The Streets of Ascalon

Mrs. Sprowl's face went pasty-white; in the fat, colourless expanse only the deathless fury of her eyes seemed alive.

"So that fetched you," he observed, coolly. "I don't want to give you apoplexy; I don't want you messing up my house. I merely want you to understand that it's dangerous to come sniffing and nosing around my threshold. You do understand, I guess."

He continued his promenade but presently came back to her:

"You know well enough who I want to marry. If you say or do one thing to interfere I'll see that you figure in the Yellows."

He thought a moment; the colour slowly returned to her face. After a fit of coughing she struggled to rise from her chair. He let her pant and scuffle and kick for a while, then opened the door and summoned her footman.

"I'm sorry I cannot drive with you this evening," he said quietly, as the footman supported Mrs. Sprowl to her feet, "but I've promised the Wycherlys. Pray offer my compliments and friendly wishes to Mrs. Ledwith."

When she had gone he walked back into the library, picked up the telephone and finally got Molly Wycherly on the wire.

"Won't you ask me to dinner?" he said. "I've an explanation to make to Mrs. Leeds and I'd be awfully obliged to you."

There was a silence, then Molly said, deliberately:

"You must be a very absent-minded young man. I saw your aunt for a moment this afternoon and she said that you are dining with her at Mrs. Ledwith's."

"She was mistaken – " began Sprowl quietly, but Molly cut him short with a laughing "good-bye," and hung up the receiver.

"That was Langly," she remarked, turning to Strelsa who was already dressed for dinner and who had come into Molly's boudoir to observe the hair-dressing and comprehensive embellishment of that young matron's person by a new maid on probation.

Strelsa's upper lip curled faintly, then the happy expression returned, and she watched the decorating of Molly until the maid turned her out in the perfection of grooming from crown to toe.

There was nobody in the music-room. Molly turned again to Strelsa as they entered:

"What a brute he is! – asking me to invite him here for dinner when Mary Ledwith has just arrived."

"Did he do that?"

"Yes. And his excuse was that he had an explanation to make you. What a sneaking way of doing it!"

Strelsa looked out of the dark window in silence.

Molly said: "I wish he'd go away, I never can look at him without thinking of Chester Ledwith – and all that wretched affair… Not that I am sniffy about Mary – the poor little fool… Anyway," she added naïvely, "old lady Sprowl has fixed her status and now we all know how to behave toward her."

Strelsa, arms clasped behind her back, came slowly forward from the window:

"What a sorry civilisation," she said thoughtfully, "and what sorry codes we frame to govern it."

"What?" sharply.

Strelsa looked at her, absently.

"Nobody seems to be ashamed of anything any more," she said, half to herself. "The only thing that embarrasses us is what the outside world may think of us. We don't seem to care what we think of each other."

Molly, a trifle red, asked her warmly what she meant.

"Oh, I was just realising what are the motives that govern us – the majority of us – and how primitive they are. So many among us seem to be moral throwbacks – types reappearing out of the mists of an ancient and unmoral past… Echoes of primitive ages when nobody knew any better – when life was new, and was merely life and nothing else – fighting, treacherous, cringing life which knew of nothing else to do except to eat, sleep, and reproduce itself – bully the weaker, fawn on the stronger, lie, steal, and watch out that death should not interfere with the main chance."

Molly, redder than ever, asked her again what she meant.

"I don't know, dear… How clean the woods and fields seem after a day indoors with many people."

"You mean we all need moral baths?"

"I do."

Molly smiled: "For a moment I thought you meant that I do."

Strelsa smiled, too:

"You're a good wife, Molly; and a good friend… I wish you had a baby."

"I'm – going to."

They looked at each other a moment; then Strelsa caught her in her arms.

"Really?"

Molly nodded:

"That's why I worry about Jim taking chances in his aeroplane."

"He mustn't! He's got to stop! What can he be thinking of!" cried Strelsa indignantly.

"But he – doesn't know."

"You haven't told him?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I – don't know how he'll take it."

"What?"

Molly flushed: "We didn't want one. I don't know what he'll say. We didn't care for them – "

Strelsa's angry beauty checked her with its silent scorn; suddenly her pretty head fell forward on Strelsa's breast:

"Don't look that way at me! I was a fool. How was I to know – anything? I'd never had one… You can't know whether you want a baby or not until you have one… I know now. I'm crazy about it… I think it would – would kill me if Jim is annoyed – "

"He won't be, darling!" whispered Strelsa. "Don't mind what he says anyway. He's only a man. He never even knew as much about it as you did. What do men know, anyway? Jim is a dear – just the regular sort of man interested in business and sport and probably afraid that a baby might interfere with both. What does he know about it?.. Besides he's too decent to be annoyed – "

"I'm afraid – I can't stand – even his indifference – " whimpered Molly.

Strelsa, holding her clasped to her breast, started to speak, but a noise of men in the outer hall silenced her – the aviators returning from their hangars and gathering in the billiard-room for a long one before dressing.

"Wait," whispered Strelsa, gently disengaging herself – "wait just a moment – "

And she was out in the hall in an instant, just in time to touch Jim on the arm as he closed the file toward the billiard-room.

"Hello, Sweetness!" he said, pivoting on his heels and seizing her hands. "Are you coming in to try a cocktail with us?"

"Jim," she said, "I want to tell you something."

"Shoot," he said. "And if you don't hurry I'll kiss you."

"Listen, please. Molly is in the music-room. Make her tell you."

"Tell me what?"

"Ask her, Jim… And, if you care one atom for her – be happy at what she tells you – and tell her that you are. Will you?"

He stared at her, then lost countenance. Then he looked at her in a panicky way and started to go, but she held on to him with determination:

"Smile first!"

"Thunder! I – "

"Smile. Oh, Jim, isn't there any decency in men?"

His mind was working like mad; he stared at her, then through the astonishment and consternation on his good-looking features a faint grin broke out.

"All right," she whispered, and let him go.

Molly, idling at the piano, heard his tread behind her, and looked up over her shoulder.

"Hello, Jim," she said, faintly.

"Hello, ducky. Strelsa says you have something to tell me."

"I – Jim?"

"So she said. So I cut out a long one to find out what it is. What's up, ducky?"

Molly's gaze grew keener: "Did that child tell you?"

"She said that you had something to tell me."

"Did she?"

"No! Aren't you going to tell me either?"

He dropped into a chair opposite her; she sat on the piano-stool considering him for a while in silence. Then, dropping her arms with a helpless little gesture:

"We are going to have a baby. Are you – annoyed?"

For a second he sat as though paralysed, and the next second he had her in his arms, the grin breaking out from utter blankness.

"You're a corker, ducky!" he whispered. "You for me all the time!"

"Jim!.. Really?"

"Surest thing you know! Which is it? – boy or – Oh, I beg your pardon, dear – I'm not accustomed to the etiquette. But I'm delighted, ducky, overwhelmed!"

"Oh, Jim! I'm so glad. And I'm crazy about it – perfectly mad about it… And you're a dear to care – "

"Certainly I care! What do you take me for – a wooden Indian!" he exclaimed virtuously. "Come on and we'll celebrate – "

"But, Jim! We can't tell people."

"Oh – that's the christening. I forgot, ducky. No, we can't talk about it of course. But I'll do anything you say – "

"Will you?"

"Will I? Watch me!"

"Then – then don't take out the Stinger for a while. Do you mind, dear?"

"What!" he said, jaw dropping.

"I can't bear it, Jim. I was a good sport before; you know I was. But my nerve has gone. I can't take chances now; I want you to see – it – "

After a moment he nodded.

"Sure," he said. "It's like Lent. You've got to offer up something… If you feel that way – " he sighed unconsciously – "I'll lock up the hangar until – "

"Oh, darling! Will you?"

"Yes," said that desolate young man, and kissed his wife without a scowl. He had behaved pretty well – about like the majority of husbands outside of popular romances.

The amateur aeronauts left in the morning before anybody was stirring except the servants – Vincent Wier, Lester Caldera, the Van Dynes and the rest, bag, baggage, and, later, two aeroplanes packed and destined for Barent Van Dyne's Long Island estate where there was to be some serious flying attempted over the flat and dusty plains of that salubrious island.

Sir Charles Mallison was leaving that same day, later; and there were to be no more of Jim's noisy parties; and now under the circumstances, no parties of Molly's, either; because Molly was becoming nervous and despondent and a mania for her husband possessed her – the pretty resurgence of earlier sentiment which, if not more than comfortably dormant, buds charmingly again at a time like this.

Also she wanted Strelsa, and nobody beside these two; and although she liked parties of all sorts including Jim's sporting ones, and although she liked Sir Charles immensely, she was looking forward to comfort of an empty house with only her husband to decorate the landscape and Strelsa to whisper to in morbid moments.

For Chrysos was going to Newport, Sir Charles and her maid accompanying her as far as New York from where the Baronet meant to sail the next day.

His luggage had already gone; his man was packing when Sir Charles sauntered out over the dew-wet lawn, a sprig of sweet-william in his lapel, tall, clear-skinned, nice to look upon.

What he really thought of what he had seen in America, of the sort of people who had entertained him, of the grotesque imitation of exotic society – or of a certain sort of it – nobody really knew. Doubtless his estimate was inclined to be a kindly one, for he was essentially that – a philosophical, chivalrous, and modest man; and if his lines had fallen in places where vulgarity, extravagance, and ostentation predominated – if he had encountered little real cultivation, less erudition, and almost nothing worthy of sympathetic interest, he never betrayed either impatience or contempt.

He had come for one reason only – the same reason that had brought him to America for the first time – to ask Strelsa Leeds to marry him.

He was man enough to understand that she did not care for him that way, soldier enough to face his fate, keen enough, long since, to understand that Quarren meant more to the woman he cared for than any other man.

Cool, self-controlled, he watched every chance for an opening in his own behalf. No good chance presented itself. So he made one and offered himself with a dignity and simplicity that won Strelsa's esteem but not her heart.

After that he stayed on, not hoping, but merely because he liked her. Later he remained because of a vague instinct that he might as well be on hand while Strelsa went through the phase with Langly Sprowl. But he was a wise man, and weeks ago he had seen the inevitable outcome. Also he had divined Quarren's influence in the atmosphere, had watched for it, sensed it, seen it very gradually materialise in a score of acts and words of which Strelsa herself was totally unconscious.

Then, too, the afternoon before, he had encountered Sprowl riding furiously with reeking spurs, after his morning's gallop with Strelsa; and he had caught a glimpse of the man's face; and that was enough.

So there was really nothing to keep him in America any longer. He wanted to get back to his own kind – into real life again, among people of real position and real elegance, where live topics were discussed, where live things were attempted or accomplished, where whatever was done, material or immaterial, was done thoroughly and well.

There was not one thing in America, now, to keep him there – except a warm and kindly affection for his little friend Chrysos Lacy with whom he had been thrown so constantly at Witch-Hollow.

Strolling across the lawn, he thought of her with warm gratitude. In her fresh and unspoiled youth he had found relief from a love unreturned, a cool, sweet antidote to passion, a balm for loneliness most exquisite and delightful.

The very perfection of comradeship it had been, full of charming surprises as well as a rest both mental and physical. For Chrysos made few demands on his intellect – that is, at first she had made very few. Later – within the past few weeks, he remembered now his surprise to find how much there really was to the young girl – and that perhaps her age and inexperience alone marked any particular intellectual chasm between them.

Thinking of these things he sauntered on across country, and after a while came to the grounds of the Ledwith place, wondering a little that a note from Mrs. Sprowl the evening before should have requested him to present himself at so early an hour.

A man took his card, returned presently saying that Mrs. Ledwith had not yet risen, but that Mrs. Sprowl would receive him.

Conducted to the old lady's apartments he was ushered into a dressing-room done in pastel tints, and which hideously set forth the colouring and proportions of Mrs. Sprowl in lace bed-attire, bolstered up in a big cane-backed chair.

"I'm ill," she said hoarsely; "I have been ill all night – sitting here because I can't lie down. I'd strangle if I lay down."

He held her hand in his firm, sun-tanned grasp, looking down compassionately:

"Awf'lly sorry," he said as though he meant it.

The old lady peered up at him:

"You're sailing to-morrow?"

"To-morrow," he said, gravely.

"When do you return?"

"I have made no plans to return."

"You mean to say that you've given up the fight?"

"There was never any fight," he said.

Mrs. Sprowl scowled:

"Has that heartless girl refused you again, Sir Charles?"

"Dear Mrs. Sprowl, you are too much my partisan. Mrs. Leeds knows better than you or I where her heart is really inclined. And you and I can scarcely question her decision."

"Do you think for a moment it is inclined toward that miserable nephew of mine?" she demanded.

"No," he said.

"Then – do you mean young Quarren?"

"I think I do," he said smiling.

"I'm glad of it!" she said angrily. "If it was not to be you I'm glad that it may be Rix. It – it would have killed me to see her fall into Langly's hands… I'm ill on account of him – his shocking treatment of me last evening. It was a brutal scene – one of those terrible family scenes! – and he threatened me – cursed me – "

She closed her eyes a moment, trembling all over her fat body; then they snapped open again with the old fire undiminished:

"Before I've finished with Langly he'll realise who has hold of him… But I'm not well. I'm going to Carlsbad. Shall I see you there?"

"I'm afraid not."

"You are going back into everything, I suppose."

"Yes."

"To forget her, I suppose."

He said pleasantly:

"I do not wish to forget her. One prefers to think often of such a woman as Mrs. Leeds. There are not many like her. It is something of a privilege to have cared for her, and the memory is not – painful."

Mrs. Sprowl glared at him; and, as she thought of Langly, of Strelsa, of the collapse of her own schemes, the baffled rage began to smoulder in her tiny green eyes till they dwindled and dwindled to a pair of phosphorescent sparks imbedded in fat.

"I did my best," she said hoarsely. "I'm not defeated if you're not. Say the word and I'll start something – " And suddenly she remembered Langly's threat involving the memory of a dead man whose only son now stood before her.

She knew that her words were vain, her boast empty; she knew there was nothing more for her to do – nothing even that Sir Charles might do toward winning Strelsa without also doing the only thing in the world which could really terrify herself. Even at the mere thought of it she trembled again, and fear forced her to speech born of fear:

"Perhaps it is best for you to go," she faltered. "Absence is a last resort… It may be well to try it – "

He bent over and took her hand:

"There is no longer even a last resort," he said kindly. "I am quite reconciled. She is different from any other woman; ours was and is a high type of friendship… Sometimes, lately, I have wondered whether it ever could have been any more than that to either of us."

Mrs. Sprowl looked up at him, her face so altered and softened that his own grew graver.

"You are like your father," she said unsteadily. "It was my privilege to share his friendship… And his friendship was of that kind – high-minded, generous, pure – asking no more than it gave – no more than it gave – "

She laid her cheek against Sir Charles's hands, let it rest there an instant, then averting her face motioned his dismissal.

He went with a pleasant and gentle word or two; she sat bolt upright among her silken pillows, lips grimly compressed, but on her tightly closed eyelids tears trembled.

Sir Charles drew a long deep breath in the outer sunshine, filling his lungs with the fragrant morning air. Hedges still glistened with spiders' tapestry; the birds which sulked all day in their early moulting-fever still sang a little in the cool of the morning, and he listened to them as he walked while his quiet, impartial eye ranged over the lovely rolling country, dew-washed and exquisite under a cloudless sky.

Far away he saw the chimneys of Langly Sprowl's sprawling country-seat, smoke rising from two, but he saw nothing of the angry horseman of the day before. Once, in the distance on the edge of a copse, he saw a man creeping about on all-fours, evidently searching for some lost object in the thicket. Looking back from a long way off he saw him still searching on his hands and knees, and wondered at his patience, half inclined to go back and aid him.

