The Streets of Ascalon Part 85

CHAPTER XV

Toward the end of the first week in August Strelsa wrote to Quarren:

"Sometimes I wonder whether you realise how my att.i.tude toward everything is altering. Things which seemed important no longer appear so in the sunlit tranquillity of this lovely place. Whatever it is that seems to be changing me in various ways is doing it so subtly, yet so inexorably, that I scarcely notice any difference in myself until some morning I awake with such a delicious sense of physical well-being and such a mental happiness apropos of nothing at all except the mere awaking into the world again, that, thinking it over, I cannot logically account for it.

"Because, Rix, my worldly affairs seem to be going from bad to worse. I know it perfectly well, yet where is that deadly fear?--where is the dismay, the alternate hours of panic and dull lethargy--the shrinking from a future which only yesterday seemed to threaten me with more than I had strength to endure--menace me with what I had neither the will nor the desire to resist?

"Gone, my friend! And I am either a fool or a philosopher, but whichever I am, I am a happy one.

"I wish to tell you something. Last winter when they fished me out of my morbid seclusion, I thought that the life I then entered upon was the only panacea for the past, the only oblivion, the only guarantee for the future.

"Now I suppose I have gone to the other extreme, because, let me tell you what I've done. Will you laugh? I can't help it if you do; I've bought a house! What do you think of that?

"The owner took back a mortgage, but I don't care. I paid so _very_ little for it, and thirty acres of woods and fields--and it is a darling house!--built in the eighteenth century and not in good repair, but it's mine! mine! mine!--and it may need paint and plumbing and all sorts of things which perhaps make for human happiness and perhaps do not. But I tell you I really don't care.

"And how I did it was this: I took what they offered for my laces and jewels--about a third of their value--but it paid every debt and left me with enough to buy my sweet old house up here.

"But that's not all! I've rented my town house furnished for a term of five years at seven thousand dollars a year! Isn't it wonderful?

"And _that_ is not all, either. I am going into business, Rix!

Don't dare laugh. Jim has made an arrangement with an independent New York florist, and I'm going to grow flowers under gla.s.s for the Metropolitan market.

"And, if I succeed, I _may_ try fruits outdoors and in. My small brain is humming with schemes, millions of them. Isn't it heavenly?

"Besides, from my second-story windows I shall be able to see Molly's chimneys above the elms. And Molly is going to remain here all winter, because, Rix--and this is a close secret--a little heir or heiress is coming to make _this_ House of Wycherly 'an habitation enforced'--and a happier habitation than it has been since they bought it.

"So you see I shall have neighbours all winter--two neighbours, for Mrs. Ledwith is wretchedly ill and her physicians have advised her to remain here all winter. Poor child--for she is nothing else, Rix--I met her for the first time when I went to call on Mrs.

Sprowl. She's so young and so empty-headed, just a shallow, hare-brained, little thing who had no more moral idea of sin than a humming-bird--nor perhaps has she any now except that the world has hurt her and broken her wings and damaged her plumage; and the sunlight in which she sparkled for a summer has faded to a chill gray twilight!--Oh, Rix, it is really pitiful; and somehow I can't seem to remember whether she was guilty or not, because she's so ill, so broken--lying here amid the splendour of her huge house----

"You know Mrs. Sprowl is on her way to Carlsbad. You haven't written me what took place in your last interview with her; and I've asked you, twice. Won't you tell me?

"Langly, thank goodness, never disturbs us. And, Rix, do you know that he has never been to call on Mary Ledwith? He keeps to his own estate and n.o.body even sees him. Which is all I ask at any rate.

"So Sir Charles called on you and told you about Chrysos? Isn't Sir Charles the most darling man you ever knew? _I_ never knew such a man. There is not one atom of anything small or unworthy in his character. And I tell you very frankly that, thinking about him at times, I am amazed at myself for not falling in love with him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Strelsa Leeds.]

"Which is proof sufficient that if I couldn't care for him I cannot ever care for any man. Don't you think so?

"Now all this letter has been devoted to matters concerning myself and not one line to you and the exciting success you and Lord Dankmere are making of your new business.

