The Moonlit Way: A Novel
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Title: The Moonlit Way: A Novel
Author: Robert W. Chambers
Illustrator: Arthur Ignatius Keller
Release date: August 28, 2010 [eBook #33557]
Language: English
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THE MOONLIT WAY
A Novel
by
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
Author of "The Common Law," "The Fighting Chance," Etc.
Illustrated by A. I. Keller
D. Appleton and Company New York London 1919
[Illustration: HIS STRAINED GAZE SOUGHT TO FIX ITSELF ON THIS
FACE--(PAGE 325)]
Copyright, 1919, by Robert W. Chambers
Copyright, 1918, 1919, by the International Magazine Co.
Printed in the United States of America
TO MY FRIEND FRANK HITCHCOCK
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Prologue--Claire-de-Lune 1
I. A Shadow Dance 19
II. Sunrise 28
III. Sunset 39
IV. Dusk 46
V. In Dragon Court 57
VI. Dulcie 78
VII. Opportunity Knocks 87
VIII. Dulcie Answers 102
IX. Her Day 109
X. Her Evening 123
XI. Her Night 131
XII. The Last Mail 155
XIII. A Midnight Tete-a-Tete 170
XIV. Problems 186
XV. Blackmail 194
XVI. The Watcher 205
XVII. A Conference 216
XVIII. The Babbler 233
XIX. A Chance Encounter 249
XX. Grogan's 265
XXI. The White Blackbird 278
XXII. Foreland Farms 292
XXIII. A Lion in the Path 312
XXIV. A Silent House 328
XXV. Starlight 339
XXVI. 'Be-N Eirinn I! 349
XXVII. The Moonlit Way 366
XXVIII. Green Jackets 385
XXIX. Asthore 407
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
His strained gaze sought to fix itself on this face
before him Frontispiece
Nihla put her feathered steed through its absurd
paces 8
"You little miracle!" 100
He came toward her stealthily 382
Novels By Robert W. Chambers
The Laughing Girl
The Restless Sex
Barbarians
The Dark Star
The Girl Philippa
Who Goes There!
Athalie
The Business of Life
The Gay Rebellion
The Streets of Ascalon
The Common Law
The Fighting Chance
The Younger Set
The Danger Mark
The Firing Line
Japonette
Quick Action
The Adventures of A Modest Man
Anne's Bridge
Between Friends
The Better Man
Police!!!
Some Ladies in Haste
The Tree of Heaven
The Tracer of Lost Persons
The Hidden Children
The Moonlit Way
Cardigan
The Reckoning
The Maid-at-Arms
Ailsa Paige
Special Messenger
The Haunts of Men
Lorraine
Maids of Paradise
Ashes of Empire
The Red Republic
Blue-Bird Weather
A Young Man in a Hurry
The Green Mouse
Iole
The Mystery of Choice
The Cambric Mask
The Maker of Moons
The King in Yellow
In Search of the Unknown
The Conspiritors
A King and a Few Dukes
In the Quarter
Outsiders
PROLOGUE
CLAIRE-DE-LUNE
There was a big moon over the Bosphorus; the limpid waters off
Seraglio Point glimmered; the Golden Horn was like a sheet of beaten
silver inset with topaz and ruby where lanterns on rusting Turkish
warships dyed the tarnished argent of the flood. Except for these, and
the fixed lights on the foreign guard-ships and on a big American
steam yacht, only a pale and nebulous shoreward glow betrayed the
monster city.
Over Pera the full moon's lustre fell, silvering palace, villa, sea
and coast; its rays glimmered on bridge and wharf, bastion, tower
arsenal, and minarette, transforming those big, sprawling, ramshackle
blotches of architecture called Constantinople into that shadowy,
magnificent enchantment of the East, which all believe in, but which
exists only in a poet's heart and mind.
Night veiled the squalour of Balat, and its filth, its meanness, its
flimsy sham. Moonlight made of Galata a marvel, ennobling every
bastard dome, every starved facade, every unlovely and attenuated
minarette, and invested with added charm each really lovely ruin, each
tower, palace, mosque, garden wall and balcony, and every crenelated
battlement, where the bronze bulk of ancient cannon slanted, outlined
in silver under the Prophet's moon.
Tiny moving lights twinkled on the Galata Bridge; pale points of
radiance dotted Scutari; but the group of amazing cities called
Constantinople lay almost blotted out under the moon.
Darker at night than any capital in the world, its huge, solid and
ancient shapes bulking gigantic in the night, its noble ruins cloaked,
its cheap filth hidden, its flimsy Coney Island aspect transfigured
and the stylographic-pen architecture of a hundred minarettes softened
into slender elegance, Constantinople lay dreaming its immemorial
dreams under the black shadow of the Prussian eagle.
* * * * *
The German Embassy was lighted up like a Pera cafe; the drawing-rooms
crowded with a brilliant throng where sashes, orders, epaulettes and
sabre-tache glittered, and jewels blazed and aigrettes waved under the
crystal chandeliers, accenting and isolating sombre civilian evening
dress, which seemed mournful, rusty, and out of the picture, even when
plastered over with jewelled stars.
Few Turkish officials and officers were present, but the disquieting
sight of German officers in Turkish uniforms was not uncommon. And the
Count d'Eblis, Senator of France, noted this phenomenon with lively
curiosity, and mentioned it to his companion, Ferez Bey.
Ferez Bey, lounging in a corner with Adolf Gerhardt, for whom he had
procured an invitation, and flanked by the Count d'Eblis, likewise a
guest aboard the rich German-American banker's yacht, was very much in
his element as friend and mentor.
For Ferez Bey knew everybody in the Orient--knew when to cringe, when
to be patronising, when to fawn, when to assert himself, when to be
servile, when impudent.
He was as impudent to Adolf Gerhardt as he dared be, the banker not
knowing the subtler shades and differences; he was on an equality with
the French senator, Monsieur le Comte d'Eblis because he knew that
d'Eblis dared not resent his familiarity.
Otherwise, in that brilliant company, Ferez Bey was a jackal--and he
knew it perfectly--but a valuable jackal; and he also knew that.
So when the German Ambassador spoke pleasantly to him, his attitude
was just sufficiently servile, but not overdone; and when Von-der-Hohe
Pasha, in the uniform of a Turkish General of Division, graciously
exchanged a polite word with him during a moment's easy gossip with
the Count d'Eblis, Ferez Bey writhed moderately under the honour, but
did not exactly squirm.
To Conrad von Heimholz he ventured to present his German-American
patron, Adolf Gerhardt, and the thin young military attache
condescended in his Prussian way to notice the introduction.
"Saw your yacht in the harbour," he admitted stiffly. "It is
astonishing how you Americans permit no bounds to your somewhat
noticeable magnificence."
"She's a good boat, the _Mirage_," rumbled Gerhardt, in his bushy red
beard, "but there are plenty in America finer than mine."
"Not many, Adolf," insisted Ferez, in his flat, Eurasian voice--"not
ver' many anyw'ere so fine like your _Mirage_."
"I saw none finer at Kiel," said the attache, staring at Gerhardt
through his monocle, with the habitual insolence and disapproval of
the Prussian junker. "To me it exhibits bad taste"--he turned to the
Count d'Eblis--"particularly when the _Meteor_ is there."
"Where?" asked the Count.
"At Kiel. I speak of Kiel and the ostentation of certain foreign yacht
owners at the recent regatta."
Gerhardt, redder than ever, was still German enough to swallow the
meaningless insolence. He was not getting on very well at the Embassy
of his fellow countrymen. Americans, properly presented, they endured
without too open resentment; for German-Americans, even when
millionaires, their contempt and bad manners were often undisguised.
"I'm going to get out of this," growled Gerhardt, who held a good
position socially in New York and in the fashionable colony at
Northbrook. "I've seen enough puffed up Germans and over-embroidered
Turks to last me. Come on, d'Eblis----"
Ferez detained them both:
"Surely," he protested, "you would not miss Nihla!"
"Nihla?" repeated d'Eblis, who had passed his arm through Gerhardt's.
"Is that the girl who set St. Petersburg by the ears?"
"Nihla Quellen," rumbled Gerhardt. "I've heard of her. She's a dancer,
isn't she?"
Ferez, of course, knew all about her, and he drew the two men into the
embrasure of a long window.
It was not happening just exactly as he and the German Ambassador had
planned it together; they had intended to let Nihla burst like a
flaming jewel on the vision of d'Eblis and blind him then and there.
Perhaps, after all, it was better drama to prepare her entrance. And
who but Ferez was qualified to prepare that entree, or to speak with
authority concerning the history of this strange and beautiful young
girl who had suddenly appeared like a burning star in the East, had
passed like a meteor through St. Petersburg, leaving several
susceptible young men--notably the Grand Duke Cyril--mentally unhinged
and hopelessly dissatisfied with fate.
"It is ver' fonny, d'Eblis--une histoire chic, vous savez! Figurez
vous----"
"Talk English," growled Gerhardt, eyeing the serene progress of a
pretty Highness, Austrian, of course, surrounded by gorgeous uniforms
and empressement.
"Who's that?" he added.
Ferez turned; the gorgeous lady snubbed him, but bowed to d'Eblis.
"The Archduchess Zilka," he said, not a whit abashed. "She is a ver'
great frien' of mine."
"Can't you present me?" enquired Gerhardt, restlessly; "--or you,
d'Eblis--can't you ask permission?"
The Count d'Eblis nodded inattentively, then turned his heavy and
rather vulgar face to Ferez, plainly interested in the "histoire" of
the girl, Nihla.
"What were you going to say about that dancer?" he demanded.
Ferez pretended to forget, then, apparently recollecting:
"Ah! Apropos of Nihla? It is a ver' piquant storee--the storee of
Nihla Quellen. Zat is not 'er name. No! Her name is Dunois--Thessalie
Dunois."
"French," nodded d'Eblis.
"Alsatian," replied Ferez slyly. "Her fathaire was captain--Achille
Dunois?--you know----?"
"What!" exclaimed d'Eblis. "Do you mean that notorious fellow, the
Grand Duke Cyril's hunting cheetah?"
"The same, dear frien'. Dunois is dead--his bullet head was crack
open, doubtless by som' ladee's angree husban'. There are a few
thousan' roubles--not more--to stan' between some kind gentleman and
the prettee Nihla. You see?" he added to Gerhardt, who was listening
without interest, "--Dunois, if he was the Gran' Duke's cheetah, kept
all such merry gentlemen from his charming daughtaire."
Gerhardt, whose aspirations lay higher, socially, than a dancing girl,
merely grunted. But d'Eblis, whose aspirations were always below even
his own level, listened with visibly increasing curiosity. And this
was according to the programme of Ferez Bey and Excellenz. As the Hun
has it, "according to plan."
"Well," enquired d'Eblis heavily, "did Cyril get her?"
"All St. Petersburg is still laughing at heem," replied the voluble
Eurasian. "Cyril indeed launched her. And that was sufficient--yet,
that first night she storm St. Petersburg. And Cyril's reward? Listen,
d'Eblis, they say she slapped his sillee face. For me, I don't know.
That is the storee. And he was ver' angree, Cyril. You know? And, by
God, it was what Gerhardt calls a 'raw deal.' Yess? Figurez
vous!--this girl, deja lancee--and her fathaire the Grand Duke's
hunting cheetah, and her mothaire, what? Yes, mon ami, a 'andsome
Georgianne, caught quite wild, they say, by Prince Haledine! For me, I
believe it. Why not?... And then the beautiful Georgianne, she fell to
Dunois--on a bet?--a service rendered?--gratitude of Cyril?----Who
knows? Only that Dunois must marry her. And Nihla is their daughtaire.
Voila!"
"Then why," demanded d'Eblis, "does she make such a fuss about being
grateful? I hate ingratitude, Ferez. And how can she last, anyway? To
dance for the German Ambassador in Constantinople is all very well,
but unless somebody launches her properly--in Paris--she'll end in a
Pera cafe."
Ferez held his peace and listened with all his might.
"I could do that," added d'Eblis.
"Please?" inquired Ferez suavely.
"Launch her in Paris."
The programme of Excellenz and Ferez Bey was certainly proceeding as
planned.
But Gerhardt was becoming restless and dully irritated as he began to
realise more and more what caste meant to Prussians and how
insignificant to these people was a German-American multimillionaire.
And Ferez realised that he must do something.
There was a Bavarian Baroness there, uglier than the usual run of
Bavarian baronesses; and to her Ferez nailed Gerhardt, and wriggled
free himself, making his way amid the gorgeous throngs to the Count
d'Eblis once more.
"I left Gerhardt planted," he remarked with satisfaction; "by God, she
is uglee like camels--the Baroness von Schaunitz! Nev' mind. It is
nobility; it is the same to Adolf Gerhardt."
"A homely woman makes me sick!" remarked d'Eblis. "Eh, mon Dieu!--one
has merely to look at these ladies to guess their nationality! Only in
Germany can one gather together such a collection of horrors. The only
pretty ones are Austrian."
Perhaps even the cynicism of Excellenz had not realised the perfection
of this setting, but Ferez, the nimble witted, had foreseen it.
Already the glittering crowds in the drawing rooms were drawing aside
like jewelled curtains; already the stringed orchestra had become mute
aloft in its gilded gallery.
The gay tumult softened; laughter, voices, the rustle of silks and
fans, the metallic murmur of drawing-room equipment died away. Through
the increasing stillness, from the gilded gallery a Thessalonian reed
began skirling like a thrush in the underbrush.
Suddenly a sand-coloured curtain at the end of the east room twitched
open, and a great desert ostrich trotted in. And, astride of the big,
excited, bridled bird, sat a young girl, controlling her restless
mount with disdainful indifference.
"Nihla!" whispered Ferez, in the large, fat ear of the Count d'Eblis.
The latter's pallid jowl reddened and his pendulous lips tightened to
a deep-bitten crease across his face.
To the weird skirling of the Thessalonian pipe the girl, Nihla, put
her feathered steed through its absurd paces, aping the haute-ecole.
There is little humour in your Teuton; they were too amazed to laugh;
too fascinated, possibly by the girl herself, to follow the panicky
gambols of the reptile-headed bird.
The girl wore absolutely nothing except a Yashmak and a zone of blue
jewels across her breasts and hips.
Her childish throat, her limbs, her slim, snowy body, her little naked
feet were lovely beyond words. Her thick dark hair flew loose, now
framing, now veiling an oval face from which, above the gauzy
Yashmak's edge, two dark eyes coolly swept her breathless audience.
But under the frail wisp of cobweb, her cheeks glowed pink, and two
full red lips parted deliciously in the half-checked laughter of
confident, reckless youth.
[Illustration: NIHLA PUT HER FEATHERED STEED THROUGH ITS ABSURD PACES]
Over hurdle after hurdle she lifted her powerful, half-terrified
mount; she backed it, pirouetted, made it squat, leap, pace, trot,
run with wings half spread and neck stretched level.
She rode sideways, then kneeling, standing, then poised on one foot;
she threw somersaults, faced to the rear, mounted and dismounted at
full speed. And through the frail, transparent Yashmak her parted red
lips revealed the glimmer of teeth and her childishly engaging
laughter rang delightfully.
Then, abruptly, she had enough of her bird; she wheeled, sprang to the
polished parquet, and sent her feathered steed scampering away through
the sand-coloured curtains, which switched into place again
immediately.
Breathless, laughing that frank, youthful, irresistible laugh which
was to become so celebrated in Europe, Nihla Quellen strolled
leisurely around the circle of her applauding audience, carelessly
blowing a kiss or two from her slim finger-tips, evidently quite
unspoiled by her success and equally delighted to please and to be
pleased.
Then, in the gilded gallery the strings began; and quite naturally,
without any trace of preparation or self-consciousness, Nihla
began to sing, dancing when the fascinating, irresponsible measure
called for it, singing again as the sequence occurred. And the
enchantment of it all lay in its accidental and detached allure--as
though it all were quite spontaneous--the song a passing whim, the
dance a capricious after-thought, and the whole thing done entirely to
please herself and give vent to the sheer delight of a young girl, in
her own overwhelming energy and youthful spirits.
Even the Teuton comprehended that, and the applause grew to a roar
with that odd undertone of animal menace always to be detected when
the German herd is gratified and expresses pleasure en masse.
But she wouldn't stay, wouldn't return. Like one of those beautiful
Persian cats, she had lingered long enough to arouse delight. Then she
went, deaf to recall, to persuasion, to caress--indifferent to praise,
to blandishment, to entreaty. Cat and dancer were similar; Nihla, like
the Persian puss, knew when she had had enough. That was sufficient
for her: nothing could stop her, nothing lure her to return.
Beads of sweat were glistening upon the heavy features of the Count
d'Eblis. Von-der-Goltz Pasha, strolling near, did him the honour to
remember him, but d'Eblis seemed dazed and unresponsive; and the old
Pasha understood, perhaps, when he caught the beady and expressive
eyes of Ferez fixed on him in exultation.
"Whose is she?" demanded d'Eblis abruptly. His voice was hoarse and
evidently out of control, for he spoke too loudly to please Ferez, who
took him by the arm and led him out to the moonlit terrace.
"Mon pauvere ami," he said soothingly, "she is actually the propertee
of nobodee at present. Cyril, they say, is following her--quite ready
for anything--marriage----"
"What!"
Ferez shrugged:
"That is the gosseep. No doubt som' man of wealth, more acceptable to
her----"
"I wish to meet her!" said d'Eblis.
"Ah! That is, of course, not easee----"
"Why?"
Ferez laughed:
"Ask yo'self the question again! Excellenz and his guests have gone
quite mad ovaire Nihla----"
"I care nothing for them," retorted d'Eblis thickly; "I wish to know
her.... I wish to know her!... _Do you understand?_"
After a silence, Ferez turned in the moonlight and looked at the Count
d'Eblis.
"And your newspapaire--_Le Mot d'Ordre_?"
"Yes.... If you get her for me."
"You sell to me for two million francs the control stock in _Le Mot
d'Ordre_?"
"Yes."
"An' the two million, eh?"
"I shall use my influence with Gerhardt. That is all I can do. If your
Emperor chooses to decorate him--something--the Red Eagle, third
class, perhaps----"
"I attend to those," smiled Ferez. "Hit's ver' fonny, d'Eblis, how I
am thinking about those Red Eagles all time since I know Gerhardt. I
spik to Von-der-Goltz de votre part, si vous le voulez? Oui?
Alors----"
"Ask her to supper aboard the yacht."
"God knows----"
The Count d'Eblis said through closed teeth:
"There is the first woman I ever really wanted in all my life!... I am
standing here now waiting for her--waiting to be presented to her
now."
"I spik to Von-der-Goltz Pasha," said Ferez; and he slipped through
the palms and orange trees and vanished.
For half an hour the Count d'Eblis stood there, motionless in the
moonlight.
She came about that time, on the arm of Ferez Bey, her father's friend
of many years.
And Ferez left her there in the creamy Turkish moonlight on the
flowering terrace, alone with the Count d'Eblis.
When Ferez came again, long after midnight, with Excellenz on one arm
and the proud and happy Adolf Gerhardt on the other, the whole cycle
of a little drama had been played to a conclusion between those two
shadowy figures under the flowering almonds on the terrace--between
this slender, dark-eyed girl and this big, bulky, heavy-visaged man of
the world.
And the man had been beaten and the girl had laid down every term. And
the compact was this: that she was to be launched in Paris; she was
merely to borrow any sum needed, with privilege to acquit the debt
within the year; that, if she ever came to care for this man
sufficiently, she was to become only one species of masculine
property--a legal wife.
And to every condition--and finally even to the last, the man had
bowed his heavy, burning head.
"D'Eblis!" began Gerhardt, almost stammering in his joy and pride.
"His highness tells me that I am to have an order--an Imperial
d-decoration----"
D'Eblis stared at him out of unseeing eyes; Nihla laughed outright,
alas, too early wise and not even troubling her lovely head to wonder
why a decoration had been asked for this burly, bushy-bearded man from
nowhere.
