"'And it is to be your last breakfast.'""'And it is to be your last breakfast.'"
There was not the slightest tremor in her voice, but her pretty face was carefully turned away so that if there was to be anything to notice in the features he could not notice it.
"I'll miss you a lot," he said.
"And I you, Sir Charles."
"You'll be over, I suppose."
"I suppose so."
"That will be jolly," he said, sitting back on his heels to rest, and to watch her—to find pleasure in her youth and beauty as she moved gracefully amid the fragrant grasses, one little sun-tanned hand clasping a great bouquet of the crimson fruit which nodded heavily amid tufts of trefoil leaves.
In the barred shadow of the pasture-fence they rested from their exertions, she rearranging their bouquets of berries and tying them fast with grass-stems.
"It has been a pleasant comradeship," he said.
"Yes."
"You have found it so, too?"
"Yes."
She appeared to be so intent, so absorbed on her bouquet tying that he involuntarily leaned nearer to watch her. A fragrance faintly fresh seemed to grow in the air around him as the hill-breeze stirred her hair. If it came from the waving grass-tops, or the honeyed fruit or from her hair, or perhaps from those small, smooth hands, he did not know.
For a long while they sat there without speaking, she steadily intent on her tying. Then, while still busy with a cluster, her slim fingers hesitated, wavered, relaxed; her hands fell to her lap, and she remained so, head bent, motionless.
After a moment he spoke, but she made no answer.
Through and through him shot the thrilling comprehension of that exquisite avowal, childlike in its silent directness, charming in its surprise. A wave of tenderness and awe mounted within him, touching his bronzed cheeks with a deeper colour.
"If you will, Chrysos," he said in a still voice.
She lifted her head and looked directly at him, and in her questioning gaze there was nothing of fear—merely the question.
"I can't bear to have you go," she said.
"I can't go—alone."
"Could you—care for me?"
"I love you, Chrysos."
Her eyes widened in wonder:
"You—you don'tloveme—do you?"
"Yes," he said, "I do. Will you marry me, Chrysos?"
Her fascinated gaze met his in silence. He drew her close to his shoulder; she laid her cheek against it.
Toward the end of the first week in August Strelsa wrote to Quarren:
"Sometimes I wonder whether you realise how my attitude 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 panaceafor 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 soverylittle 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?"Andthatis 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 glass for the Metropolitan market."And, if I succeed, Imaytry 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 iscoming to makethisHouse 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 nobody 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?Inever 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.Strelsa Leeds.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!—foryouto 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 ignoble 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 gods 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 thathad 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.Isit 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."
"Sometimes I wonder whether you realise how my attitude 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 panaceafor 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 soverylittle 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?
"Andthatis 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 glass for the Metropolitan market.
"And, if I succeed, Imaytry 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 iscoming to makethisHouse 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 nobody 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?Inever 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.
Strelsa Leeds.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!—foryouto 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 ignoble 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 gods 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 thathad 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.Isit 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."
"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 basement 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.
At first he did not recognise the figure standing on the steps in the glare of the sun; then, surprised, he held out his rather grimy hand with that instinct of kindness toward anything that seemed to need it; and the thin pallid hand of Ledwith fell limply into his, contracting nervously the next second.
"Come in," said Quarren, pleasantly. "It's very nice of you to think of me, Ledwith."
The man's hollow eyes avoided his and roamed restlessly about the gallery, looking at picture after picture and scarcely seeing them. Inside his loose summerclothing his thin, nervous frame was shifting continually even while he stood gazing almost vacantly at the walls of the gallery.
For a little while Quarren endeavoured to interest him in the canvases, meaning only charity to a man who had clearly lost his grip on things; then, afraid of bewildering and distressing a mind so nearly extinct, the young fellow remained silent, merely accompanying Ledwith as he moved purposelessly hither and thither or halted capriciously, staring into space and twitching his scarred fingers.
"You're busy, I suppose," he said.
"Yes, I am," said Quarren, frankly. "But that needn't make any difference if you'd care to come to the basement and talk to me while I'm at work."
Ledwith made no reply for a moment, then, abruptly:
"You'realwayskind to me, Quarren."
"Get over that idea," laughed the younger man. "Strange as it may seem my natural inclination is to like people. Come on downstairs."
In the littered disorder of the basement he found a chair for his visitor, then, without further excuse, went smilingly about his work, explaining it as it progressed:
"Here's an old picture by some Italian gink—impossible to tell by whom it was painted, but not difficult to assign it to a certain date and school.... See what I'm doing, Ledwith?
"That's what we call 'rabbit glue' because it's made out of rabbits' bones—or that's the belief, anyway. It's gilder's glue.
"Now I dissolve this much of it in hot water—then I glue over the face of the picture three layers of tissue-paper, one on top of the other—so!
"Now here is a new chassis or stretcher over which I have stretched a new linen canvas. Yesterday I sponged it as a tailor sponges cloth; and now it's dry and tight.
"Now I'm going to reline this battered old Italian canvas. It's already been relined—perhaps a hundred years ago. So first I take off the old relining canvas—with hot water—this way—cleaning off all the old paste or glue from it with alcohol....
"Now here's a pot of paste in which there is also glue and whitening; and I spread it over the back of this old painting, and then, very gingerly, glue it over the new linen canvas on the stretcher.
"Now I smooth it with this polished wooden block, and then—just watch me do laundry work!"
