The Streets of Ascalon Part 66

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 circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstances.

"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 a.s.s'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 pa.s.sing 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 a.s.semble 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 gla.s.s 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 a.s.sorted 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'In the evenings sometimes Miss Vining remains and dines with Dankmere and myself at some near restaurant.'"]

"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.

"n.o.body 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 pa.s.s 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 plat.i.tudes 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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.