Chambers Robert William
The Streets of Ascalon
And there, Jessie Vining, entering the front room unexpectedly, discovered the peer executing his art before the mirror, apparently enamoured of his own grace and agility.
When he caught a glimpse of her in the mirror he stopped very suddenly and came back to find her at her desk, laughing.
For a moment he remained red and disconcerted, but the memory of the fact that he and Miss Vining were to occupy the galleries all alone – exclusive of intrusive customers – for a day or more, assuaged a slight chagrin.
"At any rate," he said, "it is just as well that you should know me as I am, Miss Vining – with all my faults and frivolous imperfections, isn't it?"
"Why?" asked Miss Vining.
"Why – what?" repeated the Earl, confused.
"Why should I know all your imperfections?"
He thought hard for a moment, but seemed to discover no valid reason.
"You ask such odd questions," he protested. "Now where the deuce do you suppose Quarren has gone? I'll bet he's cut the traces and gone up to see those people at Witch-Hollow."
"Perhaps," she said, making a few erasures in her type-written folio and rewriting the blank spaces. Then she glanced over the top of the machine at his lordship, who, as it happened, was gazing at her with such peculiar intensity that it took him an appreciable moment to rouse himself and take his eyes elsewhere.
"When do you take your vacation?" he asked, carelessly.
"I am not going to take one."
"Oh, but you ought! You'll go stale, fade, droop – er – and all that, you know!"
"It is very kind of you to feel interested," she said, smiling, "but I don't expect to droop – er – and all that, you know."
He laughed, after a moment, and so did she – a sweet, fearless, little laugh most complimentary to his lordship if he only knew it – a pretty, frank tribute to what had become a friendship – an accord born of confidence on her part, and of several other things on the part of Lord Dankmere.
It had been of slow growth at first – imperceptibly their relations had grown from a footing of distant civility to a companionship almost cordial – but not quite; for she was still shy with him at times, and he with her; and she had her moods of unresponsive reserve, and he was moody, too, at intervals.
"You don't like me to make fun of you, do you?" she asked.
"Don't I laugh as though I like it?"
She knitted her pretty brows: "I don't quite know. You see you're a British peer – which is really a very wonderful thing – "
"Oh, come," he said: "it really is rather a wonderful thing, but you don't believe it."
"Yes, I do. I stand in awe of you. When you come into the room I seem to hear trumpets sounding in the far distance – "
"My boots squeak – "
"Nonsense! I do hear a sort of a fairy fanfare playing 'Hail to the Belted Earl!'"
"I wear braces – "
"How common of you to distort my meaning! I don't care, you may do as you like – dance break-downs and hammer the piano, but to me you will ever remain a British peer – poor but noble – "
"Wait until we hear from that Van Dyck! You can't call me poor then!"
She laughed, then, looking at him earnestly, involuntarily clasped her hands.
"Isn't it perfectly wonderful," she breathed with a happy, satisfied sigh.
"Are you really very happy about it, Miss Vining?"
"I? Why shouldn't I be!" she said indignantly. "I'm so proud that our gallery has such a picture. I'm so proud of Mr. Quarren for discovering it – and – " she laughed – "I'm proud of you for possessing it. You see I am very impartial; I'm proud of the gallery, of everybody connected with it including myself. Shouldn't I be?"
"We are three very perfect people," he said gravely.
"Do you know that we really are? Mr. Quarren is wonderful, and you are – agreeable, and as for me, why when I rise in the morning and look into the glass I say to myself, 'Who is that rather clever-looking girl who smiles at me every morning in such friendly fashion?' And, would you believe it! – she turns out to be Jessie Vining every time!"
She was in a gay mood; she rattled away at her machine, glancing over it mischievously at him from time to time. He, having nothing to do except to look at her, did so as often as he dared.
And so they kept the light conversational shuttle-cock flying through the sunny afternoon until it drew near to tea-time. Jessie said very seriously:
"No Englishman can exist without tea. Tea is as essential to him as it is to British fiction. A microscopic examination of any novel made by a British subject will show traces of tea-leaves and curates although, as the text-books on chemistry have it, otherwise the substance of the work may be colourless, tasteless, odourless, and gaseous to the verge of the fourth dimension – "
"If you don't cease making game of things British and sacred," he threatened, "I'll try to stop you in a way that will astonish you."
