Chambers Robert William
The Streets of Ascalon

CHAPTER VIII

A fortnight later Strelsa wrote to Quarren for the first time in nearly two months.

"Dear Mr. Quarren,

"Molly says that she saw you in town two weeks ago, and that she told you how unexpectedly my worldly affairs have altered since I last wrote to you.

"For me, somehow or other, life has been always a sequence of abrupt experiences – a series of extremes – one grotesque exaggeration after another, and all diametrically opposed. And it seems odd that such radically material transformations should so ruthlessly disturb and finally, now, end by completely altering the character of a girl whose real nature is – or was – unaccented and serene to the verge of indifference. For the woman writing this is very different from the one you knew as Strelsa Leeds.

"I am not yet sure what the outcome of this Adamant affair will be. Neither, apparently, are my attorneys. But it is absolutely certain that if I ever recover anything at all, it will not amount to very much – not nearly enough to live on.

"When they first brought the unpleasant news to me my instinct was to sit down and write you about it. I was horribly scared, and wanted you to know it.

"I didn't yield to the impulse as you know – I cannot give you the reasons why. They were merely intuitions at first; later they became reasons as my financial situation developed in all its annoying proportions.

"I can tell you only this: before material disaster threatened me out of a clear sky, supposing that matters would always remain with me as they were – that I should never know any serious want, never apprehend actual necessity – I had made up my mind to a course of life which now has become impossible.

"It was not, perhaps, a very admirable plan of existence that I had conceived for myself, nothing radical or original. I meant, merely, not to marry, to live well within my income, to divide my time between my friends and myself – that is to give myself more leisure for self-development, tranquil cultivation, and a wider and more serious interest in things worthy.

"If by dividing my time between my friends and myself I was to lose touch more or less with the lively and rather exacting society in which I live, I had decided on the sacrifice.

"And that, Mr. Quarren, is how matters stood with me until a month ago.

"Now everything is altered – even my own character I think. There is in me very little courage – and, alas, much of that cowardice which shrinks from pain and privation of any kind – which cringes the more basely, perhaps, because there has been, in my life, so much of sorrow, so little of material ease and tranquility of mind.

"I had been dreaming of a balanced and secure life with leisure to develop mental resources hitherto neglected. And your friendship – our new understanding – meant much of that part of life for me – more than I realised – far more than you do. Can you understand how deep the hurt is? – deeper because now you will learn what a coward I really am and how selfishly I surrender to the menace of material destruction. I am in dire terror of it; I simply do not choose to endure it. That I need not submit to it, inspires in me the low type of equanimity that enables me to face the future with apparent courage. My world applauds it as pluck. I have confessed to you what it really is.

"Now you know me, Mr. Quarren – a preacher of lofty ideals while prosperous, a recreant in adversity.

"I thought once that the most ignoble sentiments ever entertained by man were those lesser and physical emotions which, in the world, masquerade as love – or as an essential part of it. To me they always seemed intolerable as any part of love, material, unworthy, base. To me love was intellectual – could be nothing less lofty – and should aspire to the spiritual.

"I say this because you once tried to make me understand that you loved me.

"Marriage of two minds with nothing material to sully an ideal union was what I had dreamed of. I might have cared for you that way when a marriage tainted with lesser emotions repelled me. And now, like all iconoclasts, I end by shattering my own complacent image, and the fragments have fallen to the lowest depth of all.

"For I contemplate a mariage de convenance – and I scarcely care whom I marry as long as he removes from me this terror of a sordid and needy future.

"All ideals, all desire for higher and better things – for a noble leisure and the quiet pleasures of self-development, have gone – vanished utterly. Fear sickens me night and day – the same dull dread that I have known so many, many years in my life – a blind horror of more unhappiness and pain after two years of silence – that breathless stillness which frightened wounded things know while they lie, panting, dazed listening for the coming footsteps of that remorseless Fate which struck them down from afar.

"I tell you this, Mr. Quarren, because it is due to you if you really love me – or if you once did love me – because when you have read this you will no longer care for me.

