so, wandering and meandering on and on through meaningless mazes of sound until he begged for mercy and even had to stay her hands on the key-board with his own.

She stopped then, pretending disappointment and surprise.

"Very well," she said; "you'll have to match my performance with something equally imbecile"; and she composed herself to listen.

"What shall I do that is sufficiently imbecile?" he asked gravely; "turn seven solemn handsprings?"

"That isn't silly enough. Roll over on the rug and play dead."

He prepared to do so but she wouldn't permit him:

"No! I don't want to remember you doing such a thing… All the same I believe you could do it and not lose – lose – "

"Dignity?"

"No – I don't know what I mean. Come, Mr. Quarren; I am waiting for you to do something silly."

"Shall I say it or do it?"

"Either."

"Then I'll recite something very, very precious – subtly, intricately, and psychologically precious."

"Oh, please do!"

"It's – it's about a lover."

She blushed.

"Do you mind?"

"You are the limit! Of course I don't!"

"It's about a lady, too."

"Naturally."

"And love – rash, precipitate, unwarranted, unrequited, and fatal love."

"I can stand it if you can," she said with the faintest glimmer of malice in her smile.

"All right. The title is: 'Oh, Love! Oh, Why?'"

"A perfectly good title," she said gravely. "I alway says 'why?' to Love."

So he bowed to her and began very seriously:

"Oh, Lover in haste, beware of Fate!Wait for a moment while I relateA harrowing tragedy up to dateOf innate Hate."A maiden rocked on her rocking-chair;Her store-curls stirred in the summer air;An amorous Fly espied her there,So rare and fair."Before she knew where she was at,He'd kissed the maiden where she sat,And she batted him one which slapped him flatKer-spat! Like that!"Oh, Life! Oh, Death! Oh, swat-in-the-eye!Beyond the Bournes of the By-and-By,Spattered the soul of that amorous Fly.Oh, Love! Oh, Why?"

She pretended to be overcome by the tragic pathos of the poem:

"I cannot bear it," she protested; "I can't endure the realism of that spattered soul. Why not let her wave him away and have him plunge headlong onto a sheet of fly-paper and die a buzzing martyr?"

Then, swift as a weather-vane swinging from north to south her mood changed once more and softened; and her fingers again began idling among the keys, striking vague harmonies.

He came across the room and stood looking down over her shoulder; and after a moment her hands ceased stirring, fell inert on the keys.

A single red shaft of light slanted on the wall. It faded out to pink, lingered; and then the gray evening shadows covered it. The world outside was very still; the room was stiller, save for her heart, which only she could hear, rapid, persistent, beating the reveille.

She heard it and sat motionless; every nerve in her was sounding the alarm; every breath repeated the prophecy; and she did not stir, even when his arm encircled her. Her head, fallen partly back, rested a moment against his shoulder: she met his light caress with unresponsive lips and eyes that looked up blindly into his.

Then her face burned scarlet and she sprang up, retreating as he caught her slender hand:

"No! – please. Let me go! This is too serious – even if we did not mean it – "

"You know I mean it," he said simply.

"You must not! You understand why!.. And don't – again! I am not – I do not choose to – to allow – endure – such – things – "

He still held her by one hand and she stood twisting at it and looking at him with cheeks still crimson and eyes still a little dazed.

"Please!" she repeated – and "please!" And she came toward him a step, and laid her other hand over the one that still held hers.

"Won't you be kind to me?" she said under her breath. "Be kind to me – and let me go."

"Am I unkind?"

"Yes – yes! You know – you know how it is with me! Let me go my way… I am going anyhow!" she added fiercely; "you can't check me – not for one moment!"

"Check you from what, Strelsa?"

"From – what I want out of life! – tranquillity, ease, security, happiness – "

"Happiness?"

"Yes – yes! It will be that! I don't need anything except what I shall have. I don't want anything else. Can't you understand? Do you think women feel as – as men do? Do you think the kind of love that men experience is also experienced by women? I don't want it; I don't require it! I've – I've always had a contempt for it – and I have still… Anyway I have offered you the best that is in me to offer any man – friendship. That is the nearest I can come to love. Why can't you take it – and let me alone! What is it to you if I marry and find security and comfort and quiet and protection, as long as I give you my friendship – as long as I never swerve in it – as long as I hold you first among my friends – first among men if you wish! More I cannot offer you – I will not! Now let me go!"

"Your other self, fighting me," he said, half to himself.

"No, I am! What do you mean by my other self! There is no other – "

"Its lips rested on mine for a moment!"

