Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  Then Lester Caldera, good-naturedly, offered to take the property off his hands for less than a third of what he paid Sprowl for it; and as Quarren’s adjoining options were rapidly expiring he was forced to accept. Which put the boy almost entirely out of business; so he closed his handsome office downtown and opened another in the front parlour of an old and rather dingy brown-stone house on the east side of Lexington Avenue near Fiftieth Street and hung out his sign once more over the busy streets of Ascalon.

  Richard Stanley Quarren

  Real Estate

  Also he gave up his quarters at the Irish Legation to the unfeigned grief of the diplomats domiciled there, and established himself in the back parlour and extension of the Lexington Avenue house, ready at all moments now for business or for sleep. Neither bothered him excessively.

  He wrote no more notes to Strelsa Leeds — that is, he posted no more, however many he may have composed. Rumours from the inner temple concerning her and Langly Sprowl and Sir Charles Mallison drifted out into the real world every day or so. But he never went back to the temple to verify them. That life was ended for him. Sometimes, sitting alone at his desk, he fancied that he could almost hear the far laughter of the temple revels, and the humming of the drones. But the roar of the street-car, rushing, grinding through the steel-ribbed streets of Ascalon always drowned it, and its far seen phantom glitter became a burning reality where the mid-day sun struck the office sign outside his open window.

  Fate, the ugly jade, was making faces at him, all kinds of faces. Just now she wore the gaunt mask of poverty, but Quarren continued to ignore her, because to him, there was no real menace in her skinny grin, no real tragedy in what she threatened.

  Real tragedy lay in something very different — perhaps in manhood awaking from ignoble lethargy to learn its own degeneracy in a young girl’s scornful eyes.

  All day long he sat in his office attending to the trivial business that came into it — not enough so far to give him a living.

  In the still spring evenings he retired to his quarters in the back parlour, bathed, dressed, looking out at the cats on the back fences. Then he went forth to dine either at the Legation or with some one of the few friends he had cared to retain in that magic-lantern world which he at last had found uninhabitable — a world in which few virile men remain very long — fewer and fewer as the years pass on. For the gilding on the temple dome is peeling off; and the laughter is dying out, and the hum of the drones sounds drowsy like unreal voices heard in summer dreams.

  “It is the passing of an imbecile society,” declaimed Westguard— “the dying sounds of its meaningless noise — the first omens of a silence which foretells annihilation. Out of chaos will gradually emerge the elements of a real society — the splendid social and intellectual brotherhood of the future — —”

  “See my forthcoming novel,” added Lacy, “$1.35 net, for sale at all booksellers or sent post-paid on receipt of — —”

  “You little fashionable fop!” growled Westguard— “there’s a winter coming for all butterflies!”

  “I’ve seen ’em dancing over the snow on a mild and sunny day,” retorted Lacy. “Karl, my son, the nobly despairing writer with a grouch never yet convinced anybody.”

  “I don’t despair,” retorted Westguard. “This country is getting what it wants and what it deserves, ladled out to it in unappetising gobs. Year after year great incoming waves of ignorance sweep us from ocean to ocean; but I don’t forget that those very waves also carry a constantly growing and enlightened class higher and higher toward permanent solidity.

  “Every annual wave pushes the flotsam of the year before toward the solid land. The acquaintance with sordid things is the first real impulse toward education. Some day there will be no squalor in the land — neither the physical conditions in our slums nor the arid intellectual deserts within the social frontiers.”

  “But the waves will accomplish that — not your very worthy novels,” said Lacy, impudently.

  “If you call me ‘worthy’ I’ll bat you on the head,” roared Westguard, sitting up on the sofa where he had been sprawling; and laughter, loud and long, rattled the windows in the Irish Legation.

  The May night was hot; a sickly breeze stirred the curtains at the open windows of Westguard’s living room where the Legation was entertaining informally.

  Quarren, Lacy, O’Hara, and Sir Charles Mallison sat by the window playing poker; the Earl of Dankmere, perched on the piano-stool, was mournfully rattling off a string of melodies acquired along Broadway; Westguard himself, flat on his back, occupied a leather lounge and dispensed philosophy when permitted.