"One evening you made me understand that you cared for me; and I replied to you only by a dazed silence that neither you nor I entirely understood at the time. It was not contempt for you – yet, perhaps, I could not really have cared very deeply for such a man as you then seemed to be. It was not intellectual indifference that silenced me… And I can say no more about it – except that – something – changed me radically from that moment – and ever since I have been trying to understand myself – to learn something about myself – and of the world I live in – and of men.

"When a crisis arrives self-revelation comes in a single flash. My financial crisis arrived as you know; I suddenly saw myself as I am – a woman astonishingly undeveloped and ignorant in many ways, crude, unawakened, stupid – a woman half-blinded with an unreasoning dread of more pain – pain which she thought had at last been left behind her – and a coward all through; and selfish from head to heel.

"This is what I really am. And I shall prove it by marrying for reasons entirely material, because I have no courage to ever again face adversity and unhappiness.

"You will not care to write to me; and you will not care to see me again.

"I am glad you once cared for me. If you should ever reply to this letter, don't be very unkind to me. I know what I am – and I vaguely surmise what I shall lose by being so. But I have no courage for anything else.

"Strelsa Leeds."

That was the letter she wrote to Quarren; and he read it standing by his desk while several noisy workmen were covering every available inch of his walls with Dankmere's family pictures, and the little Earl himself, whistling a lively air, trotted about superintending everything with all the cheerful self-confidence of a family dog regulating everything that goes on in his vicinity.

"I say, Quarren – does this old lady hang next to the battered party in black?" he demanded briskly.

Quarren looked around; "Yes," he said, "they're both by Nicholas Maas according to your list."

"I think they're bally fakes," remarked the Earl, "don't you?"

"We'll try to find out," said Quarren, absently.

Dankmere puffed away on his cigar and consulted his list: "Reynolds (Sir Joshua). Portrait of Lady Dankmere," he read; "portrait of Sir Boggs Dankmere! – string 'em up aloft over that jolly little lady with no frock on! – Rembrandt (Van Rijn). Born near Leyden, July 15th, 1607 – Oh, who cares as long as it is a Rembrandt! – Is it, Quarren? It isn't a copy, is it?"

"I hope not," said the young fellow absently.

"Egad! So do I." And to the workmen – "Philemon and Baucis by Rembrandt! Hang 'em up next to that Romney – over the Jan Steen … Quarren?"

"Yes?"

"Do you think that St. Michael's Mount is a real Turner?"

"It looks like it. I can't express opinions off-hand, Dankmere."

"I can," said the little Earl; "and I say that if that is a Turner I can beat it myself working with tomato catsup, an underdone omelette, and a clothes-brush… Hello! I like this picture. The list calls it a Watteau – 'The Fête Champêtre.' What do you know about it, Quarren?"

"Nothing yet. It seems to be genuine enough."

"And this pretty girl by Boucher?"

"I tell you, Dankmere, that I don't know. They all appear to be genuine, after a superficial examination. It takes time to be sure about any picture – and if we're going to be certain it will require confabs with authorities – restorers, dealers, experts, curators from various museums – all sorts and conditions of people must be approached and warily consulted – and paid," he added smiling. "And that has to be done with circumspection because some are not honest and we don't want anybody to get the impression that we are attempting to bribe anybody for a favourable verdict."

A few minutes later he went across the street and telegraphed to Molly Wycherly:

"May I remind you that you asked me to Witch-Hollow?

Quarren."

The following morning after the workmen had departed, he and Dankmere stood contemplating the transformations wrought in the office, back parlour, and extension of Quarren's floor in the shabby old Lexington Avenue house.

The transformation was complete; all woodwork had been painted white, a gray-green paper hung on the walls, the floor stained dark brown and covered with several antique rugs which had come with the pictures – a Fereghan, a Ladik, and an ancient Herez with rose and sapphire lights in it.