"What will you try to do?" she asked, much interested.
He looked her steadily in the eyes:
"I'll try to turn you into a British subject. One can't slam one's own country."
"How could you turn me into such an object, Lord Dankmere?"
"There's only one way."
Innocent for a few moments of his meaning she smilingly and derisively defied him. Then, of a sudden, startled into immobility, the smile froze on her lips.
At the swift change in her expression his own features were slowly and not unbecomingly suffused.
Then, incredulous, and a little nervous, she rose to prepare the tea; and he sprang up to bring the folding table.
The ceremony passed almost in silence; neither he nor she made the effort to return to the lighter, gayer vein. When they spoke at all it was on some matter connected with business; and her voice seemed to him listless, almost tired.
Which was natural enough, for the heat had been trying, and, in spite of the open windows, no breath of coolness stirred the curtains.
So the last minutes of the afternoon passed but the sunshine still reddened the cornices of the houses across the street when she rose to put away the tea-things.
A little later she pinned on her hat and moved toward the front door with a friendly nod to him in silent adieu.
"Will you let me walk home with you?" he said.
"I – think – not, this evening."
"Were you going anywhere?"
She paused, her gloved hand on the knob, and he came up to her, slowly.
"Were you?" he repeated.
"No."
"Then – don't you care to let me walk with you?"
She seemed to be thinking; her head was a trifle lowered.
He said: "Before you go there is something I wanted to tell you" – she made an involuntary movement and the door opened and hung ajar letting in the lively music of a street-organ. Then he leaned over and quietly closed the door.
"I'm afraid," he said, "that I'm taking an unwarrantable liberty by interfering in your affairs without consulting you."
She looked up at him, surprised.
"It happened yesterday about this hour," he said.
"What happened?"
"Do you remember that you went home about three o'clock instead of waiting until this hour as usual?"
"Yes."
"Well, this is what occurred. I left the gallery at this same hour. Ahead of me descending the steps was a young girl who had just delivered a business letter to Mr. Quarren. As she set foot on the pavement a footman attached to an automobile drawn up across the street touched his cap to her and said: 'Beg pardon, Miss Vining, I am Mr. Sprowl's man. Mr. Sprowl would like to see you at the Café Cammargue. The car is waiting.'"
Miss Vining's colour faded; she stared at Dankmere with widening eyes, and he dropped his hands into his coat-pockets and returned her gaze.
"I don't understand you," she said in a low voice.
"Neither did the young girl addressed by the footman. Neither did I. But I was interested. So I said to the footman: 'Bring around your car. I shall have to explain about Miss Vining to Mr. Sprowl.'"
"What!" she said breathlessly.
"That's where I interfered, Miss Vining. And the footman looked doubtful, too, but he signalled the chauffeur… And so I went to the Café Cammargue – "
He hesitated, looking at her white and distressed face, then continued coolly:
"Sprowl seemed surprised to see me. He was waiting in a private room… He's looking rather badly these days… We talked a few minutes – "
Pale, angry, every sense of modesty and reserve outraged, the girl faced him, small head erect:
"You went there to – to discuss me with that man!"
He was silent. She turned suddenly and tried to open the door, but he held it closed.
"I did it because I cared for you enough to do it," he said. "Don't you understand? Don't you suppose I know that kind of man?"
"It – it was not your business – " she faltered, twisting blindly at the door-knob. "Let me go – please – "
"I made it my business… And that man understood that I was making it my business. And he won't attempt to annoy you again… Can you forgive me?"
She turned on him excitedly, her eyes flashing with tears, but the impetuous words of protest died on her lips as her eyes encountered his.
"It was because I love you," he said. And, as he spoke, there was about the man a quiet dignity and distinction that silenced her – something of which she may have had vague glimpses at wide intervals in their acquaintances – something which at times she suspected might lie latent in unknown corners of his character. Now it suddenly confronted her; and she recognised it and stood before him without a word to say.
It mended matters a little when he smiled, and the familiar friend reappeared beside her; but she still felt strange and shy; and wondering, half fearfully, she let him lift her gloved hands and stand, holding them, looking into her eyes.