  “You know,” said Lacy, dealing rapidly, “you’re only a tin-horn philosopher, Karl, but you really could write a good story if you tried. Get your people into action. That’s the game.”

  O’Hara nodded. “Interestin’ people, in books and outside, are always doin’ things, not talkin’,” he said— “like Sir Charles quietly drawin’ four cards to a kicker and sayin’ nothin’.”

  “ — Like old Dankmere, yonder, playing ‘Madame Sherry’ and not trying to tell us why human beings enjoy certain sounds known as harmonies, but just keeping busy beating the box — —”

  “ — Like a pretty woman who is contented to be as attractive and cunnin’ as she can be, and not stoppin’ to explain the anatomy of romantic love and personal beauty,” added O’Hara.

  “ — Like — —”

  “For Heaven’s sake give me a stack of chips and shut up!” shouted Westguard, jumping to his feet and striding to the table. “Everybody on earth is competent to write a book except an author, but I defy anybody to play my poker hands for me! Come on, Dankmere! Let’s clean out this complacent crowd!”

  Lord Dankmere complied, and seated himself at the table, anxiously remarking to Quarren that he had come to America to acquire capital, not to spend it. Sir Charles laughed and dealt; Westguard drew five cards, attempted to bluff Quarren’s full hand, and was scandalously routed.

  Again the cards were dealt and O’Hara bet the limit; and the Earl of Dankmere came back with an agonised burst of chips that scared out Lacy and Sir Charles and left Quarren thinking.

  When finally the dust of combat blew clear of the scene Dankmere’s stacks were nearly gone, and Quarren’s had become symmetrical sky-scrapers.

  Lacy said to Dankmere: “Now that you’ve learned how to get poor quickly you’re better prepared for the study of riches and how to acquire ‘em. Kindly pass the buck unless your misfortunes have paralysed you.”

  “The whole country,” said his lordship, “is nothing but one gigantic poker game. I sail on the next steamer. I’m bluffed out.”

  “Poor old Dankmere,” purred Lacy, “won’t the ladies love you?”

  “Their demonstrations,” said the Earl, “are not keeping me awake nights.”

  “Something keeps Quarren awake nights, judging by his transom light. Is it love, Ricky?”

  A slight colour mounted to Quarren’s thin cheeks, but he answered carelessly: “I read late sometimes.... How many cards do you want?”

  Sir Charles Mallison turned his head after a moment and looked at Quarren; and meeting his eye, said pleasantly: “I only want one card, Quarren. Please give me the right one.”

  “Which?”

  “The Queen of Hearts.”

  “Dealer draws one also,” said the young fellow.

  Sir Charles laid down his hand with a smile:

  “Did you fill?” he asked Quarren as everybody else remained out.

  “I don’t mind showing,” said Quarren sorting out his cards, faces up.

  “Which end?” inquired O’Hara.

  “An interior.” And he touched the Queen of Hearts, carelessly.

  “Crazy playing and lunatic’s luck,” commented Lacy. “Dankmere, and you, too, Sir Charles, you’d better cut and run for home as fast as your little legs can toddle. Quarren is on the loose.”

  Sir Charles laughed, glan
ced at Quarren, then turned to Dankmere.

  “It’s none of my business,” he said, “but if you really are in the devilish financial straits you pretend to be, why don’t you square up things and go into trade?”

  “Square things?” repeated the little Earl mournfully; “will somebody tell me how? Haven’t I been trying out everything? Didn’t I back a musical comedy of sorts? Didn’t I even do a turn in it myself?”

  “That’s what probably smashed it,” observed O’Hara.

  “He did it very well,” laughed Sir Charles.

  “Dankmere ought to have filled his show full of flossy flappers,” insisted Lacy. “Who wants to see an Earl dance and sing? Next time I’ll manage the company for you, Dankmere — —”

  “There’ll be no next time,” said Dankmere, scanning his cards. “I’m done for,” he added, dramatically, letting his own ante go.

  “You’ve lost your nerve,” said Quarren, smiling.

  “And everything else, my boy!”

  “What’s the matter with the heiresses, anyway?” inquired O’Hara sympathetically.

  “The matter is that I don’t want the sort that want me. Somebody’s ruined the business in the States. I suppose I might possibly induce a Broadway show-girl — —”

  The little Earl got up and began to wander around, hands in his pockets, repeating:

  “I’d make a pretty good actor, in spite of what O’Hara said. It’s the only thing I like anyway. I can improvise songs, too. Listen to this impromptu, you fellows”:

  And he bent over the piano, still standing, and beat out a jingling accompaniment:

  “I sigh for the maiden I never have seen, I’ll make her my countess whatever she’s been — Typewriter, manicure, heiress or queen, Aged fifty or thirty or lovely eighteen, Redundant and squatty, or scraggy and lean, Generous spendthrift or miserly mean — I sigh for the maiden I never have seen Provided she’s padded with wads of Long Green!”

  Still singing the air he picked up a silk hat and walking-stick and began to dance, rather lightly and gracefully, his sunken, heavy-lidded eyes fixed nonchalantly on space — his nimble little feet making no sound on the floor as he swung, swayed, and capered under the electric light timing his agile steps to his own singing.

  Loud applause greeted him; much hand-clapping and cries of “Good old Dankmere! Three cheers for the British peerage!”

  Sir Charles looked slightly bored, sitting back in his chair and waiting for the game to recommence. Which it did with the return of the Earl who had now relieved both his intellect and his legs of an accumulated and Terpischorean incubus.

  “If I was a bigger ass than I am,” said the Earl, “I’d go into vaudeville and let my creditors howl.”

  “Did they really send you over here?” asked O’Hara, knowing that his lordship made no bones about it.

  “They certainly did. And a fine mess I’ve made of it, haven’t I? No decent girl wants me — though why, I don’t know, because I’m decent enough as men go. But your newspapers make fun of me and my title — and I might as well cut away to Dankmere Tarns and let ’em pick my carcass clean.”

  “What’s Dankmere Tarns?” asked O’Hara.

  “Mine, except the mortgages on it.”

  “Entailed?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Kept up?”

  “No, shut up.”

  “What sort of a gallery is that of yours at Dankmere Tarns?” inquired Sir Charles, turning around.

  “How the devil do I know,” replied his lordship fretfully. “I don’t know anything about pictures.”

  “Are there not some very valuable ones there?”

  “There are a lot of very dirty ones.”

  “Don’t you know their value?”

  “No, I don’t. But I fancy the good ones were sold off long ago — twenty years ago I believe. There was a sale — a lot of rubbish of sorts. I took it for granted that Lister’s people cleaned out everything worth taking.”

  “When you go back,” said Sir Charles, “inspect that rubbish again. Perhaps Lister’s people overlooked enough to get you out of your financial difficulties. Pictures that sold for £100 twenty years ago might bring £1,000 to-day. It’s merely a suggestion, Dankmere — if you’ll pardon it.”

  “And a good one,” added O’Hara. “I know a lot of interestin’ people and they tell me that you can sell any rotten old picture over here for any amount of money. Sting ‘em, Dankmere. Get to ‘em!”

  “You might send for some of your pictures,” said Lacy, “and have a shot at the auction-mad amateur. He’s too easy.”

  “And pay duty and storage and gallery hire and auction fees! — no, thanks,” replied the little Earl, cautiously. “I’ve burnt my bally fingers too often in schemes.”

  “I’ve a back room behind my office,” said Quarren. “You can store them there if you like, without charge.”

  “Besides, if they’re genuine, there will be no duty to pay,” explained Sir Charles.

  Dankmere sucked on his cigar but made no comment; and the game went on, disastrously for him.

  Quarren said casually to Sir Charles:

  “I suppose you will be off to Newport, soon.”

  “To-morrow. When do you leave town?”

  “I expect to remain in town nearly all summer.”

  “Isn’t that rather hard?”

  “No; it doesn’t matter much,” said the boy indifferently.

  “Many people are already on the wing,” observed Lacy.

  “The Calderas have gone, I hear, and the Vernons and Mrs. Sprowl,” added O’Hara.