He picked up a flat-iron which was moderately warm, reversed the relined picture on a marble slab, and began to iron it out with the skill and precaution of an expert laundress doing frills.
Ledwith looked on with a sort of tremulously fixed interest.
"In three days," said Quarren, laying the plastered picture away, "I'll soak off that tissue paper with warm water. I have to keep it on, you see, so that no flakes of paint shall escape from the painting and no air get in to blister the surface."
He picked up another picture and displayed it:
"Here's a picture that I believe to be a study by Greuze. You see I have already relined it and it's fixed on its new canvas and stretcher and is thoroughly dry and ready for cleaning. And this is how I begin."
He took a fine sponge, soaked it in a weak solutionof alcohol, and very gingerly washed the blackened and dirty canvas. Then he dried it. Then he gave it a coat of varnish.
"Looks foolish to varnish over a filthy and discoloured picture like this, doesn't it, Ledwith? But I'll tell you why. When that varnish dries hard I shall place my hand on the face of that canvas and begin very cautiously but steadily to rub the varnished surface with my fingers and thumb. And do you know what will happen? The new varnish has partly united with the old yellow and opaque coating of varnish and dust, and it all will turn to a fine gray powder under the friction and will come away leaving the old paint underneath almost as fresh—very often quite as fresh and delicate as when the picture was first painted.
"Sometimes I have to use three or more coats of new varnish before I can remove the old without endangering the delicate glaze underneath. But sooner or later I get it clean.
"Then I dig out any old patches or restorations and fill in with a composition of putty, white lead, and a drier, and smooth this with a cork. Then when it is sunned for an hour a day for three weeks or more—or less, sometimes—I'm ready to grind my pure colours, mix them, set my palette, and do as honest a piece of restoring as a study of that particular master's methods permits. And that, Ledwith, is only a little part of my fascinating profession.
"Sometimes I lift the entire skin of paint from a canvas—picking out the ancient threads from the rotten texture—and transfer it to a new canvas or panel. Sometimes I cross-saw a panel, then chisel to the plaster that lies beneath the painting, and so transfer it to anew and sound support. Sometimes—" he laughed—"but there are a hundred delicate and interesting surgical operations which I attempt—a thousand exciting problems to solve—experiments without end that tempt me, innovations that allure me——"
He laughed again:
"Youought to take up some fad and make a business and even an art out of it!"
"I?" said Ledwith, dully.
"Why not? Man, you're young yet, if—if——"
"Yes, I know, Quarren.... But my mind is too old—very old and very infirm—dying in me of age—the age that comes through those centuries of pain that men sometimes live through in a few months."
Quarren looked at him hopelessly.
"Yet," he said, "if only a man wills it, the world is new again."
"But—if the will fails?"
"I don't know, Ledwith."
"I do." He drew up his cuff a little way, his dead eyes resting on Quarren, then, in silence, he drew the sleeve over the scars.
"Even that can be cured," said the younger man.
"If there is a will to cure it, perhaps."
"Even a desire is enough."
"I have not that desire. Why cure it?"
"Because, Ledwith, you haven't gone your limit yet. There's more of life; and you're cheating yourself out of it."
"Yes, perhaps. But what kind of life?" he asked, staring vaguely out into the sunshine of the backyard. "Life in hell has no attractions for me."
"We make our own hells."
"I didn't make mine. They dug the pit and I fell into it—Hell's own pit, Quarren——"
"You are wrong! You fell into a pit which hurt so much that you supposed it was the pit of hell. And, taking it for granted, you burrowed deeper in blind fury, until it became a real hell. Butyoudug it. Thereisno hell that a man does not dig for himself!"
In Ledwith's dull eyes a smouldering spark seemed to flash, go out, then glimmer palely.
"Quarren," he said, "I am not going to live in hell alone. I'm going there, shortly, but not alone."
Something new and sinister in his eyes arrested the other's attention. He considered the man for a few moments, then, coolly:
"I wouldn't, Ledwith."
"Why not?"
"He isn't worth it—even as company in hell."
"Do you think I'm going to let him live on?"
"Do you care to sink to his level?"
"Sink! Can I sink any lower than I am?"
Quarren shrugged:
"Easily, if you commit murder."
"That isn't murder——"
But Quarren cut him short continuing:
"Sink lower, you ask? What have you done, anyway—except to commit this crime against yourself?"—touching him on the wrist. "I'm not aware of any other crime committed by you, Ledwith. You're clean as you stand—except for this damnable insult and injury you offer yourself! Can't you reason? A bullet-stung animal sometimes turns and bites itself. Is that why you are doing it?—to arouse the amusement and contempt of your hunter?"
"Quarren! By God you shall not say that to me——"
"Why not? Have you ever considered what that man must think of you to see you turn and tear at the body he has crippled?"
Ledwith's sunken eyes blazed; he straightened himself, took one menacing step forward; and Quarren laid a light, steady hand on his shoulder.
"Listen to me," he said; "has it never occurred to you that you could deal him no deeper blow than to let him see a man stand up to him, face to face, where a creature lay writhing before, biting into its own vitals?"
He smiled into the fixed eyes of the almost mindless man:
"If you say the wordI'llstand by you, Ledwith. If all you want to do is to punish him, murder isn't the way. What does a dead man care? Cut your own throat and the crime might haunt him—and might not. Butkill!—Nonsense. It's all over then—except for the murderer."
He slid his hand quietly to Ledwith's arm, patted it.
"To punish him you need a doctor.... It's only a week under the new treatment. You know that, don't you? After that a few months to get back nerve and muscle and common sense."
"And then?" motioned Ledwith with dry lips.
"Then? Oh, anything that you fancy. It's according to a man's personal taste. You can take him by the neck and beat him up in public if you like—or knock him down in the club as often as he gets up. It all depends, Ledwith. Some of us maintain self-respectwithout violence; some of us seem to require it. It's up to you."
"Yes."
Quarren said carelessly: "If I were you, I think that I'd face the world as soon as I was physically and mentally well enough—the real world I mean, Ledwith—either here or abroad, just as I felt about it.
"A man can get over anything except the stigma of dishonesty. And—personally I think he ought to have another chance even after that. But men's ideas differ. As for you, what you become and show that you are, will go ultimately with the world. Beat him up if you like; but, personally, I never even wished to kick a cur. Some men kick 'em to their satisfaction; it's a matter of taste I tell you. Besides——"
He stopped short; and presently Ledwith looked up.
"Shall I say it?"
"Yes. You are kind to me, always."
"Then—Ledwith, I don't know exactly how matters stand. I can only try to put myself in your present place and imagine what I ought to do, having arrived where you have landed.... And, do you know, if I were you, and if I listened to my better self, I don't think that I'd lay a finger on Langly Sprowl."
"Why?"
"For the sake of the woman who betrayed me—and who is now betrayed in turn by the man who betrayed us both."
Ledwith said through his set teeth: "Do you think I care for her? If I nearly kill him, do you imagine I care what the public will say about her?"
"You are generous enough to care, Ledwith."
"I am not!" he said, hoarsely. "I don't care a damn!"
"Then why do you care whether or not he keeps his word to her and shares with her a coat of social whitewash?"
"I—she is only a little fool—alone to face the world now——"
"You're quite right, Ledwith. She ought to have another chance. First offenders are given it by law.... But even if that chance lay in his marrying her, could you better it by killing him if he won't do it? Or by battering him with a dog-whip?
"It isn't really much of a chance, considering it on a higher level than the social viewpoint. How much real rehabilitation is there for a woman who marries such a man?"
He smiled: "Because," he continued, "my viewpoint has changed. Things that once seemed important to me seem so no longer. To live cleanly and do your best in the real world is an aspiration more attractive to me than social absolution."
Ledwith remained silent for a long while, then muttered something indistinctly.
"Wait a moment," said Quarren, throwing aside his painter's blouse and pulling on his coat. "I'll ring up a taxi in a second!... Youmeanit, Ledwith?"
The man looked at him vacantly, then nodded.
"You're on!" said Quarren, briskly unhooking the telephone.
While they were waiting Ledwith laid a shaking hand on Quarren's sleeve and clung to it. He was trembling like a leaf when they entered the cab, whimpering when they left it in front of a wide brown-stonebuilding composed of several old-time private residences thrown together.
"Stand by me, Quarren," he whispered brokenly—"you won't go away, will you? You wouldn't leave me to face this all—all alone. You've been kind to me. I—I can do it—I can try to do it just at this moment—if you'll stay close to me—if you'll let me keep hold of you——"
"Sure thing!" said Quarren cheerfully. "I'll stay as long as you like. Don't worry about your clothes; I'll send for plenty of linen and things for us both. You're all right, Ledwith—you've got the nerve. I——"
The door opened to his ring; a pleasant-faced nurse in white ushered them in.
"Dr. Lydon will see you in a moment," she said, singling out Ledwith at a glance.
Later that afternoon Quarren telephoned to Dankmere that he would not return for a day or two, and gave careful instructions which Dankmere promised to observe to the letter.
Then he sent a telegram to Strelsa:
"Unavoidably detained in town. Hope to be up next week. Am crazy to see your house and its new owner.R. S. Q."
"Unavoidably detained in town. Hope to be up next week. Am crazy to see your house and its new owner.
R. S. Q."
Dankmere at the other end of the telephone hung up the receiver, looked carefully around him to be certain that Jessie Vining was still in the basement where she had gone to straighten up one or two things for Quarren, then, with a perfectly serious face, he began to dance, softly.
The Earl of Dankmere was light-footed and gracefulwhen paying tribute to Terpsichore; walking-stick balanced in both hands, straw hat on the back of his head, he performed in absolute silence to the rhythm of the tune running through his head, backward, forward, sideways, airy as a ballet-maiden, then off he went into the back room with a refined kick or two at the ceiling.
And there, Jessie Vining, entering the front room unexpectedly, discovered the peer executing his art before the mirror, apparently enamoured of his own grace and agility.
When he caught a glimpse of her in the mirror he stopped very suddenly and came back to find her at her desk, laughing.
For a moment he remained red and disconcerted, but the memory of the fact that he and Miss Vining were to occupy the galleries all alone—exclusive of intrusive customers—for a day or more, assuaged a slight chagrin.
"At any rate," he said, "it is just as well that you should know me as I am, Miss Vining—with all my faults and frivolous imperfections, isn't it?"
"Why?" asked Miss Vining.
"Why—what?" repeated the Earl, confused.
"WhyshouldI know all your imperfections?"
He thought hard for a moment, but seemed to discover no valid reason.
"You ask such odd questions," he protested. "Now where the deuce do you suppose Quarren has gone? I'll bet he's cut the traces and gone up to see those people at Witch-Hollow."
"Perhaps," she said, making a few erasures in her type-written folio and rewriting the blank spaces. Then she glanced over the top of the machine at his lordship, who, as it happened, was gazing at her with such peculiar intensity that it took him an appreciable moment to rouse himself and take his eyes elsewhere.
"When do you take your vacation?" he asked, carelessly.
"I am not going to take one."
"Oh, but you ought! You'll go stale, fade, droop—er—and all that, you know!"
"It is very kind of you to feel interested," she said, smiling, "but I don't expect to droop—er—and all that, you know."
He laughed, after a moment, and so did she—a sweet, fearless, little laugh most complimentary to his lordship if he only knew it—a pretty, frank tribute to what had become a friendship—an accord born of confidence on her part, and of several other things on the part of Lord Dankmere.
It had been of slow growth at first—imperceptibly their relations had grown from a footing of distant civility to a companionship almost cordial—but not quite; for she was still shy with him at times, and he with her; and she had her moods of unresponsive reserve, and he was moody, too, at intervals.
"You don't like me to make fun of you, do you?" she asked.
"Don't I laugh as though I like it?"
She knitted her pretty brows: "I don't quite know. You see you're a British peer—which is really a very wonderful thing——"
"Oh, come," he said: "it reallyisrather a wonderful thing, but you don't believe it."
"Yes, I do. I stand in awe of you. When you come into the room I seem to hear trumpets sounding in the far distance——"
"My boots squeak——"
"Nonsense! Idohear a sort of a fairy fanfare playing 'Hail to the Belted Earl!'"
"I wear braces——"
"How common of you to distort my meaning! I don't care, you may do as you like—dance break-downs and hammer the piano, but to me you will ever remain a British peer—poor but noble——"
"Wait until we hear from that Van Dyck! You can't call me poor then!"
She laughed, then, looking at him earnestly, involuntarily clasped her hands.
"Isn't it perfectly wonderful," she breathed with a happy, satisfied sigh.
"Are you really very happy about it, Miss Vining?"
"I? Why shouldn't I be!" she said indignantly. "I'm so proud that our gallery has such a picture. I'm so proud of Mr. Quarren for discovering it—and—" she laughed—"I'm proud of you for possessing it. You see I am very impartial; I'm proud of the gallery, of everybody connected with it including myself. Shouldn't I be?"
"We are three very perfect people," he said gravely.
"Do you know that we really are? Mr. Quarren is wonderful, and you are—agreeable, and as for me, why when I rise in the morning and look into the glass I say to myself, 'Who is that rather clever-looking girl who smiles at me every morning in such friendly fashion?' And, would you believe it!—she turns out to be Jessie Vining every time!"
She was in a gay mood; she rattled away at her machine, glancing over it mischievously at him from timeto time. He, having nothing to do except to look at her, did so as often as he dared.
And so they kept the light conversational shuttle-cock flying through the sunny afternoon until it drew near to tea-time. Jessie said very seriously:
"No Englishman can exist without tea. Tea is as essential to him as it is to British fiction. A microscopic examination of any novel made by a British subject will show traces of tea-leaves and curates although, as the text-books on chemistry have it, otherwise the substance of the work may be colourless, tasteless, odourless, and gaseous to the verge of the fourth dimension——"
"If you don't cease making game of things British and sacred," he threatened, "I'll try to stop you in a way that will astonish you."
"What will you try to do?" she asked, much interested.
He looked her steadily in the eyes:
"I'll try to turn you into a British subject. One can't slam one's own country."
"How could you turn me into such an object, Lord Dankmere?"
"There's only one way."
Innocent for a few moments of his meaning she smilingly and derisively defied him. Then, of a sudden, startled into immobility, the smile froze on her lips.
At the swift change in her expression his own features were slowly and not unbecomingly suffused.
Then, incredulous, and a little nervous, she rose to prepare the tea; and he sprang up to bring the folding table.
The ceremony passed almost in silence; neither henor she made the effort to return to the lighter, gayer vein. When they spoke at all it was on some matter connected with business; and her voice seemed to him listless, almost tired.
Which was natural enough, for the heat had been trying, and, in spite of the open windows, no breath of coolness stirred the curtains.
So the last minutes of the afternoon passed but the sunshine still reddened the cornices of the houses across the street when she rose to put away the tea-things.
A little later she pinned on her hat and moved toward the front door with a friendly nod to him in silent adieu.
"Will you let me walk home with you?" he said.
"I—think—not, this evening."
"Were you going anywhere?"
She paused, her gloved hand on the knob, and he came up to her, slowly.
"Wereyou?" he repeated.
"No."
"Then—don't you care to let me walk with you?"
She seemed to be thinking; her head was a trifle lowered.
He said: "Before you go there is something I wanted to tell you"—she made an involuntary movement and the door opened and hung ajar letting in the lively music of a street-organ. Then he leaned over and quietly closed the door.
"I'm afraid," he said, "that I'm taking an unwarrantable liberty by interfering in your affairs without consulting you."
She looked up at him, surprised.
"It happened yesterday about this hour," he said.
"What happened?"
"Do you remember that you went home about three o'clock instead of waiting until this hour as usual?"
"Yes."