At the end of the suite hung another relic of Dankmere Tarns – a Gobelins tapestry about ten by twelve, signed by Audran, the subject of which was Boucher's "Venus, Mars, and Vulcan" from the picture in the Wallace Collection. Opposite it was suspended an old Persian carpet of the sixteenth century – a magnificent Dankmere heirloom woven in the golden age of ancient Eastern art and displaying amid the soft splendour of its matchless hues the strange and exquisitely arched cloud-forms traced in forgotten dyes amid a wilderness of delicate flowers and vines.

Between these two fabrics, filling the walls from base-board to ceiling, were ranged Dankmere's pictures. Few traces of the real-estate office remained – merely a desk, letter-file, a shelf piled up with maps, and Quarren's shingle outside; but this was now overshadowed by the severely magnificent sign:

THE DANKMERE GALLERY OF OLD MASTERS

Algernon Fayre, R. S. Quarren & Co

For Lord Dankmere, otherwise Algernon Cecil Clarence Fayre, Earl of Dankmere, had decided to dedicate to trade only a portion of his aristocratic appellations. As for the company, it consisted of Quarren's cat, Daisy, and her litter of unweaned kittens.

"Do you realise," said Quarren, dropping into the depths of a new easy-chair, "that you have almost put me out of business?"

"Well, you weren't in very deeply, you know," commented Dankmere.

"No; but last week I went to bed a broker in real estate; and this week I wake up a picture dealer and your partner. It's going to take most of my time. I can't sell a picture unless I know what it is. I've got to find out – or try to. Do you know what that means?"

"I fancy it means chucking your real estate," said Dankmere, imperturbably. "Why not? This is a better gamble. And if we make anything we ought to make something worth while."

"Do you propose that I shall simply drop my entire business – close up everything and go into this thing permanently?" demanded Quarren.

"It will come to that, ultimately. Don't you want to?"

From the beginning Quarren had felt, vaguely, that it would come to that – realised instinctively that in such an enterprise he would be on solid ground – that the idea was pleasant to him – that his tastes fitted him for such an occupation. Experience was lacking, but, somehow, his ignorance did not dismay him.

All his life he had cared for such things, been familiar with them, been curious to learn more, had read enough to understand something of the fascinating problems now confronting him, had, in his hours of leisure, familiarised himself with the best of art in the public and private galleries of the city.

More than that a natural inclination and curiosity had led him among dealers, restorers, brokers of pictures. He knew them all from Fifth Avenue to Lexington, the celebrated and the obscure; he had heard them talk, heard the gossip and scandal of their curious world, watched them buying, selling, restoring, relining, reframing; listened to their discussions concerning their art and the art in which they dealt. And it had always fascinated him although, until Dankmere arrived, it had never occurred to him to make a living out of a heterogeneous mass of partly assimilated knowledge acquired from the sheer love of the subject.

Fortunate the man whose means of livelihood is also his pleasure! Deep in his heart lies the unconscious contentment of certainty.

And somehow, with the advent of Dankmere's pictures, into Quarren's troubled heart had come a vague sensation of ease – a cessation of the old anxiety and unrest – a quiet that he had never before known.

To learn what his wares really were seemed no formidable task; to appreciate and appraise each one only little labours of love. Every problem appeared to him as a separate attraction; the disposal of his stock a delightful and leisurely certainty because he himself would be certain of what he dealt in.

Then, too, his mind had long since invaded a future which day by day grew more alluring in its suggestions. He himself would learn the practical and manual art of restoration – learn how to clean, reline, revarnish; how to identify, how to dissect. Every thread of an ancient canvas should tell him a true story; every grain in an old panel. He would be chief surgeon in his hospital for old and decrepit masterpieces; he would "cradle" with his own hands – clear the opacity from time-dimmed beauty with savant touch, knit up tenderly the wounds of ages —

"Dankmere," he said, throwing away his cigarette, "I'm going into this business from this minute; and I would like to die in harness, at the end, the companion, surgeon, and friend of old-time pictures. Do you think I can make a living at it?"

"God knows. Do you mean that you're really keen on it?"

"Dead keen."

Dankmere puffed on his cigar: "A chap usually makes out pretty well when he's a bit keen on anything of sorts. You'll be owning the gallery, next, you infernal Yankee!"

