Chambers Robert William
The Streets of Ascalon
So she gave him the post-card, and next day she found a rose in a glass of water on her desk; and that ended the incident for them both except that Dankmere was shyer of her than ever and she was beginning to realise that his aloof and expressionless deportment was due to shyness – which seemed to be inexplicable because otherwise timidity was scarcely the word to characterise his lively little lordship.
Once, looking out of the rear windows, through the lace curtains she saw the Earl of Dankmere in the backyard, gravely turning handsprings on the grass while still smoking his pipe. Once, entering the gallery unexpectedly, she discovered the Earl standing at the piano, playing a rattling breakdown while his nimble little feet performed the same with miraculous agility and professional precision. She withdrew to the front door, hastily, and waited until the piano ceased from rumbling and the Oxfords were at rest, then returned with heightened colour and a stifled desire to laugh which she disguised under an absent-minded nod of greeting.
Meanwhile one or two pictures had been sold to dealers – not important ones – but the sales were significant enough to justify the leasing of the basement. And here Quarren installed himself from morning to noon as apprentice to an old Englishman who, before the failure of his eyesight, had amassed a little fortune as surgeon, physician, and trained nurse to old and decrepit pictures.
Not entirely unequipped in the beginning, Quarren now learned more about his trade – the guarded secrets of mediums and solvents, the composition of ancient and modern canvases, how old and modern colours were ground and prepared, how mixed, how applied.
He learned how the old masters of the various schools of painting prepared a canvas or panel – how the snowy "veil" was spread and dried, how the under painting was executed in earth-red and bone-black, how the glaze was used and why, what was the medium, what the varnish.
He learned about the "baths of sunlight," too – those clarifying immersions practised so openly yet until recently not understood. He comprehended the mechanics, physics, and simple chemistry of that splendid, mysterious "inward glow" which seemed to slumber under the colours of the old masters like the exquisite warmth in the heart of a gem.
To him, little by little, was revealed the only real wonder of the old masters – their astonishing honesty. He began to understand that, first of all, they were self-respecting artisans, practising their trade of making pictures and painting each picture as well as they knew how; that, like other artisans, their pride was in knowing their trade, in a mastery of their tools, and in executing commissions as honestly as they knew how and leaving the "art" to take care of itself.
Also he learned – for he was obliged to learn in self-protection – the tricks and deceptions and forgeries of the trade – all that was unworthy about it, all its shabby disguises and imitations and crude artifices and cunning falsehoods.
He examined old canvases painted over with old-new pictures and then relined; canvases showing portions of original colour; old canvases and panels repainted and artificially darkened and cleverly covered with both paint and varnish cracks; canvases that almost defied detection by needle-point or glass or thumb friction or solvent, so ingenious was the forgery simulating age.
Every known adjunct was provided to carry out deception – genuinely old canvases or panels, old stretchers really worm-eaten, aged frames of the period, half-obliterated seals bearing sometimes even the cross-keys of the Vatican. Even, in some cases, pretence that the pictures had been cut from the frame and presumably stolen was carried out by a knife-slashed and irregular ridge where the canvas had actually been so cut and then sewed to a modern toile.
For forgery of art is as old as the Greeks and as new as to-day – the one sinister art that perhaps will never become a lost art; and Quarren and his aged mentor in the basement of the Dankmere Galleries discovered more than enough frauds among the Dankmere family pictures showing how the little Earl's forebears had once been gulled before his present lordship lay in his cradle.
To Quarren the work was fascinating and, except for his increasing worry over Strelsa Leeds, would have been all-absorbing to the degree of happiness – or that interested contentment which passes for it on earth.
To see the dull encasing armour of varnish disappear from some ancient masterpiece under the thumb, as the delicate thumb of the Orient polishes lacquer; to dare a solvent when needed, timing its strength to the second lest disaster tarnish forever the exquisite bloom of the shrouded glazing; to cautiously explore for suspected signatures, to brood and ponder over ancient records and alleged pedigrees; to compare prints and mezzotints, photographs and engravings in search for identities; to study threads of canvas, flakes of varnish, flinty globules of paint under the microscope; to learn, little by little, the technical manners and capricious mannerisms significant of the progress periods of each dead master; to pore over endless volumes, monographs, illustrated foreign catalogues of public and private collections – in these things and through them happiness came to Quarren.
Never a summer sun rose over the streets of Ascalon arousing the Philistine to another day of toil but it awoke Quarren to the subdued excitement of another day. Eager, interested, content in his self-respect, he went forth to a daily business which he cared about for its own sake, and was fast learning to care about to the point of infatuation.
He was never tired these days; but the summer heat and lack of air and exercise made him rather thin and pale. Close work with the magnifying glass had left his features slightly careworn, and had begun little converging lines at the outer corners of his eyes. Only one line in his face expressed anything less happy – the commencement of a short perpendicular crease between his eyebrows. Anxious pondering over old canvases was not deepening that faint signature of perplexity – or the forerunner of Care's signs manual nervously etched from the wing of either nostril.
CHAPTER XII
Since Quarren had left Witch-Hollow, he and Strelsa had exchanged half-a-dozen letters of all sorts – gay, impersonal notes, sober epistles reflecting more subdued moods, then letters fairly sparkling with high spirits and the happy optimism of young people discovering that there is more of good than evil in a world still really almost new to them. Then there was a long letter of description and amusing narrative from her, in which, here and there, she became almost sentimental over phases of rural beauty; and he replied at equal length telling her about his new shop-work in detail.
Suddenly, out of a clear sky, there came from her a short, dry, and deliberate letter mentioning once more her critical worldly circumstances and the necessity of confronting them promptly and with intelligence and decision.
To which he answered vigorously, begging her to hold out – either fit herself for employment – or throw her fortunes in with his and take the chances.
"Rix dear," she answered, "don't you suppose I have thought of that? But I can't do it. There is nothing left in me to go on with. I'm burnt out – deadly tired, wanting nothing more than I shall have by marrying as I must marry. For I shall have you, too, as I have always had you. You said so, didn't you?
"What difference, then, does it make to you or me whether or not I am married?
"If you were sufficiently equipped to take care of me, and if I married you, I could not give you anything more than I have given already – I would not wish to if I could. All that many other women consider part of love – all that lesser side of it and of marriage I could not give to you or to any man – could not endure; because it is not in me and never has been. It is foreign to me, unpleasant, distasteful – even hateful.
"So as I can give you nothing more than I have given or ever shall give, and as you have given me all you can – anyway all I care for in you – let me feel free to seek my worldly salvation and find the quiet and rest and surcease from anxiety which comes only under such circumstances.
"You won't think unkindly of me, will you, Rix? I don't know very much; I amount to very little. What ideals I had are dead. Why should anybody bother to agree or disagree with my very unaggressive opinions or criticise harshly a life which has been spent mainly in troubling the world as little as possible?
"There are a number of people here – among them several friends of Jim Wycherly, all of them aviation-mad. Jim took out the Stinger, smashed the planes and got a fall which was not very serious. Lester Caldera did the same thing to the Kent biplane except that he fell into the river and Sir Charles and Chrysos, in the launch, fished him out – swearing, they say.
"Vincent Wier made a fine flight in his Delatour Dragon, sailing 'round and 'round like a big hawk for a quarter of an hour, but the wind came up and he couldn't land, and he finally came down thirty miles north of us in a swamp.
"Langly took me for a short flight in his Owlet No. 3 – only two miles and not very high, but the sensation was simply horrid. I never even cared for motoring, you see, so the experience left me most unenthusiastic, greatly to Langly's disgust. Really, all I care for is a decently gaited horse – and I prefer to walk him half the time. There is nothing speedy about me, Rix. If I ever had the inclination it's gone now.
"To the evident displeasure of Sir Charles, Langly took up Chrysos Lacy; and the child adored it. I believe Sir Charles said something cutting to Langly in his quiet and dry way which has, apparently, infuriated my to-be-affianced, for he never goes near Sir Charles, now, and that cold-eyed gentleman completely ignores him. Which is not very agreeable for me.
"Oh, Rix, there seems to be so many misunderstandings in this exceedingly small world of ours – rows innumerable, heartburns, recriminations, quarrels secret and open, and endless misunderstandings.
"Please don't let any come between us, will you? Somehow, lately, I find myself looking on you as a distant but solid and almost peaceful refuge for my harried thoughts. And I'm so very, very tired of being hunted.
"Strelsa."
"If they hunt you too hard," he wrote to Strelsa, "the gateway of my friendship is open to you always: remember that, now and in the days to come.
"What you have written leaves me with nothing to answer except this. To all it is given to endure according to their strength; beyond it no one can strive; but short of its limits it's a shame to show faint-heartedness.
"About the man you are determined to marry I have no further word to say. You know in what repute he is held in your world, and you believe that its censure is unjust. There is good in every man, perhaps, and perhaps the good in this man may show itself only in response to the better qualities in you.
