The Streets of Ascalon

CHAPTER II

A masked dance, which for so long has been out of fashion in the world that pretends to it, was the experiment selected by Molly Wycherly for the warming up of her new house on Park Avenue.

The snowy avenue for blocks was a mass of motors and carriages; a platoon of police took charge of the vehicular mess. Outside of the storm-coated lines the penniless world of shreds and patches craned a thousand necks as the glittering costumes passed from brougham and limousine under the awnings into the great house.

Already in the new ball-room, along the edges of the whirl, masqueraders in tumultuous throngs were crowding forward to watch the dancers or drifting into the eddies and set-backs where ranks of overloaded gilt chairs creaked under jewelled dowagers, and where rickety old beaux impersonated tinselled courtiers on wavering but devoted legs.

Aloft in their rococo sky gallery a popular orchestra fiddled frenziedly; the great curtains of living green set with thousands of gardenias swayed in the air currents like Chinese tapestries; a harmonious tumult swept the big new ball-room from end to end – a composite uproar in which were mingled the rushing noise of silk, clatter of sole and heel, laughter and cries of capering maskers gathered from the four quarters of fashionable Gath to grace the opening of the House of Wycherly. They were all there, dowager, matron, débutante, old beaux, young gallant, dancing, laughing, coquetting, flirting. Young eyes mocked the masked eyes that wooed them; adolescence tormented maturity; the toothless ogled the toothsome. Unmasking alone could set right this topsy-turvy world of carnival.

A sinuous Harlequin, his skin-tight lozenge-patterned dress shimmering like the red and gold skin of a Malay snake, came weaving his way through the edges of the maelstrom, his eyes under the black half-mask glittering maliciously at the victims of his lathe-sword. With it he recklessly slapped whatever tempted him, patting gently the rounded arms and shoulders of nymph and shepherdess, using more vigour on the plump contours of fat and elderly courtiers, spinning on the points of his pump-toes, his limber lathe-sword curved in both hands above his head, leaping lithely over a chair here and there, and landing always as lightly as a cat on silent feet – a wiry, symmetrical figure under the rakish bi-corne, instinct with mischief and grace infernal.

Encountering a burly masker dressed like one of Cromwell's ponderous Ironsides, he hit him a resounding whack over his aluminum cuirass, and whispered:

"That Ironside rig doesn't conceal you: it reveals you, Karl! Out with your Bible and your Sword and preach the wrath to come!"

"It will come all right," said Westguard. "Do you know how many hundred thousand dollars are wasted here to-night?.. And yesterday a woman died of hunger in Carmine Street. Don't worry about the wrath of God as long as people die of cold and hunger in the streets of Ascalon."

"That's not as bad as dying of inanition – which would happen to the majority here if they didn't have things like this to amuse 'em. For decency's sake, Karl, pity the perplexities of the rich for a change!"

Westguard grunted something under his casque; then, adjusting his aluminum mask:

"Are you having a good time, Dicky? I suppose you are."

"Oh, I'm gay enough," returned the Harlequin airily – "but there's never much genuine gaiety among the overfed." And he slapped a passing gallant with his wooden sword, spun around on his toes, bent over gracefully and stood on his hands, legs twinkling above him in the air. Then, with a bound he was on his nimble feet again, and, linking his arm in the arm of the Cromwellian trooper, strolled along the ranks of fanning dowagers, glancing amiably into their masked faces.

"Same old battle-line," he observed to his companion – "their jewels give them away. Same old tiaras, same old ladies – all fat, all fifty, all fanning away like the damned. Your aunt has on about a ton of emeralds. I think she does it for the purpose of banting, don't you, Karl – "

The uproar drowned his voice: Westguard, colossal in his armour, gazed gloomily around at the gorgeous spectacle for which his cousin Molly Wycherly was responsible.

"It's monkey-shines like this that breed anarchists," he growled. "Did you notice that rubbering crowd outside the police lines in the snow? Molly and Jim ought to see it."

"Oh, cut it out, Karl," retorted the Harlequin gaily; "there'll be rich and poor in the world as long as the bally old show runs – there'll be reserved seats and gallery seats and standing room only, and ninety-nine percent of the world cooling its shabby heels outside."

"I don't care to discuss the problem with you," observed Westguard. After a moment he added: "I'm going to dance once or twice and get out… I suppose you'll flit about doing the agreeable and fashionable until daylight."

