The Streets of Ascalon Part 33

"Such scandal!" laughed Chrysos Lacy. "How many of us can afford to turn our backs to the rest of the cage even for an instant? Sir Charles, I simply don't dare to go away. Otherwise I'd purchase several of those glittering articles yonder--whatever they are. Do you happen to know?"

"Automatic revolvers. The cartridges are charged with j.a.panese perfumes.

Did you never see one?" he asked, turning to Strelsa. But she was not listening; and he transferred his attention to Chrysos.

Several people moved forward to examine the pretty and apparently deadly little weapons; Sir Charles was called upon to explain the j.a.panese game of perfumes, and everybody began to purchase the paraphernalia, pistols, cartridges, targets, and counters.

Sir Charles came back, presently, to where Strelsa still stood, listlessly examining laces.

"All kinds of poor people have blinded themselves making these pretty things," she said, as Sir Charles came up beside her. "My only apparent usefulness is to buy them, I suppose."

He offered her one of the automatic pistols.

"It's loaded," he cautioned her, solemnly.

"What an odd gift!" she said, surprised, taking it gingerly into her gloved hand. "Is it really for me? And why?"

"Are you timid about firearms?" he asked, jestingly.

"No.... I don't know anything about them--except to keep my finger away from the trigger. I know enough to do that."

He supposed that she also was jesting, and her fastidious handling of the weapon amused him. And when she asked him if it was safe to carry in her m.u.f.f, he a.s.sured her very gravely that she might venture to do so.

"Turn it loose on the first burglar," he added, "and his regeneration will begin in all the forty-nine odours of sanct.i.ty."

Strelsa smiled without comprehending. Cyrille Caldera was standing just beyond them, apparently interested in antique jewellery, trying the effect of various linked gems against her lilac gown, and inviting Quarren's opinion of the results. Their backs were turned; Ricky's blond head seemed to come unreasonably close to Cyrille's at moments. Once Mrs. Caldera thoughtlessly laid a pretty hand on his arm as though in emphasis. Their unheard conversation was evidently amusing them.

Strelsa's smile remained unaltered; people were coming constantly to pay their respects to her; and they lingered, attracted and amused by her unusual gaiety, charm, and wit.

Her mind seemed suddenly to have become crystal clear; her gay retorts to lively badinage, and her laughing epigrams were deliciously spontaneous. A slight exhilaration, without apparent reason, was transforming her, swiftly, into an incarnation entirely unknown even to herself.

Conscious of a wonderful mood never before experienced, perfectly aware of her unusual brilliancy and beauty, surprised and interested in the sudden revelation of powers within her still unexercised, she felt herself, for the first time in her life, in contact with things heretofore impalpable--and, in spirit, with delicate fingers, she gathered up instinctively those intangible threads with which man is guided as surely as though driven in chains of steel.

And all the while she was aware of Quarren's boyish head bending almost too near to Cyrille Caldera's over the trays of antique jewels; and all the while she was conscious of the transfiguration in process--that not only a new self was being evolved for her out of the debris of the old, but that the world itself was changing around her--and a new Heaven and a new earth were being born--and a new h.e.l.l.

That evening she fought it out with herself with a sort of deadly intelligence. Alone in her room, seated, and facing her mirrored gaze unflinchingly, she stated her case, minutely, to herself from beginning to end; then called the only witness for the prosecution--herself--and questioned that witness without mercy.

Did she care for Quarren? Apparently. How much? A great deal. Was she in love with him? She could not answer. Wherein did he differ from other men she knew--Sir Charles, for example? She only knew that he _was_ different. Perhaps he was n.o.bler? No. More intelligent? No. Kinder? No.

More admirable? No. More gentle, more sincere, less selfish? No. Did he, as a man, compare favorably with other men--Sir Charles for example? The comparison was not in Quarren's favor.

Wherein, then, lay her interest in him? She could not answer. Was she perhaps sorry for him? Very. Why? Because she believed him capable of better things. Then the basis of her regard for him was founded on pity.

No; because from the beginning--even before he had unmasked--she had been sensible of an interest in him different from any interest she had ever before felt for any man.

This uncompromisingly honest answer silenced her mentally for some moments; then she lifted her resolute gray eyes to the eyes of the mirrored witness:

If that is true, then the attraction was partly physical? She could not answer. Pressed for a statement she admitted that it might be that.

Then the basis of her regard for him was ign.o.ble? She found pleasure in his intellectual attractions. But the basis had not been intellectual?