"Well, this is what occurred. I left the gallery at this same hour. Ahead of me descending the steps was a young girl who had just delivered a business letter to Mr. Quarren. As she set foot on the pavement a footman attached to an automobile drawn up across the street touched his cap to her and said: 'Beg pardon, Miss Vining, I am Mr. Sprowl's man. Mr. Sprowl would like to see you at the Café Cammargue. The car is waiting.'"
Miss Vining's colour faded; she stared at Dankmere with widening eyes, and he dropped his hands into his coat-pockets and returned her gaze.
"I don't understand you," she said in a low voice.
"Neither did the young girl addressed by the footman. Neither did I. But I was interested. So I said to the footman: 'Bring around your car. I shall have to explain about Miss Vining to Mr. Sprowl.'"
"What!" she said breathlessly.
"That's where I interfered, Miss Vining. And the footman looked doubtful, too, but he signalled the chauffeur.... And so I went to the Café Cammargue——"
He hesitated, looking at her white and distressed face, then continued coolly:
"Sprowl seemed surprised to see me. He was waiting in a private room.... He's looking rather badly these days.... We talked a few minutes——"
Pale, angry, every sense of modesty and reserve outraged, the girl faced him, small head erect:
"You went there to—to discussmewiththatman!"
He was silent. She turned suddenly and tried to open the door, but he held it closed.
"I did it because I cared for you enough to do it," he said. "Don't you understand? Don't you suppose I know that kind of man?"
"It—it was not your business—" she faltered, twisting blindly at the door-knob. "Let me go—please——"
"I made it my business.... And that man understood that I was making it my business. And he won't attempt to annoy you again.... Can you forgive me?"
She turned on him excitedly, her eyes flashing with tears, but the impetuous words of protest died on her lips as her eyes encountered his.
"It was because I love you," he said. And, as he spoke, there was about the man a quiet dignity and distinction that silenced her—something of which she may have had vague glimpses at wide intervals in their acquaintances—something which at times she suspected might lie latent in unknown corners of his character. Now it suddenly confronted her; and she recognised it and stood before him without a word to say.
It mended matters a little when he smiled, and the familiar friend reappeared beside her; but she still felt strange and shy; and wondering, half fearfully, she let him lift her gloved hands and stand, holding them, looking into her eyes.
"You know what I am," he said. "I have nothing to say about myself. But I love you very dearly.... I loved before, once, and married. And she died.... After that I didn't behave very well—until I knew you.... Itis really in me to be a decent husband—if you can care for me.... And I don't think we're likely to starve——"
"I—it isn't that," she said, flushing scarlet.
"What?"
"What youhave... I could only care for—what you are."
"Can you do that?"
But her calm had vanished, and, head bent and averted, she was attempting to withdraw her hands—and might have freed herself entirely if it had not been for his arm around her.
This new and disconcerting phase of the case brought her so suddenly face to face with him that it frightened her; and he let her go, and followed her back to the empty gallery where she sank down at her desk, resting her arms on the covered type-machine, and buried her quivering face in them.
It was excusable. Such things don't usually happen to typewriters and stenographers although they have happened to barmaids.
When he had been talking eloquently and otherwise for a long time Jessie Vining lifted her pale, tear-stained face from her arms; and his lordship dropped rather gracefully on his knees beside her, and she looked down at him very solemnly and wistfully.
It was shockingly late when they closed the gallery that evening. And their mode of homeward progress was stranger still, for instead of a tram or of the taxi which Lord Dankmere occasionally prevailed upon her to accept, they drifted homeward on a pink cloud through the light-shot streets of Ascalon.
To the solitary and replete pike, lying motionless in shadow, no still-bait within reach is interesting. But the slightest movement in his vicinity of anything helpless instantly rivets his attention; any creature apparently in distress arouses him to direct and lightning action whether he be gorged or not—even, perhaps, while he is still gashed raw with the punishment for his last attempt.
So it was with Langly Sprowl. He had come into town, sullen, restless, still fretting with checked desire. Within him a dull rage burned; he was ready to injure, ready for anything to distract his mind which, however, had not given up for a moment the dogged determination to recover the ground he had lost with perhaps the only woman in the world he had ever really cared for.
Yet, he was the kind of man who does not know what real love is. That understanding had not been born in him, and he had not acquired it. He was totally incapable of anything except that fierce passion which is aroused by obstacles when in pursuit of whatever evinces a desire to escape.
It was that way with him when, by accident, he saw and recognised Jessie Vining one evening leaving the Dankmere Galleries. And Langly Sprowl never denied himself anything that seemed incapable of self-defence.
He stopped his car and got out and spoke to her,very civilly, and with a sort of kindly frankness which he sometimes used with convincing effect. She refused the proffered car to take her to her destination, but could not very well avoid his escort; and their encounter ended by her accepting his explanations and his extended hand, perplexed, unwilling to misjudge him, but thankful when he departed.
After that he continued to meet her occasionally and walk home with her.
Then he sent his footman and the car for her; and drew Lord Dankmere out of the grab-bag, to his infinite annoyance. Worse, Dankmere had struck him with an impact so terrific that it had knocked him senseless across the table in a private dining-room of the Café Cammargue, where he presently woke up with a most amazing eye to find the terrified proprietor and staff playing Samaritan.
In various papers annoying paragraphs concerning him had begun to appear—hints of how matters stood between him and Mary Ledwith, ugly innuendo, veiled rumours of the breach between him and his aunt consequent upon his untenable positionvis-à-visMrs. Ledwith.
