The Streets of Ascalon

"You went there to – to discuss me with that man!"

He was silent. She turned suddenly and tried to open the door, but he held it closed.

"I did it because I cared for you enough to do it," he said. "Don't you understand? Don't you suppose I know that kind of man?"

"It – it was not your business – " she faltered, twisting blindly at the door-knob. "Let me go – please – "

"I made it my business… And that man understood that I was making it my business. And he won't attempt to annoy you again… Can you forgive me?"

She turned on him excitedly, her eyes flashing with tears, but the impetuous words of protest died on her lips as her eyes encountered his.

"It was because I love you," he said. And, as he spoke, there was about the man a quiet dignity and distinction that silenced her – something of which she may have had vague glimpses at wide intervals in their acquaintances – something which at times she suspected might lie latent in unknown corners of his character. Now it suddenly confronted her; and she recognised it and stood before him without a word to say.

It mended matters a little when he smiled, and the familiar friend reappeared beside her; but she still felt strange and shy; and wondering, half fearfully, she let him lift her gloved hands and stand, holding them, looking into her eyes.

"You know what I am," he said. "I have nothing to say about myself. But I love you very dearly… I loved before, once, and married. And she died… After that I didn't behave very well – until I knew you… It is really in me to be a decent husband – if you can care for me… And I don't think we're likely to starve – "

"I – it isn't that," she said, flushing scarlet.

"What?"

"What you have … I could only care for – what you are."

"Can you do that?"

But her calm had vanished, and, head bent and averted, she was attempting to withdraw her hands – and might have freed herself entirely if it had not been for his arm around her.

This new and disconcerting phase of the case brought her so suddenly face to face with him that it frightened her; and he let her go, and followed her back to the empty gallery where she sank down at her desk, resting her arms on the covered type-machine, and buried her quivering face in them.

It was excusable. Such things don't usually happen to typewriters and stenographers although they have happened to barmaids.

When he had been talking eloquently and otherwise for a long time Jessie Vining lifted her pale, tear-stained face from her arms; and his lordship dropped rather gracefully on his knees beside her, and she looked down at him very solemnly and wistfully.

It was shockingly late when they closed the gallery that evening. And their mode of homeward progress was stranger still, for instead of a tram or of the taxi which Lord Dankmere occasionally prevailed upon her to accept, they drifted homeward on a pink cloud through the light-shot streets of Ascalon.

CHAPTER XVI

To the solitary and replete pike, lying motionless in shadow, no still-bait within reach is interesting. But the slightest movement in his vicinity of anything helpless instantly rivets his attention; any creature apparently in distress arouses him to direct and lightning action whether he be gorged or not – even, perhaps, while he is still gashed raw with the punishment for his last attempt.

So it was with Langly Sprowl. He had come into town, sullen, restless, still fretting with checked desire. Within him a dull rage burned; he was ready to injure, ready for anything to distract his mind which, however, had not given up for a moment the dogged determination to recover the ground he had lost with perhaps the only woman in the world he had ever really cared for.

Yet, he was the kind of man who does not know what real love is. That understanding had not been born in him, and he had not acquired it. He was totally incapable of anything except that fierce passion which is aroused by obstacles when in pursuit of whatever evinces a desire to escape.

It was that way with him when, by accident, he saw and recognised Jessie Vining one evening leaving the Dankmere Galleries. And Langly Sprowl never denied himself anything that seemed incapable of self-defence.

He stopped his car and got out and spoke to her, very civilly, and with a sort of kindly frankness which he sometimes used with convincing effect. She refused the proffered car to take her to her destination, but could not very well avoid his escort; and their encounter ended by her accepting his explanations and his extended hand, perplexed, unwilling to misjudge him, but thankful when he departed.

After that he continued to meet her occasionally and walk home with her.

