The Streets of Ascalon Part 45

He smiled. "She may be, yet," he said lightly. "Don't come back too soon."

So Molly went away laughing; and presently through the lace curtains, Quarren saw Jim Wycherly whirl up in a yellow touring car, and Molly, Chrysos, and Sir Charles clamber in for one of those terrific and headlong drives which made Jim's hospitality a terror to the majority of his guests.

Quarren watched the car disappear, hopelessly followed by an overfed setter. Then the dust settled; the fat family pet came panting back to lie down on the lawn, dead beat, and Quarren resumed his toilet.

Half an hour later he emerged from his quarters wearing tennis flannels and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the stem into a new pipe which he had decided to break in--a tall, well-built, pleasant-eyed young fellow with the city pallor blanching his skin and the breeze stirring his short blond hair.

"h.e.l.lo, old man!" he said affably to the fat setter, who thumped his tail on the gra.s.s and looked up at Quarren with mild, deerlike eyes.

"We're out of the running, we two--aren't we?" he added. "You try very pluckily to keep up with your master's devil-wagon; I run a more hopeless race.... For the golden chariot is too swift for me, and the race is to the swift; and the prize, doggy, is a young girl's unhappy heart which is slowly turning from sensitive flesh and blood into pure and senseless gold."

He stood under a tree slowly filling his pipe. The scent of early summer was in the air; the odour of June peonies, and young leaves and clear waters; of gra.s.ses and hedges and distant hemlocks.

Leisurely, the fat dog waddling at his heels, he sauntered about the Wycherly place inspecting its renovated attractions--among others the new old-fashioned garden full of new old-fashioned flowers so marvellously developed by modern skill that he recognised scarcely any of them. Petunias, with their great fluted and scalloped blossoms resembled nothing he had known by that name; the peonies seemed to him enormous and exotic; rockets, larkspurs, spiderwort, pinks, all had been so fantastically and grotesquely developed by modern horticulture that Quarren felt as though he were wandering alone among a gardenful of strangers. Only here and there a glimpse of familiar sweet-william or the faint perfume of lemon-verbena brought a friendly warmth into his heart; but, in hostile silence he pa.s.sed by hydrangea and althea, syringa and preposterous canna, quietly detesting the rose garden where scores of frail and frivolous strangers nodded amid anaemic leaves, or where great, blatant, aniline-coloured blossoms bulged in the sun, seeming to repeat with every strapping bud their Metropolitan price per dozen.

He looked in at the stables and caressed a horse or two; examined the sheepfold; pa.s.sed by garage and hangar without interest, lingered wistfully by the kennels where a dozen nervous little Blue Beltons, too closely inbred, welcomed his appearance with hysteric emotions.

Beyond the kennels he caught a distant glimpse of blue water glimmering between tall hemlock trees; so he took the lake path and presently rounded a sharp curve where a rustic bench stood, perched high above the rocky sh.o.r.e. Strelsa Leeds, seated there, looked up from the newspaper which she had been reading. Some of the colour faded from her cheeks.

There was a second's silence, then, as though a little bewildered, she looked inquiringly into his smiling eyes and extended her hand toward the hand he offered.

"I didn't know you were coming," she said with pallid self-possession.

"I telegraphed for permission. Is your headache better?"

"Yes. Have you just arrived?"

"A little while ago. I was told to wander about and enjoy the Wycherlys'

new ancestral palace. Does a ghost go with the place? You're rather pale, Mrs. Leeds. Have they engaged you as the family phantom?"

She laughed a little, then her gray eyes grew sombre; and, watching, he saw the dusky purple hue deepen in them under the downward sweep of the lashes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "So he took the lake path and presently rounded a sharp curve."]

He waited for her to speak, and she did not. Her remote gaze rested on the lake where the base of the rocks fell away sheer into limpid depths; where green trees, reversed in untroubled reflection, tinted the still waters exquisitely, and bits of sky lay level as in a looking-gla.s.s.

No fish broke the absolute stillness of the surface, no breeze ruffled it; only the glitter of some drifting dragon-fly accented the intense calm.

"Are you--offended?" she said at last, her gaze now riveted on the water.

"Of course not!" he replied cordially.

She lifted her eyes, surveying him in silence.

"Why did you suppose so?" he asked amiably.

"Did you receive my letter?"

"Of course I did."

"You did not answer it."

"I didn't know how--then."

His reply seemed to perplex her--so did his light and effortless good-humour.

"I know how to answer it now," he added.

She forced a smile:

"Isn't it too late to think of answering that letter, Mr. Quarren?"

"Oh, no," he said pleasantly; "a man who is afraid of being too late seldom dares start.... I wonder if anything could induce you to ask me to be seated?"

She flushed vividly and moved to the extreme edge of the seat. He took the other end, knocked the ashes from his pipe, and put it in his pocket.

"Now," he said, smiling, "I am ready to answer your letter."

"Really, Mr. Quarren----"

"Don't you want me to?"

"I--don't think--it matters, now----"

"But it's only civil of me to answer it," he insisted, laughing.

She could not entirely interpret his mood. Of one thing she had been instantly conscious--he had changed since she had seen him--changed radically. There was about him, now, a certain inexplicable air suggesting a.s.surance--an individuality which had not heretofore clearly distinguished him--a hidden hint of strength. Or was she mistaken--abashed--remembering what she had written him in a bitter hour of fear and self-abas.e.m.e.nt? A thousand times she had regretted writing to him what she had written.

She said, coldly: "I think that my letter may very properly remain unanswered."

"You think I'm too late?"

She looked at him steadily:

"Yes, you are too late--in every sense."

"You are mistaken," he said, cheerfully.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that all these superficial details which, under the magnifying gla.s.s of fear, you and I have regarded with terrified respect, amount to nothing. Real trouble is something else; the wings of tragedy have never yet even brushed either you or me. But unless you let me answer that letter of yours, and listen very carefully to my answer, you and I are going to learn some day what tragedy really is."

"Mr. Quarren!" she exclaimed, forcing a laugh, "are you trying to make me take you seriously?"

"I certainly am."

"That in itself is tragic enough," she laughed.

"It really is," he said: "because it has come to a time when you have _got_ to take me seriously."