Complete weird tales of.., p.626
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 626
“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.
* * *
CHAPTER IX
AS QUARREN CAME forward between the peonies drooping over the flagged walk, Molly Wycherly, awaiting him on the veranda, laid her forefinger across her lips conjuring caution.
“I didn’t tell Strelsa that you were coming,” she whispered; “I didn’t suppose the child could possibly object.”
“‘I didn’t tell Strelsa that you were coming,’ she whispered.”
Quarren’s features stiffened:
“Does she?”
“Why — this morning I said carelessly to Jim that I meant to ask you, and Strelsa came into my room later and begged me not to ask you until she had left.”
“Why?” inquired the boy, grimly.
“I really don’t know, Ricky — —”
“Yes, you do. What has happened?”
“You’re certainly rude enough — —”
“What has happened, Molly?”
“I don’t know for certain, I tell you.... Langly Sprowl has been roving around the place a great deal lately. He and Strelsa ride together nearly every day.”
“Do you think she has come to an understanding with him?”
“She hasn’t told me so. Perhaps she prefers Sir Charles.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Frankly, no. I’m much more afraid that Langly has persuaded her into some sort of a tacit engagement.... I don’t know what the child can be thinking of — unless the universal criticism of Langly Sprowl has convinced her of his martyrdom.... There’ll be a pretty situation when Mary Ledwith returns.... I could kill Langly—” She doubled both pretty hands and frowned at Quarren, then her swift smile broke out and she placed the tips of her fingers on his shoulders and stooping from the top step deliberately kissed him.
“You dear fellow,” she said; “I don’t care what Strelsa thinks; I’m glad you’ve come. And, oh, Ricky! The papers are full of you and Dankmere and your new enterprise! — I laughed and laughed! — forgive me, but the papers were so funny — and I couldn’t help laughing — —”
Quarren forced a smile.
“I have an idea,” he said, “that our new business is destined to command a good deal of respect sooner or later.”
“Has Dankmere anything really valuable in his collection?”
“I’m taking that risk,” he said, gaily. “Wait a few weeks, Molly, before you and Jim try to buy the entire collection.”
“I can see Jim decorating the new ‘Stinger’ with old masters,” laughed Molly. “Come upstairs with me; I’ll show you your quarters. Go lightly and don’t talk; Strelsa is wandering around the house somewhere with a bad case of blue devils, and I’d rather she were over her headache before your appearance adds another distressing jolt.”
“Has she had another shock recently?”
“A letter from her lawyers. There won’t be anything at all left for her.”
“Are you sure?”
“She is. Why, Ricky, the City had half a million on deposit there, and even that foxy young man Langly was caught for twice as much more. It’s a ghastly scandal — the entire affair. How many cents on a dollar do you suppose poor little Strelsa is going to recover? Not two!”
They paused at the door of his quarters. His luggage had already arrived and a valet was busy unpacking for him.
“Sir Charles, Chrysos Lacy, Jim and I are motoring. We’ll be back for tea. Prowl about, Ricky; the place is yours and everything in it — except that little girl over there” — pointing along the corridor to a distant door.
He smiled. “She may be, yet,” he said lightly. “Don’t come back too soon.”
So Molly went away laughing; and presently through the lace curtains, Quarren saw Jim Wycherly whirl up in a yellow touring car, and Molly, Chrysos, and Sir Charles clamber in for one of those terrific and headlong drives which made Jim’s hospitality a terror to the majority of his guests.
Quarren watched the car disappear, hopelessly followed by an overfed setter. Then the dust settled; the fat family pet came panting back to lie down on the lawn, dead beat, and Quarren resumed his toilet.
Half an hour later he emerged from his quarters wearing tennis flannels and screwing the stem into a new pipe which he had decided to break in — a tall, well-built, pleasant-eyed young fellow with the city pallor blanching his skin and the breeze stirring his short blond hair.
“Hello, old man!” he said affably to the fat setter, who thumped his tail on the grass and looked up at Quarren with mild, deerlike eyes.
“We’re out of the running, we two — aren’t we?” he added. “You try very pluckily to keep up with your master’s devil-wagon; I run a more hopeless race.... For the golden chariot is too swift for me, and the race is to the swift; and the prize, doggy, is a young girl’s unhappy heart which is slowly turning from sensitive flesh and blood into pure and senseless gold.”
He stood under a tree slowly filling his pipe. The scent of early summer was in the air; the odour of June peonies, and young leaves and clear waters; of grasses and hedges and distant hemlocks.
Leisurely, the fat dog waddling at his heels, he sauntered about the Wycherly place inspecting its renovated attractions — among others the new old-fashioned garden full of new old-fashioned flowers so marvellously developed by modern skill that he recognised scarcely any of them. Petunias, with their great fluted and scalloped blossoms resembled nothing he had known by that name; the peonies seemed to him enormous and exotic; rockets, larkspurs, spiderwort, pinks, all had been so fantastically and grotesquely developed by modern horticulture that Quarren felt as though he were wandering alone among a gardenful of strangers. Only here and there a glimpse of familiar sweet-william or the faint perfume of lemon-verbena brought a friendly warmth into his heart; but, in hostile silence he passed by hydrangea and althea, syringa and preposterous canna, quietly detesting the rose garden where scores of frail and frivolous strangers nodded amid anæmic leaves, or where great, blatant, aniline-coloured blossoms bulged in the sun, seeming to repeat with every strapping bud their Metropolitan price per dozen.
