The Streets of Ascalon

Emotion again checked him – or perhaps he had lost the thread of his discourse – or possibly he had attained its limit – but he filled it out by coming down from the platform and shaking hands so vigorously that the gardenia in his lapel presently fell out.

Cyrille Caldera rose, fresh and dainty and smiling, and discoursed single-tax and duplex tenements, getting the two subjects mixed but not minding that. Also she pointed at the Calla lily and explained that the lily was the emblem of purity. Which may have had something to do with something or other.

Then Westguard arose once more and told them all about the higher type of novel he was writing for humanity's sake, and became so interested and absorbed in his own business that the impatient shuffling of shabby feet on the floor alone interrupted him.

"Has anybody," inquired De Groot, sweetly, "any vital question to ask – any burning inquiry of deeper, loftier import, which has perhaps long remained unanswered in his heart?"

A gentleman known usually as "Mike the Mink" arose and indicated with derisive thumb a picture among the Dankmere collection, optimistically attributed to Correggio:

"Is that Salome, mister?" he inquired with a leer.

De Groot looked at the canvas, slightly startled.

"No, my dear friend; that is a picture painted hundreds of years ago by a great Italian master. It is called 'Danaë.' Jupiter, you know, came to her in a shower of gold – "

"They all have to come across with it," remarked the Mink.

Somebody observed that if the police caught the dago who painted it they'd pinch him.

To make a diversion, and with her own fair hands, Cyrille Caldera summoned the derelicts to sandwiches and ginger-ale; and De Groot, dashing more unmanly moisture from his monocle, went about resolutely shaking hands, while Westguard and the hirsute young man sang "Comrades" with much feeling.

Quarren, still unrecognised, edged his way out and rejoined Dankmere on the front stoop. Neither made any comment on the proceedings.

Later the derelicts, moodily replete, shuffled forth into the night, herded lovingly by De Groot, still shaking hands.

From the corner of the street opposite, Quarren and Dankmere observed their departure, and, later, they beheld De Groot and Mrs. Caldera slip around the block and discreetly disappear into a 1912 touring-car with silver mountings and two men in livery on the box.

Westguard, truer to his principles, took a tram and Quarren and the Earl returned to their gallery with mixed emotions, and opened every window top and bottom.

"It's all right in its way, I suppose," said Quarren. "Probably De Groot means well, but there's no conversation possible between a man who has just dined rather heavily, and a man who has no chance of dining at all."

"Like preaching Christ to the poor from a Fifth Avenue pulpit," said Dankmere, vaguely.

"How do you mean?"

"A church on a side street would seem to serve the purpose. And the poor need the difference."

"I don't know about those matters."

"No; I don't either. It's easy, cheap, and popular to knock the clergy… Still, somehow or other, I can't seem to forget that the disciples were poor – and it bothers me a lot, Quarren."

Quarren said: "Haven't you and I enough to worry us concerning our own morals?"

Dankmere, who had been closing up and piling together the Undertaker's camp-chairs, looked around at the younger man.

"What did you say?" he asked.

"I said that probably you and I would find no time left to criticise either De Groot or the clergy, if we used our leisure in self-examination."

His lordship went on piling up chairs. When he finished he started wandering around, hands in his pockets. Then he turned out all the electric lamps, drew the bay-window curtains wide so that the silvery radiance from the arc-light opposite made the darkness dimly lustrous.

A little breeze stirred the hair on Quarren's forehead; Dankmere dropped into the depths of an armchair near him. For a while they sat together in darkness and silence, then the Englishman said abruptly:

"You've been very kind to me."

Quarren glanced up surprised.

"Why not?"

"Because nobody else has any decent words to say to me or of me."

Quarren, amused, said: "How do you know that I have, Dankmere?"

"A man knows some things. For example, most people take me for an ass – they don't tell me so but I know it. And if they don't take me for an ass they assume that I'm something worse – because I have a title of sorts, no money, an inclination for the stage and the people who make a living out of it."

"Also," Quarren reminded him, "you are looking for a wealthy wife."

"God bless my soul! Am I the only chap in America who happens to be doing that?"

"No; but you're doing it conspicuously."