Quarren laughed: "I won't forget that you gave me my first real chance in the world. You've done it, too; do you realise it, Dankmere?"

"Very glad I'm sure."

"So am I!" said Quarren with sudden emphasis. "I believe I'm on the right track now. I believe it's in me – in my heart – to work – to work!" – he laughed – "as the old chronicles say, 'To the glory of God and the happiness of self and mankind.' … I'm grateful to you; do you understand?"

"Awf'lly glad, old chap."

"You funny Englishman – I believe you are… And we'll make this thing go. Down comes my real-estate shingle; I'm a part of the Dankmere Galleries now. I'll rent the basement after our first sale and there you and I will fuss and tinker and doctor and nurse any poor old derelict of a picture back to its pristine beauty. What?"

"Not I," said the little Earl. "All I'm good for is to furnish the initial stock. You may do what you please with it, and we'll share profits according to contract. Further than that, Quarren, you'll have to count me out."

"Don't you care for pictures?"

"I prefer horses," said the Earl drily – "and, after the stable and kennel, my taste inclines toward Vaudeville." And he cocked up one little leg over the other and whistled industriously at a waltz which he was attempting to compose. He possessed a high, maddening, soprano whistle which Quarren found painful to endure; and he was glad when his lordship departed, jauntily twirling his walking-stick and taking fancy dance steps as far as the front door.

Left alone Quarren leaned back in his chair resting his head against the new olive-tinted velvet.

He had nothing to do but sit there and gaze at the pictures and wait for an answer to his telegram.

It came about dusk and he lighted the gas to read it:

"Come up to Witch-Hollow to-morrow.

"Marie Wycherly."

He could not leave until he had planned for work to go on during his absence. First he arranged with Valasco to identify as nearly as possible, and to appraise, the French and Italian pictures. Then he made an arrangement with Van Boschoven for the Dutch and Flemish; secured Drayton-Quinn for the English; and warned Dankmere not to bother or interfere with these temperamental and irascible gentlemen while in exercise of their professional duties.

"Don't whistle, don't do abrupt skirt-dances, don't sing comic songs, don't obscure the air with cigar smoke, don't go to sleep on the sofa and snore, don't drink fizzes and rattle the ice in your glass – "

"My God!" faltered his lordship, "do you mind if I breathe now and then?"

"I'll be away a few days – Valasco is slow, and the others take their time. Let anybody come in who wants to, but don't sell anything until the experts report to me in writing – "

"Suppose some chap rushes in with ten thousand – "

"No!"

"What?"

"Certainly not. Chaps who rush in with any serious money at all will rush in again all the faster if you make them wait. Don't sell a picture – not even to Valasco or any of the experts – "

"Suppose a charming lady – "

"Now you understand, don't you? I wouldn't think of selling a single canvas until I have their reports and have made up my own mind that they're as nearly right as any expert can be who didn't actually see the artist paint the picture. The only trustworthy expert is the man who saw the picture painted – if you can believe his word."

"But my dear Quarren," protested Dankmere, seriously bewildered – "how could any living expert ever have seen an artist, who died two hundred years ago, paint anything?"

"Right," said Quarren solemnly; "the point is keenly taken. Ergo, there are no real experts, only guessers. When Valasco et al finish their guessing, I'll guess how near they have guessed correctly. Good-bye… You will be good, won't you, Dankmere?"

"No fear. I'll keep my weather eye on the shop. Do you want me to sleep here?"

"You'd better, I think. But don't have rowdy parties here, will you? And don't wander away and leave the door open. By George! I believe I'd better stay – "

"Rot! Go on and take your vacation, old chap! Back in a week?"

"Yes; or any time you wire me – "

"Not I. I'll have a jolly time by myself."

"Don't have too many men here in the evening. The smoke will get into those new curtains – "

Dankmere, in his trousers and undershirt, stretched on the divan, laughed and blew a cloud of smoke at the ceiling. Then, reaching forth he took a palm-leaf fan in one hand, a tall, frosty glass in the other, and applied both in a manner from which he could extract the most benefit.

"Bon voyage!" he nodded to Quarren. "My duties and compliments and all that – and pick me out an heiress of sorts – there's a good fellow – "

As Quarren went out he heard his lordship burst forth into his distressing whistle; and he left him searching piercingly for inspiration to complete his "Coster's Hornpipe."

On the train Quarren bought the evening papers; and the first item that met his eye was a front-page column devoted to the Dankmere Galleries. Every paper had broken out into glaring scare-heads announcing the recent despoiling of Dankmere Tarns and the venture into trade of Algernon Cecil Clarence Fayre, tenth Earl of Dankmere. The majority of papers were facetious, one or two scathing, but the more respectable journals managed to repress a part of their characteristic antagonism and report the matter with a minimum of venom and a rather exhaustive historical accompaniment:

"POOR PEERS EAGER TO SELL HEIRLOOMS

"LORD DANKMERE'S CASE SAID TO BE ONE OF DOZENS AMONG THE BRITISH ARISTOCRACY

"GAMBLING SPIRIT BLAMED

"OBSERVERS ASCRIBE POVERTY OF OLD BRITISH FAMILIES TO THIS CAUSE – MANY RENT ROLLS DECLARED TO BE MORTGAGED

"The opening of the so-called Dankmere galleries on Lexington Avenue will bring into the lime-light once more a sprightly though somewhat world-battered little Peer recently and disastrously connected with the stage and its feminine adjuncts.

"The Dankmere galleries blossom in a shabby old house flanked on one side by a Chop-Suey restaurant haunted of celestials, and on the other by an undertaker's establishment displaying the following enterprising sign: Mortem's Popular $50 Funerals! Bury Your Family at Attractive Prices!

"GAMBLING DID IT!

"Gambling usually lands the British Peer on his aristocratic uppers. But in this case gambolling behind the footlights is responsible for the present display of the Dankmere family pictures in the converted real-estate offices of young Mr. Quarren of cotillion fame.

"Among supposedly well-to-do English nobles the need for ready cash so frequently reaches the acute stage that all manner of schemes are readily resorted to in an effort to 'raise the wind.'

"Lord Dankmere openly admits that had he supposed any valuable 'junk' lay concealed in the attics of his mansion, he would, without hesitation, have converted it into ready money long before this.

"Lord Dankmere's case is only one typical of dozens of others among the exclusive and highly placed of Mayfair. It is a known fact that since the sale of the Capri Madonna (Titian) for $350,000 to the British Government, by special act of Parliament, Daffydill Palace has gradually been unloaded of all treasures not tied by the entail to the estate. For the same sum ($350,000) the late Earl of Blitherington disposed of his famous Library and the sale of the library was known to be necessary for the provision of living funds for the incoming heir. Just recently the Duke of Putney, reputed to be a man of vast wealth, had a difficulty with a dealer concerning the sale of some of his treasures.

 

"Such cases may be justified by circumstances. The general public hears, however, of only a few isolated cases. The number of private deals that are executed, week in, week out, between impoverished members of the highest nobility – some of them bound, like Lord Blitherington and the Duke of Putney by close official ties to the Court – and the agents of either new-rich Britishers or wealthy Americans has reached its maximum, and by degrees unentailed treasures and heirlooms are passing from owners of many centuries to families that were unheard of a dozen years ago.

"THE AWFUL YANKEE

"The American is given priority in the matter of purchase, not only because he pays more, as a rule, but also for the reason that the transfer of his prize to the United States removes the possibility of noble sellers being pestered with awkward questions by the inquisitive. For, however unostentatiously home deals are made and transfers effected, society soon learns the facts. So hard up, however, has the better-known aristocracy become, and so willing are they to trade at fancy sums to anxious purchasers, that several curio dealers in the St. James's quarter hold unlimited power of attorney to act for plutocratic American principals either in the United States or in this country.