But within his sinuous, twisted soul Ferez writhed exultingly, and
patted Gerhardt on the arm, and patted d'Eblis, too--dared even to
squirm visibly closer to Excellenz, like a fawning dog that fears too
much to venture contact in his wriggling demonstrations.
"You take with you our pretty wonder-child to Paris to be launched, I
hear," remarked Excellenz, most affably, to d'Eblis. And to Nihla:
"And upon a yacht fit for an emperor, I understand. Ach! Such a going
forth is only heard of in the Arabian Nights. Eh bien, ma petite, go
West, conquer, and reign! It is a prophecy!"
And Nihla threw back her head and laughed her full-throated laughter
under the Turkish moon.
* * * * *
Later, Ferez, walking with the Ambassador, replied humbly to the curt
question:
"Yes, I have become his jackal. But always at the orders of
Excellenz."
* * * * *
Later still, aboard the _Mirage_, Ferez stood alone by the after-rail,
staring with ratty eyes at the blackness beyond the New Bridge.
"Oh, God, be merciful!" he whispered. He had often said it on the
eve of crime. Even an Eurasian rat has emotions. And Ferez had
been in love with Nihla many years, and was selling her now at a
price--selling her and Adolf Gerhardt and the Count d'Eblis and
France--all he had to barter--for he had sold his soul too long
ago to remember even what he got for it.
The silence seemed more intense for the sounds that made it audible.
From, the unlighted cities on the seven hills came an unbroken howling
of dogs; transparent waves of the limpid Bosphorus slapped the
vessel's sides, making a mellow and ceaseless clatter. Far away beyond
Galata Quay, in the inner reek of unseen Stamboul, the notes of a
Turkish flute stole out across the darkness, where some Tzigane--some
unseen wretch in rags--was playing the melancholy song of Mourad. And,
mournfully responsive to the reedy complaint of a homeless wanderer
from a nation without a home, the homeless dogs of Islam wailed their
miserere under the Prophet's moon.
The tragic wolf-song wavered from hill to hill; from the Fields of the
Dead to the Seven Towers, from Kassim to Tophane, seeming to swell
into one dreadful, endless plaint:
"My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"
"And me!" muttered Ferez, shivering in the windy vapours from the
Black Sea, which already dampened his face with their creeping summer
chill.
"Ferez!"
He turned slowly. Swathed in a white wool bernous, Nihla stood there
in the foggy moonlight.
"Why?" she enquired, without preliminaries and with the unfeigned
curiosity of a child.
He did not pretend to misunderstand her in French:
"Thou knowest, Nihla. I have never touched thy heart. I could do
nothing for thee----"
"Except to sell me," she smiled, interrupting him in English, without
the slightest trace of accent.
But Ferez preferred the refuge of French:
"Except to launch thee and make possible thy career," he corrected her
very gently.
"I thought you were in love with me?"
"I have loved thee, Nihla, since thy childhood."
"Is there anything on earth or in paradise, Ferez, that you would not
sell for a price?"
"I tell thee----"
"Zut! I know thee, Ferez!" she mocked him, slipping easily into
French. "What was my price? Who pays thee, Colonel Ferez? This big,
shambling, world-wearied Count, who is, nevertheless, afraid of me?
Did he pay thee? Or was it this rich American, Gerhardt? Or was it
Von-der-Goltz? Or Excellenz?"
"Nihla! Thou knowest me----"
Her clear, untroubled laughter checked him:
"I know you, Ferez. That is why I ask. That is why I shall have no
reply from you. Only my wits can ever answer me any questions."
She stood laughing at him, swathed in her white wool, looming like
some mocking spectre in the misty moonlight of the after-deck.
"Oh, Ferez," she said in her sweet, malicious voice, "there was a
curse on Midas, too! You play at high finance; you sell what you never
had to sell, and you are paid for it. All your life you have been busy
selling, re-selling, bargaining, betraying, seeking always gain where
only loss is possible--loss of all that justifies a man in daring to
stand alive before the God that made him!... And yet--that which you
call love--that shadowy emotion which you have also sold to-night--I
think you really feel for me.... Yes, I believe it.... But it, too,
has its price.... _What_ was that price, Ferez?"
"Believe me, Nihla----"
"Oh, Ferez, you ask too much! No! Let _me_ tell _you_, then. The price
was paid by that American, who is not one but a German."
"That is absurd!"
"Why the Red Eagle, then? And the friendship of Excellenz? What is
he then, this Gerhardt, but a millionaire? Why is nobility so
gracious then? What does Gerhardt give for his Red Eagle?--for the
politeness of Excellenz?--for the crooked smile of a Bavarian
Baroness and the lifted lorgnette of Austria? What does he give for
_me_? Who buys me after all? Enver? Talaat? Hilmi? Who sells me?
Excellenz? Von-der-Goltz? You? And who pays for me? Gerhardt, who
takes his profit in Red Eagles and offers me to d'Eblis for
something in exchange to please Excellenz--and you? And what, at the
end of the bargaining, does d'Eblis pay for me--pay through Gerhardt
to you, and through you to Excellenz, and through Excellenz to the
Kaiser Wilhelm II----"
Ferez, showing his teeth, came close to her and spoke very softly:
"See how white is the moonlight off Seraglio Point, my Nihla!... It is
no whiter than those loveliest ones who lie fathoms deep below these
little silver waves.... Each with her bowstring snug about her snowy
neck.... As fair and young, as warm and fresh and sweet as thou, my
Nihla."
He smiled at her; and if the smile stiffened an instant on her lips,
the next instant her light, dauntless laughter mocked him.
"For a price," she said, "you would sell even Life to that old miser,
Death! Then listen what you have done, little smiling, whining jackal
of his Excellency! I go to Paris and to my career, certain of my happy
destiny, sure of myself! For my opportunity I pay if I choose--pay
_what_ I choose--when and where it suits me to pay!----"
She slipped into French with a little laugh:
"Now go and lick thy fingers of whatever crumbs have stuck there. The
Count d'Eblis is doubtless licking his. Good appetite, my Ferez! Lick
away lustily, for God does not temper the jackal's appetite to his
opportunities!"
Ferez let his level gaze rest on her in silence.
"Well, trafficker in Eagles, dealer in love, vendor of youth, merchant
of souls, what strikes you silent?"
But he was thinking of something sharper than her tongue and less
subtle, which one day might strike her silent if she laughed too much
at Fate.
And, thinking, he showed his teeth again in that noiseless snicker
which was his smile and laughter too.
The girl regarded him for a moment, then deliberately mimicked his
smile:
"The dogs of Stamboul laugh that way, too," she said, baring her
pretty teeth. "What amuses you? Did the silly old Von-der-Goltz Pasha
promise you, also, a dish of Eagle?--old Von-der-Goltz with his
spectacles an inch thick and nothing living within what he carries
about on his two doddering old legs! There's a German!--who died
twenty years ago and still walks like a damned man--jingling his iron
crosses and mumbling his gums! Is it a resurrection from 1870 come to
foretell another war? And why are these Prussian vultures gathering
here in Stamboul? Can you tell me, Ferez?--these Prussians in Turkish
uniforms! Is there anything dying or dead here, that these buzzards
appear from the sky and alight? Why do they crowd and huddle in a
circle around Constantinople? Is there something dead in Persia? Is
the Bagdad railroad dying? Is Enver Bey at his last gasp? Is Talaat?
Or perhaps the savoury odour comes from the Yildiz----"
"Nihla! Is there nothing sacred--nothing thou fearest on earth?"
"Only old age--and thy smile, my Ferez. Neither agrees with me." She
stretched her arms lazily.
"Allons," she said, stifling a pleasant yawn with one slim hand,"--my
maid will wake below and miss me; and then the dogs of Stamboul yonder
will hear a solo such as they never heard before.... Tell me, Ferez,
do you know when we are to weigh anchor?"
"At sunrise."
"It is the same to me,"--she yawned again--"my maid is aboard and all
my luggage. And my Ferez, also.... Mon dieu! And what will Cyril have
to say when he arrives to find me vanished! It is, perhaps, well for
us that we shall be at sea!"
Her quick laughter pealed; she turned with a careless gesture of
salute, friendly and contemptuous; and her white bernous faded away in
the moonlit fog.
And Ferez Bey stood staring after her out of his near-set, beady eyes,
loving her, desiring her, fearing her, unrepentant that he had sold
her, wondering whether the day might dawn when he would find it best
to kill her for the prosperity and peace of mind of the only living
being in whose service he never tired--himself.
I
A SHADOW DANCE
Three years later Destiny still wore a rosy face for Nihla Quellen.
And, for a young American of whom Nihla had never even heard, Destiny
still remained the laughing jade he had always known, beckoning him
ever nearer, with the coquettish promise of her curved forefinger, to
fame and wealth immeasurable.
* * * * *
Seated now on a moonlit lawn, before his sketching easel, this
optimistic young man, whose name was Barres, continued to observe the
movements of a dim white figure which had emerged from the villa
opposite, and was now stealing toward him across the dew-drenched
grass.
When the white figure was quite near it halted, holding up filmy
skirts and peering intently at him.
"May one look?" she inquired, in that now celebrated voice of hers,
through which ever seemed to sound a hint of hidden laughter.
"Certainly," he replied, rising from his folding camp stool.
She tiptoed over the wet grass, came up beside him, gazed down at the
canvas on his easel.
"Can you really see to paint? Is the moon bright enough?" she asked.
"Yes. But one has to be familiar with one's palette."
"Oh. You seem to know yours quite perfectly, monsieur."
"Enough to mix colours properly."
"I didn't realise that painters ever actually painted pictures by
moonlight."
"It's a sort of hit or miss business, but the notes made are
interesting," he explained.
"What do you do with these moonlight studies?"
"Use them as notes in the studio when a moonlight picture is to be
painted."
"Are you then a realist, monsieur?"
"As much of a realist as anybody with imagination can be," he replied,
smiling at her charming, moonlit face.
"I understand. Realism is merely honesty plus the imagination of the
individual."
"A delightful _mot_, madam----"
"Mademoiselle," she corrected him demurely. "Are you English?"
"American."
"Oh. Then may I venture to converse with you in English?" She said it
in exquisite English, entirely without accent.
"You _are_ English!" he exclaimed under his breath.
"No ... I don't know what I am.... Isn't it charming out here? What
particular view are you painting?"
"The Seine, yonder."
She bent daintily over his sketch, holding up the skirts of her
ball-gown.
"Your sketch isn't very far advanced, is it?" she inquired seriously.
"Not very," he smiled.
They stood there together in silence for a while, looking out over
the moonlit river to the misty, tree-covered heights.
Through lighted rows of open windows in the elaborate little villa
across the lawn came lively music and the distant noise of animated
voices.
"Do you know," he ventured smilingly, "that your skirts and slippers
are soaking wet?"
"I don't care. Isn't this June night heavenly?"
She glanced across at the lighted house. "It's so hot and noisy in
there; one dances only with discomfort. A distaste for it all sent me
out on the terrace. Then I walked on the lawn. Then I beheld you!...
Am I interrupting your work, monsieur? I suppose I am." She looked up
at him naively.
He said something polite. An odd sense of having seen her somewhere
possessed him now. From the distant house came the noisy American
music of a two-step. With charming grace, still inspecting him out of
her dark eyes, the girl began to move her pretty feet in rhythm with
the music.
"Shall we?" she inquired mischievously.... "Unless you are too
busy----"
The next moment they were dancing together there on the wet lawn,
under the high lustre of the moon, her fresh young face and fragrant
figure close to his.
During their second dance she said serenely:
"They'll raise the dickens if I stay here any longer. Do you know the
Comte d'Eblis?"
"The Senator? The numismatist?"
"Yes."
"No, I don't know him. I am only a Latin Quarter student."
"Well, he is giving that party. He is giving it for me--in my honour.
That is his villa. And I"--she laughed--"am going to marry
him--_perhaps_! Isn't this a delightful escapade of mine?"
"Isn't it rather an indiscreet one?" he asked smilingly.
"Frightfully. But I like it. How did you happen to pitch your easel on
his lawn?"
"The river and the hills--their composition appealed to me from here.
It is the best view of the Seine."
"Are you glad you came?"
They both laughed at the mischievous question.
* * * * *
During their third dance she became a little apprehensive and kept
looking over her shoulder toward the house.
"There's a man expected there," she whispered, "Ferez Bey. He's as
soft-footed as a cat and he always prowls in my vicinity. At times it
almost seems to me as though he were slyly watching me--as though he
were employed to keep an eye on me."
"A Turk?"
"Eurasian.... I wonder what they think of my absence? Alexandre--the
Comte d'Eblis--won't like it."
"Had you better go?"
"Yes; I ought to, but I won't.... Wait a moment!" She disengaged
herself from his arms. "Hide your easel and colour-box in the
shrubbery, in case anybody comes to look for me."
She helped him strap up and fasten the telescope-easel; they placed
the paraphernalia behind the blossoming screen of syringa. Then,
coming together, she gave herself to him again, nestling between his
arms with a little laugh; and they fell into step once more with the
distant dance-music. Over the grass their united shadows glided,
swaying, gracefully interlocked--moon-born phantoms which dogged
their light young feet....
* * * * *
A man came out on the stone terrace under the Chinese lanterns. When
they saw him they hastily backed into the obscurity of the shrubbery.
"Nihla!" he called, and his heavy voice was vibrant with irritation
and impatience.
He was a big man. He walked with a bulky, awkward gait--a few paces
only, out across the terrace.
"Nihla!" he bawled hoarsely.
Then two other men and a woman appeared on the terrace where the
lanterns were strung. The woman called aloud in the darkness:
"Nihla! Nihla! Where are you, little devil?" Then she and the two men
with her went indoors, laughing and skylarking, leaving the bulky man
there alone.
The young fellow in the shrubbery felt the girl's hand tighten on his
coat sleeve, felt her slender body quiver with stifled laughter. The
desire to laugh seized him, too; and they clung there together,
choking back their mirth while the big man who had first appeared
waddled out across the lawn toward the shrubbery, shouting:
"Nihla! Where are you then?" He came quite close to where they stood,
then turned, shouted once or twice and presently disappeared across
the lawn toward a walled garden. Later, several other people came out
on the terrace, calling, "Nihla, Nihla," and then went indoors,
laughing boisterously.
The young fellow and the girl beside him were now quite weak and
trembling with suppressed mirth.
* * * * *
They had not dared venture out on the lawn, although dance music had
begun again.
"Is it your name they called?" he asked, his eyes very intent upon her
face.
"Yes, Nihla."
"I recognise you now," he said, with a little thrill of wonder.
"I suppose so," she replied with amiable indifference. "Everybody
knows me."
She did not ask his name; he did not offer to enlighten her. What
difference, after all, could the name of an American student make to
the idol of Europe, Nihla Quellen?
"I'm in a mess," she remarked presently. "He will be quite furious
with me. It is going to be most disagreeable for me to go back into
that house. He has really an atrocious temper when made ridiculous."
"I'm awfully sorry," he said, sobered by her seriousness.
She laughed:
"Oh, pouf! I really don't care. But perhaps you had better leave me
now. I've spoiled your moonlight picture, haven't I?"
"But think what you have given me to make amends!" he replied.
She turned and caught his hands in hers with adorable impulsiveness:
"You're a sweet boy--do you know it! We've had a heavenly time,
haven't we? Do you really think you ought to go--so soon?"
"Don't you think so, Nihla?"
"I don't want you to go. Anyway, there's a train every two hours----"
"I've a canoe down by the landing. I shall paddle back as I came----"
"A canoe!" she exclaimed, enchanted. "Will you take me with you?"
"To Paris?"
"Of course! Will you?"
"In your ball-gown?"
"I'd adore it! Will you?"
"That is an absolutely crazy suggestion," he said.
"I know it. The world is only a big asylum. There's a path to the
river behind these bushes. Quick--pick up your painting traps----"
"But, Nihla, dear----"
"Oh, please! I'm dying to run away with you!"
"To Paris?" he demanded, still incredulous that the girl really meant
it.
"Of course! You can get a taxi at the Pont-au-Change and take me home.
Will you?"
"It would be wonderful, of course----"
"It will be paradise!" she exclaimed, slipping her hand into his.
"Now, let us run like the dickens!"
In the uncertain moonlight, filtering through the shrubbery, they
found a hidden path to the river; and they took it together, lightly,
swiftly, speeding down the slope, all breathless with laughter, along
the moonlit way.
* * * * *
In the suburban villa of the Comte d'Eblis a wine-flushed and very
noisy company danced on, supped at midnight, continued the revel into
the starlit morning hours. The place was a jungle of confetti.
Their host, restless, mortified, angry, perplexed by turns, was
becoming obsessed at length with dull premonitions and vaguer alarms.
He waddled out to the lawn several times, still wearing his fancy gilt
and tissue cap, and called:
"Nihla! Damnation! Answer me, you little fool!"
He went down to the river, where the gaily painted row-boats and punts
lay, and scanned the silvered flood, tortured by indefinite
apprehensions. About dawn he started toward the weed-grown, slippery
river-stairs for the last time, still crowned with his tinsel cap; and
there in the darkness he found his aged boat-man, fishing for gudgeon
with a four-cornered net suspended to the end of a bamboo pole.
"Have you see anything of Mademoiselle Nihla?" he demanded, in a
heavy, unsteady voice, tremulous with indefinable fears.
"Monsieur le Comte, Mademoiselle Quellen went out in a canoe with a
young gentleman."
"W-what is that you tell me!" faltered the Comte d'Eblis, turning grey
in the face.
"Last night, about ten o'clock, M'sieu le Comte. I was out in the
moonlight fishing for eels. She came down to the shore--took a canoe
yonder by the willows. The young man had a double-bladed paddle. They
were singing."
"They--they have not returned?"
"No, M'sieu le Comte----"
"Who was the--man?"
"I could not see----"
"Very well." He turned and looked down the dusky river out of
light-coloured, murderous eyes. Then, always awkward in his gait, he
retraced his steps to the house. There a servant accosted him on the
terrace:
"The telephone, if Monsieur le Comte pleases----"
"Who is calling?" he demanded with a flare of fury.
"Paris, if it pleases Monsieur le Comte."
The Count d'Eblis went to his own quarters, seated himself, and picked
up the receiver:
"Who is it?" he asked thickly.
"Max Freund."
"What has h-happened?" he stammered in sudden terror.
Over the wire came the distant reply, perfectly clear and distinct:
"Ferez Bey was arrested in his own house at dinner last evening, and
was immediately conducted to the frontier, escorted by Government
detectives.... Is Nihla with you?"
The Count's teeth were chattering now. He managed to say:
"No, I don't know where she is. She was dancing. Then, all at once,
she was gone. Of what was Colonel Ferez suspected?"
"I don't know. But perhaps we might guess."
"Are _you_ followed?"
"Yes."
"By--by whom?"
"By Souchez.... Good-bye, if I don't see you. I join Ferez. And look
out for Nihla. She'll trick you yet!"
The Count d'Eblis called:
"Wait, for God's sake, Max!"--listened; called again in vain. "The
one-eyed rabbit!" he panted, breathing hard and irregularly. His large
hand shook as he replaced the instrument. He sat there as though
paralysed, for a moment or two. Mechanically he removed his tinsel cap
and thrust it into the pocket of his evening coat. Suddenly the dull
hue of anger dyed neck, ears and temple:
"By God!" he gasped. "What is that she-devil trying to do to me? What
has she _done_!"
After another moment of staring fixedly at nothing, he opened the
table drawer, picked up a pistol and poked it into his breast pocket.
Then he rose, heavily, and stood looking out of the window at the
paling east, his pendulous under lip aquiver.
II
SUNRISE
The first sunbeams had already gilded her bedroom windows, barring the
drawn curtains with light, when the man arrived. He was still wearing
his disordered evening dress under a light overcoat; his soiled shirt
front was still crossed by the red ribbon of watered silk; third class
orders striped his breast, where also the brand new Turkish sunburst
glimmered.
A sleepy maid in night attire answered his furious ringing; the man
pushed her aside with an oath and strode into the semi-darkness of the
corridor. He was nearly six feet tall, bulky; but his legs were either
too short or something else was the matter with them, for when he
walked he waddled, breathing noisily from the ascent of the stairs.