Until Dankmere had inconvenienced his features he had walked downtown to his office every day, lank, long-legged, sleek head held erect, hatchet face pointed straight in front of him, his restless eyes encountering everybody's but seeing nobody unless directly saluted.
Now, his right eye rivalling a thunder-cloud in tints, he drove one of his racing cars as fast as he dared, swinging through Westchester or scurrying about Long Island. Occasionally he went aboard theYulan, but a burning restlessness kept him moving; and at last hereturned to South Linden in a cold but deadly rage, determined to win back the chances which he supposed he had thrown away in the very moment of victory.
Strelsa Leeds had now taken up her abode in her quaint little house; he learned that immediately; and that evening he went over and came upon her moving about in the dusky garden, so intent on inspecting her flowers that he was within a pace of her before she turned her head and saw him.
"Strelsa," he said, "can we not be friends again? I ask no more than that."
Too surprised and annoyed to reply she merely gazed at him. And, because, for the first time in his life, perhaps, he really felt every word he uttered, he spoke now with a certain simplicity and self-control that sounded unusual to her ears—so noticeably unlike what she knew of him that it commanded her unwilling attention.
For his unpardonable brutality and violence he asked forgiveness, promising to serve her faithfully and in friendship for the privilege of attempting to win back her respect and regard. He asked only that.
He said that he scarcely knew what to do with his life without the hope of recovering her respect and esteem; he asked for a beggar's chance, begged for it with a candour and naïveté almost boyish—so directly to the point tended every instinct in him to recover through caution and patience what he had lost through carelessness and a violence which still astonished him.
The Bermuda lilies were in bloom and Strelsa stood near them, listening to him, touching the tall stalks absently at intervals. And while she listened she became more conscious still of the great change in herself—ofher altered attitude toward so much in life that once had seemed to her important. After he had ceased she still stood pensively among the lilies, gray eyes brooding. At length, looking up, she said very quietly:
"Why do you care for my friendship, Langly? I am not the kind of woman you think me—not even the kind I once thought myself. To me friendship is no light thing either to ask for or to give. It means more to me than it once did; and I give it very seldom, and sparingly, and to very, very few. But toward everybody I am gently disposed—because, I am much happier than I ever have been in all my life.... Is not my good will sufficient for any possible relation between you and me?"
"Then you are no longer angry with me?"
"No—no longer angry."
"Can we be friends again? Can you really forgive me, Strelsa?"
"Why—yes, I could do that.... But, Langly, what have you and I in common as a basis for friendship? What have we ever had in common? Except when we encounter each other by hazard, why should we ever meet at all?"
"You have not pardoned me, Strelsa," he said patiently.
"Does that really make any difference to you? It doesn't to me. It is only because I never think of you that it would be an effort to forgive you. I'll make that effort if you wish, but really, Langly, I never think about you at all."
"If that is true, let me be with you sometimes, Strelsa," he said in a low voice.
"Why?"
"Because I am wretchedly unhappy. And I care for you—more than you realise."
She said seriously: "You have no right to speak that way to me, Langly."
"Could you ever again give me the right to say I love you?"
A quick flush of displeasure touched her cheeks; he saw it in the dusk of the garden, and mistook it utterly:
"Strelsa—listen to me, dear! I have not slept since our quarrel. I must have been stark mad to say and do what I did.... Don't leave me! Don't go! I beg you to listen a moment——"
She had started to move away from him and his first forward step broke a blossom from its stalk where it hung white in the dusk.
"I ask you to go," she said under her breath. "There are people here—on the veranda——"
Every sense within him told him to go, pretending resignation. That was his policy. He had come here for martyrdom, cuirassed in patience. Every atom of common sense warned him to go.
But also every physical sense in him was now fully aroused—the silvery star-dusk, the scent of lilies, a slender woman within arm's reach—this woman who had once been so nearly his—who was still rightfully his!—these circumstances were arousing him once more to a temerity which his better senses warned him to subdue. Yet if he could only get nearer to her—if he could once get her into his arms—overwhelm her with the storm of passion rising so swiftly within him, almost choking him—so that his voice and limbs already trembled in its furious surge——
"Strelsa—I love you! For God's sake show me somemercy!" he stammered. "I come to you half crazed by the solitude to which your anger has consigned me. I cannot endure it—I need you—I want you—I ask for your compassion——"
"Hush!" she pleaded, hastily retreating before him through the snowy banks of rockets—"I have asked you not to speak to me that way! I ask you to go—to go now!—because——"
"Will you listen to me! Will you wait a moment! I am only trying to tell you that I love you, dear——"
He almost caught her, but she sprang aside, frightened, still retreating before him.
"I cannot go until you listen to me!—" he said thickly, trampling through the flowers to intercept her. "You've got to listen!—do you hear?"
She had almost reached the terrace; the shadowy veranda opened widely beyond.
"There are people here! Don't you understand?" she said once more in a choking voice; but he only advanced, and she fell back before him to the very edge of the porch lattice.
"Now listen to me!" he said between his teeth. "I love you and I'll never give you up——"
Suddenly she turned on him, hands tightly clenched:
"Be silent!" she whispered fiercely. "I tell you what you say is indecent, revolting! If there were a man here he'd kill you! Do you understand?"
At the same instant his eyes became fixed on a figure in white which took shadowy shape on the dark veranda, rising and coming slowly forward.