"You know what I am," he said. "I have nothing to say about myself. But I love you very dearly… I loved before, once, and married. And she died… After that I didn't behave very well – until I knew you… It is really in me to be a decent husband – if you can care for me… And I don't think we're likely to starve – "
"I – it isn't that," she said, flushing scarlet.
"What?"
"What you have … I could only care for – what you are."
"Can you do that?"
But her calm had vanished, and, head bent and averted, she was attempting to withdraw her hands – and might have freed herself entirely if it had not been for his arm around her.
This new and disconcerting phase of the case brought her so suddenly face to face with him that it frightened her; and he let her go, and followed her back to the empty gallery where she sank down at her desk, resting her arms on the covered type-machine, and buried her quivering face in them.
It was excusable. Such things don't usually happen to typewriters and stenographers although they have happened to barmaids.
When he had been talking eloquently and otherwise for a long time Jessie Vining lifted her pale, tear-stained face from her arms; and his lordship dropped rather gracefully on his knees beside her, and she looked down at him very solemnly and wistfully.
It was shockingly late when they closed the gallery that evening. And their mode of homeward progress was stranger still, for instead of a tram or of the taxi which Lord Dankmere occasionally prevailed upon her to accept, they drifted homeward on a pink cloud through the light-shot streets of Ascalon.
CHAPTER XVI
To the solitary and replete pike, lying motionless in shadow, no still-bait within reach is interesting. But the slightest movement in his vicinity of anything helpless instantly rivets his attention; any creature apparently in distress arouses him to direct and lightning action whether he be gorged or not – even, perhaps, while he is still gashed raw with the punishment for his last attempt.
So it was with Langly Sprowl. He had come into town, sullen, restless, still fretting with checked desire. Within him a dull rage burned; he was ready to injure, ready for anything to distract his mind which, however, had not given up for a moment the dogged determination to recover the ground he had lost with perhaps the only woman in the world he had ever really cared for.
Yet, he was the kind of man who does not know what real love is. That understanding had not been born in him, and he had not acquired it. He was totally incapable of anything except that fierce passion which is aroused by obstacles when in pursuit of whatever evinces a desire to escape.
It was that way with him when, by accident, he saw and recognised Jessie Vining one evening leaving the Dankmere Galleries. And Langly Sprowl never denied himself anything that seemed incapable of self-defence.
He stopped his car and got out and spoke to her, very civilly, and with a sort of kindly frankness which he sometimes used with convincing effect. She refused the proffered car to take her to her destination, but could not very well avoid his escort; and their encounter ended by her accepting his explanations and his extended hand, perplexed, unwilling to misjudge him, but thankful when he departed.
After that he continued to meet her occasionally and walk home with her.
Then he sent his footman and the car for her; and drew Lord Dankmere out of the grab-bag, to his infinite annoyance. Worse, Dankmere had struck him with an impact so terrific that it had knocked him senseless across the table in a private dining-room of the Café Cammargue, where he presently woke up with a most amazing eye to find the terrified proprietor and staff playing Samaritan.
In various papers annoying paragraphs concerning him had begun to appear – hints of how matters stood between him and Mary Ledwith, ugly innuendo, veiled rumours of the breach between him and his aunt consequent upon his untenable position vis-à-vis Mrs. Ledwith.
Until Dankmere had inconvenienced his features he had walked downtown to his office every day, lank, long-legged, sleek head held erect, hatchet face pointed straight in front of him, his restless eyes encountering everybody's but seeing nobody unless directly saluted.
Now, his right eye rivalling a thunder-cloud in tints, he drove one of his racing cars as fast as he dared, swinging through Westchester or scurrying about Long Island. Occasionally he went aboard the Yulan, but a burning restlessness kept him moving; and at last he returned to South Linden in a cold but deadly rage, determined to win back the chances which he supposed he had thrown away in the very moment of victory.
Strelsa Leeds had now taken up her abode in her quaint little house; he learned that immediately; and that evening he went over and came upon her moving about in the dusky garden, so intent on inspecting her flowers that he was within a pace of her before she turned her head and saw him.
"Strelsa," he said, "can we not be friends again? I ask no more than that."