"Those who are reasonably entitled to explain the cause of this poverty among old families, whose landed estates are unimpaired in acreage at least, and whose inheritance was of respectable proportions, declare that not since the eighteenth century has the gambling spirit so persistently invaded the inside coteries of high society. The desire to acquire riches quickly seems to have taken hold of the erstwhile staid and conventional upper ten, just as it has seized upon the smart set. The recent booms in oil and rubber have had the effect of transferring many a comfortable rent roll from its owner's bankers – milady's just as often as milord's – to the chartered mortgagors of the financial world. The panic in America in 1907 showed to what extent the English nobility was interested, not only in gilt-edged securities, but also to what degree it was involved in wildcat finance. The directing geniuses of many of the suspect ventures of to-day in London are often the possessors of names that are writ rubric in the pages of Debrett and Burke.

"According to a London radical paper, there are at present over a score of estates in the auction mart which must soon pass from some of the bluest-blooded nobles in Great Britain to men whose fortunes have grown in the past few years from the humblest beginnings, a fact which itself cannot fail to change both the tone and constitution of town and country society."

Quarren read every column, grimly, to the end, wincing when he encountered some casual reference to himself and his recent social activities. Then, lips compressed, boyish gaze fixed on the passing landscape, he sat brooding until at last the conductor opened the door and shouted the name of his station.

The Wycherlys' new place, Witch-Hollow, a big rambling farm among the Connecticut hills, was only three hours from New York, and half an hour by automobile from the railroad. The buildings were wooden and not new; a fashionable architect had made the large house "colonially" endurable with furnaces and electricity as well as with fan-lights and fluted pilasters.

Most of the land remained wild – weed-grown pastures, hard-wood ridges, neglected orchards planted seventy years ago. Molly Wycherly had ordered a brand new old-time garden to be made for her overlooking the wide, unruffled river; also a series of sylvan paths along the wooded shores of the hill-set lake which was inhabited by bass placed there by orders of her husband.

"For Heaven's sake," he said to his wife, "don't try to knock any antiquity into the place; I'm sick of fine old ancestral halls put up by building-loan associations. Plenty of paint and varnish for mine, Molly, and a few durable iron fountains and bronze stags on the lawn – "

"No, Jim," she said firmly.

So he ordered an aeroplane, a herd of sheep, a shepherd, and two tailless sheep-dogs, and made plans to spend most of his vacation yachting, when he did not spend it in town.

But he was restlessly domiciled at Witch-Hollow, now, and he met Quarren at the station in a bright purple runabout which he drove like lightning, one hand on the steering wheel, the other carelessly waving toward the streaky landscape in affable explanation of the various points of interest.

"Quite a little colony of us up here, Quarren," he said. "I don't know why anybody picked out this silly country for estates, but Langly Sprowl started a stud farm over yonder, and then poor Chester Ledwith built a house for his wife in the middle of a thousand acres, over there where you see those maple woods! – and then people began to come and pick up worn-out farms and make 'em into fine old family places – Lester Caldera's model dairies are behind that hill; and that leather-headed O'Hara has a bungalow somewhere – and there's a sort of Hunt Club, too, and a bum pack of Kiyi's – "

The wind tore most of his speech from his lips and whirled it out of earshot: Quarren caught a word now and then which interested him. It also interested him to observe how Wycherly shaved annihilation at every turn of the road.

"I've asked some men to bring up their biplanes and have a few flies on me," continued his host – "I've a 'Stinger' monoplane and a Kent biplane myself. I can't get any more sensation out of motoring. I'd as soon wheel twins in a go-cart."

Quarren saw him cleverly avoid death with one hand, and laughed.

"Who is stopping with you up here?" he shouted close to Wycherly's ear.

"Nobody – Mrs. Leeds, Chrysos Lacy, and Sir Charles. There are some few neighbours, too – Langly is mousing and prowling about; and that poor Ledwith man is all alone in his big house – fixing to get out of it so his wife can move in from Reno when she's ready for more mischief… Here we are, Quarren! Your stuff will be in your rooms in a few minutes. There's my wife, now – "

He waved his hand to Molly but let Quarren go forward alone while he started across the fields toward his hangar where, in grotesque and vicious-looking immobility, reposed his new winged pet, the little Stinger monoplane, wings set as wickedly as an alert wasp's.