"Oh, Rix, I am not indifferent; all the time I have been writing to you, that has been surging and laughing in my heart--like some delicious aria that charmingly occupies your mind while you go happily about other matters--happy because the ceaseless melody that enchants you makes you so.

"I have read your letter so many times, over and over; and always the same thrill of excitement begins when I come to the part where you begin to suspect that under the daubed surface of that canvas there may be something worth while.

"Is it really and truly a Van Dyck? Is there any chance that it is not? Is it possible that all these years none of Dankmere's people suspected what was hidden under the aged paint and varnish of that tiresome old British landscape?

"And it remained for you to suspect it!--for _you_ to discover it?

Oh, Rix, I am proud of you!

"And how perfectly wonderful it is that now you know its history, when it was supposed to have disappeared, where it has remained ever since under its ign.o.ble integument of foolish paint.

"No, I promise not to say one word about it until I have your permission. I understand quite well why you desire to keep the matter from the newspapers for the present. But--won't it make you and Lord Dankmere rich? Tell me--please tell me. I don't want money for myself any more, but I do want it for you. You need it; you can do so much with it, use it so intelligently, so gloriously, make the world better with it,--make it more beautiful, and people happier.

"What a chasm, Rix, between what we were a year ago, and what we care to be--what we are trying to be to-day! Sometimes I think of it, not unhappily, merely wondering.

"Toward what goal were we moving a year ago? What was there to be of such lives?--what at the end? Why, there was, for us, no more significance in living than there is to any overfed animal!--not as much!

"Oh, this glorious country of high clouds and far horizons!--and alas! for the Streets of Ascalon where such as I once was go to and fro--'clad delicately in scarlet and ornaments of gold.'

"'Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the Streets of Ascalon'--that the pavements of the Philistines have bruised my feet, and their Five Cities weary me, and Philistia's high towers are become a burden to my soul. For their G.o.ds are too many and too strange for me. So I am decided to remain here--ere 'they that look out of their windows be darkened' and 'the doors be shut in the Streets'--'and all the daughters of music shall be brought low.'

"My poor comrade! Must you remain a prisoner in the Streets of Ascalon? Yet, through your soul I know as free and fresh a breeze is blowing as stirs the curtains at my open window!--You wonderful man to evoke in imagery--to visualise and conceive all that had to be concrete to cure me soul and body of my hurts!

"I have been reading Karl Westguard's new novel. Rix, there is no story in it, nothing at all that I can discover except a very earnest warming over of several modern philosophers' views and conclusions concerning social problems.

"I hate to speak unkindly of it; I wanted to like it because I like Karl Westguard. But it isn't fiction and it isn't philosophy, and its treatment of social problems seems to follow methods already obsolete.

"Do you think people will buy it? But I don't suppose Karl cares since he's made up his quarrel with his aunt.

"Poor old lady! Did you ever see anybody so subdued and forlorn?

Something has gone wrong with her. She told me that she had had a most dreadful scene with Langly and that she had not been well since.

"I'm afraid that sounds like gossip, but I wanted you to know. _Is_ it gossip for me to tell you so much? I tell you about everything.

If it's gossip, make me stop.

"And now--when are you coming to see me? I am still at Molly's, you know. My house is being cleaned and sweetened and papered and chintzed and made livable and lovable.

"When?--please.

"Your friend and comrade,

STRELSA."

Quarren telegraphed:

"I'll come the moment I can. Look for me any day this week. Letter follows."

Then he wrote her a long letter, and was still at it when Jessie Vining went to lunch and when Dankmere got onto his little legs and strolled out, also. There was no need to arouse anybody's suspicions by hurrying, so Dankmere waited until he turned the corner before his little legs began to trot. Miss Vining would be at her usual table, anyway--and probably as calmly surprised to see him as she always was. For the repeated accident of their encountering at the same restaurant seemed to furnish an endless source of astonishment to them both. Apparently Jessie Vining could never understand it, and to him it appeared to be a coincidence utterly unfathomable.

Meanwhile Quarren had mailed his letter to Strelsa and had returned to his workshop in the bas.e.m.e.nt where several canvases awaited his attention.

And it was while he was particularly busy that the front door-bell rang and he had to go up and open.