Robert Chambers - The Streets of Ascalon

It being rent day, and Saturday, the staff of the "Irish Legation," with the exception of Westguard, began to migrate uptown for the monthly conference, returning one by one from that mysterious financial jungle popularly known as "Downtown." As for Westguard, he had been in his apartment all day as usual. He worked where he resided.

A little before five o'clock John Desmond Lacy, Jr., came in, went directly to his rooms on the top floor, fished out a check-book, and tried to persuade himself that he had a pleasing balance at the bank – not because he was likely to have any balance either there or in his youthful brain, but because he had to have one somewhere. God being good to the Irish he found he had not overdrawn his account.

Roger O'Hara knocked on his door, later, and receiving no response called out: "Are you in there, Jack?"

"No," said Lacy, scratching away with his pen in passionate hopes of discovering a still bigger balance.

"Sportin' your oak, old Skeezicks?" inquired O'Hara, affectionately, delivering a kick at the door.

"Let me alone, you wild Irishman!" shouted Lacy. "If I can't dig out an extra hundred somewhere the State Superintendent is likely to sport my oak for keeps!"

A big, lumbering, broad-shouldered young fellow was coming up the stairs behind O'Hara, a blank book and some papers tucked under his arm, and O'Hara nodded to him and opened Mr. Lacy's door without further parleying.

"Here's Westguard, now," he said; "and as we can't shoot landlords in the close season we'll have to make arrangements to pay for bed and board, Jack."

Lacy glanced up from the sheet of figures before him, then waved his guests to seats and lighted a cigarette.

"Hooray," he remarked to Westguard; "I can draw you a check, Karl, and live to tell the tale." And he rose and gave his place at the desk to the man addressed, who seated himself heavily, as though tired.

"Before we go over the accounts," he began, "I want to say a word or two – "

"Hadn't you better wait till Quarren comes in?" interrupted O'Hara, smoking and stretching out his long legs.

"No; I want to talk to you two fellows first. And I'll tell you at once what's the matter: Quarren's check came back marked 'no funds.' This is the third time; and one of us ought to talk to him."

"It's only a slip," said Lacy – "it's the tendency in him that considers the lilies of the field – "

"It isn't square," said Westguard doggedly.

"Nonsense, Karl, Rix means to be square – "

"That's all right, too, but he isn't succeeding. It humiliates me; it hurts like hell to have to call his attention to such oversights."

"Oh, he's the gay tra-la-la," said O'Hara, indulgently; "do you think he bothers his elegant noddle about such trifles as checks? Besides he's almost as Irish as I am – God bless his mother and damn all landlords, Lester Caldera included."

"What does Quarren do with all his money, then?" mused Lacy – "soaking the public in Tappan-Zee Park and sitting up so close and snug to the rich and great!"

"It's his business," said Westguard, "to see that any check he draws is properly covered. Overdrafts may be funny in a woman, and in novels, but once is too often for any man. And this makes three times for Rix."

"Ah, thin, lave the poor la-ad be! ye could-blooded Sassenach!" said Lacy, pretending to the brogue. "Phwat the divil! – 'tis the cashier ye should blame whin Rix tells him to pay, an' he refuses to projuice the long-green wad!"

But Westguard, unsmiling, consulted his memoranda, then, holding up his sheet of figures:

"There's a quorum here," he said. "Rix can read this over when he comes in, if he likes. Here's the situation." And he read off the items of liabilities and assets, showing exactly, and to a penny, how the house had been run for the past month.

Everything was there, rent, servants' wages, repairs, provisions, bills for heating and lighting, extras, incidentals – all disbursements and receipts; then, pausing for comments, and hearing none, he closed the ledger with a sharp slap.

"The roof's leakin'," observed O'Hara without particular interest.

"Write to the landlord," said Lacy – "the stingy millionaire."

"He won't fix it," returned the other. "Did you ever hear of Lester Caldera spendin' a cent?"

"On himself, yes."

"That's not spendin'; it all goes inside or outside of him somewhere." He stretched his legs, crossed them, sucked on his empty pipe, and looked around at Westguard, who was still fussing over the figures.

"Are you goin' to the Wycherlys', Karl?"

"I think so."

"What costume?"

"None of your business," retorted Westguard pleasantly.

"I'm going as the family Banshee," observed Lacy.

"Did you ever hear me screech, Karl?" And, pointing his nose skyward and ruffling up his auburn hair he emitted a yell so unendurable that it brought Westguard to his feet, protesting.

"Shut up!" he said. "Do you want to have this house pinched, you crazy Milesian?"

"Get out of my rooms if you don't like it," said Lacy. "If I'm going to a masked dance as a Banshee I've got to practice screaming, haven't I?"

"I," said O'Hara, "am goin' as a bingle."

"What's a bingle?"

"Nobody knows. Neither do I; and it's killin' me to think up a costume… Dick Quarren's goin', isn't he?"

"Does he ever miss anything?" said Lacy.

"He's missing most of his life," said Westguard so sharply that the others opened their eyes.

A flush had settled under Westguard's cheek-bones; he was still jotting down figures with a flat silver pencil, but presently he looked up.

"It's the cold and uncomplimentary truth about Ricky," he said. "That set he runs with is making an utter fool of him."

"That set," repeated Lacy, grinning. "Why, we all have wealthy relatives in it – wealthy, charming, and respectable – h'm!"

"Which is why we're at liberty to curse it out," observed O'Hara, complacently. "We all know what it is. Karl is right. If a man is goin' to make anythin' of himself he can't run with that expensive pack. One may venture to visit the kennels now and then, and look over the new litters – perhaps do a little huntin' once in a while – just enough – so that the M. F. H. recognises your coat tails when you come a cropper. But nix for wire or water! Me for the gate, please. Ah, do you think a man can stand what the papers call 'the realm of society' very long?"

"Rix is doing well."

Westguard said: "They've gradually been getting a strangle-hold on him. Women are crazy about that sort of man – with his good looks and good humour and his infernally easy way of obliging a hundred people at once… Look back a few years! Before he joined that whipper-snapper junior club he was full of decent ambition, full of go, unspoiled, fresh from college and as promising a youngster as anybody ever met. Where is his ambition now? What future has he? – except possibly to marry a million at forty-five and settle down with a comfortable grunt in the trough. It's coming, I tell you. Look what he was four years ago – a boy with clear eyes and a clear skin, frank, clean set, clean minded. Look at him now – sallow, wiry, unprofitably wise, rangé, disillusioned – oh, hell! they've mauled him to a shadow of a rag!"

Lacy lighted another cigarette and winked at O'Hara. "Karl's off again," he said. "Now we're going to get the Bible and the Sword for fair!"

"Doesn't everybody need them both!" said Westguard, smiling. Then his heavy features altered: "I care a good deal for Dick Quarren," he said. "That's why his loose and careless financial methods make me mad – that's why this loose and careless transformation of a decent, sincere, innocent boy into an experienced, easy-going, cynical man makes me tired. I've got to stand for it, I suppose, but I don't want to. He's a gifted, clever, lovable fellow, but he hasn't any money and any right to leisure, and these people are turning him into one of those dancing things that leads cotillions and arranges tableaux, and plays social diplomat and forgets secrets and has his pockets full of boudoir keys – good Lord! I hate to say it, but they're making a tame cat of him – they're using him ignobly, I tell you – and that's the truth – if he had a friend with courage enough to tell him! I've tried, but I can't talk this way to him."