“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.
* * *
CHAPTER IX
AS QUARREN CAME forward between the peonies drooping over the flagged walk, Molly Wycherly, awaiting him on the veranda, laid her forefinger across her lips conjuring caution.
“I didn’t tell Strelsa that you were coming,” she whispered; “I didn’t suppose the child could possibly object.”
“‘I didn’t tell Strelsa that you were coming,’ she whispered.”
Quarren’s features stiffened:
“Does she?”
“Why — this morning I said carelessly to Jim that I meant to ask you, and Strelsa came into my room later and begged me not to ask you until she had left.”
“Why?” inquired the boy, grimly.
“I really don’t know, Ricky — —”
“Yes, you do. What has happened?”
“You’re certainly rude enough — —”
“What has happened, Molly?”
“I don’t know for certain, I tell you.... Langly Sprowl has been roving around the place a great deal lately. He and Strelsa ride together nearly every day.”
“Do you think she has come to an understanding with him?”
“She hasn’t told me so. Perhaps she prefers Sir Charles.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Frankly, no. I’m much more afraid that Langly has persuaded her into some sort of a tacit engagement.... I don’t know what the child can be thinking of — unless the universal criticism of Langly Sprowl has convinced her of his martyrdom.... There’ll be a pretty situation when Mary Ledwith returns.... I could kill Langly—” She doubled both pretty hands and frowned at Quarren, then her swift smile broke out and she placed the tips of her fingers on his shoulders and stooping from the top step deliberately kissed him.
“You dear fellow,” she said; “I don’t care what Strelsa thinks; I’m glad you’ve come. And, oh, Ricky! The papers are full of you and Dankmere and your new enterprise! — I laughed and laughed! — forgive me, but the papers were so funny — and I couldn’t help laughing — —”
Quarren forced a smile.
“I have an idea,” he said, “that our new business is destined to command a good deal of respect sooner or later.”
“Has Dankmere anything really valuable in his collection?”
“I’m taking that risk,” he said, gaily. “Wait a few weeks, Molly, before you and Jim try to buy the entire collection.”
“I can see Jim decorating the new ‘Stinger’ with old masters,” laughed Molly. “Come upstairs with me; I’ll show you your quarters. Go lightly and don’t talk; Strelsa is wandering around the house somewhere with a bad case of blue devils, and I’d rather she were over her headache before your appearance adds another distressing jolt.”
“Has she had another shock recently?”
“A letter from her lawyers. There won’t be anything at all left for her.”
“Are you sure?”
“She is. Why, Ricky, the City had half a million on deposit there, and even that foxy young man Langly was caught for twice as much more. It’s a ghastly scandal — the entire affair. How many cents on a dollar do you suppose poor little Strelsa is going to recover? Not two!”
They paused at the door of his quarters. His luggage had already arrived and a valet was busy unpacking for him.
“Sir Charles, Chrysos Lacy, Jim and I are motoring. We’ll be back for tea. Prowl about, Ricky; the place is yours and everything in it — except that little girl over there” — pointing along the corridor to a distant door.
He smiled. “She may be, yet,” he said lightly. “Don’t come back too soon.”
So Molly went away laughing; and presently through the lace curtains, Quarren saw Jim Wycherly whirl up in a yellow touring car, and Molly, Chrysos, and Sir Charles clamber in for one of those terrific and headlong drives which made Jim’s hospitality a terror to the majority of his guests.
Quarren watched the car disappear, hopelessly followed by an overfed setter. Then the dust settled; the fat family pet came panting back to lie down on the lawn, dead beat, and Quarren resumed his toilet.
Half an hour later he emerged from his quarters wearing tennis flannels and screwing the stem into a new pipe which he had decided to break in — a tall, well-built, pleasant-eyed young fellow with the city pallor blanching his skin and the breeze stirring his short blond hair.
“Hello, old man!” he said affably to the fat setter, who thumped his tail on the grass and looked up at Quarren with mild, deerlike eyes.
“We’re out of the running, we two — aren’t we?” he added. “You try very pluckily to keep up with your master’s devil-wagon; I run a more hopeless race.... For the golden chariot is too swift for me, and the race is to the swift; and the prize, doggy, is a young girl’s unhappy heart which is slowly turning from sensitive flesh and blood into pure and senseless gold.”
He stood under a tree slowly filling his pipe. The scent of early summer was in the air; the odour of June peonies, and young leaves and clear waters; of grasses and hedges and distant hemlocks.
Leisurely, the fat dog waddling at his heels, he sauntered about the Wycherly place inspecting its renovated attractions — among others the new old-fashioned garden full of new old-fashioned flowers so marvellously developed by modern skill that he recognised scarcely any of them. Petunias, with their great fluted and scalloped blossoms resembled nothing he had known by that name; the peonies seemed to him enormous and exotic; rockets, larkspurs, spiderwort, pinks, all had been so fantastically and grotesquely developed by modern horticulture that Quarren felt as though he were wandering alone among a gardenful of strangers. Only here and there a glimpse of familiar sweet-william or the faint perfume of lemon-verbena brought a friendly warmth into his heart; but, in hostile silence he passed by hydrangea and althea, syringa and preposterous canna, quietly detesting the rose garden where scores of frail and frivolous strangers nodded amid anæmic leaves, or where great, blatant, aniline-coloured blossoms bulged in the sun, seeming to repeat with every strapping bud their Metropolitan price per dozen.