"Somehow, without trying, you almost instantly evoke the better qualities in me. You changed my entire life; do you know it? I myself scarcely comprehended why. Perhaps the negative sweetness in you concentrated and brought out the positive strength so long dormant in me. All I know clearly is that you came into my life and found a fool wasting it, capering about in a costume half livery, half motley. My ambition was limited to my cap and bells; my aspirations never reached beyond the tip of my bauble. Then I saw you – and, all by themselves, my rags of motley fell from me, and something resembling a man stepped clear of them.
"I am trying to make out of myself all that there is in me to develop. It is not much – scarcely more than the ability to earn a living.
"I have come to care for nothing more than the right to look this sunny world straight in the face. Until I knew you I had scarcely seen it except through artificial light – scarce heard its voice; for the laughter of your world and the jingle of my cap and bells drowned it in my ass's ears.
"I could tell you – for in dark moments I often believe it – that there is only one thing that counts in the world – one thing worth having, worth giving – love!
"But in my heart I know it is not so; and the romancers are mistaken; and so is the heart denied.
"Better and worth more than love of man or woman is the mind's silent approval – whether given in tranquillity or accorded in dumb anguish.
"Strelsa dear, I shall always care for you; but I have discovered that love is another matter – higher or lower as you will – but different. And I do not think I shall be able to love the girl who does what you are decided to do. And that does not mean that I criticise you or blame you, or that my sympathy, affection, interest, in you will be less. On the contrary all these emotions may become keener; only one little part will die out, and that without changing the rest – merely that mysterious, curious, elusive and illogical atom in the unstable molecule, which we call love – and which, when separated, leaves the molecule changed only in name. We call it friendship, then.
"And this is, I think, what you would most desire. So when you do what you have determined to do, I will really become toward you what you are – and have always been – toward me. And could either of us ask for more?
"Only – forgive me – I wish it had been Sir Charles – or almost any other man. But that is for your decision. Strelsa governs and alone is responsible to Strelsa.
"Meanwhile do not doubt my affection – do not fear unkindness, judgment, or criticism. I wish I were what you cared for most in the world – after the approval of your own mind. I wish you cared for me not only as you do but with all that has never been aroused in you. For without that I am helpless to fight for you.
"So, in your own way, you will live life through, knowing that in me you will always have an unchanged friend – even though the lover died when you became a wife. Is all clear between us now?
"If you are ever in town, or passing through to Newport or Bar Harbour, stop and inspect our gallery.
"It is really quite pretty and some of the pictures are excellent. You should see it now – sunlight slanting in through the dusty bay-window, Dankmere at a long polished table doing his level best to assemble certain old prints out of a portfolio containing nearly a thousand; pretty little Miss Vining, pencil in hand, checking off at her desk the reference books we require in our eternal hunt for information; I below stairs in overalls if you please, paint and varnish stained, a jeweller's glass screwed into my left eye, examining an ancient panel which I strongly hope may have been the work of a gentleman named Bronzino – for its mate is almost certainly the man in armour in the Metropolitan Museum.
"Strelsa, it is the most exciting business I ever dreamed of. And the beauty of it is that it leads out into everything – stretches a thousand sensitive tentacles which grasp at knowledge of beauty everywhere – whether it lie in the sombre splendour of the tapestries of Bayeux, of Italy, of Flanders; or deep in the woven magnificence of some dead Sultan's palace rug; or in the beauty of the work of silversmiths, goldsmiths, of sculptors in ivory or in wood long dead; or in the untinted marbles of the immortal masters.
"Never before did I understand how indissolubly all arts are linked, how closely and eternally knit together in the vast fabric fashioned by man from the beginning of time, and in the cryptograms of which lie buried all that man has ever thought and hoped.
"My cat, Daisy, recently presented the Dankmere Galleries with five squeaking kittens of assorted colour and design. Their eyes are now open.
"Poor Daisy! It seems only yesterday when, calmly purring on my knee, she heard for the first time in her innocent life a gentleman cat begin an intermezzo on the back fence.
"Never before had Daisy heard such amazing language: she rose, astounded, listening; then, giving me one wild glance, fled under the piano. I shied an empty bottle at the moon-lit minstrel; and I supposed that Daisy approved. But man supposes and cat proposes and – Daisy's kittens are certainly ornamental. Dankmere carries one in each pocket, Daisy trotting at his heels with an occasional little exclamation of solicitude and pride.
"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.
"Hasn't she had time to rest in that dingy, dead-and-alive place? And what keeps Langly there? He has nothing to look at except a few brood-mares. Do you suppose he has the bad taste to hang around waiting for Chester Ledwith to get out and Mary Ledwith to return? Or is it something else that glues him there – with the Yulan in the North River?"
Quarren shrugged his lack of interest in the subject.
"If I thought," muttered the old lady – "if I imagined for one moment that Langly was daring to try any of his low, cold-blooded tricks on Strelsa Leeds, I'd go up there myself – I'd take the next train and tell that girl plainly what kind of a citizen my charming nephew really is!"
Quarren was silent.
"Why the dickens don't you say something?" she demanded. "I want to know whether I ought to go up there or not. Have you ever observed – have you ever suspected that there might be anything between Langly and Strelsa Leeds? – any tacit understanding – any interest on her part in him?.. Why don't you answer me?"
"You know," he said, "that it's none of your business what I believe."
"Am I to take that impudence literally?"
"Exactly as I said it. You asked improper questions; I am obliged to remind you that you cannot expect me to answer them."
"Why can't you speak of Langly?"
"Because what concerns him does not concern me."
"I thought you were in love with Strelsa," she said bluntly.
"If I were, do you imagine I'd discuss it with you?"
"I'll tell you what!" she shouted, purple with rage, "you might do a damn sight worse! I'd – I'd rather see her your wife than his! – and God knows what he wants of her at that – as Mary Ledwith has first call or the world will turn Langly out of doors!"
Quarren, slightly paler, looked at her in silence.
"I tell you the world will spit in his face," she said between her teeth, "if he doesn't make good with Mary Ledwith after what he's done to her and her husband."
"He has too much money," said Quarren. "Besides there's an ordinance against it."
"You watch and see! Some things are too rotten to be endured – "
"What? I haven't noticed any either abroad or here. Anyway it doesn't concern me."
"Don't you care for that girl?"
"We are friends."
"Friends, eh!" she mimicked him wickedly, plying her fan like a madwoman; "well I fancy I know what sort of friendship has made you look ten years older in half a year. Oh, Ricky, Ricky!" – she added with an abrupt change of feeling – "I'm sorry for you. I like you even when you are impertinent to me – and you know I do! But I – my heart is set on her marrying Sir Charles. You know it is. Could anything on earth be more suitable? – happier for her as well as for him? Isn't he a man where Langly is a – a toad, a cold-blooded worm! – a – a thing!
"I tell you my heart's set on it; there is nothing else interests me; I think of nothing else, care for nothing else – "
"Why?"
"What?" she said, suddenly on her guard.
"Why do you care for it so much?"
"Why? That is an absurd question."
"Then answer it without taking time to search for any reason except the real one."
"Ricky, you insolent – "
"Never mind. Answer me; why are you so absorbed in this marriage?"
She said with a calmly contemptuous shrug: "Because Sir Charles is deeply in love with her, and I am fond of them both."
"Is that sufficient reason for such strenuous and persistent efforts on your part?"
"That – and hatred for Langly," she said stolidly.
"Just those three reasons?"
"Certainly. Just those three."
He shook his head.
"Do you disbelieve me?" she demanded.
"I am compelled to – knowing that never in all your life have you made the slightest effort in behalf of friendship – never inconvenienced yourself in the least for the sake of anybody on earth."
She stared at him, amazed, then angry, then burst into a loud laugh; but, even while laughing her fat features suddenly altered as though pain had cut mirth short.
"What is the matter?" he said.
"Nothing… You are the matter… I've always been fool enough to take you for a fool. You were the only one among us clever enough to read us and remain unread. God! If only some of us could see what we look like in the archives of your brain!.. Let it go at that; I don't care what I look like as long as it's a friendly hand that draws my features… I'm an old woman, remember… And it is a friendly pencil you wield, isn't it, Ricky?"
"Yes."
"I believe it. I never knew you to do or say a deliberately unkind thing. I never knew you to abuse a confidence, either… And you were the receptacle for many – Heaven only knows how many trivial, petty, miserable little intrigues you were made aware of, or how many secret kindnesses you have done… Let that go, too. I want to tell you something."
She motioned him nearer; she was too stout to lean far forward: and he placed his chair beside hers.
"Do you know where and when Sir Charles first saw Strelsa Leeds?"
"Yes."
"In Egypt. She was the wife of the charming and accomplished Reggie at the time."
"I know."
"Did you know that Sir Charles fell in love with her then? That he never forgot her? That when Reggie finally took his last header into the ditch he had been riding for, Sir Charles came to me in America and asked what was best to do? That on my advice he waited until I managed to draw the girl out of her retirement? That then, on my advice, he returned to America to offer himself when the proper time arrived? Did you know these things, Rix?"