"I suppose so," said the Harlequin, tranquilly. "Why not? Also you ought to find material here for one of your novels."

"A man doesn't have to hunt for material. It's in his bedroom when he wakes; it's all around him all day long. There's no more here than there is outside in the snow; and no less… But dancing all night isn't going to help your business, Ricky."

"It won't hurt any business I'm likely to do."

"Isn't your Tappan-Zee Park panning out?"

"Fizzling out. Nobody's bought any building sites."

"Why not?"

"How the deuce do I know, Karl! I don't want to talk business, here – "

He ceased speaking as three or four white masked Bacchantes in fluttering raiment came dancing by to the wild music of Philemon and Baucis. Shaking their be-ribboned tambourines, flowery garlands and lynx-skins flying from their shoulders, they sped away on fleet little feet, hotly pursued by adorers.

"Come on," said the Harlequin briskly; "I think one of those skylarkers ought to prove amusing! Shall I catch you one?"

But he found no encouragement in the swift courtship he attempted; for the Bacchantes, loudly protesting at his interference, banged him over his head and shoulders with their resounding tambourines and danced away unheeding his blandishments.

"Flappers," observed a painted and powdered clown whose voice betrayed him as O'Hara; "this town is overstocked with fudge-fed broilers. They're always playin' about under foot, spoilin' your huntin'; and if you touch 'em they ki-yi no end."

"I suppose you're looking for Mrs. Leeds," said Westguard, smiling.

"I fancy every man here is doin' the same thing," replied the clown. "What's her costume? Do you know, Ironsides?"

"I wouldn't tell you if I did," said Westguard frankly.

The Harlequin shrugged.

"This world," he remarked, "is principally encumbered with women, and naturally a man supposes the choice is unlimited. But as you live to drift from girl to girl you'll discover that there are just two kinds; the kind you can kiss and the kind you can't. So finally you marry the latter. Does Mrs. Leeds flirt?"

"Will a fish swim?" rejoined the clown. "You bet she will flirt. Haven't you met her?"

"I? No," said the Harlequin carelessly. Which secretly amused both Westguard and O'Hara, for it had been whispered about that the new beauty not only had taken no pains to meet Quarren, but had pointedly ignored an opportunity when the choice lay with her, remarking that dancing men were one of the social necessities which everybody took for granted – like flowers and champagne. And the comment had been carried straight to Quarren, who had laughed at the time – and had never forgotten it, nor the apparently causeless contempt that evidently had inspired it.

The clown brandished his bunch of toy balloons, and gazed about him:

"Anybody who likes can go and tell Mrs. Leeds that I'm her declared suitor. I don't care who knows it. I'm foolish about her. She's different from any woman I ever saw. And if I don't find her pretty soon I'll smash every balloon over your head, Ricky!"

The Harlequin laughed. "Women," he said, "are cut out in various and amusing patterns like animal crackers, but the fundamental paste never varies, and the same pastry cook seasoned it."

"That's a sickly and degenerate sentiment," observed Westguard.

"You might say that about the unfledged," added O'Hara – "like those kittenish Bacchantes. Winifred Miller and the youngest Vernon girl were two of those Flappers, I think. But there's no real jollity among the satiated," he added despondently. "A mask, a hungry stomach, and empty pockets are the proper ingredients for gaiety – take it from me, Karl." And he wandered off, beating everybody with his bunch of toy balloons.

Quarren leaped to the seat of a chair and squatted there drawing his shimmering legs up under him like a great jewelled spider.

"Bet you ten that the voluminous domino yonder envelops my aunt, Mrs. Sprowl," whispered Westguard.

"You're betting on a certainty and a fat ankle."

"Sure. I've seen her ankles going upstairs too often… What the devil is the old lady wearing under that domino?"

"Wait till you see her later," said Quarren, delightedly. "She has come as Brunhilda."

"I don't want to see three hundred pounds of relative as Brunhilda," growled Westguard.

"You will, to-morrow. She's given her photograph to a Herald man."

"What did you let her do it for?" demanded Westguard wrathfully.

"Could I help it?"

"You could have stopped her. She thinks your opinion is the last lisp in fashionable art problems."

"There are some things you can't tell a woman," said Quarren. "One of 'em concerns her weight."

"Are you afraid of Mrs. Sprowl?"