But about that time one of Sprowl's young bulls came walking over toward him with such menacing observations and deportment that Sir Charles promptly looked about him for an advance to the rear-front – a manœuvre he had been obliged to learn in the late Transvaal unpleasantness.

And at the same moment he saw Chrysos Lacy.

There was no time for explanations; clearly she was too frightened to stir; so he quietly picked her up on his advance to the rear-front, carrying her in the first-aid style approved by the H. B. M. medical staff, and scaled the five-bar fence as no barrier had ever been scaled at Aldershot or Olympia by any warrior in khaki or scarlet tunic.

"Th-thank you," said Chrysos, unwinding her arms from the baronet's neck as the bull came trotting up on the other side of the fence and bellowed at them. Not the slightest atom of fright remained, only a wild-rose tint in her cheeks. She considered the bull, absently, patted a tendril of hair into symmetry; but the breeze loosened it again, and she let it blow across her cheek.

"We should have been in South Africa together," said Sir Charles. "We manœuvre beautifully as a unit."

The girl laughed, then spying more wild strawberries – the quest of which had beguiled her into hostile territory – dropped on her knees and began to explore.

The berries were big and ripe – huge drops of crimson honey hanging heavily, five to a stalk. The meadow-grass was red with them, and Sir Charles, without more ado, got down on all-fours and started to gather them with all the serious and thorough determination characteristic of that warrior.

"You're not to eat any, yet," said Chrysos.

"Of course not; they're for your breakfast I take it," he said.

"For yours."

He straightened up on his knees: "For mine?"

"Certainly."

"You didn't go wandering afield at this hour to pick wild strawberries for my breakfast!" he said incredulously.

"Yes, I did," said the girl; and continued exploring, parting the high grass-stems to feel for and detach some berry-loaded stem.

"Do you know," he said, returning to his labours, "that I am quite overcome by your thought of me?"

"Why? We are friends… And it is to be your last breakfast."

There was not the slightest tremor in her voice, but her pretty face was carefully turned away so that if there was to be anything to notice in the features he could not notice it.

"I'll miss you a lot," he said.

"And I you, Sir Charles."

"You'll be over, I suppose."

"I suppose so."

"That will be jolly," he said, sitting back on his heels to rest, and to watch her – to find pleasure in her youth and beauty as she moved gracefully amid the fragrant grasses, one little sun-tanned hand clasping a great bouquet of the crimson fruit which nodded heavily amid tufts of trefoil leaves.

In the barred shadow of the pasture-fence they rested from their exertions, she rearranging their bouquets of berries and tying them fast with grass-stems.

"It has been a pleasant comradeship," he said.

"Yes."

"You have found it so, too?"

"Yes."

She appeared to be so intent, so absorbed on her bouquet tying that he involuntarily leaned nearer to watch her. A fragrance faintly fresh seemed to grow in the air around him as the hill-breeze stirred her hair. If it came from the waving grass-tops, or the honeyed fruit or from her hair, or perhaps from those small, smooth hands, he did not know.

For a long while they sat there without speaking, she steadily intent on her tying. Then, while still busy with a cluster, her slim fingers hesitated, wavered, relaxed; her hands fell to her lap, and she remained so, head bent, motionless.

After a moment he spoke, but she made no answer.

Through and through him shot the thrilling comprehension of that exquisite avowal, childlike in its silent directness, charming in its surprise. A wave of tenderness and awe mounted within him, touching his bronzed cheeks with a deeper colour.

"If you will, Chrysos," he said in a still voice.

She lifted her head and looked directly at him, and in her questioning gaze there was nothing of fear – merely the question.

"I can't bear to have you go," she said.

"I can't go – alone."

"Could you – care for me?"

"I love you, Chrysos."

Her eyes widened in wonder:

"You – you don't love me – do you?"

"Yes," he said, "I do. Will you marry me, Chrysos?"

Her fascinated gaze met his in silence. He drew her close to his shoulder; she laid her cheek against it.