Complete weird tales of.., p.641
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 641
“Yes, I am,” said Quarren, frankly. “But that needn’t make any difference if you’d care to come to the basement and talk to me while I’m at work.”
Ledwith made no reply for a moment, then, abruptly:
“You’re always kind to me, Quarren.”
“Get over that idea,” laughed the younger man. “Strange as it may seem my natural inclination is to like people. Come on downstairs.”
In the littered disorder of the basement he found a chair for his visitor, then, without further excuse, went smilingly about his work, explaining it as it progressed:
“Here’s an old picture by some Italian gink — impossible to tell by whom it was painted, but not difficult to assign it to a certain date and school.... See what I’m doing, Ledwith?
“That’s what we call ‘rabbit glue’ because it’s made out of rabbits’ bones — or that’s the belief, anyway. It’s gilder’s glue.
“Now I dissolve this much of it in hot water — then I glue over the face of the picture three layers of tissue-paper, one on top of the other — so!
“Now here is a new chassis or stretcher over which I have stretched a new linen canvas. Yesterday I sponged it as a tailor sponges cloth; and now it’s dry and tight.
“Now I’m going to reline this battered old Italian canvas. It’s already been relined — perhaps a hundred years ago. So first I take off the old relining canvas — with hot water — this way — cleaning off all the old paste or glue from it with alcohol....
“Now here’s a pot of paste in which there is also glue and whitening; and I spread it over the back of this old painting, and then, very gingerly, glue it over the new linen canvas on the stretcher.
“Now I smooth it with this polished wooden block, and then — just watch me do laundry work!”
He picked up a flat-iron which was moderately warm, reversed the relined picture on a marble slab, and began to iron it out with the skill and precaution of an expert laundress doing frills.
Ledwith looked on with a sort of tremulously fixed interest.
“In three days,” said Quarren, laying the plastered picture away, “I’ll soak off that tissue paper with warm water. I have to keep it on, you see, so that no flakes of paint shall escape from the painting and no air get in to blister the surface.”
He picked up another picture and displayed it:
“Here’s a picture that I believe to be a study by Greuze. You see I have already relined it and it’s fixed on its new canvas and stretcher and is thoroughly dry and ready for cleaning. And this is how I begin.”
He took a fine sponge, soaked it in a weak solution of alcohol, and very gingerly washed the blackened and dirty canvas. Then he dried it. Then he gave it a coat of varnish.
“Looks foolish to varnish over a filthy and discoloured picture like this, doesn’t it, Ledwith? But I’ll tell you why. When that varnish dries hard I shall place my hand on the face of that canvas and begin very cautiously but steadily to rub the varnished surface with my fingers and thumb. And do you know what will happen? The new varnish has partly united with the old yellow and opaque coating of varnish and dust, and it all will turn to a fine gray powder under the friction and will come away leaving the old paint underneath almost as fresh — very often quite as fresh and delicate as when the picture was first painted.
“Sometimes I have to use three or more coats of new varnish before I can remove the old without endangering the delicate glaze underneath. But sooner or later I get it clean.
“Then I dig out any old patches or restorations and fill in with a composition of putty, white lead, and a drier, and smooth this with a cork. Then when it is sunned for an hour a day for three weeks or more — or less, sometimes — I’m ready to grind my pure colours, mix them, set my palette, and do as honest a piece of restoring as a study of that particular master’s methods permits. And that, Ledwith, is only a little part of my fascinating profession.
“Sometimes I lift the entire skin of paint from a canvas — picking out the ancient threads from the rotten texture — and transfer it to a new canvas or panel. Sometimes I cross-saw a panel, then chisel to the plaster that lies beneath the painting, and so transfer it to a new and sound support. Sometimes—” he laughed— “but there are a hundred delicate and interesting surgical operations which I attempt — a thousand exciting problems to solve — experiments without end that tempt me, innovations that allure me — —”
He laughed again:
“You ought to take up some fad and make a business and even an art out of it!”
“I?” said Ledwith, dully.
“Why not? Man, you’re young yet, if — if — —”
“Yes, I know, Quarren.... But my mind is too old — very old and very infirm — dying in me of age — the age that comes through those centuries of pain that men sometimes live through in a few months.”
Quarren looked at him hopelessly.
“Yet,” he said, “if only a man wills it, the world is new again.”
“But — if the will fails?”
“I don’t know, Ledwith.”
“I do.” He drew up his cuff a little way, his dead eyes resting on Quarren, then, in silence, he drew the sleeve over the scars.
“Even that can be cured,” said the younger man.
“If there is a will to cure it, perhaps.”
“Even a desire is enough.”
“I have not that desire. Why cure it?”
“Because, Ledwith, you haven’t gone your limit yet. There’s more of life; and you’re cheating yourself out of it.”
“Yes, perhaps. But what kind of life?” he asked, staring vaguely out into the sunshine of the backyard. “Life in hell has no attractions for me.”
“We make our own hells.”
“I didn’t make mine. They dug the pit and I fell into it — Hell’s own pit, Quarren — —”
“You are wrong! You fell into a pit which hurt so much that you supposed it was the pit of hell. And, taking it for granted, you burrowed deeper in blind fury, until it became a real hell. But you dug it. There is no hell that a man does not dig for himself!”
In Ledwith’s dull eyes a smouldering spark seemed to flash, go out, then glimmer palely.
“Quarren,” he said, “I am not going to live in hell alone. I’m going there, shortly, but not alone.”
Something new and sinister in his eyes arrested the other’s attention. He considered the man for a few moments, then, coolly:
“I wouldn’t, Ledwith.”
“Why not?”
“He isn’t worth it — even as company in hell.”
“Do you think I’m going to let him live on?”
“Do you care to sink to his level?”
“Sink! Can I sink any lower than I am?”
Quarren shrugged:
“Easily, if you commit murder.”
“That isn’t murder — —”
But Quarren cut him short continuing:
“Sink lower, you ask? What have you done, anyway — except to commit this crime against yourself?” — touching him on the wrist. “I’m not aware of any other crime committed by you, Ledwith. You’re clean as you stand — except for this damnable insult and injury you offer yourself! Can’t you reason? A bullet-stung animal sometimes turns and bites itself. Is that why you are doing it? — to arouse the amusement and contempt of your hunter?”
“Quarren! By God you shall not say that to me — —”
“Why not? Have you ever considered what that man must think of you to see you turn and tear at the body he has crippled?”
Ledwith’s sunken eyes blazed; he straightened himself, took one menacing step forward; and Quarren laid a light, steady hand on his shoulder.
“Listen to me,” he said; “has it never occurred to you that you could deal him no deeper blow than to let him see a man stand up to him, face to face, where a creature lay writhing before, biting into its own vitals?”
He smiled into the fixed eyes of the almost mindless man:
“If you say the word I’ll stand by you, Ledwith. If all you want to do is to punish him, murder isn’t the way. What does a dead man care? Cut your own throat and the crime might haunt him — and might not. But kill! — Nonsense. It’s all over then — except for the murderer.”
He slid his hand quietly to Ledwith’s arm, patted it.
“To punish him you need a doctor.... It’s only a week under the new treatment. You know that, don’t you? After that a few months to get back nerve and muscle and common sense.”
“And then?” motioned Ledwith with dry lips.
“Then? Oh, anything that you fancy. It’s according to a man’s personal taste. You can take him by the neck and beat him up in public if you like — or knock him down in the club as often as he gets up. It all depends, Ledwith. Some of us maintain self-respect without violence; some of us seem to require it. It’s up to you.”
“Yes.”
Quarren said carelessly: “If I were you, I think that I’d face the world as soon as I was physically and mentally well enough — the real world I mean, Ledwith — either here or abroad, just as I felt about it.
