The Streets of Ascalon

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 passage 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, unobserved, 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 hoarse voice; "it's all a con game, an' the perlice is into it, too!"

"T'hell 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 noble 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:

"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."