Ghostlike as it was he knew it instantly, stood rooted in his tracks while Strelsa stole away from him through the star-lit gloom, farther, farther, slipping foreverfrom him now—he knew that as he stood there staring like a damned man upon that other dim shape in the darkness beyond.
It was his first glimpse of her since her return from Reno. And now, unbidden, memories half strangled were already in full resurrection, gasping in his ears of things that had been—of forgotten passion, of pleasure promised; and, because never tasted, it had been the true and only pleasure for such a man as he—the pleasure of anticipation. But the world had never, would never believe that. Only he, and the phantom there in the dusk before him, knew it to be true.
Slightly reeling he turned away in the darkness. In his haunted ears sounded a young wife's voice, promising, caressing; through and through him shot a thrill of the old excitement, the old desire, urging him again toward belated consummation.
And again the old impatience seized him, the old ruthlessness, the old anger at finding her weak in every way except one, the old contempt which had turned to sullen amazement when she wrote him that she had gone to Reno and that they must wait for their happiness until the courts decreed it legal.
Now as he swung along under the high stars he was thinking of these things. And he felt that he had not tried her enough, had not really exerted himself—that women who are fools require closer watching than clever ones; that he could have overcome her scruples with any real effort and saved her from giving him the slip and sowing a wind in Reno which already had become enough of a breeze to bother him.
With her, for a while, he might be able to distract his mind from this recent obsession tormenting him. Toovercome her would interest him; and he had no doubt it could be done—for she was a little fool—silly enough to slap the world in the face and brave public opinion at Reno. No—it was not necessary to marry such a woman. She might think so, but it wasn't.
He had behaved unwisely, too. Why should he not have gone to see her when she returned? By doing so, and acting cleverly, he could have avoided trouble with his aunt, and also these annoying newspaper paragraphs. Also he could have avoided the scene with Ledwith—and the aborted reconciliation just now with Strelsa, where he had stood staring at the apparition of Mary Ledwith as lost souls stand transfixed before the pallid shades of those whom they have destroyed.
At his lodge-gate a half-cowering dog fawned on him and he kicked it aside. The bruised creature fled, and Sprowl turned in at his gates and walked slowly up the cypress-bordered drive.
He thought it all out that night, studied it carefully. What he needed was distraction from the present torment. Mary Ledwith could give that to him. What a fool she had been ever to imagine that she could be anything more than his temporary mistress.
"The damned little idiot," he mused—"cutting away to Reno before I knew what she was up to—and involving us both in all that talk! What did she flatter herself I wanted, anyway.... But I ought to have called on her at once; now it's going to be difficult."
Yet he sullenly welcomed the difficulty—hoped that she'd hold out. That was what he wanted, the excitement of it to take his mind from Strelsa—keep him interested and employed until the moment arrived oncemore when he might venture to see her again. He was, by habit, a patient man. Only in the case of Strelsa Leeds had passion ever prematurely betrayed him; and, pacing his porch there in the darkness, he set his teeth and wondered at himself and cursed himself, unable to reconcile what he knew of himself with what he had done to the only woman he had ever wished to marry as a last resort.
For two weeks Sprowl kept to himself. Few men understood better than he what was the medicinal value of time. Only once had he dared ignore it.
So one evening, late in August, still dressed in knickerbockers and heather-spats, he walked from his lawn across country to make the first move in a new game with Mary Ledwith.
Interested, confident, already amused, and in far better spirits than he had been for many a day, he strode out across the fields, swinging his walking-stick, his restless eyes seeing everything and looking directly at nothing.
Which was a mistake on his part for once, because, crossing a pasture corner, his own bull, advancing silently from a clump of willows, nearly caught him; but Sprowl went over the fence and, turning, brought down his heavy stick across the brute's ringed nose; and the animal bellowed at him and tore up the sod and followed along inside the fence thundering his baffled fury as long as Sprowl remained in sight.
It was not all bad disposition. Sprowl, who cared nothing for animals, hated the bull, and, when nothing more attractive offered, was accustomed to come to the fence, irritate the animal, lure him within range, andstrike him. He had done it many times; and, some day, he meant to go into the pasture with a rifle, stand the animal's charge, and shoot him.
It was a calm, primrose-tinted sunset where trees and hills and a distant spire loomed golden-black against the yellow west. No trees had yet turned, although, here and there on wooded hills, single discoloured branches broke the green monotony.
No buckwheat had yet been cut, but above the ruddy fields of stalks the snow of the blossoms had become tarnished in promise of maturity—the first premonition of autumn except for a few harvest apples yellow amid green leaves.
He had started without any definite plan, a confident but patient opportunist; and as he approached the Ledwith property and finally sighted the chimneys of the house above the trees, something—some errant thought seemed to amuse him, for he smiled slightly. His smile was as rare as his laughter—and as brief; and there remained no trace of it as he swung up the last hill and stood there gazing ahead.
The sun had set. A delicate purple haze already dimmed distances; and the twilight which falls more swiftly as summer deepens into autumn was already stealing into every hollow and ravine, darkening the alders where the stream stole swampwards. A few laggard crows were still winging toward the woods; a few flocks of blackbirds passed overhead almost unseen against the sky. Somewhere some gardener had been burning leaves and refuse, and the odour made the dusk more autumn-like.
