The Streets of Ascalon

CHAPTER XIV

Into the long stables at South Linden, that afternoon, Langly Sprowl's trembling horse was led limping, his velvet flanks all torn by spurs and caked with mud, his tender mouth badly lacerated.

As for his master, it seemed that the ruin of the expensive hunter and four hours' violent and capricious exercise in his reeking saddle had merely whetted his appetite for more violence; and he had been tramping for an hour up and down the length of the library in his big sprawling house when Mr. Kyte, his confidential secretary, came in without knocking.

Sprowl hearing his step swung on him savagely, but Kyte coolly closed the door behind him and turned the key.

"Ledwith is here," he said.

"Ledwith," repeated Sprowl, mechanically.

"Yes, he's on the veranda. They said you were not at home. He said he'd wait. I thought you ought to know. He acts queerly."

Langly's protruding eyes became utterly expressionless.

"All right," he said in dismissal.

Kyte still lingered:

"Is there anything I can say or do?"

"If there was I'd tell you, wouldn't I?"

Kyte's lowered gaze stole upward toward his employer, sustained his expressionless glare for a second, then shifted.

"Very well," he said unlocking the library door; "I thought he might be armed, that's all."

"Kyte!"

Mr. Kyte turned on the door-sill.

"What do you mean by saying that?"

"Saying what?"

"That you think this fellow Ledwith may be armed?"

Kyte stood silent.

"I ask you again," repeated Sprowl, "why you infer that this man might have armed himself to visit this house?"

Kyte's eyes stole upward, were instantly lowered. Sprowl walked over to him.

"You're paid to act, not think; do you understand?" he said in a husky, suppressed voice; but his long fingers were twitching.

"I understand," said Kyte.

Sprowl's lean head jerked; Kyte went; and the master of the house strode back into the library and resumed his pacing.

Boots, spurs, the skirts of his riding coat, even his stock were stained with mud and lather; and there was a spot or two across his sun-tanned cheeks.

Presently he walked to the bay-window which commanded part of the west veranda, and looking out through the lace curtains saw Ledwith sitting there, his sunken eyes fixed on the westering sun.

The man's clothing hung loosely on his frame, showing bony angles at elbow and knee. Burrs and black swamp-mud stuck to his knickerbockers and golf-stockings; he sat very still save for a constant twitching of the muscles.

The necessity for nervous and physical fatigue drove Sprowl back into the library to tramp up and down over the soft old Saraband rugs, up and down, to and fro, and across sometimes, ranging the four walls with the dull, aimless energy of a creature which long caging is rendering mentally unsound.

Then the monotony of the exercise began to irritate instead of allaying his restlessness; he went to the bay-window again, saw Ledwith still sitting there, stared at him with a ferocity almost expressionless, and strode out into the great hallway and through the servant-watched doors to the veranda.

Ledwith looked up, rose. "How are you, Langly?" he said.

Sprowl nodded, staring him insolently in the face.

There was a pause, then Ledwith's pallid features twitched into a crooked smile.

"I wanted to talk over one or two matters with you before I leave," he said.

"When are you leaving?"

"To-night."

"Where are you going?"

"I don't know – to the Acremont Inn for a few days. After that – I don't know."

Sprowl, perfectly aware that his footman was listening, walked out across the lawn, and Ledwith went with him. Neither spoke. Shadows of tall trees lay like velvet on the grass; the crests of the woods beyond grew golden, their depths dusky and bluish. Everywhere robins were noisily at supper, tilting for earthworms on the lawns; golden-winged woodpeckers imitated them; in the late sunlight the grackles' necks were rainbow tinted.

On distant hillcrests Sprowl could see his brood-mares feeding, switching their tails against the sky; farther away sheep dotted hillside pastures. Farther still the woods of Witch-Hollow lay banded with sunshine and shadow. And Sprowl's protuberant gaze grew fixed and expressionless as he swung on across the meadows and skirted the first grove of oaks, huge outlying pickets of his splendid forest beyond.

"We can talk here," said Ledwith in a voice which sounded hoarse and painful; and, swinging around on him, Sprowl saw that he was in distress, fighting for breath and leaning against the trunk of an oak.

"What do you want to talk about?" said Sprowl.

The struggle for breath left Ledwith mute.

"Can't you walk and talk at the same time?" demanded Sprowl. "I need exercise."

"I've got to rest."

"Well, then, what have you got to say? – because I'm going on. What's the matter with you, anyway," he added sneeringly; "dope?"

"Partly," said Ledwith without resentment.

"What else?"

"Anxiety."

"Oh. Do you think you have a monopoly of that?"

Ledwith, without heeding the sneering question, went on, still resting on his elbow against the tree-trunk:

"I want to talk to you, Langly. I want straight talk from you. Do I get it?"

"You'll get it; go on," said Sprowl contemptuously.

"Then – my wife has returned."

"Your ex-wife," corrected Sprowl without a shade of expression in voice or features.

"Yes," said Ledwith – "Mary. I left the house before she arrived, on my way to Acremont across country. She and your aunt drove up together. I saw them from the hill."

"Very interesting," said Sprowl. "Is that all?"

Ledwith detached himself from the tree and stood aside, under it, looking down at the grass.

"You are going to marry her of course," he said.

"That," retorted Sprowl, "is none of your business."

"Because," continued Ledwith, not heeding him, "that is the only thing possible. There is nothing else for her to do – for you to do. She knows it, you know it, and so do I."

"I know all about it," said Sprowl coolly. "Is there anything else?"

"Only your word to confirm what I have just said."

"What are you talking about?"

"Your marriage with Mary."

"I think I told you that it was none of your business."

"Perhaps you did. But I've made it my business."

"May I ask why?"

"Yes, you may ask, Langly, and I'll tell you. It's because, recently, there have been rumours concerning you and a Mrs. Leeds. That's the reason."

Sprowl's hands, hanging at his sides, began nervously closing and unclosing:

"Is that all, Ledwith?"

"That's all – when you have confirmed what I have said concerning the necessity for your marriage with the woman you debauched."

"You lie," said Langly.

Ledwith smiled. "No," he said wearily, "I don't. She admitted it to me."

"That is another lie."

"Ask her. She didn't care what she said to me any more than she cared, after a while, what she did to me. You made her yours, soul and body; she became only your creature, caring less and less for concealment as her infatuation grew from coquetry to imprudence, from recklessness to effrontery… It's the women of our sort, who, once misled, stop at nothing – not the men. Prudence to the point of cowardice is the amatory characteristic of your sort… I don't mean physical cowardice," he added, lifting his sunken eyes and letting them rest on Sprowl's powerful frame.

"Have you finished?" asked the latter.

"In a moment, Langly. I am merely reminding you of what has happened. Concerning myself I have nothing to say. Look at me. You know what I was; you see what I am. I'm not whining; it's all in a lifetime. And the man who is not fitted to take care of what is his, loses. That's all."

Sprowl's head was averted after an involuntary glance at the man before him. His face was red – or it may have been the ruddy evening sun striking flat across it.

Ledwith said: "You will marry her, of course. But I merely wish to hear you say so."

Sprowl swung on him, his thick lips receding:

"I'll marry whom I choose! Do you understand that?"

"Of course. But you will choose to marry her."

"Do you think so?"

"Yes. Or – I'll kill you," he said seriously.

Langly stared at him, every vein suddenly dark and swollen; then his bark of a laugh broke loose.

"I suppose you've got it in your pocket," he said.

Ledwith fumbled in his coat pocket and produced a dully blued weapon of heavy calibre; and Sprowl walked slowly up to him, slapped his face, took the revolver from him, and flung it into the woods.

"Now go home and punch yourself full of dope," he said; swung on his heel, and sauntered off.

Ledwith looked after him, one bloodless hand resting on the cheek which Sprowl had struck – watched him out of sight. Then, patiently, he started to search for the weapon, dropping on all-fours, crawling, peering, parting the ferns and bushes. But the sun was low and the woods dusky, and he could not find what he was looking for. So he sat up on the ground among the dead leaves of other years, drew from his pocket what he needed, and slowly bared his scarred arm to the shoulder.

As for Sprowl, his vigorous tread lengthened to a swinging stride as he shouldered his way through a thicket and out again into the open.

Already he scarcely remembered Ledwith at all, or his menace, or the blow; scarcely even recollected that Mary Ledwith had returned or that his aunt was within driving distance of his own quarters.