"You mean I'm honest about it?"

Quarren laughed: "Anyway perhaps that's one reason why I like you. At first I also thought it was merely stupidity."

Dankmere crossed his short legs and lighted his pipe:

"The majority of your better people have managed not to know me. I've met a lot of men of sorts, but they draw the line across their home thresholds – most of them. Is it the taint of vaudeville that their wives sniff at, or my rather celebrated indigence?"

"Both, Dankmere – and then some."

"Oh, I see. Many thanks for telling me. I take it you mean that it was my first wife they shy at."

Quarren remained silent.

"She was a bar-maid," remarked the Earl. "We were quite happy – until she died."

Quarren made a slight motion of comprehension.

"Of course my marrying her damned us both," observed the Earl.

"Of course."

"Quite so. People would have stood for anything else… But she wouldn't – you may think it odd… And I was in love – so there you are."

For a while they smoked in the semi-darkness without exchanging further speech; and finally Dankmere knocked out his pipe, pocketed it, and put on his hat.

"You know," he said, "I'm not really an ass. My tastes and my caste don't happen to coincide – that's all, Quarren."

They walked together to the front stoop.

"When do we open shop?" asked the Earl, briskly.

"As soon as I get the reports from our experts."

"Won't business be dead all summer?"

"We may do some business with agents and dealers."

"I see. You and I are to alternate as salesmen?"

"For a while. When things start I want to rent the basement and open a department for repairing, relining and cleaning; and I'd like to be able to do some of the work myself."

"You?"

"Surely. It interests me immensely."

"You're welcome I'm sure," said Dankmere drily. "But who's to keep the books and attend to correspondence?"

"We'll get somebody. A young woman, who says she is well recommended, advertised in Thursday's papers, and I wrote her from Witch-Hollow to come around Sunday morning."

"That's to-morrow."

Quarren nodded.

So Dankmere trotted jauntily away into the night, and Quarren locked the gallery and went to bed, certain that he was destined to dream of Strelsa. But the sleek, narrow head and slightly protruding eyes of Langly Sprowl was the only vision that peered cautiously at him through his sleep.

The heated silence of a Sunday morning in June awoke him from a somewhat restless night. Bathed and shaved, he crept forth limply to breakfast at the Founders' Club where he still retained a membership. There was not a soul there excepting himself and the servants – scarcely a person on the avenues and cross-streets which he traversed going and coming, only one or two old men selling Sunday papers at street-stands, an old hag gleaning in the gutters, and the sparrows.

Clothing was a burden. He had some pongee garments which he put on, installed himself in the gallery with a Sunday paper, an iced lime julep, and a cigarette, and awaited the event of the young lady who had advertised that she knew all about book-keeping, stenography, and typewriting, and could prove it.

She came about noon – a pale young girl, very slim in her limp black gown, and, at Quarren's invitation, seated herself at the newly purchased desk of the firm.

Here, at his request she took a page or two of dictation from him and typed it rapidly and accurately.

She had her own system of book-keeping which she explained to the young man who seemed to think it satisfactory. Then he asked her what salary she expected, and she told him, timidly.

"All right," he said with a smile, "if it suits you it certainly suits me. Will you begin to-morrow?"

"Whenever you wish, Mr. Quarren."

"Well, there won't be very much to do for a while," he said laughingly, "except to sit at that desk and look ornamental."

She flushed, then smiled and thanked him for giving her the position, adding with another blush that she would do her best.

"Your best," he said amiably, "will probably be exactly what we require… Did you bring any letters?"

She hesitated: "One," she said gravely. She searched in her reticule, found it, and handed it to Quarren who read it in silence, then returned it to her.

"You were stenographer in Mr. Sprowl's private office?"

"Yes."

"This letter isn't signed by Mr. Sprowl."

"No, by Mr. Kyte, his private secretary."

"It seems you were there only six months."

"Six months."

"And before that where were you?"

"At home."

"Oh; Mr. Sprowl was your first employer!"

"Yes."

"Why did you leave?"

The girl hesitated so long that he thought she had not understood, and was about to repeat the question when something in her pallor and in her uplifted eyes checked him.

"I don't know why I was sent away," she said in a colourless voice.

He thought for a while, then, carelessly: "I take it that there was nothing irregular in your conduct?"

"No."

"You'd tell me if there was, wouldn't you?"

She lifted her dark eyes to his. "Yes," she said.

How much of an expert he was at judging faces he did not know, but he was perfectly satisfied with himself when she took her leave.

And when Dankmere came in after luncheon he said:

"I've engaged a book-keeper. Her name is Jessie Vining. She's evidently unhappy, poor, underfed, and the prettiest thing you ever saw out of a business college. So, being unhappy, poor, underfed and pretty, I take it that she's all to the good."

"It's a generous world of men," said Dankmere – "so I guess she is good."

"I'm sure of it. She was Sprowl's private stenographer – and he sent her away… There are three reasons why he might have dismissed her. I've taken my choice of them."

"Did he give her a letter?"

"No."

"Oh. Then I've taken my choice, too."

"Kyte ventured to give her a letter," said Quarren. "I've heard that Kyte could be decent sometimes."

"I see."

Nothing further was said about the new book-keeper. His lordship went into the back parlour and played the piano until satiated; then mixed himself a lime julep.

That afternoon they went over the reports of the experts very carefully. From these reports and his own conclusions Quarren drafted a catalogue while Dankmere went about sticking adhesive labels on the frames, all numbered. And, as he trotted blithely about his work, he talked to himself and to the pictures:

"Here's number nine for you, old lady! If I'd had a face like that I'd have killed the artist who transferred it to canvas!.. Number sixteen for you there in your armour! Somebody in Springfield will buy you for an ancestor and that's what will happen to you… And you, too, in a bag-wig! —you'll be some rich Yankee's ancestor before you know it! That's the way you'll end, my smirking friend… Hello! Tiens! In Gottes namen– whom have we here? Why, it's Venus!.. And hot weather is no excuse for going about that way!.. Listen to this, Quarren, for an impromptu patter-song —

"'Venus, dear, you ought to knowWhat the proper caper is —Even Eve, who wasn't slow,Robbed the neighbours' graperies!Even Mænads on the go,Fat Bacchantes in a row —Even ladies in a showWear some threads of naperies!Through the heavens planet-strewnWhere a shred of vapour isQuickly clothes herself the Moon!Get you to a modiste soonWhere the tissue-paper is,Cut in fashions fit for June —Wear 'em, dear, for draperies – '"

"Good heavens!" protested Quarren – "how long can you run on like that?"

"Years and years, my dear fellow. It's in me – born in me! Can you beat it? Though I appear to be a peer appearance is a liar; cast for a part apart from caste, departing I climb higher toward the boards to bore the hordes and lord it, sock and buskin dispensing sweetness, art, and light as per our old friend Ruskin – "

"Dankmere!"

"Heaven-born?"

"Stop!"

"I remain put… What number do I stick on this gentleman with streaky features?"

"Eighteen. That's a Franz Hals."

"Really?"

"Yes; the records are all here, and the experts agree."

His lordship got down nimbly from the step-ladder and came over to the desk:

"Young sir," he said, "how much is that picture worth?"

"All we can get for it. It's not a very good example."

"Are you going to tell people that?"

"If they ask me," said Quarren, smiling.

"What price are you going to put on it?"

"Ten thousand."

"And do you think any art-smitten ass will pay that sum for a thing like that?"

"I think so. If it were only a decent example I'd ask ten times that – and probably get it in the end."

Dankmere inspected the picture more respectfully for a few moments, then pasted a label on an exquisite head by Greuze.

"She's a peach," he said. "What price is going to waft her from my roof-tree?"

"The experts say it's not a Greuze but a contemporary copy. And there's no pedigree, either."

"Oh," said the Earl blankly, "is that your opinion, too?"

"I haven't any yet. But there's no such picture by Greuze extant."

"You don't think it a copy?"

"I'm inclined not to. Under that thick blackish-yellow varnish I believe I'll find the pearl and rose texture of old Greuze himself. In the meantime it's not for sale."

"I see. And this battle-scene?"

"Wouverman's – ruined by restoring. It's not worth much."

"And this Virgin?"

"Pure as the Virgin Herself – not a mark – flawless. It's by 'The Master of the Death of Mary.' Isn't it a beauty? Do you notice St. John holding the three cherries and the Christ-child caressing the goldfinch? Did you ever see such colour?"

"It's – er – pretty," said his lordship.

And so during the entire afternoon they compiled the price-list and catalogue, marking copies for what they were, noting such pictures as had been ruined by restoring or repainted so completely as to almost obliterate the last original brush stroke. Also Quarren reserved for his own investigations such canvases as he doubted or of which he had hopes – a number that under their crocked, battered, darkened or discoloured surfaces hinted of by-gone glories that might still be living and only imprisoned beneath the thick opacity of dust, soot, varnish, and the repainting of many years ago.

And that night he went to bed happier than he had ever been in all his life – unless his moments with Strelsa Leeds might be termed happy ones.

Monday morning brought, among other things, a cloudless sun, and little Miss Vining quite as spotless and radiant; and within ten minutes the click of the typewriter made the silent picture-plastered rooms almost gay.

In shirtwaist and cuffs she took her place behind the desk with a sort of silent decision which seemed at once to invest her with suzerainty over all that corner of the room; and Dankmere coming in a little later, whistling merrily and twirling his walking-stick, sheered off instinctively on his breezy progress through the rooms, skirting Jessie Vining's domain as though her private ensign flew above it and earthworks, cannon and trespass notices flanked her corner on every side.

In the back parlour he said to Quarren: "So that is the girl?"

"It sure is."

"God bless my soul! she acts as though she had just bought in the whole place."

"What's she doing?"

"Just sitting there," admitted Dankmere.

He seemed to have lost his spirits. Once, certain that he was unobserved except by Quarren, he ventured to balance his stick on his chin, but it was a half-hearted performance; and when he tossed up his straw hat and attempted to catch it on his head, he missed, and the corrugated brim sustained a dent.

A number of people called that morning, quiet, well-dressed, cautious-eyed, soft-spoken gentlemen who moved about noiselessly over the carpets and, on encountering one another, nodded with silent familiarity and smiles scarcely perceptible.

They seemed to require no information concerning the pictures which they swept with glances almost careless on their first rounds of the rooms. But the first leisurely tour always resulted in a second where one or two pictures seemed to claim their closer scrutiny.

Now and then one of these gentlemen would screw a jeweller's glass into his eye and remain a few minutes nose almost touching a canvas. Several used the large reading-glass lying on a side table. Before they departed all glanced over the incomplete scale of prices which Jessie Vining had typed and bound in blue covers; but one and all took their leave in amiable silence, saying a non-committal word or two to Quarren in pleasantly modulated voices and passing Jessie's desk with a grave inclination of gravely preoccupied faces.

When the last leisurely lingerer had taken his leave Quarren said to Jessie Vining:

"Those are representatives of various first-class dealers – confidential buyers, sons – even dealers themselves – like that handsome gray-haired young-looking man who is Max Von Ebers, head of that great house."

"But they didn't buy one single thing!" said Jessie.

Quarren laughed: "People don't buy off-hand. Our triumph is to get them here at all. I wrote to each of them personally."

Nobody else came for a long while; then one or two of the lesser dealers appeared, and now and then a man who might be an agent or a prowling and wealthy amateur or perhaps one of those curious haunters of all art marts who never buy but who never miss assisting at all inaugurations in person – like an ubiquitous and silent dog who turns up wherever more than two people assemble with any purpose in view – or without any.

During the forenoon and early afternoon several women came into the galleries; and they seemed to be a little different from ordinary women, although it would be hard to say wherein they were different except in one instance – a tall, darkly handsome girl whose jewellery was as conspicuously oriental as her brilliant colour.

Later Quarren told Jessie Vining that they were expert buyers on commission or brokers having clients among those very wealthy people who bought pictures now and then because it was fashionable to do so. Also, these same women-brokers represented a number of those unhappy old families who, incognito, were being forced by straitened circumstances to part secretly with heirlooms – family plate, portraits, miniatures, furniture – even with the antique mirrors on the walls and the very fire-dogs on the hearth amid the ashes of a burnt-out race almost extinct.

A few Jews came – representing the extreme types of the most wonderful race of people in the world – one tall, handsome, immaculate young man whose cultivated accent, charming manners, and quiet bearing challenged exception – and one or two representing the other extreme, loud, restless, aggressive, and as impertinent as they dared be, discussing the canvases in noisy voices and with callous manners verging always on the offensive.

These evinced a disposition for cash deals and bargain-wrangling, discouraged good-naturedly by Quarren who referred them to the catalogue; and presently they took themselves off.

Dankmere sidled up to Quarren rather timidly toward the close of the afternoon.

"I don't see what bally good I am in this business," he said. "I don't mean to shirk, Quarren, but there doesn't seem to be anything for me to do. I think that all these beggars spot me for an ignoramus the moment they lay eyes on me, and the whole thing falls on you."

Quarren said laughingly: "Well, didn't you furnish the stock?"

"We ought to go halves," muttered Dankmere, shyly skirting Jessie Vining's domain where she was writing letters with the Social Register at her elbow.

The last days of June and the first of July were repetitions in a measure of the opening day at the Dankmere Galleries; people came and were received and entertained by Quarren; Dankmere sat about in various chairs or retired furtively to the backyard to smoke at intervals; Jessie Vining with more colour in her pale, oval face, ruled her corner of the room in a sort of sweet and silent dignity.

Dankmere, who, innately, possessed the effrontery of a born comedian, for some reason utterly unknown to himself, was inclined to be afraid of her – afraid of the clear brown eyes indifferently lifted to his when he entered – afraid of the quiet "Good-morning, Lord Dankmere," with which she responded to his morning greeting – afraid of her cool skilful little hands busy with pencil, pen, or lettered key – afraid of everything about her from her rippling brown hair and snowy collar to the tips of her little tan shoes – even afraid of the back of her head when it presented only a slender neck and two little rosy, close-set ears. But he didn't mention his state of abasement to Quarren.

A curious thing occurred, too: Jessie had evidently been gay on Sunday; and, Monday noon, while out for lunch, she had left on her desk two Coney Island postal cards decorated with her own photograph. When she returned, one card had vanished; and she searched quietly but thoroughly before she left for home that evening, but she did not find the card. But she said nothing about it.

The dreadful part of the affair was that it was theft – the Earl of Dankmere's first crime.

Why he had taken it he did not know. The awful impulse of kleptomania alone seemed to explain but scarcely palliate his first offence against society.

It was only after he realised that the picture and Jessie Vining vaguely resembled his dead Countess that his lordship began to understand why he had committed a felony before he actually knew what he was doing.

And one day when Quarren was still out for lunch and Jessie had returned to her correspondence, the terrified Earl suddenly appeared before her holding out the photograph: and she took it, astonished, her lifted eyes mutely inquiring concerning the inwardness of this extraordinary episode.

But Dankmere merely fled to the backyard and remained there all the afternoon smoking his head off; and it was several days before Jessie had an opportunity to find herself alone in his vicinity and to ask him with almost perfect self-possession where he had found the photograph.

"I stole it," said Dankmere, turning bright red to his ear-tips.

"All she could think of to say was: 'Why?'

"It resembles my wife. So do you."

"Really," she said coldly.

Several days later she learned by the skilfully careless questioning of Quarren that the Countess of Dankmere had not existed on earth for the last ten years.

This news extenuated the Earl's guilt in her eyes to a degree which permitted a slight emotion resembling pity to pervade her. And one day she said to him, casually pleasant – "Would you care for that post-card, Lord Dankmere? If it resembles your wife I would be very glad to return it to you."

Dankmere, painfully red again, thanked her so nicely that the slight, instinctive distrust and aversion which, in the beginning, she had entertained for his lordship, suddenly disappeared so entirely that it surprised her when she had leisure to think it over afterward.

So she gave him the post-card, and next day she found a rose in a glass of water on her desk; and that ended the incident for them both except that Dankmere was shyer of her than ever and she was beginning to realise that his aloof and expressionless deportment was due to shyness – which seemed to be inexplicable because otherwise timidity was scarcely the word to characterise his lively little lordship.