Too surprised and annoyed to reply she merely gazed at him. And, because, for the first time in his life, perhaps, he really felt every word he uttered, he spoke now with a certain simplicity and self-control that sounded unusual to her ears – so noticeably unlike what she knew of him that it commanded her unwilling attention.
For his unpardonable brutality and violence he asked forgiveness, promising to serve her faithfully and in friendship for the privilege of attempting to win back her respect and regard. He asked only that.
He said that he scarcely knew what to do with his life without the hope of recovering her respect and esteem; he asked for a beggar's chance, begged for it with a candour and naïveté almost boyish – so directly to the point tended every instinct in him to recover through caution and patience what he had lost through carelessness and a violence which still astonished him.
The Bermuda lilies were in bloom and Strelsa stood near them, listening to him, touching the tall stalks absently at intervals. And while she listened she became more conscious still of the great change in herself – of her altered attitude toward so much in life that once had seemed to her important. After he had ceased she still stood pensively among the lilies, gray eyes brooding. At length, looking up, she said very quietly:
"Why do you care for my friendship, Langly? I am not the kind of woman you think me – not even the kind I once thought myself. To me friendship is no light thing either to ask for or to give. It means more to me than it once did; and I give it very seldom, and sparingly, and to very, very few. But toward everybody I am gently disposed – because, I am much happier than I ever have been in all my life… Is not my good will sufficient for any possible relation between you and me?"
"Then you are no longer angry with me?"
"No – no longer angry."
"Can we be friends again? Can you really forgive me, Strelsa?"
"Why – yes, I could do that… But, Langly, what have you and I in common as a basis for friendship? What have we ever had in common? Except when we encounter each other by hazard, why should we ever meet at all?"
"You have not pardoned me, Strelsa," he said patiently.
"Does that really make any difference to you? It doesn't to me. It is only because I never think of you that it would be an effort to forgive you. I'll make that effort if you wish, but really, Langly, I never think about you at all."
"If that is true, let me be with you sometimes, Strelsa," he said in a low voice.
"Why?"
"Because I am wretchedly unhappy. And I care for you – more than you realise."
She said seriously: "You have no right to speak that way to me, Langly."
"Could you ever again give me the right to say I love you?"
A quick flush of displeasure touched her cheeks; he saw it in the dusk of the garden, and mistook it utterly:
"Strelsa – listen to me, dear! I have not slept since our quarrel. I must have been stark mad to say and do what I did… Don't leave me! Don't go! I beg you to listen a moment – "
She had started to move away from him and his first forward step broke a blossom from its stalk where it hung white in the dusk.
"I ask you to go," she said under her breath. "There are people here – on the veranda – "
Every sense within him told him to go, pretending resignation. That was his policy. He had come here for martyrdom, cuirassed in patience. Every atom of common sense warned him to go.
But also every physical sense in him was now fully aroused – the silvery star-dusk, the scent of lilies, a slender woman within arm's reach – this woman who had once been so nearly his – who was still rightfully his! – these circumstances were arousing him once more to a temerity which his better senses warned him to subdue. Yet if he could only get nearer to her – if he could once get her into his arms – overwhelm her with the storm of passion rising so swiftly within him, almost choking him – so that his voice and limbs already trembled in its furious surge —
"Strelsa – I love you! For God's sake show me some mercy!" he stammered. "I come to you half crazed by the solitude to which your anger has consigned me. I cannot endure it – I need you – I want you – I ask for your compassion – "
"Hush!" she pleaded, hastily retreating before him through the snowy banks of rockets – "I have asked you not to speak to me that way! I ask you to go – to go now! – because – "
"Will you listen to me! Will you wait a moment! I am only trying to tell you that I love you, dear – "
He almost caught her, but she sprang aside, frightened, still retreating before him.
"I cannot go until you listen to me! – " he said thickly, trampling through the flowers to intercept her. "You've got to listen! – do you hear?"
She had almost reached the terrace; the shadowy veranda opened widely beyond.
"There are people here! Don't you understand?" she said once more in a choking voice; but he only advanced, and she fell back before him to the very edge of the porch lattice.
"Now listen to me!" he said between his teeth. "I love you and I'll never give you up – "
Suddenly she turned on him, hands tightly clenched:
"Be silent!" she whispered fiercely. "I tell you what you say is indecent, revolting! If there were a man here he'd kill you! Do you understand?"
At the same instant his eyes became fixed on a figure in white which took shadowy shape on the dark veranda, rising and coming slowly forward.
Ghostlike as it was he knew it instantly, stood rooted in his tracks while Strelsa stole away from him through the star-lit gloom, farther, farther, slipping forever from him now – he knew that as he stood there staring like a damned man upon that other dim shape in the darkness beyond.
It was his first glimpse of her since her return from Reno. And now, unbidden, memories half strangled were already in full resurrection, gasping in his ears of things that had been – of forgotten passion, of pleasure promised; and, because never tasted, it had been the true and only pleasure for such a man as he – the pleasure of anticipation. But the world had never, would never believe that. Only he, and the phantom there in the dusk before him, knew it to be true.
Slightly reeling he turned away in the darkness. In his haunted ears sounded a young wife's voice, promising, caressing; through and through him shot a thrill of the old excitement, the old desire, urging him again toward belated consummation.
And again the old impatience seized him, the old ruthlessness, the old anger at finding her weak in every way except one, the old contempt which had turned to sullen amazement when she wrote him that she had gone to Reno and that they must wait for their happiness until the courts decreed it legal.
Now as he swung along under the high stars he was thinking of these things. And he felt that he had not tried her enough, had not really exerted himself – that women who are fools require closer watching than clever ones; that he could have overcome her scruples with any real effort and saved her from giving him the slip and sowing a wind in Reno which already had become enough of a breeze to bother him.
With her, for a while, he might be able to distract his mind from this recent obsession tormenting him. To overcome her would interest him; and he had no doubt it could be done – for she was a little fool – silly enough to slap the world in the face and brave public opinion at Reno. No – it was not necessary to marry such a woman. She might think so, but it wasn't.
He had behaved unwisely, too. Why should he not have gone to see her when she returned? By doing so, and acting cleverly, he could have avoided trouble with his aunt, and also these annoying newspaper paragraphs. Also he could have avoided the scene with Ledwith – and the aborted reconciliation just now with Strelsa, where he had stood staring at the apparition of Mary Ledwith as lost souls stand transfixed before the pallid shades of those whom they have destroyed.
At his lodge-gate a half-cowering dog fawned on him and he kicked it aside. The bruised creature fled, and Sprowl turned in at his gates and walked slowly up the cypress-bordered drive.
He thought it all out that night, studied it carefully. What he needed was distraction from the present torment. Mary Ledwith could give that to him. What a fool she had been ever to imagine that she could be anything more than his temporary mistress.
"The damned little idiot," he mused – "cutting away to Reno before I knew what she was up to – and involving us both in all that talk! What did she flatter herself I wanted, anyway… But I ought to have called on her at once; now it's going to be difficult."
Yet he sullenly welcomed the difficulty – hoped that she'd hold out. That was what he wanted, the excitement of it to take his mind from Strelsa – keep him interested and employed until the moment arrived once more when he might venture to see her again. He was, by habit, a patient man. Only in the case of Strelsa Leeds had passion ever prematurely betrayed him; and, pacing his porch there in the darkness, he set his teeth and wondered at himself and cursed himself, unable to reconcile what he knew of himself with what he had done to the only woman he had ever wished to marry as a last resort.
For two weeks Sprowl kept to himself. Few men understood better than he what was the medicinal value of time. Only once had he dared ignore it.
So one evening, late in August, still dressed in knickerbockers and heather-spats, he walked from his lawn across country to make the first move in a new game with Mary Ledwith.
Interested, confident, already amused, and in far better spirits than he had been for many a day, he strode out across the fields, swinging his walking-stick, his restless eyes seeing everything and looking directly at nothing.
Which was a mistake on his part for once, because, crossing a pasture corner, his own bull, advancing silently from a clump of willows, nearly caught him; but Sprowl went over the fence and, turning, brought down his heavy stick across the brute's ringed nose; and the animal bellowed at him and tore up the sod and followed along inside the fence thundering his baffled fury as long as Sprowl remained in sight.