“A man can get over anything except the stigma of dishonesty. And — personally I think he ought to have another chance even after that. But men’s ideas differ. As for you, what you become and show that you are, will go ultimately with the world. Beat him up if you like; but, personally, I never even wished to kick a cur. Some men kick ’em to their satisfaction; it’s a matter of taste I tell you. Besides — —”
He stopped short; and presently Ledwith looked up.
“Shall I say it?”
“Yes. You are kind to me, always.”
“Then — Ledwith, I don’t know exactly how matters stand. I can only try to put myself in your present place and imagine what I ought to do, having arrived where you have landed.... And, do you know, if I were you, and if I listened to my better self, I don’t think that I’d lay a finger on Langly Sprowl.”
“Why?”
“For the sake of the woman who betrayed me — and who is now betrayed in turn by the man who betrayed us both.”
Ledwith said through his set teeth: “Do you think I care for her? If I nearly kill him, do you imagine I care what the public will say about her?”
“You are generous enough to care, Ledwith.”
“I am not!” he said, hoarsely. “I don’t care a damn!”
“Then why do you care whether or not he keeps his word to her and shares with her a coat of social whitewash?”
“I — she is only a little fool — alone to face the world now — —”
“You’re quite right, Ledwith. She ought to have another chance. First offenders are given it by law.... But even if that chance lay in his marrying her, could you better it by killing him if he won’t do it? Or by battering him with a dog-whip?
“It isn’t really much of a chance, considering it on a higher level than the social viewpoint. How much real rehabilitation is there for a woman who marries such a man?”
He smiled: “Because,” he continued, “my viewpoint has changed. Things that once seemed important to me seem so no longer. To live cleanly and do your best in the real world is an aspiration more attractive to me than social absolution.”
Ledwith remained silent for a long while, then muttered something indistinctly.
“Wait a moment,” said Quarren, throwing aside his painter’s blouse and pulling on his coat. “I’ll ring up a taxi in a second!... You mean it, Ledwith?”
The man looked at him vacantly, then nodded.
“You’re on!” said Quarren, briskly unhooking the telephone.
While they were waiting Ledwith laid a shaking hand on Quarren’s sleeve and clung to it. He was trembling like a leaf when they entered the cab, whimpering when they left it in front of a wide brown-stone building composed of several old-time private residences thrown together.
“Stand by me, Quarren,” he whispered brokenly— “you won’t go away, will you? You wouldn’t leave me to face this all — all alone. You’ve been kind to me. I — I can do it — I can try to do it just at this moment — if you’ll stay close to me — if you’ll let me keep hold of you — —”
“Sure thing!” said Quarren cheerfully. “I’ll stay as long as you like. Don’t worry about your clothes; I’ll send for plenty of linen and things for us both. You’re all right, Ledwith — you’ve got the nerve. I — —”
The door opened to his ring; a pleasant-faced nurse in white ushered them in.
“Dr. Lydon will see you in a moment,” she said, singling out Ledwith at a glance.
* * *
Later that afternoon Quarren telephoned to Dankmere that he would not return for a day or two, and gave careful instructions which Dankmere promised to observe to the letter.
Then he sent a telegram to Strelsa:
“Unavoidably detained in town. Hope to be up next week. Am crazy to see your house and its new owner.
R. S. Q.”
Dankmere at the other end of the telephone hung up the receiver, looked carefully around him to be certain that Jessie Vining was still in the basement where she had gone to straighten up one or two things for Quarren, then, with a perfectly serious face, he began to dance, softly.
The Earl of Dankmere was light-footed and graceful when paying tribute to Terpsichore; walking-stick balanced in both hands, straw hat on the back of his head, he performed in absolute silence to the rhythm of the tune running through his head, backward, forward, sideways, airy as a ballet-maiden, then off he went into the back room with a refined kick or two at the ceiling.