Then he sent his footman and the car for her; and drew Lord Dankmere out of the grab-bag, to his infinite annoyance. Worse, Dankmere had struck him with an impact so terrific that it had knocked him senseless across the table in a private dining-room of the Café Cammargue, where he presently woke up with a most amazing eye to find the terrified proprietor and staff playing Samaritan.

In various papers annoying paragraphs concerning him had begun to appear – hints of how matters stood between him and Mary Ledwith, ugly innuendo, veiled rumours of the breach between him and his aunt consequent upon his untenable position vis-à-vis Mrs. Ledwith.

Until Dankmere had inconvenienced his features he had walked downtown to his office every day, lank, long-legged, sleek head held erect, hatchet face pointed straight in front of him, his restless eyes encountering everybody's but seeing nobody unless directly saluted.

Now, his right eye rivalling a thunder-cloud in tints, he drove one of his racing cars as fast as he dared, swinging through Westchester or scurrying about Long Island. Occasionally he went aboard the Yulan, but a burning restlessness kept him moving; and at last he returned to South Linden in a cold but deadly rage, determined to win back the chances which he supposed he had thrown away in the very moment of victory.

Strelsa Leeds had now taken up her abode in her quaint little house; he learned that immediately; and that evening he went over and came upon her moving about in the dusky garden, so intent on inspecting her flowers that he was within a pace of her before she turned her head and saw him.

"Strelsa," he said, "can we not be friends again? I ask no more than that."

Too surprised and annoyed to reply she merely gazed at him. And, because, for the first time in his life, perhaps, he really felt every word he uttered, he spoke now with a certain simplicity and self-control that sounded unusual to her ears – so noticeably unlike what she knew of him that it commanded her unwilling attention.

For his unpardonable brutality and violence he asked forgiveness, promising to serve her faithfully and in friendship for the privilege of attempting to win back her respect and regard. He asked only that.

He said that he scarcely knew what to do with his life without the hope of recovering her respect and esteem; he asked for a beggar's chance, begged for it with a candour and naïveté almost boyish – so directly to the point tended every instinct in him to recover through caution and patience what he had lost through carelessness and a violence which still astonished him.

The Bermuda lilies were in bloom and Strelsa stood near them, listening to him, touching the tall stalks absently at intervals. And while she listened she became more conscious still of the great change in herself – of her altered attitude toward so much in life that once had seemed to her important. After he had ceased she still stood pensively among the lilies, gray eyes brooding. At length, looking up, she said very quietly:

"Why do you care for my friendship, Langly? I am not the kind of woman you think me – not even the kind I once thought myself. To me friendship is no light thing either to ask for or to give. It means more to me than it once did; and I give it very seldom, and sparingly, and to very, very few. But toward everybody I am gently disposed – because, I am much happier than I ever have been in all my life… Is not my good will sufficient for any possible relation between you and me?"

"Then you are no longer angry with me?"

"No – no longer angry."

"Can we be friends again? Can you really forgive me, Strelsa?"

"Why – yes, I could do that… But, Langly, what have you and I in common as a basis for friendship? What have we ever had in common? Except when we encounter each other by hazard, why should we ever meet at all?"

"You have not pardoned me, Strelsa," he said patiently.

"Does that really make any difference to you? It doesn't to me. It is only because I never think of you that it would be an effort to forgive you. I'll make that effort if you wish, but really, Langly, I never think about you at all."

"If that is true, let me be with you sometimes, Strelsa," he said in a low voice.

"Why?"

"Because I am wretchedly unhappy. And I care for you – more than you realise."

She said seriously: "You have no right to speak that way to me, Langly."

"Could you ever again give me the right to say I love you?"

A quick flush of displeasure touched her cheeks; he saw it in the dusk of the garden, and mistook it utterly:

"Strelsa – listen to me, dear! I have not slept since our quarrel. I must have been stark mad to say and do what I did… Don't leave me! Don't go! I beg you to listen a moment – "

She had started to move away from him and his first forward step broke a blossom from its stalk where it hung white in the dusk.