The Streets of Ascalon. Chambers Robert William

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СКАЧАТЬ tatters of my reputation – any song can buy it, now – "

      "Mr. Quarren!"

      "Yes?"

      "I don't want you to go – like this. I want you to go away knowing in your heart that you have been very – nice – agreeable – to a young girl who hasn't perhaps had as much experience as you think – "

      "Thank God," he said, smiling.

      "I want you to like me, always," she said. "Will you?"

      "I promise," he replied so blithely that for a moment his light irony deceived her. Then something in his eyes left her silent, concerned, unresponsive – only her heart seemed to repeat persistently in childish reiteration, the endless question, Why? Why? Why? And she heard it but found no answer where love was not, and had never been.

      "I – am sorry," she said in a low voice. "I – I try to understand you – but I don't seem to… I am so very sorry that you – care for me."

      He took her gloved hand, and she let him.

      "I guess I'm nothing but a harlequin after all," he said, "and they're legitimate objects for pity. Good-bye, Mrs. Leeds. You've been very patient and sweet with a blithering lunatic… I've committed only another harlequinade of a brand-new sort. But the fall from that balcony would have been less destructive."

      She looked at him out of her gray eyes.

      "One thing," she said, with a tremulous smile, "you may be certain that I am not going to forget you very easily."

      "Another thing," he said, "I shall never forget you as long as I live; and – you have my violets, I see. Are they to follow the gardenia?"

      "Only when their time comes," she said, trying to laugh.

      So he wished her a happy trip and sojourn in the South, and went away into the city – downtown, by the way to drop into an office chair in an empty office and listen to the click of a typewriter in the outer room, and sit there hour after hour with his chin in his hand staring at nothing out of the clear blue eyes of a boy.

      And she went away to her luncheon at the Province Club with Susanne Lannis who wished her to meet some of the governors – very grand ladies – upon whose good will depended Strelsa's election to the most aristocratic, comfortable, wisely managed, and thriftiest of all metropolitan clubs.

      After luncheon she, with Mrs. Lannis and Chrysos Lacy – a pretty red-haired edition of her brother – went to see "Sumurun."

      And after they had tea at the redoubtable Mrs. Sprowl's, where there were more footmen than guests, more magnificence than comfort, and more wickedness in the gossip than lemon in the tea or Irish in the more popular high-ball.

      The old lady, fat, pink, enormous, looked about her out of her little glittering green eyes with a pleased conviction that everybody on earth was mortally afraid of her. And everybody, who happened to be anybody in New York, was exactly that – with a few eccentric exceptions like her nephew, Karl Westguard, and half a dozen heavily upholstered matrons whose social altitude left them nothing to be afraid of except lack of deference and death.

      Mrs. Sprowl had a fat, wheezy, and misleading laugh; and it took time for Strelsa to understand that there was anything really venomous in the old lady; but the gossip there that afternoon, and the wheezy delight in driving a last nail into the coffin of some moribund reputation, made plain to her why her hostess was held in such respectful terror.

      The talk finally swerved from Molly Wycherly's ball to the Irish Legation, and Mrs. Sprowl leaned toward Strelsa, and panted behind her fan:

      "A perfect scandal, child. The suppers those young men give there! Orgies, I understand! No pretty actress in town is kept sighing long for invitations. Even" – she whispered the name of a lovely and respectable prima-donna with a perfectly good husband and progeny – and nodded so violently that it set her coughing.

      "Oh," cried Strelsa, distressed, "surely you have been misinformed!"

      "Not in the least," wheezed the old lady. "She is no better than the rest of 'em! And I sent for my nephew Karl, and I brought him up roundly. 'Karl!' said I, 'what the devil do you mean! Do you want that husband of hers dragging you all into court?' And, do you know, my dear, he appeared perfectly astounded – said it wasn't so – just as you said a moment ago. But I can put two and two together, yet; I'm not too old and witless to do that! And I warrant you I gave him a tongue trouncing which he won't forget. … Probably he retailed it to that O'Hara man, and to young Quarren, too. If he did it won't hurt 'em, either."

      She was speaking now so generally that everybody heard her, and Cyrille Caldera said:

      "Ricky is certainly innocuous, anyway."

      "Oh, is he!" said Mrs. Sprowl with another wheezy laugh. "I fancy I know that boy. Did you say 'harmless,' Susanne? Well, you ought to know, of course – "

      Cyrille Caldera blushed brightly although her affair with Quarren had been of the most innocent description.

      "There's probably as much ground for indicting Ricky as there is for indicting me," she protested. "He's merely a nice, useful boy – "

      "Rather vapid, don't you think?" observed a thin young woman in sables and an abundance of front teeth.

      "Who expects anything serious from Ricky? He possesses good manners, and a sweet alacrity," said Chrysos Lacy, "and that's a rare combination."

      "He's clever enough to be wicked, anyway," said Mrs. Sprowl. "Don't tell me that every one of his sentimental affairs have been perfectly harmless."

      "Has he had many?" asked Strelsa before she meant to.

      "Thousands, child. There was Betty Clyde – whose husband must have been an idiot – and Cynthia Challis – she married Prince Sarnoff, you remember – "

      "The Sarnoffs are coming in February," observed Chrysos Lacy.

      "I wonder if the Prince has had a tub since he left," said Mrs. Sprowl. "How on earth Cynthia can endure that dried up yellow Tartar – "

      "Cynthia was in love with Ricky I think," said Susanne Lannis.

      "Most girls are when they come out, but their mothers won't let 'em marry him. Poor Ricky."

      "Poor Ricky," sighed Chrysos; "he is so nice, and nobody is likely to marry him."

      "Why?" asked Strelsa.

      "Because he's – why he's just Ricky. He has no money, you know. Didn't you know it?"

      "No," said Strelsa.

      "That's the trouble – partly. Then there's no social advantage for any girl in this set marrying him. He'll have to take a lame duck or go out of his circle for a wife. And that means good-bye Ricky – unless he marries a lame duck."

      "Some unattractive person of uncertain age and a million," explained Mrs. Lannis as Strelsa turned to her, perplexed.

      "Ricky," said the lady with abundant teeth, "is a lightweight."

      "The lightness, I think, is in his heels," said Strelsa. "He's intelligent otherwise I fancy."

      "Yes, but not intellectual."

      "I СКАЧАТЬ