She blushed scarlet:

"Is that what you mean! – the stupid, unworthy, material self – "

"The trinity is incomplete without it."

She wrenched her hand free, and stood staring at him breathing unevenly as though frightened.

After a moment he began to pace the floor, hands dropped into his coat pockets, his teeth worrying his under lip:

"I'm not going to give you up," he said. "I love you. Whatever is lacking in you makes no difference to me. My being poor and your being poor makes no difference either. I simply don't care – I don't even care what you think about it. Because I know that we will be worth it to each other – whether you think so or not. And you evidently don't, but I can't help that. If I'm any good I'll make you think as I do – "

He swung on his heel and came straight up to her, took her in his arms and kissed her, then, releasing her, turned toward the window, his brows slightly knitted.

Through the panes poured the sunset flood, bathing him from head to foot in ruddy light. He stared into the red West and the muscles tightened under his cheeks.

"Can't you care?" he said, half to himself.

She stood dumb, still cold and rigid with repulsion from the swift and almost brutal contact. That time nothing in her had responded. Vaguely she felt that what had been there was now dead – that she never could respond again; that, from the lesser emotions, she was clean and free forever.

"Can't you care for a man who loves you, Strelsa?" he said again, turning toward her.

"Is that your idea of love?"

He shook his head, hopelessly:

"Oh, it's everything else, too – everything on earth – and afterward – everything – mind, soul and body – birth, life, death – sky and land and sea – everything that is or was or will be – "

His hands clenched, relaxed; he made a gesture, half checked – looked up at her, looked long and steadily into her expressionless eyes.

"You care for money, position, ease, security, tranquillity – more than for love; do you?"

"Yes."

"Is that true?"

"Yes. Because, unless you mean friendship, I care nothing for love."

"That is your answer."

"It is."

"Then there is something lacking in you."

"Perhaps. I have never loved in the manner you mean. I do not wish to. Perhaps I am incapable of it… I hope I am; I believe – I believe – " But she fell silent, standing with eyes lowered and the warm blood once more stinging her cheeks.

Presently she looked up, calm, level-eyed:

"I think you had better ask my forgiveness before you go."

He shrugged:

"Yes, I'll ask it if you like."

To keep her composure became difficult:

"It is your affair, Mr. Quarren – if you still care to preserve our friendship."

"Would a kiss shatter it?"

She smiled:

"A look, a word, the quiver of an eyelash is enough."

"It doesn't seem to be very solidly founded, does it?"

"Friendship is the frailest thing in the world – and the mightiest… I am waiting for your decision."

He walked up to her again, and she steeled herself, not knowing what to expect.

"Will you marry me, Strelsa?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because I have told Mr. Sprowl that I will marry him."

"Also because you don't love me; is that so?"

She said tranquilly: "I can't afford to marry you. I wouldn't love you anyway."

"Couldn't?"

"Wouldn't," she said calmly; but her face was crimson.

"Oh," he said under his breath – "you are capable of love."

"I think not, Mr. Quarren; but I am very capable of hate."

And, looking up, he saw it for an instant, clear in her eyes. Then it died out; she turned a trifle pale, walked to the window and stood leaning against it, one hand on the curtain.

She did not seem to hear him when he came up behind her, and he touched her lightly on the arm:

"I ask your forgiveness," he said.

"It is granted, Mr. Quarren."

"Have I ruined our friendship?"

"I don't know what you have done," she said wearily.

A few moments later the motor arrived; Quarren turned on the electric lights in the room; Strelsa walked across to the piano and seated herself.

She was playing rag-time when the motor party entered; Quarren came forward and shook hands with Chrysos Lacy and Sir Charles; Langly Sprowl passed him with a short nod, saying "How are you, Quarren?" – and kept straight on to Strelsa.

"Rotten luck," he said in his full, careless voice; "I'd meant to ride over and chance a gallop with you but Wycherly picked me up and started on one of his break-neck tears… What have you been up to all day?"

"Nothing – Mr. Quarren came."

"I see – showed him about, I expect."

"A – little."

"Are you feeling fit, Strelsa?"

"Perfectly… Why?"

"You look a bit streaky – "

"Thank you!"

"'Pon my word you do – a bit under the weather, you know – "

"Woman's only friend and protector – a headache," she said, gaily rattling off more rag-time. "Where did you go, Langly?"

"To look over some silly horses – "

"They're fine nags!" remonstrated Molly – "and I was perfectly sure that Langly would buy half a dozen."