The Harlequin laughed:

"Where would I be if I incurred your aunt's displeasure, dear friend?"

"Out of the monkey house for good I suppose," admitted Westguard. "Lord, Ricky, what a lot you have had to swallow for the sake of staying put among these people!"

Quarren sat meditating under his mask, cross-legged, twirling his sword, the crash of the floor orchestra dinning in his close-set ears.

"Yes," he said without resentment, "I've endured my share. That's one reason why I don't want to let several years of humiliation go for nothing. I've earned whatever place I have. And I mean to keep it."

Westguard turned on him half angrily, hesitated, then remained silent. What was the use? If Quarren had not been guilty of actually fawning, toadying, currying favour, he had certainly permitted himself to be rudely used. He had learned very thoroughly his art in the school of the courtier – learned how and when to be blind, silent, deaf; how to offer, how to yield, when and how to demand and exact. Which, to Westguard, meant the prostitution of intelligence. And he loathed the game like a man who is free to play it if he cares to. Of those who are denied participation, few really hate it.

But he said nothing more; and the Harlequin, indolently stretching his glittering limbs, dropped a light hand on Westguard's cuirassed shoulder:

"Don't be forever spoiling things for me, Karl. I really do enjoy the game as it lies."

"It does lie – that is the trouble, Rix."

"I can't afford to criticise it… Listen; I'm a mediocre man; I'd never count among real men. I count in the set which I amuse and which accepts me. Let me enjoy it, can't you?"

An aged dandy, masked, painted, wizened, and dressed like Henri II, tottered by with a young girl on his arm, his shrill, falsetto giggle piercing the racket around them.

"Do you wish to live to be like that?" asked Westguard sharply.

"Oh, I'll die long before that," said Quarren cheerfully, and leaped lightly to his feet. "I shall now accomplish a little dancing," he said, pointing with his wooden sword at the tossing throng. "Venus send me a pretty married woman who really loves her husband… By Bacchus! Those dancers are going it! Come on, Karl. Leave us foot it!"

Many maskers were throwing confetti now: multi-tinted serpents shot out across the clamorous gulf; bunches of roses flung high, rising in swift arcs of flight, crossed and recrossed. All along the edges of the dance, like froth and autumn leaves cast up from a whirlpool, fluffy feminine derelicts and gorgeous masculine escorts were flung pell-mell out of the maelstrom and left stranded or drifting breathless among the eddies setting in toward the supper-room.

Suddenly, as the Harlequin bent forward to plunge into the crush, the very centre of the whirlpool parted, and out of it floated a fluttering, jingling, dazzling figure all gold – slender, bare-armed and bare of throat and shoulders, auriferous, scintillating from crown to ankle – for her sleeveless tabard was cloth-of-gold, and her mask was gold; so were her jewelled shoes and the gemmed fillet that bound her locks; and her thick hair clustering against her cheeks had the lustre of precious metal.

Jingling, fluttering, gems clashing musically, the Byzantine dancer, besieged by adorers, deftly evaded their pressing gallantries – evaded the Harlequin, too, with laughing mockery, skilfully disengaging herself from the throng of suitors stumbling around her, crowded and buffeted on every side.

After her like a flash sped Harlequin: for an instant, just ahead of him, she appeared in plain sight, glimmering brightly against the green and swaying tapestry of living leaves and flowers, then even as her pursuers looked at her, she vanished before their very eyes.

They ran about distractedly hunting for her, Turk, Drum Major, Indian Chief, and Charles the First, then reluctantly gave up the quest and drifted off to seek for another ideal. All women are ideal under the piquant promise of the mask.

A pretty shepherdess, lingering near, whispered close to Quarren's shoulder behind her fan:

"Check to you, Harlequin! That golden dancer was the only girl in town who hasn't taken any pains to meet you!"

He turned his head, warily, divining Molly Wycherly under the disguise, realising, too, that she recognised him.

"You'll never find her now," laughed the shepherdess. "Besides she does not care a rap about meeting a mere Harlequin. It's refreshing to see you so thoroughly snubbed once in a while." And she danced gaily away, arms akimbo, her garlanded crook over her shoulder; and her taunting laughter floated back to him where he stood irresolute, wondering how the golden dancer could have so completely vanished.

Suddenly he recollected going over the house before its completion with Jim Wycherly, who had been his own architect, and the memory of a certain peculiarity in the construction of the ball-room flashed into his mind. The only possible explanation for her disappearance was that somebody had pointed out to her the low door behind the third pillar, and she was now in the gilded swallow's-nest aloft.

It was a whim of Wycherly – this concealed stair – he recalled it perfectly now – and, parting the living tapestry of blossoms, he laid his hand on the ivory and gilded paneling, pressing the heart of one carved rose after another, until with a click! a tiny door swung inward, revealing a narrow spiral of stairs, lighted rosily by electricity.

He stepped inside, closed the door, and listened, then mounted noiselessly. Half way up he caught the aroma of a cigarette; and, a second later he stepped out onto a tiny latticed balcony, completely screened.

The golden dancer, who evidently had been gazing down on the carnival scene below from behind the lattice, whirled around to confront him in a little flurry of cigarette smoke.

For a moment they faced each other, then:

"How did you know where to find me, Harlequin?"

"I'd have died if I hadn't found you, fairest, loveliest – "

"That is no answer! Answer me!"

"Why did you flee?" he asked. "Answer that, first."

She glanced at her cigarette and shrugged her shoulders:

"You see why I fled, don't you? Now answer me."

The Harlequin presented the hilt of his sword which was set with a tiny mirror.

"You see why I fled after you," he said, "don't you?"

"All the same," she insisted, smilingly, "I have been informed on excellent authority that I am the only one, except the family, who knows of this balcony. And here comes a Harlequin blundering in! You are not Mr. Wycherly; and you're certainly not Molly."

"Alas! My ultimate ends are not as shapely."

"Then who are you?" She added, laughing: "They're shapely enough, too."

"I am only a poor wandering, love-smitten Harlequin – " he said, "scorned, despised, and mocked by beauty – "

"Love-smitten?" she repeated.

"Can you doubt it, now?"

She laughed gaily and leaned back against the balcony's velvet rail:

"You lose no time in declaring yourself, do you, Harlequin? – that is, if you are hinting that I have smitten you with the pretty passion."

"Through and through, beautiful dancer – "

"How do you know that I am beautiful under this mask?"

"I know many things. That's my compensation for being only a poor mountebank of a Harlequin – magic penetration – the clairvoyance of radium."

"Did you expect to find me at the top of those cork-screw stairs?"

"I did."

"Why?"

"Inference. Every toad hides a jewel in its head. So I argued that somewhere in the ugliness of darkest Philistia a gem must be hidden; and I've searched for years – up and down throughout the haunts of men from Gath to Ascalon. And – behold! My quest is ended at your pretty feet! – Rose-Diamond of the World!"

He sank lithely on one knee; she laughed deliciously, looking down at his masked face.

"Who are you, Harlequin? – whose wits and legs seem to be equally supple and symmetrical?"

"Tell it not in Gath; Publish it not in the streets of Ascalon; I am that man for whom you were destined before either you or I were born. Are you frightened?"

The Byzantine dancer laughed and shook her head till all the golden metal on her was set chiming.

He said, still on one knee at her feet:

"Exquisite phantom of an Empire dead, from what emblazoned sarcophagus have you danced forth across our modern oceans to bewitch the Philistia of to-day? Who clothed you in scarlet delicately? Who put ornaments of gold upon your apparel – "

"You court me with Scripture as smoothly as Heaven's great Enemy," she said – "and to your own ends, as does he. Are you leagued with him, O agile and intrusive Harlequin, to steal away my peace of mind?"

Lithely, silently he leaped up to the balustrade and, gathering his ankles under him, squatted there, cross-legged, peering sideways at her through the slanting eye-holes.

"If that screen behind you gives way," she warned him, "you will have accomplished your last harlequinade."

He glanced coolly over his shoulder:

"How far is it to the floor below, do you suppose?"

"Far enough to make a good harlequin out of a live one," she said… "Please be careful; I really mean it."

"Child," he said solemnly, "do you suppose that I mind falling a hundred feet or so on my head? I've already fallen infinitely farther than that this evening."

"And it didn't kill you?" she exclaimed, clasping her hands, dramatically.

"No. Because our destiny must first be accomplished before I die."

"Ours?"

"Yours and mine, pretty dancer! I've already fulfilled my destiny by falling in love with you at first sight. That was a long fall, wasn't it?"