  “I suppose the Wycherlys will open Witch-Hollow in June,” said Quarren carelessly.

  “Yes. Are you asked?”

  “No.”

  “Doubtless you will be,” said Sir Charles. “Jim Wycherly is mad about aviation and several men are going to send their biplanes up and try ’em out.”

  “I’m goin’,” announced O’Hara.

  Quarren drew one card, and filled his house. Sir Charles laid aside his useless hand with a smile and turned to Quarren:

  “Mrs. Leeds has spoken so often and so pleasantly of you that I have been rather hoping I might some day have the opportunity of knowing you better. I am very glad that the Legation asked me to-night.”

  Quarren remained absolutely still for a few moments. Then he said:

  “Mrs. Leeds is very generous in her estimate of me.”

  “She is a woman of rare qualities.”

  “Of unusual qualities and rare charm,” said Quarren coolly.... “I think, Karl, that I’ll make it ten more to draw cards. Are you all staying in?”

  Before the party broke up — and it was an early one — Lord Dankmere turned to Quarren.

  “I’ll drop in at your office, if I may, some morning,” he said. “May I?”

  “It will give me both pleasure and diversion,” said Quarren laughing. “There is not enough business in my office to afford me either. Also you are welcome to send for those pictures and store them in my back parlour until you can find a purchaser.”

  “It’s an idea, isn’t it?” mused his lordship. “Now I don’t suppose you happen to know anything about such rubbish, do you? — pictures and that sort. What?”

  “Why — yes — I do, in a way.”

  “The devil you do! But then I’ve always been told that you know something about everything — —”

  “Very, very little,” said Quarren, laughing. “In an ignorant world smatterings are reverenced. But the fashionable Philistine of yesterday, who used to boast of his ignorance regarding things artistic and intellectual, is becoming a little ashamed of his ignorance — —”

  Dankmere, reddening, said bluntly:

  “That applies to me; doesn’t it?”

  “I beg your pardon! — I didn’t mean it that way — —”

  “You’re right, anyway. I’m damnably ignorant.... See here, Quarren, if I send over for some of those pictures of mine, will you give me
your opinion like a good fellow before I make a bally ass of myself by offering probable trash to educated people?”

  “I’ll tell you all I know about your pictures, if that is what you mean,” said Quarren, much amused.

  They shook hands as Sir Charles came up to make his adieux.

  “Good-bye,” he said to Quarren. “I’m off to Newport to-morrow. And — I — I promised to ask you to come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “Mrs. Sprowl told me to bring you. You know how informal she is.”

  Quarren, surprised, glanced sharply at Sir Charles. “I don’t believe she really wants me,” he said.

  “If she didn’t she wouldn’t have made me promise to bring you. She’s that sort, you know. Won’t you come? I am sure that Mrs. Leeds, also, would be glad to see you.”

  Quarren looked him coolly and unpleasantly in the eyes.

  “Do you really believe that?” he asked, almost insolently.

  Sir Charles reddened:

  “She asked me to say so to you. I heard from her this morning; and I have fulfilled her request.”

  “Thank her for me,” returned Quarren, level-eyed and very white.

  “Which means?” insisted Sir Charles quietly.

  “Absolutely nothing,” said Quarren in a voice which makes enemies.

  The following day Sir Charles left for Newport where Mrs. Sprowl had opened “Skyland,” her villa of pink Tennessee marble, to a lively party of young people of which Strelsa Leeds made one. And once more, according to the newspapers, her engagement to Sir Charles was expected to be announced at any moment.

  When Quarren picked up the newspapers from his office desk next morning he found the whole story there — a story to which he had become accustomed.

  But the next day, the papers repeated the news. And it remained, for the first time, uncontradicted by anybody. All that morning he sat at his desk staring at her picture, reproduced in half-tones on the first page of every newspaper in town — stared at it, and at the neighbouring likeness of Sir Charles in the uniform of his late regiment; read once more of Strelsa’s first marriage with all its sequence of misery and degradation; read fulsome columns celebrating her beauty, her popularity, her expected engagement to one of the wealthiest Englishmen in the world.