As he crossed the line separating his land from the Ledwith estate he nodded to the daughter of one of hisown gardeners who was passing with a collie; and then he turned to look again at the child whose slender grace and freshness interested him.
"Look out for that bull, Europa," he said, staring after her as she walked on.
She looked back at him, laughingly, and thanked him and went on quite happily, the collie plodding at her heels. Recently Sprowl had been very pleasant to her.
When she was out of sight he started forward, climbed the fence into the road, followed it to the drive-way, and followed that among the elms and Norway firs to the porch.
It was so dark here among the trees that only the lighted transom guided him up the steps.
To the maid who came to the door he said coolly: "Say to Mrs. Ledwith that Mr. Sprowl wishes to see her for a moment on a very important matter."
"Mrs. Ledwith is not at home, sir."
"What?"
"Mrs. Ledwith is not at home."
"Where is she; out?"
"Y-yes, sir."
"Where?"
"I don't know, sir——"
"Yes, you do. Mrs. Ledwith is at home but has given you instructions concerning me. Isn't that so?"
The maid, crimson and embarrassed, made no answer, and he walked past her into the drawing-room.
"Light up here," he said.
"Please, sir——"
"Do as I tell you, my good girl. Here—where's that button?—there!—" as the pretty room spranginto light—"Now never mind your instructions but go and say to Mrs. Ledwith that Imustsee her."
He calmly unfolded a flat packet of fresh bank-notes, selected one, changed it on reflection for another of higher denomination, and handed it to her. The girl hesitated, still irresolute until he lifted his narrow head and stared at her. Then she went away hurriedly.
When she returned to say that Mrs. Ledwith was not at home to Mr. Sprowl he shrugged and bade her inform her mistress that their meeting was not a matter of choice but of necessity, and that he would remain where he was until she received him.
Again the maid went away, evidently frightened, and Sprowl lighted a cigarette and began to saunter about. When he had examined everything in the room he strolled into the farther room. It was unlighted and suited him to sit in; and he installed himself in a comfortable chair and, throwing his cigarette into the fire-place, lighted a cigar.
This was a game he understood—a waiting game. The game was traditional with his forefathers; every one of them had played it; their endless patience had made a fortune to which each in turn had added before he died. Patience and courage—courage of the sort known as personal bravery—had distinguished all his race. He himself had inherited patience, and had used it wisely except in that one inexplicable case!—and personal courage in him had never been lacking, nor had what often accompanies it, coolness, obstinacy, and effrontery.
He had decided to wait until his cigar had been leisurely finished. Then, other measures—perhaps walking upstairs, unannounced, perhaps an unresentful withdrawal, a note by messenger, and another attempt to see her to-morrow—he did not yet know—had arrived at no conclusion—but would make up his mind when he finished his cigar and then do whatever caution dictated.
Once a servant came to the door to look around for him, and when she discovered him in the half-light of the music-room she departed hastily for regions above. This amused Sprowl.
As he lounged there, thoroughly comfortable, he could hear an occasional stir in distant regions of the house, servants moving perhaps, a door opened or closed, faint creaks from the stairs. Once the distant sounds indicated that somebody was using a telephone; once, as he neared the end of his cigar, a gray cat stole in, caught sight of him, halted, her startled eyes fixed on him, then turned and scuttled out into the hall.
Finally he rose, flicked his cigar ashes into the fireplace, stretched his powerful frame, yawned, and glanced at his watch.
And at the same instant somebody entered the front door with a latch-key.
Sprowl stood perfectly still, interested, waiting: and two men, bare-headed and in evening dress, came swiftly but silently into the drawing-room. One was Quarren, the other Chester Ledwith. Quarren took hold of Ledwith's arm and tried to draw him out of the room. Then Ledwith caught sight of Sprowl and started toward him, but Quarren again seized his companion by the shoulder and dragged him back.
"I tell you to keep quiet," he said in a low voice—"Keep out of this!—go out of the house!"
"I can't, Quarren! I——"
"You promised not to come in until that man had left——"
"I know it. I meant to—but, good God! Quarren! I can't stand there——"
He was struggling toward Sprowl and Quarren was trying to push him back into the hall.
"You said that you had given up any idea of personal vengeance!" he panted. "Let me deal with him quietly——"
"I didn't know what I was saying," retorted Ledwith, straining away from the man who held him, his eyes fixed on Sprowl. "I tell you I can't remain quiet and see that blackguard in this house——"
"But he's going I tell you! He's going without a row—without any noise. Can't you let me manage it——"
He could not drag Ledwith to the door, so he forced him into a chair and stood guard, glancing back across his shoulder at Sprowl.
"You'd better go," he said in a low but perfectly distinct voice.
Sprowl, still holding his cigar, sauntered forward into the drawing-room.
"I suppose you are armed," he said contemptuously. "If you threaten me I'll take away your guns and slap both your faces—ask the other pup how it feels, Quarren."
Ledwith struggled to rise but Quarren had him fast.
"Get out of here, Sprowl," he said. "You'll have a bad time of it if he gets away from me."
Sprowl stared, hands in his pockets, puffing his cigar.
"I've a notion to kick you both out," he drawled.
"It would be a mistake," panted Quarren. "Can't you go while there's time, Sprowl! I tell you he'll kill you in this room if you don't."
"I won't—killhim!—Let go of me, Quarren," gasped Ledwith. "I—I won't do murder; I've promised you that—forhersake——"
"Let him loose, Quarren," said Sprowl.