The Streets of Ascalon Part 81

"Yes!" he shouted, partly rising from his chair, his narrow face distorted. "Yes, I do! Now you know, don't you! Is the matter settled at last? Do you understand clearly?--you fat-headed, meddlesome old fool!"

He sprang to his feet in an access of fury and began loping up and down the room, gesticulating, almost mouthing out his hatred and abuse--rendered more furious still by the knowledge of his own weakness and disintegration--his downfall from that silent citadel of self-control which had served him so many years as a stronghold for defiance or refuge.

"You impertinent old woman!" he shouted, "if you don't keep your fat nose out of my affairs I'll set a thousand men tampering with the foundations of your investments! Keep your distance and mind your business--I warn you now and for the last time, or else--" He swung around on her, and the jaw muscles began to work--"or else I'll supply the Yellows with a few facts concerning that Englishman's late father and yourself!"

Mrs. Sprowl's face went pasty-white; in the fat, colourless expanse only the deathless fury of her eyes seemed alive.

"So _that_ fetched you," he observed, coolly. "I don't want to give you apoplexy; I don't want you messing up my house. I merely want you to understand that it's dangerous to come sniffing and nosing around my threshold. You _do_ understand, I guess."

He continued his promenade but presently came back to her:

"You know well enough who I want to marry. If you say or do one thing to interfere I'll see that you figure in the Yellows."

He thought a moment; the colour slowly returned to her face. After a fit of coughing she struggled to rise from her chair. He let her pant and scuffle and kick for a while, then opened the door and summoned her footman.

"I'm sorry I cannot drive with you this evening," he said quietly, as the footman supported Mrs. Sprowl to her feet, "but I've promised the Wycherlys. Pray offer my compliments and friendly wishes to Mrs.

Ledwith."

When she had gone he walked back into the library, picked up the telephone and finally got Molly Wycherly on the wire.

"Won't you ask me to dinner?" he said. "I've an explanation to make to Mrs. Leeds and I'd be awfully obliged to you."

There was a silence, then Molly said, deliberately:

"You must be a very absent-minded young man. I saw your aunt for a moment this afternoon and she said that you are dining with her at Mrs.

Ledwith's."

"She was mistaken--" began Sprowl quietly, but Molly cut him short with a laughing "good-bye," and hung up the receiver.

"That was Langly," she remarked, turning to Strelsa who was already dressed for dinner and who had come into Molly's boudoir to observe the hair-dressing and comprehensive embellishment of that young matron's person by a new maid on probation.

Strelsa's upper lip curled faintly, then the happy expression returned, and she watched the decorating of Molly until the maid turned her out in the perfection of grooming from crown to toe.

There was n.o.body in the music-room. Molly turned again to Strelsa as they entered:

"What a brute he is!--asking me to invite him here for dinner when Mary Ledwith has just arrived."

"Did he do that?"

"Yes. And his excuse was that he had an explanation to make you. What a sneaking way of doing it!"

Strelsa looked out of the dark window in silence.

Molly said: "I wish he'd go away, I never can look at him without thinking of Chester Ledwith--and all that wretched affair.... Not that I am sniffy about Mary--the poor little fool.... Anyway," she added navely, "old lady Sprowl has fixed her status and now we all know how to behave toward her."

Strelsa, arms clasped behind her back, came slowly forward from the window:

"What a sorry civilisation," she said thoughtfully, "and what sorry codes we frame to govern it."

"What?" sharply.

Strelsa looked at her, absently.

"n.o.body seems to be ashamed of anything any more," she said, half to herself. "The only thing that embarra.s.ses us is what the outside world may think of us. We don't seem to care what we think of each other."

Molly, a trifle red, asked her warmly what she meant.

"Oh, I was just realising what are the motives that govern us--the majority of us--and how primitive they are. So many among us seem to be moral throwbacks--types reappearing out of the mists of an ancient and unmoral past.... Echoes of primitive ages when n.o.body knew any better--when life was new, and was merely life and nothing else--fighting, treacherous, cringing life which knew of nothing else to do except to eat, sleep, and reproduce itself--bully the weaker, fawn on the stronger, lie, steal, and watch out that death should not interfere with the main chance."

Molly, redder than ever, asked her again what she meant.

"I don't know, dear.... How clean the woods and fields seem after a day indoors with many people."

"You mean we all need moral baths?"

"I do."

Molly smiled: "For a moment I thought you meant that I do."

Strelsa smiled, too:

"You're a good wife, Molly; and a good friend.... I wish you had a baby."

"I'm--going to."

They looked at each other a moment; then Strelsa caught her in her arms.

"Really?"

Molly nodded:

"That's why I worry about Jim taking chances in his aeroplane."

"He mustn't! He's got to stop! What can he be thinking of!" cried Strelsa indignantly.

"But he--doesn't know."

"You haven't _told_ him?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I--don't know how he'll take it."

"What?"

Molly flushed: "We didn't want one. I don't know what he'll say. We didn't care for them----"