A dull hot anguish, partly rage, possessed him, tormenting brain and heart incessantly and giving him no rest. His own clumsy madness in destroying what he believed had been a certainty – his stupidity, his loss of self-control, not only in betraying passion prematurely but in his subsequent violence and brutality, almost drove him insane.

Never before in any affair with women had he forgotten caution in any crisis; his had been a patience unshakable when necessary, a dogged, driving persistence when the time came, the subtlety of absolute inertness when required. But above all and everything else he has been a master of patience, and so a master of himself; and so he had usually won.

And now – now in this crisis – a crisis involving the loss of what he cared for enough to marry – if he must marry to have his way with her – what was to be done?

He tried to think coolly, but the cinders of rage and passion seemed to stir and move with every breath he drew awaking the wild fire within.

He would try to reason and think clearly – try to retrace matters to the beginning and find out why he had blundered when everything was in his own hands.

It was his aunt's sudden policy that betrayed him into a premature move – Mary Ledwith's return, and his aunt's visit. Mary Ledwith was there to marry him; his aunt to make mischief unless he did what was expected of him.

Leisurely but thoroughly he cursed them both as he walked back across his lawn. But he was already thinking of Strelsa again when, as he entered the wide hall, his aunt waddled across the rugs of the drawing-room, pronouncing his name with unmistakable decision. And, before the servants, he swallowed the greeting he had hoped to give her, and led her into the library.

"Mercy on us, Langly!" she exclaimed, eyeing his reeking boots and riding-breeches; "do you live like a pig up here?"

"I've been out," he said briefly. "What do you want?"

Her little green eyes lighted up, and her smile, which was fading, she forced into a kind of fixed grin.

"Your polished and thoughtful inquiry is characteristic of you," she said. "Mary is here, and I want you to come over to dinner."

"I'm not up to it," he said.

"I want you to come."

"I tell you I'm not up to it," he said bluntly.

"And I tell you that you'd better come."

"Better come?" he repeated.

"Yes, better come. More than that, Langly, you'd better behave yourself, or I'll make New York too hot to hold you."

His prominent eyes were expressionless.

"Ah?" he remarked.

"Exactly, my friend. Your race is run. You've done one thing too publicly to squirm out of the consequences. The town has stood for a good deal from you. When that girl at the Frivolity Theatre shot herself, leaving a letter directed to you, the limit of public patience was nearly reached. You had to go abroad, didn't you? Well, you can't go abroad this time. Neither London nor Paris nor Vienna nor Budapest – no, nor St. Petersburg nor even Constantinople would stand you! Your course is finished. If you've an ounce of brains remaining you know that you're done for this time. So go and dress and come over to dinner… And don't worry; I'll keep away from you after you're married."

"You'll keep your distance before that," he said slowly.

"You're mistaken. Many people are afraid of you, but I never was and never could be. You're no good; you never were. If you didn't lug my name about with you I'd let you go to hell. You'll go there anyway, but you'll go married first."

"I expect to."

"Married to Mary Ledwith," she said looking at him.

He picked up a cigar, examined it, yawned, then glanced at her:

"As I had – recently – occasion to tell Chester Ledwith, I'll marry whom I please. Now suppose you clear out."

"Are you dining with us?"

"No."

"What time may we expect you to-morrow?"

"At no time."

"Do you intend to marry Mary Ledwith?"

"No."

"Is that final?"

"Yes!"

"Do you expect to marry anybody else?"

"Yes!" he shouted, partly rising from his chair, his narrow face distorted. "Yes, I do! Now you know, don't you! Is the matter settled at last? Do you understand clearly? – you fat-headed, meddlesome old fool!"

He sprang to his feet in an access of fury and began loping up and down the room, gesticulating, almost mouthing out his hatred and abuse – rendered more furious still by the knowledge of his own weakness and disintegration – his downfall from that silent citadel of self-control which had served him so many years as a stronghold for defiance or refuge.

"You impertinent old woman!" he shouted, "if you don't keep your fat nose out of my affairs I'll set a thousand men tampering with the foundations of your investments! Keep your distance and mind your business – I warn you now and for the last time, or else – " He swung around on her, and the jaw muscles began to work – "or else I'll supply the Yellows with a few facts concerning that Englishman's late father and yourself!"