It was not all bad disposition. Sprowl, who cared nothing for animals, hated the bull, and, when nothing more attractive offered, was accustomed to come to the fence, irritate the animal, lure him within range, and strike him. He had done it many times; and, some day, he meant to go into the pasture with a rifle, stand the animal's charge, and shoot him.
It was a calm, primrose-tinted sunset where trees and hills and a distant spire loomed golden-black against the yellow west. No trees had yet turned, although, here and there on wooded hills, single discoloured branches broke the green monotony.
No buckwheat had yet been cut, but above the ruddy fields of stalks the snow of the blossoms had become tarnished in promise of maturity – the first premonition of autumn except for a few harvest apples yellow amid green leaves.
He had started without any definite plan, a confident but patient opportunist; and as he approached the Ledwith property and finally sighted the chimneys of the house above the trees, something – some errant thought seemed to amuse him, for he smiled slightly. His smile was as rare as his laughter – and as brief; and there remained no trace of it as he swung up the last hill and stood there gazing ahead.
The sun had set. A delicate purple haze already dimmed distances; and the twilight which falls more swiftly as summer deepens into autumn was already stealing into every hollow and ravine, darkening the alders where the stream stole swampwards. A few laggard crows were still winging toward the woods; a few flocks of blackbirds passed overhead almost unseen against the sky. Somewhere some gardener had been burning leaves and refuse, and the odour made the dusk more autumn-like.
As he crossed the line separating his land from the Ledwith estate he nodded to the daughter of one of his own gardeners who was passing with a collie; and then he turned to look again at the child whose slender grace and freshness interested him.
"Look out for that bull, Europa," he said, staring after her as she walked on.
She looked back at him, laughingly, and thanked him and went on quite happily, the collie plodding at her heels. Recently Sprowl had been very pleasant to her.
When she was out of sight he started forward, climbed the fence into the road, followed it to the drive-way, and followed that among the elms and Norway firs to the porch.
It was so dark here among the trees that only the lighted transom guided him up the steps.
To the maid who came to the door he said coolly: "Say to Mrs. Ledwith that Mr. Sprowl wishes to see her for a moment on a very important matter."
"Mrs. Ledwith is not at home, sir."
"What?"
"Mrs. Ledwith is not at home."
"Where is she; out?"
"Y-yes, sir."
"Where?"
"I don't know, sir – "
"Yes, you do. Mrs. Ledwith is at home but has given you instructions concerning me. Isn't that so?"
The maid, crimson and embarrassed, made no answer, and he walked past her into the drawing-room.
"Light up here," he said.
"Please, sir – "
"Do as I tell you, my good girl. Here – where's that button? – there! – " as the pretty room sprang into light – "Now never mind your instructions but go and say to Mrs. Ledwith that I must see her."
He calmly unfolded a flat packet of fresh bank-notes, selected one, changed it on reflection for another of higher denomination, and handed it to her. The girl hesitated, still irresolute until he lifted his narrow head and stared at her. Then she went away hurriedly.
When she returned to say that Mrs. Ledwith was not at home to Mr. Sprowl he shrugged and bade her inform her mistress that their meeting was not a matter of choice but of necessity, and that he would remain where he was until she received him.
Again the maid went away, evidently frightened, and Sprowl lighted a cigarette and began to saunter about. When he had examined everything in the room he strolled into the farther room. It was unlighted and suited him to sit in; and he installed himself in a comfortable chair and, throwing his cigarette into the fire-place, lighted a cigar.
This was a game he understood – a waiting game. The game was traditional with his forefathers; every one of them had played it; their endless patience had made a fortune to which each in turn had added before he died. Patience and courage – courage of the sort known as personal bravery – had distinguished all his race. He himself had inherited patience, and had used it wisely except in that one inexplicable case! – and personal courage in him had never been lacking, nor had what often accompanies it, coolness, obstinacy, and effrontery.
He had decided to wait until his cigar had been leisurely finished. Then, other measures – perhaps walking upstairs, unannounced, perhaps an unresentful withdrawal, a note by messenger, and another attempt to see her to-morrow – he did not yet know – had arrived at no conclusion – but would make up his mind when he finished his cigar and then do whatever caution dictated.
Once a servant came to the door to look around for him, and when she discovered him in the half-light of the music-room she departed hastily for regions above. This amused Sprowl.
