The Streets of Ascalon

"I would scarcely class Mr. Quarren with the sort you mention – "

"Why not? He's of no importance."

"Because he is kind, considerate, and unusually intelligent and interesting; and he is very capable of succeeding in whatever he undertakes," said Strelsa, slowly.

"Ricky is a nice boy; but what does he undertake?" asked Mrs. Sprowl with good-natured contempt. "He undertakes the duties, obligations, and details of a useful man in the greater household, which make him acceptable to us; and I'm bound to say that he does 'em very well. But outside of that he's a nobody. And I'll tell you just what he'll turn into; shall I? Society's third chief bottlewasher in succession. We had one, who evolved us. He's dead. We have another. He's still talking. When he ultimately evaporates into infinity Ricky will be his natural successor. Do you want that kind of a husband?"

"Did you suppose – "

"Don't get angry, Strelsa? I didn't suppose anything. Ricky, like every other man, dangles his good-looking, good-humoured self in your vicinity. You're inclined to notice him. All I mean is that he isn't worth your pains… Now you won't be offended by a plain-spoken old woman who wishes only your happiness, will you, my child?"

"No," said Strelsa, wearily, beginning to feel the fatigue of the scene.

She took her leave a few moments afterward, very unhappy because two of the pleasantest incidents in her life had been badly, if not hopelessly, marred. But Langly Sprowl was not one of them.

That hatchet-faced and immaculate gentleman, divining possibly that Strelsa might be with his aunt, arrived shortly after her departure; learned of it from a servant, and was turning on his heel without even asking for Mrs. Sprowl, when the thought occurred to him that possibly she might know Strelsa's destination.

When a servant announced him he found his aunt quite herself, grim, ready for trouble, her small green eyes fairly snapping.

They indulged in no formalities, being alone together, and caring nothing for servants' opinions. Their greeting was perfunctory; their inquiries civil. Then there ensued a short silence.

"Which way did Mrs. Leeds go?" he asked, busily twisting his long moustache.

"None of your business," rejoined his aunt.

He looked up in slight surprise, recognised a condition of things which, on second thought, surprised him still more. Because his aunt had never before noticed his affairs – had not even commented on the Ledwith matter to him. He had always felt that she disliked him too thoroughly to care.

"I don't think I understood you," he said, watching her out of shifting eyes which protruded a trifle.

"I think you will understand me before I've done with you," returned his aunt, grimly. "It's a perfectly plain matter; you've the rest of the female community to chase if you choose. Go and chase 'em for all I care – hunt from here to Reno if you like! – but I have other plans for Strelsa Leeds. Do you understand? I've put my private mark on her. There's no room for yours."

Langly's gaze which had not met hers – and never met anybody's for more than a fraction of a second – shifted. He continued his attentions to his moustache; his eyes roved; he looked at but did not see a hundred things in a second.

"You don't know where she's gone?" he inquired with characteristic pertinacity and an indifference to what she had said, absolutely stony.

"Do you mean trouble for that girl?"

"I do not."

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing."

"Do you want to marry her?"

"I said that I was considering nothing in particular. We are friends."

"Keep away from her! Do you understand?"

"I really don't know whether I do or not. I suppose you mean Sir Charles."

Mrs. Sprowl turned red:

"Suppose what you like, you cold-blooded cad! But by God! – if you annoy that child I'll empty the family wash all over the sidewalk! And let the public pick it over!"

He rested his pale, protuberant eyes on her for a brief second:

"Will any of your finery figure in it? Any relics or rags once belonging to the late parent of Sir Charles?"

Her features were livid; her lips twisted, tortured under the flood of injuries which choked her. Not a word came. Exhausted for a moment she sat there grasping the gilded arms of her chair, livid as the dead save for the hell blazing in her tiny green eyes.

"I fancy that settles the laundry question," he said, while his restless glance ceaselessly swept the splendid room and his lean, sunburnt hand steadily caressed his moustache. Then, as though he had forgotten something, he rose and walked out. A footman invested him with hat and overcoat. A moment later the great doors clicked.

In the silence of the huge house there was not a sound except the whispers of servants; and these ceased presently.

All alone, amid the lighted magnificence of the vast room sat the old woman hunched in her chair, bloodless, motionless as a mass of dead flesh. Even the spark in her eyes was gone, the lids closed, the gross lower lip pendulous. Later two maids, being summoned, accompanied her to her boudoir, and were dismissed. Her social secretary, a pretty girl, came and left with instructions to cancel invitations for the evening.

A maid arrived with a choice of headache remedies; then, with the aid of another, disrobed her mistress and got her into bed.

Their offices accomplished, they were ordered to withdraw but to leave one light burning. It glimmered over an old-fashioned photograph on the wall – the portrait of a British officer taken in the days when whiskers, "pill-box," and frogged frock-tunic were cultivated in Her British Majesty's Service.

From where she lay she looked at him; and Sir Weyward Mallison stared back at her through his monocle.

Strelsa at home, unpinning her hat before the mirror, received word over the telephone that Mrs. Sprowl, being indisposed, regretfully recalled the invitations for the evening.

The girl's first sensation was relief, then self-reproach, quite forgetting that if Mrs. Sprowl's violent emotions had made that redoubtable old woman ill, they had also thoroughly fatigued the victim of her ill-temper and made her very miserable.

She wrote a perfunctory note of regret and civil inquiry and dispatched it, then surrendered herself to the ministrations of her maid.

The luxury of dining alone for the first time in months, appealed to her. She decided that she was not to be at home to anybody.

Langly Sprowl called about six, and was sent away. Strelsa, curled up on a divan, could hear the staccato racket that his powerful racing-car made in the street outside. The informality of her recent host aboard the Yulan did not entirely please her. She listened to his departure with quiet satisfaction.

Although it was not her day, several people came and went. Flowers from various smitten youths arrived; orchids from Sprowl; nothing from Quarren. Then for nearly two hours she slept where she lay and awakened laughing aloud at something Quarren had been saying in her dream. But what it was she could not recollect.

At eight her maid came and hooked her into a comfortable and beloved second-year gown; dinner was announced; she descended the stairway in solitary state, still smiling to herself at Quarren's forgotten remark, and passed by the library just as the telephone rang there.

It may have been a flash of clairvoyance – afterward she wondered exactly what it was that made her say to her maid very confidently:

"That is Mr. Quarren. I'll speak to him."

It was Mr. Quarren. The amusing coincidence of her dream and her clairvoyance still lingering in her mind, she went leisurely to the telephone and said:

"I don't understand how I knew it was you. And I'm not sure why I came to the 'phone, because I'm not at home to anybody. But what was it you said to me just now?"

"When?"

"A few minutes ago while I was asleep?"