The Streets of Ascalon

"Really we're a funny lot here in the Dankmere Galleries – not superficially business-like perhaps, for we close at five and have tea in the extension, Dankmere, Miss Vining, I, Daisy, and her young ones – Daisy and the latter taking their nourishment together in a basket which Miss Vining has lined with blue silk.

"In the evenings sometimes Miss Vining remains and dines with Dankmere and myself at some near restaurant; and after dinner Karl Westguard comes in and reads the most recent chapter of his novel – or perhaps Dankmere plays and sings old-time songs for us – or, if the heat makes us feel particularly futile, I perform some of those highly intellectual tricks which once made me acceptable among people I now seldom or never see.

"Miss Vining, as I have already told you in other letters, is a sweet, sincere girl with no pretence to anything out of the ordinary yet blessed with a delicate sense of honour and incidentally of humour.

"She is quite alone in the world, and, now that she has made up her mind about Dankmere and me I can see that she shyly enjoys our including her in our harmless informalities.

"Westguard is immensely interested in her as a 'type,' and he informs me that he is 'studying' her. Which is more or less bosh; but Karl loves to take himself seriously.

"Nobody you know has been to see us. It may be because your world is out of town, but I'm beginning to believe that the Dankmere Galleries need expect no patronage from that same world. Friendship usually fights shy of the frontiers of business. Old acquaintanceship is forgot very quickly when one side or the other has anything to sell. Only those thrifty imitations of friends venture near in quest of special privilege; and not getting it, go, never to return. Ubi amici, ibi opes!

"When you pass through this furnace of Ascalon called New York will you stop among the Philistines long enough to take a cup of tea with us? – I'll show you the pictures; Dankmere will play 'Shannon Water' for you; Miss Vining will talk pretty platitudes to you, Daisy will purr for you, and the painted eyes of Dankmere's ancestors will look down approvingly at you from the wall; and all our little world will know that the loveliest and best of all the greater world is breaking bread with us under our roof, and that one for once, unlike man's dealings with your celestial sisters, our entertainment of you will not be wholly unawares.

    "R. S. Quarren."

The basement workshop was aromatic with the odours of solvents, mediums, and varnishes when he returned from posting his letter to Strelsa. His old English mentor had departed for good, leaving him to go forward alone in his profession.

And now, as he stood there, looking out into the sunny backyard, for the first time he felt the silence and isolation of the place, and his own loneliness. Doubt crept in whispering the uselessness of working, of saving, of self-denial, of laying by anything for a future that already meant nothing of happiness to him.

For whom, after all, should he save, hoard, gather together, economise? Who was there to labour for? For whom should he endure?

He cared nothing for women; he had really never cared for any woman excepting only this one. He would never marry and have a son. He had no near or distant relatives. For whose sake, then, was he standing here in workman's overalls? What business had he here in the basement of a shabby house in midsummer? Did there remain any vague hope of Strelsa? Perhaps. Hope is the last of one's friends to die. Or was it for himself that he was working now to provide against those evil days "when the keepers of the house shall tremble"? Perhaps he was unconsciously obeying nature's first law.

And yet, slowly within him grew a certainty that these reasons were not the real ones – not the vital impulse that moved his hand steadily through critical and delicate moments as he bent, breathless, over the faded splendours of ancient canvases. No; somehow or other he had already begun to work for the sake of the work itself – whatever that really meant. That was the basic impulse – the occult motive; and, somehow he knew that, once aroused, the desire to strive could never again in him remain wholly quiescent.

Both Dankmere and Miss Vining had gone to lunch, presumably in different directions; Daisy and her youngsters, having been nourished, were asleep; there was not a sound in the house except the soft rubbing of tissue-paper where Quarren was lightly removing the retouching varnish from a relined canvas. Presently the front door-bell rang.

Quarren rinsed his hands and, still wearing overalls and painter's blouse, mounted the basement stairs and opened the front door. And Mrs. Sprowl supported by a footman waddled in, panting.

"Tell your master I want to see him," she said – "I don't mean that fool of an Englishman; I mean Mr. Quar – Good Lord! Ricky, is that you? Here, get me a chair – those front steps nearly killed me. Long ago I swore I'd never enter a house which was not basement-built and had an elevator!.. Hand me one of those fans. And if there's any water in the house not swarming with typhoid germs, get me a glass of it."

He brought her a tumbler of spring water; she panted and gulped and fanned and panted, her little green eyes roaming around her.

Presently she dismissed the footman, and turned her heavily flushed face on Quarren. The rolls of fat crowded the lace on her neck, perspiration glistened under her sparklike eyes.

"How are you?" she inquired.

He said, smilingly, that he was well.

"You don't look it. You look gaunt… Well, I never thought you'd come to this – that you had it in you to do anything useful."

"I believe I've heard you say so now and then," he said with perfect good-humour.

"Why not? Why should I have thought that your talents amounted to more than ornaments?"

"No reason to suppose so," he admitted, amused.

"Not the slightest. Talent usually damns people to an effortless existence. And yours was a pleasant one, too. You had a good time, didn't you?"

"Oh, very."

"There was nothing to do except to come in, kiss the girls all around, and make faces to amuse them, was there?"

"Not much more," he admitted, laughing.

Mrs. Sprowl's little green eyes travelled all over the walls.

"Umph," she snorted, "I suppose these are some of Dankmere's heirlooms. I never fancied that little bounder – "

"Wait!"

"What!"

"Wait a moment. I like Dankmere, and he isn't a bounder – "

"He is one!"

"Keep that opinion to yourself," he said bluntly.

The old lady's eyes blazed. "I'm damned if I do!" she retorted – "I'll say what – "

"Not here! You mustn't be uncivil here. You know well enough how to behave when necessary; and if you don't do it I'll call your carriage."

For fully five minutes Mrs. Sprowl sat there attempting to digest what he had said. The process was awful to behold, but she accomplished it at last with a violent effort.

"Ricky," she said, "I didn't come here to quarrel with you over an Englishman who – of whom I – have my personal opinion."

He laughed, leaned over and deliberately patted her fat wrist; and she glared at him somewhat as a tigress inspects a favourite but overgrown and presuming cub.

"I don't know why you came," he said, "but it was nice of you anyway and I am glad to see you."

"If that's true," she said, "you're one of mighty few. The joy which people feel in my presence is usually exhibited when I'm safely out of their houses, or they are out of mine."

She laughed at that; and he did too; and she gulped her glass of water empty and refused more.

"Ricky," she began abruptly, "you've been up to that Witch-Hollow place of Molly's?"

"Yes."

"Well, what the devil is going on there?"

"Aviation," he said blandly.

"What else? Don't evade an answer! I can't get anything out of that little idiot, Molly; I can't worm anything out of Sir Charles; I can't learn anything from Strelsa Leeds; and as for Langly he won't even answer my letters.

"Now I want to know what is going on there? I've been as short with Strelsa as I dare be – she's got to be led with sugar. I've almost ordered her to come to me at Newport – but she doesn't come."

"She's resting," said Quarren coolly.