The Streets of Ascalon

"Sure. I'm through with 'em all. I'm wise to the sex. That was merely a word picture. I'm talking like a writer, that's all. That's how you boobs talk, isn't it, Karl?"

"Always," said Westguard gravely.

"Me for Mrs. Leeds," remarked O'Hara frankly. "I'd ask her to marry me on the drop of a hat."

"Well, I'll drop no hat for you!" said Lacy. "And there'll be plenty of lunatics in this town who'll go madder than you or me before they forget Mrs. Leeds. Wait! Town is going to sit up and take notice when this new planet swims into its social ken. How's that epigram, Karl?"

Westguard said thoughtfully: "There'll be notoriety, too, I'm afraid. If nobody knows her everybody knows about that wretched boy she married."

Quarren added: "I have always understood that the girl did not want to marry him. It was her mother's doings."

O'Hara scowled. "I also have heard that the mother engineered it… What was Mrs. Leeds's name? I forget – "

"Strelsa Lanark," said Quarren who never forgot anything.

"Ugh," grunted Westguard. "Fancy a mother throwing her daughter at the head of a boy like Reggie Leeds! – as vicious and unclean a little whelp as ever – Oh, what's the use? – and de mortius nihil– et cetera, cock-a-doodle-do!"

"That poor girl had two entire years of him," observed Lacy. "She doesn't look more than twenty now – and he's been in – been dead two years. Good Heavens! What a child she must have been when she married him!"

Westguard nodded: "She had two years of him – and I suppose he seldom drew a perfectly sober breath… He dragged her all over the world with him – she standing for his rotten behaviour, trying to play the game with the cards hopelessly stacked against her. Vincent Wier met them in Naples; Mallison ran across them in Egypt; so did Lydon in Vienna. They said it was heartbreaking to see her trying to keep up appearances – trying to smile under his nagging or his drunken insults in public places. Lydon told me that she behaved like a brick – stuck to Reggie, tried to shield him, excuse him, make something out of the miserable pup who was doing his best to drag her to his own level and deprave her. But I guess she was too young or too unhappy or something, because there's no depravity in the girl who was here a few minutes ago. I'll swear to that."

After a moment Lacy said: "Well, he got his at last!"

"What was comin' to him," added O'Hara, with satisfaction.

Lacy added, curiously: "How can a man misbehave when he has such a woman for a wife?"

"I wonder," observed Quarren, "how many solid citizens read the account in the papers and remained scared longer than six weeks?"

"Lord help the wives of men," growled Westguard… "If any of you fellows are dressing for dinner you'd better be about it… Wait a moment, Rix!" – as Quarren, the last to leave, was already passing the threshold.

The young fellow turned, smiling: the others went on; Westguard stood silent for a moment, then:

"You're about the only man I care for very much," he said bluntly. "If I am continually giving you the Bible and the Sword it's the best I have to give."

Quarren replied laughingly.

"Don't worry, old fellow. I take what you say all right. And I really mean to cut out a lot of fussing and begin to hustle… Only, isn't it a wise thing to keep next to possible clients?"

"The people you train with don't buy lots in Tappan-Zee Park."

"But I may induce them to go into more fashionable enterprises – "

"Not they! The eagle yells on every dollar they finger. If there's any bleeding to be done they'll do it, my son."

"Lester Caldera has already asked me about acreage in Westchester."

"Did he do more than ask?"

"No."

"Did you charge him for the consultation?"

"Of course not."

"Then he got your professional opinion for nothing."

"But he, or others, may try to assemble several farms – "

"Why don't they then? – instead of dragging you about at their heels from house to house, from card-room to ball-room, from café to opera, from one week-end to the next! – robbing you of time, of leisure, of opportunity, of ambition – spoiling you – making a bally monkey of you! You're always in some fat woman's opera box or on some fat man's yacht or coach, or doing some damn thing – with your name figuring in everything from Newport to Hot Springs – and – and how can you ever turn into anything except a tame cat!"

Quarren's face reddened slightly.

"I'd be perfectly willing to sit in an office all day and all night if anybody would give me any business. But what's the use of chewing pencils and watching traffic on Forty-second Street?"

"Then go into another business!"

"I haven't any money."

"I'll lend it to you!"

"I can't risk your money, Karl. I'm too uncertain of myself. If anybody else offered to stake me I'd try the gamble." … He looked up at Westguard, ashamed, troubled, and showing it like a boy. "I'm afraid I don't amount to anything, Karl. I'm afraid I'm no good except in the kind of thing I seem to have a talent for."

"Fetching and carrying for the fashionable and wealthy," sneered Westguard.

Quarren's face flushed again: "I suppose that's it."

Westguard glared at him: "I wish I could shake it out of you!"

"I guess the poison's there," said Quarren in a low voice. "The worst of it is I like it – except when I understand your contempt."

"You like to fetch and carry and go about with your pocket full of boudoir keys!"

"People give me as much as I give them."

"They don't!" said the other angrily. "They've taken a decent fellow and put him in livery!"

Quarren bit his lip as the blood leaped to his face.

"Don't talk that way, Karl," he said quietly. "Even you have no business to take that tone with me."

There was a silence. After a few moments Westguard came over and held out his hand. Quarren took it, looked at him.

"I tell you," he said, "there's nothing to me. It's your kindness, Karl, that sees in me possibilities that never were."

"They're there. I'll do my duty almost to the point of breaking our friendship. But – I'll have to stop short of that point."

A quick smile came over Quarren's face, gay, affectionate: