The Streets of Ascalon Part 61

"Good-bye.... Will you come up again?"

"I'll try."

"Shall we write?"

"Will you?"

"Yes. I have so much to say, now that you are going. I am glad you came.

I am glad I told you everything. Please believe that my heart is enlisted in your new enterprise; that I pray for your success and welfare and happiness. Will you always remember that?"

"Yes, dear."

"Then--I mustn't keep you a moment longer. Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

They stood a moment, neither stirring; then he put his arms around her; she touched his shoulder once more, lightly with her cheek--a second's contact; then he kissed her clasped hands and was gone.

CHAPTER XI

Quarren arrived in town about twilight. Taxis were no longer for him nor he for them. Suit-case and walking-stick in hand, he started up Lexington Avenue still excited and exhilarated from his leave-taking with Strelsa. An almost imperceptible fragrance seemed to accompany him, freshening the air around him in the shabby streets of Ascalon; the heat-cursed city grew cooler, sweeter for her memory. Through the avenue's lamp-lit dusk pa.s.sed the pale ghosts of Gath and the phantoms of the Philistines, and he thought their shadowy forms moved less wearily; and that strange faces looked less wanly at him as they grew out of the night--"clothed in scarlet and ornaments of gold"--and dissolved again into darkness.

Still thrilled, almost buoyant, he walked on, pa.s.sing the high-piled masonry of the branch Post-Office and the Central Palace on his left.

Against high stars the twin Power-House chimneys stood outlined in steel; on the right endless blocks of brown-stone dwellings stretched northward, some already converted into shops where print-sellers, dealers in old books, and here and there antiquaries, had constructed show-windows.

Firemen lounged outside the Eighth Battalion quarters; here and there a grocer's or wine-seller's windows remained illuminated where those who were neither well-to-do nor very poor pa.s.sed to and fro with little packages which seemed a burden under the sultry skies.

At last, ahead, the pseudo-oriental towers of a synagogue varied the flat skyline, and a moment later he could see the New Thought Laundry, the Tonsorial Drawing Rooms, the Undertaker's discreetly illuminated windows, and finally the bay-window of his own recent Real-Estate office, now transmogrified into the Dankmere Galleries of Old Masters, Fayre and Quarren, proprietors.

The window appeared to be brilliantly illuminated behind the drawn curtains; and Quarren, surprised and vexed, concluded that the little Englishman was again entertaining. So it perplexed and astonished him to find the Earl sitting on the front steps, his straw hat on the back of his head, smoking. At the same moment from within the house a confused and indescribable murmur was wafted to his ears as though many people were applauding.

"What on earth is going on inside?" he asked, bewildered.

"You told me over the telephone that Karl Westguard might have the gallery for this evening," said the Englishman calmly. "So I let him have it."

"What did he want of it? Who has he got in there?"--demanded Quarren as another ripple of applause sounded from within.

Dankmere thought a moment: "I really don't know the audience, Quarren--they're not a very fragrant lot."

"What audience? Who are they?"

"You Americans would call them a 'tough-looking bunch--except Westguard and Bleecker De Groot and Mrs. Caldera----"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "A high and soulful tenor was singing 'Perfumes of Araby.'"]

"Cyrille Caldera and De Groot! What's that silly old Dandy doing down here?"

"Diffusing sweetness and light among the unwashed; telling them that there are no such things as cla.s.ses, that wealth is no barrier to brotherhood, that the heart of Fifth Avenue beats as warmly and guilelessly as the heart of Ess.e.x Street, and that its wealth-burdened inhabitants have long desired to fraternise with the benchers in Paradise Park."

"Who put Westguard up to this?" asked Quarren, aghast.

"De Groot. Karl is writing a levelling novel calculated to annihilate caste. The Undertaker next door furnished the camp-chairs; the corner grocer the collation; Westguard, Mrs. Caldera, and Bleecker De Groot the mind-food. Go in and look 'em over."

The front door was standing partly open; the notes of a piano floated through; a high and soulful tenor voice was singing "Perfumes of Araby,"

but Quarren did not notice any as he stepped inside.

Not daring to leave his suit-case in the hallway he kept on along the pa.s.sage to the extension where the folding doors were locked. Here he deposited his luggage, locked the door, then walked back to the front parlour and, un.o.bserved, slipped in, seating himself among the battered derelicts of the rear row.

A thin, hirsute young man had just finished scattering the perfumes of Araby; other perfumes nearly finished Quarren; but he held his ground and gazed grimly at an improvised platform where sat in a half-circle and in full evening dress, Karl Westguard, Cyrille Caldera and Bleecker De Groot. Also there was a table supporting a Calla lily.

Westguard was saying very earnestly: "The world calls me a novelist. I am not! Thank Heaven, I aspire to something loftier. I am not a mere scribbler of fiction; I am a man with a message--a plain, simple, earnest, warm-hearted humanitarian who has been roused to righteous indignation by the terrible contrast in this miserable city between wealth and poverty----"

"That's right," interrupted a hoa.r.s.e voice; "it's all a con game, an'

the perlice is into it, too!"

"T'h.e.l.l wit te bulls! Croak 'em!" observed another gentleman thickly.

Westguard, slightly discountenanced by the significant cheers which greeted this sentiment, introduced Bleecker De Groot; and the rotund old Beau came jauntily forward, holding out both immaculate hands with an artlessly comprehensive gesture calculated to make the entire East Side feel that it was reposing upon his beautifully laundered bosom.

"Ah, my friends!" cried De Groot, "if you could only realise how great is the love for humanity within my breast!--If you could only know of the hours and days and even weeks that I have devoted to solving the problems of the poor!

"And I _have_ solved them--every one. And _this_ is the answer!"--grasping dauntlessly at a dirty hand and shaking it--"this!"

seizing another--"and this, and this! And now I ask you, _what_ is this mute answer which I have given you?"

"De merry mitt," said a voice, promptly. Mr. De Groot smiled with sweetness and indulgence.

"I apprehend your quaint and trenchant vernacular," he said. "It _is_ the 'merry mitt'--the 'glad glove,' the 'happy hand'! Fifth Avenue clasps palms with Doyers Street----"

"Ding!" said a weary voice, "yer in wrong, boss. It's nix f'r the Tongs wit us gents. We transfer to Avenue A."

Mr. De Groot merely smiled indulgently. "The rich," he said, "are not really happy." His plump, highly coloured features altered; presently a priceless tear glimmered in his monocle eye; and he brushed it away with a kind of n.o.ble pity for his own weakness.

"Dear, dear friends," he said tremulously, "believe me--oh, believe me that the rich are not happy! Only the perspiring labourer knows what is true contentment. The question of poverty is a great social question.

With me it is a religion. Oh, I could go on forever on this subject, dear friends, and talk on and on and on----"

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: