A fortnight later Strelsa wrote to Quarren for the first time in nearly
two months.
"DEAR MR. QUARREN,
"Molly says that she saw you in town two weeks ago, and that she
told you how unexpectedly my worldly affairs have altered since I
last wrote to you.
"For me, somehow or other, life has been always a sequence of
abrupt experiences--a series of extremes--one grotesque
exaggeration after another, and all diametrically opposed. And it
seems odd that such radically material transformations should so
ruthlessly disturb and finally, now, end by completely altering the
character of a girl whose real nature is--or was--unaccented and
serene to the verge of indifference. For the woman writing this is
very different from the one you knew as Strelsa Leeds.
"I am not yet sure what the outcome of this Adamant affair will be.
Neither, apparently, are my attorneys. But it is absolutely certain
that if I ever recover anything at all, it will not amount to very
much--not nearly enough to live on.
"When they first brought the unpleasant news to me my instinct was
to sit down and write you about it. I was horribly scared, and
wanted you to know it.
"I didn't yield to the impulse as you know--I cannot give you the
reasons why. They were merely intuitions at first; later they
became reasons as my financial situation developed in all its
annoying proportions.
"I can tell you only this: before material disaster threatened me
out of a clear sky, supposing that matters would always remain with
me as they were--that I should never know any serious want, never
apprehend actual necessity--I had made up my mind to a course of
life which now has become impossible.
"It was not, perhaps, a very admirable plan of existence that I had
conceived for myself, nothing radical or original. I meant, merely,
_not_ to marry, to live well within my income, to divide my time
between my friends and myself--that is to give myself more leisure
for self-development, tranquil cultivation, and a wider and more
serious interest in things worthy.
"If by dividing my time between my friends and myself I was to lose
touch more or less with the lively and rather exacting society in
which I live, I had decided on the sacrifice.
"And that, Mr. Quarren, is how matters stood with me until a month
ago.
"Now everything is altered--even my own character I think. There is
in me very little courage--and, alas, much of that cowardice which
shrinks from pain and privation of any kind--which cringes the more
basely, perhaps, because there has been, in my life, so much of
sorrow, so little of material ease and tranquility of mind.
"I had been dreaming of a balanced and secure life with leisure to
develop mental resources hitherto neglected. And your
friendship--our new understanding--meant much of that part of life
for me--more than I realised--far more than you do. Can you
understand how deep the hurt is?--deeper because now you will learn
what a coward I really am and how selfishly I surrender to the
menace of material destruction. I am in dire terror of it; I simply
do not choose to endure it. That I need not submit to it, inspires
in me the low type of equanimity that enables me to face the future
with apparent courage. My world applauds it as pluck. I have
confessed to you what it really is.
"Now you know me, Mr. Quarren--a preacher of lofty ideals while
prosperous, a recreant in adversity.
"I thought once that the most ignoble sentiments ever entertained
by man were those lesser and physical emotions which, in the world,
masquerade as love--or as an essential part of it. To me they
always seemed intolerable as any part of love, material, unworthy,
base. To me love was intellectual--could be nothing less lofty--and
should aspire to the spiritual.
"I say this because you once tried to make me understand that you
loved me.
"Marriage of two minds with nothing material to sully an ideal
union was what I had dreamed of. I might have cared for you that
way when a marriage tainted with lesser emotions repelled me. And
now, like all iconoclasts, I end by shattering my own complacent
image, and the fragments have fallen to the lowest depth of all.
"For I contemplate a mariage de convenance--and I scarcely care
whom I marry as long as he removes from me this terror of a sordid
and needy future.
"All ideals, all desire for higher and better things--for a noble
leisure and the quiet pleasures of self-development, have
gone--vanished utterly. Fear sickens me night and day--the same
dull dread that I have known so many, many years in my life--a
blind horror of more unhappiness and pain after two years of
silence--that breathless stillness which frightened wounded things
know while they lie, panting, dazed listening for the coming
footsteps of that remorseless Fate which struck them down from
afar.
"I tell you this, Mr. Quarren, because it is due to you if you
really love me--or if you once did love me--because when you have
read this you will no longer care for me.
"One evening you made me understand that you cared for me; and I
replied to you only by a dazed silence that neither you nor I
entirely understood at the time. It was not contempt for you--yet,
perhaps, I could not really have cared very deeply for such a man
as you then seemed to be. It was not intellectual indifference that
silenced me.... And I can say no more about it--except
that--something--changed me radically from that moment--and ever
since I have been trying to understand myself--to learn something
about myself--and of the world I live in--and of men.
"When a crisis arrives self-revelation comes in a single flash. My
financial crisis arrived as you know; I suddenly saw myself as I
am--a woman astonishingly undeveloped and ignorant in many ways,
crude, unawakened, stupid--a woman half-blinded with an unreasoning
dread of more pain--pain which she thought had at last been left
behind her--and a coward all through; and selfish from head to
heel.
"This is what I _really_ am. And I shall prove it by marrying for
reasons entirely material, because I have no courage to ever again
face adversity and unhappiness.
[Illustration: "'I say, Quarren--does this old lady hang next to the
battered party in black?'"]
"You will not care to write to me; and you will not care to see me
again.
"I am glad you once cared for me. If you should ever reply to this
letter, don't be very unkind to me. I know what I am--and I vaguely
surmise what I shall lose by being so. But I have no courage for
anything else.
"STRELSA LEEDS."
That was the letter she wrote to Quarren; and he read it standing by his
desk while several noisy workmen were covering every available inch of
his walls with Dankmere's family pictures, and the little Earl himself,
whistling a lively air, trotted about superintending everything with all
the cheerful self-confidence of a family dog regulating everything that
goes on in his vicinity.
"I say, Quarren--does this old lady hang next to the battered party in
black?" he demanded briskly.
Quarren looked around; "Yes," he said, "they're both by Nicholas Maas
according to your list."
"_I_ think they're bally fakes," remarked the Earl, "don't you?"
"We'll try to find out," said Quarren, absently.
Dankmere puffed away on his cigar and consulted his list: "Reynolds (Sir
Joshua). Portrait of Lady Dankmere," he read; "portrait of Sir Boggs
Dankmere!--string 'em up aloft over that jolly little lady with no frock
on!--Rembrandt (Van Rijn). Born near Leyden, July 15th, 1607--Oh, who
cares as long as it _is_ a Rembrandt!--Is it, Quarren? It isn't a copy,
is it?"
"I hope not," said the young fellow absently.
"Egad! So do I." And to the workmen--"Philemon and Baucis by Rembrandt!
Hang 'em up next to that Romney--over the Jan Steen ... Quarren?"
"Yes?"
"Do you think that St. Michael's Mount is a real Turner?"
"It looks like it. I can't express opinions off-hand, Dankmere."
"I can," said the little Earl; "and I say that if that _is_ a Turner I
can beat it myself working with tomato catsup, an underdone omelette,
and a clothes-brush.... Hello! I like this picture. The list calls it a
Watteau--'The Fête Champêtre.' What do you know about it, Quarren?"
"Nothing yet. It seems to be genuine enough."
"And this pretty girl by Boucher?"
"I tell you, Dankmere, that I don't know. They all appear to be genuine,
after a superficial examination. It takes time to be sure about any
picture--and if we're going to be certain it will require confabs with
authorities--restorers, dealers, experts, curators from various
museums--all sorts and conditions of people must be approached and
warily consulted--and paid," he added smiling. "And that has to be done
with circumspection because some are not honest and we don't want
anybody to get the impression that we are attempting to bribe anybody
for a favourable verdict."
A few minutes later he went across the street and telegraphed to Molly
Wycherly:
"May I remind you that you asked me to Witch-Hollow?
QUARREN."
The following morning after the workmen had departed, he and Dankmere
stood contemplating the transformations wrought in the office, back
parlour, and extension of Quarren's floor in the shabby old Lexington
Avenue house.
The transformation was complete; all woodwork had been painted white, a
gray-green paper hung on the walls, the floor stained dark brown and
covered with several antique rugs which had come with the pictures--a
Fereghan, a Ladik, and an ancient Herez with rose and sapphire lights in
it.
At the end of the suite hung another relic of Dankmere Tarns--a Gobelins
tapestry about ten by twelve, signed by Audran, the subject of which was
Boucher's "Venus, Mars, and Vulcan" from the picture in the Wallace
Collection. Opposite it was suspended an old Persian carpet of the
sixteenth century--a magnificent Dankmere heirloom woven in the golden
age of ancient Eastern art and displaying amid the soft splendour of its
matchless hues the strange and exquisitely arched cloud-forms traced in
forgotten dyes amid a wilderness of delicate flowers and vines.
Between these two fabrics, filling the walls from base-board to ceiling,
were ranged Dankmere's pictures. Few traces of the real-estate office
remained--merely a desk, letter-file, a shelf piled up with maps, and
Quarren's shingle outside; but this was now overshadowed by the severely
magnificent sign:
THE DANKMERE GALLERY
OF
OLD MASTERS
ALGERNON FAYRE, R. S. QUARREN & Co.
For Lord Dankmere, otherwise Algernon Cecil Clarence Fayre, Earl of
Dankmere, had decided to dedicate to trade only a portion of his
aristocratic appellations. As for the company, it consisted of Quarren's
cat, Daisy, and her litter of unweaned kittens.
"Do you realise," said Quarren, dropping into the depths of a new
easy-chair, "that you have almost put me out of business?"
"Well, you weren't in very deeply, you know," commented Dankmere.
"No; but last week I went to bed a broker in real estate; and this week
I wake up a picture dealer and your partner. It's going to take most of
my time. I can't sell a picture unless I know what it is. I've got to
find out--or try to. Do you know what that means?"
"I fancy it means chucking your real estate," said Dankmere,
imperturbably. "Why not? This is a better gamble. And if we make
anything we ought to make something worth while."
"Do you propose that I shall simply drop my entire business--close up
everything and go into this thing permanently?" demanded Quarren.
"It will come to that, ultimately. Don't you want to?"
From the beginning Quarren had felt, vaguely, that it would come to
that--realised instinctively that in such an enterprise he would be on
solid ground--that the idea was pleasant to him--that his tastes fitted
him for such an occupation. Experience was lacking, but, somehow, his
ignorance did not dismay him.
All his life he had cared for such things, been familiar with them, been
curious to learn more, had read enough to understand something of the
fascinating problems now confronting him, had, in his hours of leisure,
familiarised himself with the best of art in the public and private
galleries of the city.
More than that a natural inclination and curiosity had led him among
dealers, restorers, brokers of pictures. He knew them all from Fifth
Avenue to Lexington, the celebrated and the obscure; he had heard them
talk, heard the gossip and scandal of their curious world, watched them
buying, selling, restoring, relining, reframing; listened to their
discussions concerning their art and the art in which they dealt. And it
had always fascinated him although, until Dankmere arrived, it had never
occurred to him to make a living out of a heterogeneous mass of partly
assimilated knowledge acquired from the sheer love of the subject.
Fortunate the man whose means of livelihood is also his pleasure! Deep
in his heart lies the unconscious contentment of certainty.
And somehow, with the advent of Dankmere's pictures, into Quarren's
troubled heart had come a vague sensation of ease--a cessation of the
old anxiety and unrest--a quiet that he had never before known.
To learn what his wares really were seemed no formidable task; to
appreciate and appraise each one only little labours of love. Every
problem appeared to him as a separate attraction; the disposal of his
stock a delightful and leisurely certainty because he himself would be
certain of what he dealt in.
Then, too, his mind had long since invaded a future which day by day
grew more alluring in its suggestions. He himself would learn the
practical and manual art of restoration--learn how to clean, reline,
revarnish; how to identify, how to dissect. Every thread of an ancient
canvas should tell him a true story; every grain in an old panel. He
would be chief surgeon in his hospital for old and decrepit
masterpieces; he would "cradle" with his own hands--clear the opacity
from time-dimmed beauty with savant touch, knit up tenderly the wounds
of ages----
"Dankmere," he said, throwing away his cigarette, "I'm going into this
business from this minute; and I would like to die in harness, at the
end, the companion, surgeon, and friend of old-time pictures. Do you
think I can make a living at it?"
"God knows. Do you mean that you're really keen on it?"
"Dead keen."
Dankmere puffed on his cigar: "A chap usually makes out pretty well when
he's a bit keen on anything of sorts. You'll be owning the gallery,
next, you infernal Yankee!"
Quarren laughed: "I won't forget that you gave me my first real chance
in the world. You've done it, too; do you realise it, Dankmere?"
"Very glad I'm sure."
"So am I!" said Quarren with sudden emphasis. "I believe I'm on the
right track now. I believe it's in me--in my heart--to work--to
_work_!"--he laughed--"as the old chronicles say, 'To the glory of God
and the happiness of self and mankind.' ... I'm grateful to you; do you
understand?"
"Awf'lly glad, old chap."
"You funny Englishman--I believe you are.... And we'll make this thing
go. Down comes my real-estate shingle; I'm a part of the Dankmere
Galleries now. I'll rent the basement after our first sale and there
you and I will fuss and tinker and doctor and nurse any poor old
derelict of a picture back to its pristine beauty. What?"
"Not I," said the little Earl. "All I'm good for is to furnish the
initial stock. You may do what you please with it, and we'll share
profits according to contract. Further than that, Quarren, you'll have
to count me out."
"Don't you care for pictures?"
"I prefer horses," said the Earl drily--"and, after the stable and
kennel, my taste inclines toward Vaudeville." And he cocked up one
little leg over the other and whistled industriously at a waltz which he
was attempting to compose. He possessed a high, maddening, soprano
whistle which Quarren found painful to endure; and he was glad when his
lordship departed, jauntily twirling his walking-stick and taking fancy
dance steps as far as the front door.
Left alone Quarren leaned back in his chair resting his head against the
new olive-tinted velvet.
He had nothing to do but sit there and gaze at the pictures and wait for
an answer to his telegram.
It came about dusk and he lighted the gas to read it:
"Come up to Witch-Hollow to-morrow.
"MARIE WYCHERLY."
He could not leave until he had planned for work to go on during his
absence. First he arranged with Valasco to identify as nearly as
possible, and to appraise, the French and Italian pictures. Then he made
an arrangement with Van Boschoven for the Dutch and Flemish; secured
Drayton-Quinn for the English; and warned Dankmere not to bother or
interfere with these temperamental and irascible gentlemen while in
exercise of their professional duties.
"Don't whistle, don't do abrupt skirt-dances, don't sing comic songs,
don't obscure the air with cigar smoke, don't go to sleep on the sofa
and snore, don't drink fizzes and rattle the ice in your glass----"
"My God!" faltered his lordship, "do you mind if I breathe now and
then?"
"I'll be away a few days--Valasco is slow, and the others take their
time. Let anybody come in who wants to, but don't sell anything until
the experts report to me in writing----"
"Suppose some chap rushes in with ten thousand----"
"No!"
"What?"
"Certainly not. Chaps who rush in with any serious money at all will
rush in again all the faster if you make them wait. Don't sell a
picture--not even to Valasco or any of the experts----"
"Suppose a charming lady----"
"Now you understand, don't you? I wouldn't think of selling a single
canvas until I have their reports and have made up my own mind that
they're as nearly right as any expert can be who didn't actually see the
artist paint the picture. The only trustworthy expert is the man who saw
the picture painted--if you can believe his word."
"But my dear Quarren," protested Dankmere, seriously bewildered--"how
could any living expert ever have seen an artist, who died two hundred
years ago, paint anything?"
"Right," said Quarren solemnly; "the point is keenly taken. Ergo, there
_are_ no real experts, only guessers. When Valasco _et al_ finish their
guessing, I'll guess how near they have guessed correctly. Good-bye....
You _will_ be good, won't you, Dankmere?"
"No fear. I'll keep my weather eye on the shop. Do you want me to sleep
here?"
"You'd better, I think. But don't have rowdy parties here, will you? And
don't wander away and leave the door open. By George! I believe I'd
better stay----"
"Rot! Go on and take your vacation, old chap! Back in a week?"
"Yes; or any time you wire me----"
"Not I. I'll have a jolly time by myself."
"Don't have too many men here in the evening. The smoke will get into
those new curtains----"
Dankmere, in his trousers and undershirt, stretched on the divan,
laughed and blew a cloud of smoke at the ceiling. Then, reaching forth
he took a palm-leaf fan in one hand, a tall, frosty glass in the other,
and applied both in a manner from which he could extract the most
benefit.
"Bon voyage!" he nodded to Quarren. "My duties and compliments and all
that--and pick me out an heiress of sorts--there's a good fellow----"
As Quarren went out he heard his lordship burst forth into his
distressing whistle; and he left him searching piercingly for
inspiration to complete his "Coster's Hornpipe."
* * * * *
On the train Quarren bought the evening papers; and the first item that
met his eye was a front-page column devoted to the Dankmere Galleries.
Every paper had broken out into glaring scare-heads announcing the
recent despoiling of Dankmere Tarns and the venture into trade of
Algernon Cecil Clarence Fayre, tenth Earl of Dankmere. The majority of
papers were facetious, one or two scathing, but the more respectable
journals managed to repress a part of their characteristic antagonism
and report the matter with a minimum of venom and a rather exhaustive
historical accompaniment:
"POOR PEERS EAGER TO SELL HEIRLOOMS
"LORD DANKMERE'S CASE SAID TO BE ONE OF DOZENS
AMONG THE BRITISH ARISTOCRACY
"GAMBLING SPIRIT BLAMED
"OBSERVERS ASCRIBE POVERTY OF OLD BRITISH FAMILIES
TO THIS CAUSE--MANY RENT ROLLS DECLARED
TO BE MORTGAGED
"The opening of the so-called Dankmere galleries on Lexington
Avenue will bring into the lime-light once more a sprightly though
somewhat world-battered little Peer recently and disastrously
connected with the stage and its feminine adjuncts.
"The Dankmere galleries blossom in a shabby old house flanked on
one side by a Chop-Suey restaurant haunted of celestials, and on
the other by an undertaker's establishment displaying the following
enterprising sign: Mortem's Popular $50 Funerals! Bury Your Family
at Attractive Prices!
"GAMBLING DID IT!
"Gambling usually lands the British Peer on his aristocratic
uppers. But in this case gambolling behind the footlights is
responsible for the present display of the Dankmere family pictures
in the converted real-estate offices of young Mr. Quarren of
cotillion fame.
"Among supposedly well-to-do English nobles the need for ready cash
so frequently reaches the acute stage that all manner of schemes
are readily resorted to in an effort to 'raise the wind.'
"Lord Dankmere openly admits that had he supposed any valuable
'junk' lay concealed in the attics of his mansion, he would,
without hesitation, have converted it into ready money long before
this.
"Lord Dankmere's case is only one typical of dozens of others among
the exclusive and highly placed of Mayfair. It is a known fact that
since the sale of the Capri Madonna (Titian) for $350,000 to the
British Government, by special act of Parliament, Daffydill Palace
has gradually been unloaded of all treasures not tied by the entail
to the estate. For the same sum ($350,000) the late Earl of
Blitherington disposed of his famous Library and the sale of the
library was known to be necessary for the provision of living funds
for the incoming heir. Just recently the Duke of Putney, reputed to
be a man of vast wealth, had a difficulty with a dealer concerning
the sale of some of his treasures.
"Such cases may be justified by circumstances. The general public
hears, however, of only a few isolated cases. The number of private
deals that are executed, week in, week out, between impoverished
members of the highest nobility--some of them bound, like Lord
Blitherington and the Duke of Putney by close official ties to the
Court--and the agents of either new-rich Britishers or wealthy
Americans has reached its maximum, and by degrees unentailed
treasures and heirlooms are passing from owners of many centuries
to families that were unheard of a dozen years ago.
"THE AWFUL YANKEE
"The American is given priority in the matter of purchase, not only
because he pays more, as a rule, but also for the reason that the
transfer of his prize to the United States removes the possibility
of noble sellers being pestered with awkward questions by the
inquisitive. For, however unostentatiously home deals are made and
transfers effected, society soon learns the facts. So hard up,
however, has the better-known aristocracy become, and so willing
are they to trade at fancy sums to anxious purchasers, that several
curio dealers in the St. James's quarter hold unlimited power of
attorney to act for plutocratic American principals either in the
United States or in this country.
"Those who are reasonably entitled to explain the cause of this
poverty among old families, whose landed estates are unimpaired in
acreage at least, and whose inheritance was of respectable
proportions, declare that not since the eighteenth century has the
gambling spirit so persistently invaded the inside coteries of high
society. The desire to acquire riches quickly seems to have taken
hold of the erstwhile staid and conventional upper ten, just as it
has seized upon the smart set. The recent booms in oil and rubber
have had the effect of transferring many a comfortable rent roll
from its owner's bankers--milady's just as often as milord's--to
the chartered mortgagors of the financial world. The panic in
America in 1907 showed to what extent the English nobility was
interested, not only in gilt-edged securities, but also to what
degree it was involved in wildcat finance. The directing geniuses
of many of the suspect ventures of to-day in London are often the
possessors of names that are writ rubric in the pages of Debrett
and Burke.
"According to a London radical paper, there are at present over a
score of estates in the auction mart which must soon pass from some
of the bluest-blooded nobles in Great Britain to men whose fortunes
have grown in the past few years from the humblest beginnings, a
fact which itself cannot fail to change both the tone and
constitution of town and country society."
Quarren read every column, grimly, to the end, wincing when he
encountered some casual reference to himself and his recent social
activities. Then, lips compressed, boyish gaze fixed on the passing
landscape, he sat brooding until at last the conductor opened the door
and shouted the name of his station.
The Wycherlys' new place, Witch-Hollow, a big rambling farm among the
Connecticut hills, was only three hours from New York, and half an hour
by automobile from the railroad. The buildings were wooden and not new;
a fashionable architect had made the large house "colonially" endurable
with furnaces and electricity as well as with fan-lights and fluted
pilasters.
Most of the land remained wild--weed-grown pastures, hard-wood ridges,
neglected orchards planted seventy years ago. Molly Wycherly had ordered
a brand new old-time garden to be made for her overlooking the wide,
unruffled river; also a series of sylvan paths along the wooded shores
of the hill-set lake which was inhabited by bass placed there by orders
of her husband.
"For Heaven's sake," he said to his wife, "don't try to knock any
antiquity into the place; I'm sick of fine old ancestral halls put up by
building-loan associations. Plenty of paint and varnish for mine, Molly,
and a few durable iron fountains and bronze stags on the lawn----"
"No, Jim," she said firmly.
So he ordered an aeroplane, a herd of sheep, a shepherd, and two
tailless sheep-dogs, and made plans to spend most of his vacation
yachting, when he did not spend it in town.
But he was restlessly domiciled at Witch-Hollow, now, and he met Quarren
at the station in a bright purple runabout which he drove like
lightning, one hand on the steering wheel, the other carelessly waving
toward the streaky landscape in affable explanation of the various
points of interest.
"Quite a little colony of us up here, Quarren," he said. "I don't know
why anybody picked out this silly country for estates, but Langly Sprowl
started a stud farm over yonder, and then poor Chester Ledwith built a
house for his wife in the middle of a thousand acres, over there where
you see those maple woods!--and then people began to come and pick up
worn-out farms and make 'em into fine old family places--Lester
Caldera's model dairies are behind that hill; and that leather-headed
O'Hara has a bungalow somewhere--and there's a sort of Hunt Club, too,
and a bum pack of Kiyi's----"
The wind tore most of his speech from his lips and whirled it out of
earshot: Quarren caught a word now and then which interested him. It
also interested him to observe how Wycherly shaved annihilation at every
turn of the road.
"I've asked some men to bring up their biplanes and have a few flies on
me," continued his host--"I've a 'Stinger' monoplane and a Kent biplane
myself. I can't get any more sensation out of motoring. I'd as soon
wheel twins in a go-cart."
Quarren saw him cleverly avoid death with one hand, and laughed.
"Who is stopping with you up here?" he shouted close to Wycherly's ear.
"Nobody--Mrs. Leeds, Chrysos Lacy, and Sir Charles. There are some few
neighbours, too--Langly is mousing and prowling about; and that poor
Ledwith man is all alone in his big house--fixing to get out of it so
his wife can move in from Reno when she's ready for more mischief....
Here we are, Quarren! Your stuff will be in your rooms in a few minutes.
There's my wife, now----"
He waved his hand to Molly but let Quarren go forward alone while he
started across the fields toward his hangar where, in grotesque and
vicious-looking immobility, reposed his new winged pet, the little
Stinger monoplane, wings set as wickedly as an alert wasp's.