No. It had been material? Yes. And she had never forgotten the light pressure of that masked Harlequin's spangled arm around her while she desperately counted out the seconds of that magic minute forfeited to him? No; she had never forgotten. It was a sensation totally unknown to her before that moment? Yes. Had she experienced it since that time?

Yes. When? When he first told her that he loved her. And afterward? Yes.

When?

In the cheeks of the mirrored witness a faint fire began to burn: her own face grew pink: but she answered, looking the shadowy witness steadily in the eyes:

"When he took my hand at the door--and during--whatever happened--afterward."

And she excused the witness and turned her back to the looking-gla.s.s.

The only witness for the defence was the accused--unless her own heart were permitted to testify. Or--and there seemed to be some slight confusion here--_was_ Quarren on trial? Or was she herself?

This threatened to become a serious question; she strove to think clearly, to reason; but only evoked the pale, amused face of Quarren from inner and chaotic consciousness until the visualisation remained fixed, defying obliteration. And she accepted the mental spectre for the witness box.

"Ricky," she said, "do you really love me?"

But the clear-cut, amused face seemed to mock her question with the smile she knew so well--so well, alas!

"Why are you unworthy?" she said again--"you who surely are equipped for a n.o.bler life. What is it in you that I have responded to? If a woman is so colourless as to respond merely to love in the abstract, she is worth nothing better, nothing higher, than what she has evoked. For you are no better than other men, Ricky; indeed you are less admirable than many; and to compare you to Sir Charles is not advantageous to you, poor boy--poor boy."

In vain she strove to visualise Sir Charles; she could not. All she could do was to mentally enumerate his qualities; and she did so, the amused face of Quarren looking on at her from out of empty s.p.a.ce.

"Ricky, Ricky," she said, "am I no better than that?--am I fit only for such a response?--to find the contact of your hand so wonderful?--to thrill with the consciousness of your nearness--to let my senses drift, contented merely by your touch--yielding to the charm of it--suffering even your lips' embrace----"

She shuddered slightly, drawing one hand across her eyes, then sitting straight, she faced his smiling phantom, resolute to end it now forever.

"If I am such a woman," she said, "and you are the kind of man I know you to be--then is it time for me to fast and pray, lest I enter into temptation.... Into the one temptation I have never before known, Ricky--and which, in my complacency and pride I never dreamed that I should encounter.

"And it is coming to that!... A girl must be honest with herself or all life is only the same smiling lie. I'm ashamed to be honest, Ricky; but I must be. You are not very much of a man--otherwise I might find some reason for caring: and now there is none; and yet--I care--G.o.d knows why--or what it is in you that I care for!--But I do--I am beginning to care--and I don't know why; I--don't--know why----".

She dropped her face in her hands, sitting there bowed low over her knees. And there, hour after hour she fought it out with herself and with the amused spectre ever at her elbow--so close at moments that some unaroused nerve fell a-trembling in its sleep, threatening to awaken those quiet senses that she already feared for their unknown powers.

The season was approaching its end, still kicking now and then spasmodically, but pretty nearly done for. No particularly painful incidents marked its demise except the continued absence of Quarren from social purlieus accustomed to his gay presence and adroit executive abilities.

After several demoralised cotillions had withstood the shock of his absence, and a dozen or more functions had become temporarily disorganised because he declined to occupy himself with their success; and after a number of hostesses had filled in his place at dinner, at theatres, at week-ends, on yachts and coaches; and after an unprecedented defiance of two summonses to the hazardous presence of Mrs. Sprowl, he obeyed a third subpna, and presented himself with an air of cheerful confidence that instantly enraged her.

The old lady lay abed with nothing more compromising than a toothache; Quarren was conducted to the inner shrine; she glared at him hideously from her pillows; and for one moment he felt seriously inclined to run.

"Where have you been?" she wheezed.

"Nowhere in particu----"

"I know d.a.m.n well you've been nowhere," she burst out. "Molly Wycherly's dance went to pieces because she was fool enough to trust things to you.

Do you know who led? That great oaf, Barent Van Dyne! He led like a trick elephant, too!"

Quarren looked politely distressed.

"And there are a dozen hostesses perfectly furious with you," continued the old lady, pounding the pillows with a fat arm--"parties of all sorts spoiled, idiocies committed, dinners either commonplace or blank failures--what the devil possesses you to behave this way?"

"I'm tired," he said, politely.