"Not I," said that hatchet-faced young man; and into his sleek and restless features came a glimmer of shrewdness – the sly thrift that lurks in the faces of those who bargain much and wisely in petty wares. It must have been a momentary ancestral gleam from his rum-smuggling ancestors, for Langly Sprowl had never dealt in little things.

Chrysos Lacy was saying: "It's adorable to see you again, Ricky. What is this we hear about you and Lord Dankmere setting up shop?"

"It's true," he laughed. "Come in and buy an old master, Chrysos, at bargain prices."

"I shall insist on Jim buying several," said Molly.

Her husband laughed derisively:

"When I can buy a perfectly good Wright biplane for the same money? Come to earth, Molly!"

"You'll come to earth if you go sky-skating around the clouds in that horrid little Stinger, Jim," she said. "Why couldn't you take out the Stinger for a little exercise?" – turning to Sprowl.

"I'm going to," said Sprowl in his full penetrating voice, not conscious that it required courage to risk a flight with the Stinger. Nobody had ever imputed any lack of that sort of courage to Langly Sprowl. He simply did not understand bodily fear.

Strelsa glanced up at him from the piano:

"It's rather risky, isn't it?"

He merely stared at her out of his slightly protruding eyes as though she were speaking an unfamiliar language.

"Jim," said Quarren, "would you mind taking me as a passenger?"

Wycherly, reckless enough anyway, balked a little at the proposition:

"That Stinger is too light and too tricky I'm afraid."

"Isn't she built for two?"

"Well, I suppose she could get off the ground with you and me – "

"All right; let's try her?"

"Jim! I won't let you," said his wife.

"Don't be silly, Molly. Rix and I are not going up if she won't take us – "

"I forbid you to try! It's senseless!"

Her husband laughed and finished his whisky and soda. Then twirling his motor goggles around his fingers he stood looking at Strelsa.

"You're a pretty little peach," he said sentimentally, "and I'm sorry Molly is here or – "

"Do you care?" laughed Strelsa, looking around at him over her shoulder. "I don't mind being adored by you, Jim."

"Don't you, sweetness?"

"Indeed I don't."

Wycherly started toward her: Langly Sprowl, who neither indulged in badinage nor comprehended it in others, turned a perfectly expressionless face on his host, who said:

"You old muffin head, did you ever smile in your life? You'd better try now because I'm going to take your best girl away from you!"

Which bored Sprowl; and he turned his lean, narrow head away as a sleek and sinister dog turns when laughed at.

Strelsa slipped clear of the piano and vanished, chased heavily by Wycherly.

Molly said: "It's time to dress, good people. Langly, your man is upstairs with your outfit. Come, Chrysos, dear – Rix, have you everything you want?" she added in a low voice as he stood aside for her to pass: "Have you everything, Ricky?"

"Nothing," he said.

"The little minx! Is it Langly?"

"Yes."

"Oh, dear, oh, dear!" And, aloud: "Jim! Do let Langly try out the Stinger to-morrow."

Her husband, who had given up his search for Strelsa, said that Sprowl was welcome.

People scattered to their respective quarters; Quarren walked slowly to his. Sprowl, passing with his mincing, nervous stride, said: "How's little Dankmere?"

"All right," replied Quarren briefly.

"Cheap little beggar," commented Sprowl.

"He happens to be my partner," said the other.

"He suits your business no doubt," said Sprowl with a contempt he took no pains to conceal – a contempt which very plainly included Quarren as well as the Earl and the picture business.

Arrived at his door he glanced around to stare absently at Quarren. The latter said, pleasantly:

"I don't suppose you meant to be offensive, Sprowl; you simply can't help it; can you?"

"What?"

"I mean, you can't help being a bounder. It's just in you, isn't it?"

For a moment Sprowl's hatchet face was ghastly; he opened his mouth to speak, twice, then jerked open his door and disappeared.

CHAPTER X

Quarren had been at Witch-Hollow three days when Dankmere called him on the long-distance telephone.

"Do you want me to come back?" asked the young fellow. "I don't mind if you do; I'm quite ready to return – "

"Not at all, my dear chap," said his lordship. "I fancied you might care to hear how matters are going in the Dankmere Galleries."

"Of course I do, but I rather hoped nothing in particular would happen for a week or so – "

"Plenty has. You know those experts of yours, Valasco, Drayton-Quinn, and that Hollander Van Boschoven. Well, they don't get on. Each has come to me privately, and in turn, and told me that the others were no good – "

"Your rôle is to remain amiable and non-committal," said Quarren. "Let them talk – "