And there, Jessie Vining, entering the front room unexpectedly, discovered the peer executing his art before the mirror, apparently enamoured of his own grace and agility.
When he caught a glimpse of her in the mirror he stopped very suddenly and came back to find her at her desk, laughing.
For a moment he remained red and disconcerted, but the memory of the fact that he and Miss Vining were to occupy the galleries all alone — exclusive of intrusive customers — for a day or more, assuaged a slight chagrin.
“At any rate,” he said, “it is just as well that you should know me as I am, Miss Vining — with all my faults and frivolous imperfections, isn’t it?”
“Why?” asked Miss Vining.
“Why — what?” repeated the Earl, confused.
“Why should I know all your imperfections?”
He thought hard for a moment, but seemed to discover no valid reason.
“You ask such odd questions,” he protested. “Now where the deuce do you suppose Quarren has gone? I’ll bet he’s cut the traces and gone up to see those people at Witch-Hollow.”
“Perhaps,” she said, making a few erasures in her type-written folio and rewriting the blank spaces. Then she glanced over the top of the machine at his lordship, who, as it happened, was gazing at her with such peculiar intensity that it took him an appreciable moment to rouse himself and take his eyes elsewhere.
“When do you take your vacation?” he asked, carelessly.
“I am not going to take one.”
“Oh, but you ought! You’ll go stale, fade, droop — er — and all that, you know!”
“It is very kind of you to feel interested,” she said, smiling, “but I don’t expect to droop — er — and all that, you know.”
He laughed, after a moment, and so did she — a sweet, fearless, little laugh most complimentary to his lordship if he only knew it — a pretty, frank tribute to what had become a friendship — an accord born of confidence on her part, and of several other things on the part of Lord Dankmere.
It had been of slow growth at first — imperceptibly their relations had grown from a footing of distant civility to a companionship almost cordial — but not quite; for she was still shy with him at times, and he with her; and she had her moods of unresponsive reserve, and he was moody, too, at intervals.
“You don’t like me to make fun of you, do you?” she asked.
“Don’t I laugh as though I like it?”
She knitted her pretty brows: “I don’t quite know. You see you’re a British peer — which is really a very wonderful thing — —”
“Oh, come,” he said: “it really is rather a wonderful thing, but you don’t believe it.”
“Yes, I do. I stand in awe of you. When you come into the room I seem to hear trumpets sounding in the far distance — —”
“My boots squeak — —”
“Nonsense! I do hear a sort of a fairy fanfare playing ‘Hail to the Belted Earl!’”
“I wear braces — —”
“How common of you to distort my meaning! I don’t care, you may do as you like — dance break-downs and hammer the piano, but to me you will ever remain a British peer — poor but noble — —”
“Wait until we hear from that Van Dyck! You can’t call me poor then!”
She laughed, then, looking at him earnestly, involuntarily clasped her hands.
“Isn’t it perfectly wonderful,” she breathed with a happy, satisfied sigh.
“Are you really very happy about it, Miss Vining?”
“I? Why shouldn’t I be!” she said indignantly. “I’m so proud that our gallery has such a picture. I’m so proud of Mr. Quarren for discovering it — and—” she laughed— “I’m proud of you for possessing it. You see I am very impartial; I’m proud of the gallery, of everybody connected with it including myself. Shouldn’t I be?”
“We are three very perfect people,” he said gravely.
“Do you know that we really are? Mr. Quarren is wonderful, and you are — agreeable, and as for me, why when I rise in the morning and look into the glass I say to myself, ‘Who is that rather clever-looking girl who smiles at me every morning in such friendly fashion?’ And, would you believe it! — she turns out to be Jessie Vining every time!”
She was in a gay mood; she rattled away at her machine, glancing over it mischievously at him from time to time. He, having nothing to do except to look at her, did so as often as he dared.
And so they kept the light conversational shuttle-cock flying through the sunny afternoon until it drew near to tea-time. Jessie said very seriously:
