The Streets of Ascalon Part 22

"Oh, preciousness and splash! Tell your story as well as you can, and if it's well done there'll be latent lessons enough in it."

"Are you perhaps instructing me in my own profession?" asked the other, smiling.

"Heaven knows I'm not venturing----"

"Heaven knows you _are_! Also there is something In what you say--" He sat smoking, thoughtfully, eyes narrowing in the fire--"if I only _could_ manage that!--to arrest the public's attention by the rather cheap medium of the story, and then, cleverly, shoot a few moral pills into 'em.... That's one way, of course----"

"Like the drums of the Salvation Army."

Westguard looked around at him, suspiciously, but Quarren seemed to be serious enough.

"I suppose it doesn't matter much how a fellow collects an audience, so that he does collect one."

"Exactly," nodded Quarren. "Get your people, then keep 'em interested and unsuspecting while you inject 'em full of thinks."

Westguard smoked and pondered; but presently his lips became stern and compressed.

"I don't intend to trifle with my convictions or make any truce or any compromise with 'em," he announced. "I'm afraid that this last story of mine ran away with me."

"It sure did, old Ironsides. Heaven protected her own this time. And in 'The Real Thing' you have ridden farther out among the people with your Bible and your Sword than you ever have penetrated by brandishing both from the immemorial but immobile battlements of righteousness. Truth _is_ a citadel, old fellow; but its garrison should be raiders, not defenders. And they should ride far afield to carry its message. For few journey to that far citadel; you must go to them. And does it make any difference what vehicle you employ in the cause of Truth--so that the message arrives somewhere before your vehicle breaks down of its own heaviness? Novel or poem, sermon or holy writ--it's all one, Karl, so that they get there with their burden."

Westguard sat silent a moment, then thumped the table, emphatically.

"If I had your wasted talents," he said, "I could write anything!"

"Rot!"

"As you please. You use your ability rottenly--that's true enough."

"My ability," mimicked Quarren.

"Yes, your many, many talents, Rix. G.o.d knows why He gave them to you; I don't--for you use them ign.o.bly, when you do not utterly neglect them----"

"I've a light and superficial talent for entertaining people; I've nimble legs, and possess a low order of intelligence known as 'tact.'

What more have I?"

"You're the best amateur actor in New York, for example."

"An _amateur_," sneered Quarren. "That is to say, a man who has the inclinations, but neither the courage, the self-respect, nor the ambition of the professional.... Well, I admit that. I lack something--courage, I think. I prefer what is easy. And I'm doing it."

"What's your reward?" said Westguard bluntly.

"Reward? Oh, I don't know. The inner temple. I have the run of the premises. People like me, trust me, depend upon me more or less. The intrigues and politics of my little world amuse me; now and then I act as amba.s.sador, as envoy of peace, as herald, as secret diplomatic agent.... Reward? Oh, yes--you didn't suppose that my real-estate operations clothed and fed me, did you, Karl?"

"What does?"

"Diplomacy," explained Quarren gaily. "A successful emba.s.sy is rewarded.

How? Why, now and then a pretty woman's husband makes an investment for me at his own risk; now and then, when my office is successfully accomplished, I have my fee as social attorney or arbiter elegantiarum.... There are, perhaps, fewer separations and divorces on account of me; fewer scandals.

"I am sometimes called into consultation, _in extremis_; I listen, I advise--sometimes I plan and execute; even take the initiative and interfere--as when a foolish boy at the Cataract Club, last week, locked himself into the bath-room with an automatic revolver and a case of half-drunken fright. I had to be very careful; I expected to hear that drumming fusillade at any moment.

"But I talked to him, through the keyhole: and at last he opened the door--to take a shot at me, first."

Quarren shrugged and lighted a cigarette.

"Of course," he added, "his father was only too glad to pay his debts.

But boys don't always see things in their true proportions. Neither do women."

Westguard, silent, scowling, pulled at his pipe for a while, then:

"Why should you play surgeon and nurse in such a loathsome hospital?"

"Somebody must. I seem better fitted to do it than the next man."

"Yes," said Westguard with a wry face, "I fancy somebody must do unpleasant things--even among the lepers of Molokai. But I'd prefer real lepers."

"The social sort are sometimes sicker," laughed Quarren.

"I don't agree with you.... By the way, it's all off between my aunt and me."

"I'm sorry, Karl----"

"I'm not! I don't want her money. She told me to go to the devil, and I said something similar. Do you know what she wants me to do?" he added angrily. "Give up writing, live on an allowance from her, and marry Chrysos Lacy! What do you think of that for a cold-blooded and impertinent proposition! We had a fearful family row," he continued with satisfaction--"my aunt bellowing so that her footmen actually fled, and I doing the cool and haughty, and letting her bellow her bally head off."

"You and she have exchanged civilities before," said Quarren, smiling.

"Yes, but this is really serious. I'm d.a.m.ned if I give up writing."

"Or marry Chrysos Lacy?"

"Or that, either. Do you think I want a red-headed wife? And I've never spoken a dozen words to her, either. And I'll pick out my own wife. What does my aunt think I am? I wish I were in love with somebody's parlour-maid. B'jinks! I'd marry her, just to see my aunt's expression----"

"Oh, stop your fulminations," said Quarren, laughing. "That's the way with you artistic people; you're a pa.s.sionate pack of pups!"

"I'm not as pa.s.sionate as my aunt!" retorted Westguard wrathfully. "Do you consider her artistic? She's a meddlesome, malicious, domineering, insolent, evil old woman, and I told her so."

Quarren managed to stifle his laughter for a moment, but his sense of the ludicrous was keen, and the scene his fancy evoked sent him off into mirth uncontrollable.

Westguard eyed him gloomily; ominous clouds poured from "The Weather-breeder."

"Perhaps it's funny," he said, "but she and I cannot stand each other, and this time it's all off for keeps. I told her if she sent me another check I'd send it back. That settles it, doesn't it?"

"You're foolish, Karl----"

"Never mind. If I can't keep myself alive in an untrammelled and self-respecting exercise of my profession--" His voice ended in a gurgling growl. Then, as though the recollections of his injuries at the hands of his aunt still stung him, he reared up in his chair:

"Chrysos Lacy," he roared, "is a sweet, innocent girl--not a bale of fashionable merchandise! Besides," he added in a modified tone, "I was rather taken by--by Mrs. Leeds."

Quarren slowly raised his eyes.