"Is your mistress here?" he demanded, hoarse with his effort.
"Y--yes, monsieur----"
"When did she come in?" And, as the scared and bewildered maid
hesitated: "Damn you, answer me! When did Mademoiselle Quellen come
in? I'll wring your neck if you lie to me!"
The maid began to whimper:
"Monsieur le Comte--I do not wish to lie to you.... Mademoiselle Nihla
came back with the dawn----"
"Alone?"
The maid wrung her hands:
"Does Monsieur le Comte m-mean to harm her?"
"Will you answer me, you snivelling cat!" he panted between his big,
discoloured teeth. He had fished out a pistol from his breast pocket,
dragging with it a silk handkerchief, a fancy cap of tissue and gilt,
and some streamers of confetti which fell to the carpet around his
feet.
"Now," he breathed in a half-strangled voice, "answer my questions.
Was she alone when she came in?"
"N-no."
"Who was with her?"
"A--a----"
"A man?"
The maid trembled violently and nodded.
"What man?"
"M-Monsieur le Comte, I have never before beheld him----"
"You lie!"
"I do not lie! I have never before seen him, Monsieur le----"
"Did you learn his name?"
"No----"
"Did you hear what they said?"
"They spoke in English----"
"What!" The man's puffy face went flabby white, and his big, badly
made frame seemed to sag for a moment. He laid a large fat hand flat
against the wall, as though to support and steady himself, and gazed
dully at the terrified maid.
And she, shivering in her night-robe and naked feet, stared back into
the pallid face, with its coarse, greyish moustache and little short
side-whiskers which vulgarized it completely--gazed in unfeigned
terror at the sagging, deadly, lead-coloured eyes.
"Is the man there--in there now--with her?" demanded the Comte d'Eblis
heavily.
"No, monsieur."
"Gone?"
"Oh, Monsieur le Comte, the young man stayed but a moment----"
"Where were they? In her bedroom?"
"In the salon. I--I served a pate--a glass of wine--and the young
gentleman was gone the next minute----"
A dull red discoloured the neck and features of the Count.
"That's enough," he said; and waddled past her along the corridor to
the furthest door; and wrenched it open with one powerful jerk.
In the still, golden gloom of the drawn curtains, now striped with
sunlight, a young girl suddenly sat up in bed.
"Alexandre!" she exclaimed in angry astonishment.
"You slut!" he said, already enraged again at the mere sight of her.
"Where did you go last night!"
"What are you doing in my bedroom?" she demanded, confused but flushed
with anger. "Leave it! Do you hear!--" She caught sight of the pistol
in his hand and stiffened.
He stepped nearer; her dark, dilated gaze remained fixed on the
pistol.
"Answer me," he said, the menacing roar rising in his voice. "Where
did you go last night when you left the house?"
"I--I went out--on the lawn."
"And then?"
"I had had enough of your party: I came back to Paris."
"And _then_?"
"I came here, of course."
"Who was with you?"
Then, for the first time, she began to comprehend. She swallowed
desperately.
"Who was your companion?" he repeated.
"A--man."
"You brought him here?"
"He--came in--for a moment."
"Who was he?"
"I--never before saw him."
"You picked up a man in the street and brought him here with you?"
"N-not on the street----"
"Where?"
"On the lawn--while your guests were dancing----"
"And you came to Paris with him?"
"Y-yes."
"Who was he?"
"I don't know----"
"If you don't name him, I'll kill you!" he yelled, losing the last
vestige of self-control. "What kind of story are you trying to tell
me, you lying drab! You've got a lover! Confess it!"
"I have not!"
"Liar! So this is how you've laughed at me, mocked me, betrayed me,
made a fool of me! You!--with your fierce little snappish ways of a
virgin! You with your dangerous airs of a tiger-cat if a man so much
as laid a finger on your vicious body! So Mademoiselle-Don't-touch-me
had a lover all the while. Max Freund warned me to keep an eye on
you!" He lost control of himself again; his voice became a hoarse
shout: "Max Freund begged me not to trust you! You filthy little
beast! Good God! Was I crazy to believe in you--to talk without
reserve in your presence! What kind of imbecile was I to offer you
marriage because I was crazy enough to believe that there was no other
way to possess you! You--a Levantine dancing girl--a common painted
thing of the public footlights--a creature of brasserie and cabaret!
And you posed as Mademoiselle Nitouche! A novice! A devotee of
chastity! And, by God, your devilish ingenuity at last persuaded me
that you actually were what you said you were. And all Paris knew you
were fooling me--all Paris was laughing in its dirty sleeve--mocking
me--spitting on me----"
"All Paris," she said, in an unsteady voice, "gave you credit for
being my lover. And I endured it. And you knew it was not true. Yet
you never denied it.... But as for me, I never had a lover. When I
told you that I told you the truth. And it is true to-day as it was
yesterday. Nobody believes it of a dancing girl. Now, _you_ no longer
believe it. Very well, there is no occasion for melodrama. I tried to
fall in love with you: I couldn't. I did not desire to marry you. You
insisted. Very well; you can go."
"Not before I learn the name of your lover of last night!" he
retorted, now almost beside himself with fury, and once more menacing
her with his pistol. "I'll get that much change out of all the money
I've lavished on you!" he yelled. "Tell me his name or I'll kill
you!"
She reached under her pillow, clutched a jewelled watch and purse, and
hurled them at him. She twisted from her arm a gemmed bracelet, tore
every flashing ring from her fingers, and flung them in a handful
straight at his head.
"There's some more change for you!" she panted. "Now, leave my
bedroom!"
"I'll have that man's name first!"
The girl laughed in his distorted face. He was within an ace of
shooting her--of firing point-blank into the lovely, flushed features,
merely to shatter them, destroy, annihilate. He had the desire to do
it. But her breathless, contemptuous laugh broke that impulse--relaxed
it, leaving it flaccid. And after an interval something else
intervened to stay his hand at the trigger--something that crept into
his mind; something he had begun to suspect that she knew. Suddenly he
became convinced that she _did_ know it--that she believed that he
dared not kill her and stand the investigation of a public trial
before a _juge d'instruction_--that he could not afford to have his
own personal affairs scrutinised too closely.
He still wanted to kill her--shoot her there where she sat in bed,
watching him out of scornful young eyes. So intense was his need to
slay--to disfigure, brutalise this girl who had mocked him, that the
raging desire hurt him physically. He leaned back, resting against the
silken wall, momentarily weakened by the violence of passion. But his
pistol still threatened her.
No; he dared not. There was a better, surer way to utterly destroy
her,--a way he had long ago prepared,--not expecting any such
contingency as this, but merely as a matter of self-insurance.
His levelled weapon wavered, dropped, held loosely now. He still
glared at her out of pallid and blood-shot eyes in silence. After a
while:
"You hell-cat," he said slowly and distinctly. "Who is your English
lover? Tell me his name or I'll beat your face to a pulp!"
"I have no English lover."
"Do you think," he went on heavily, disregarding her reply, "that I
don't know why you chose an Englishman? You thought you could
blackmail me, didn't you?"
"How?" she demanded wearily.
Again he ignored her reply:
"Is he one of the Embassy?" he demanded. "Is he some emissary of
Grey's? Does he come from their intelligence department? Or is he only
a police jackal? Or some lesser rat?"
She shrugged; her night-robe slipped and she drew it over her shoulder
with a quick movement. And the man saw the deep blush spreading over
face and throat.
"By God!" he said, "you _are_ an actress! I admit it. But now you are
going to learn something about real life. You think you've got me,
don't you?--you and your Englishman? Because I have been fool enough
to trust you--hide nothing from you--act frankly and openly in your
presence. You thought you'd get a hold on me, so that if I ever caught
you at your treacherous game you could defy me and extort from me the
last penny! You thought all that out--very thriftily and cleverly--you
and your Englishman between you--didn't you?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"Don't you? Then why did you ask me the other day whether it was not
German money which was paying for the newspaper which I bought?"
"The _Mot d'Ordre_?"
"Certainly."
"I asked you that because Ferez Bey is notoriously in Germany's pay.
And Ferez Bey financed the affair. You said so. Besides, you and he
discussed it before me in my own salon."
"And you suspected that I bought the _Mot d'Ordre_ with German money
for the purpose of carrying out German propaganda in a Paris daily
paper?"
"I don't know why Ferez Bey gave you the money to buy it."
"He did not give me the money."
"You said so. Who did?"
"_You!_" he fairly yelled.
"W-what!" stammered the girl, confounded.
"Listen to me, you rat!" he said fiercely. "I was not such a fool as
you believed me to be. I lavished money on you; you made a fortune for
yourself out of your popularity, too. Do you remember endorsing a
cheque drawn to your order by Ferez Bey?"
"Yes. You had borrowed every penny I possessed. You said that Ferez
Bey owed you as much. So I accepted his cheque----"
"That cheque paid for the _Mot d'Ordre_. It is drawn to your order;
it bears your endorsement; the _Mot d'Ordre_ was purchased in your
name. And it was Max Freund who insisted that I take that precaution.
Now, try to blackmail me!--you and your English spy!" he cried
triumphantly, his voice breaking into a squeak.
Not yet understanding, merely conscious of some vague and monstrous
danger, the girl sat motionless, regarding him intently out of
beautiful, intelligent eyes.
He burst into laughter, made falsetto by the hysteria of sheer
hatred:
"That's where you are now!" he said, leering down at her. "Every paper
I ever made you sign incriminates you; your cancelled cheque is in the
same packet; your _dossier_ is damning and complete. You didn't know
that Ferez Bey was sent across the frontier yesterday, did you? Your
English spy didn't inform you last night, did he?"
"N-no."
"You lie! You _did_ know it! That was why you stole away last night
and met your jackal--to sell him something besides yourself, this
time! You knew they had arrested Ferez! I don't know how you knew it,
but you did. And you told your lover. And both of you thought you had
me at last, didn't you?"
"I--what are you trying to say to me--do to me?" she stammered, losing
colour for the first time.
"Put you where you belong--you dirty spy!" he said with grinning
ferocity. "If there is to be trouble, I've prepared for it. When they
try you for espionage, they'll try you as a foreigner--a dancing girl
in the pay of Germany--as my mistress whom Max Freund and I discover
in treachery to France, and whom I instantly denounce to the proper
authorities!"
He shoved his pistol into his breast pocket and put on his marred silk
hat.
"Which do you think they will believe--you or the Count d'Eblis?" he
demanded, the nervous leer twitching at his heavy lips. "Which do you
think they will believe--your denials and counter-accusations against
me, or Max Freund's corroboration, and the evidence of the packet I
shall now deliver to the authorities--the packet containing every
cursed document necessary to convict you!--you filthy little----"
The girl bounded from her bed to the floor, her dark eyes blazing:
"Damn you!" she said. "Get out of my bedroom!"
Taken aback, he retreated a pace or two, and, at the furious menace of
the little clenched fist, stepped another pace out into the corridor.
The door crashed in his face; the bolt shot home.
* * * * *
In twenty minutes Nihla Quellen, the celebrated and adored of European
capitals, crept out of the street door. She wore the dress of a
Finistere peasant; her hair was grey, her step infirm.
The _commissaire_, two _agents de police_, and a Government detective,
one Souchez, already on their way to identify and arrest her, never
even glanced at the shabby, infirm figure which hobbled past them on
the sidewalk and feebly mounted an omnibus marked Gare du Nord.
* * * * *
For a long time Paris was carefully combed for the dancer, Nihla
Quellen, until more serious affairs occupied the authorities, and
presently the world at large. For, in a few weeks, war burst like a
clap of thunder over Europe, leaving the whole world stunned and
reeling. The dossier of Nihla Quellen, the dancing girl, was tossed
into secret archives, together with the dossier of one Ferez Bey, an
Eurasian, now far beyond French jurisdiction, and already very
industrious in the United States about God knows what, in company with
one Max Freund.
As for Monsieur the Count d'Eblis, he remained a senator, an owner of
many third-rate decorations, and of the _Mot d'Ordre_.
And he remained on excellent terms with everybody at the Swedish,
Greek, and Bulgarian legations, and the Turkish Embassy, too. And
continued in cipher communication with Max Freund and Ferez Bey in
America.
Otherwise, he was still president of the Numismatic Society of Spain,
and he continued to add to his wonderful collection of coins, and to
keep up his voluminous numismatic correspondence.
He was growing stouter, too, which increased his spinal waddle when he
walked; and he became very prosperous financially, through fortunate
"operations," as he explained, with one Bolo Pasha.
He had only one regret to interfere with his sleep and his digestion;
he was sorry he had not fired his pistol into the youthful face of
Nihla Quellen. He should have avenged himself, taken his chances, and
above everything else he should have destroyed her beauty. His
timidity and caution still caused him deep and bitter chagrin.
For nearly a year he heard absolutely nothing concerning her. Then one
day a letter arrived from Ferez Bey through Max Freund, both being in
New York. And when, using his key to the cipher, he extracted the
message it contained, he had learned, among other things, that Nihla
Quellen was in New York, employed as a teacher in a school for
dancing.
The gist of his reply to Ferez Bey was that Nihla Quellen had already
outlived her usefulness on earth, and that Max Freund should attend to
the matter at the first favourable opportunity.
III
SUNSET
On the edge of evening she came out of the Palace of Mirrors and
crossed the wet asphalt, which already reflected primrose lights from
a clearing western sky.
A few moments before, he had been thinking of her, never dreaming that
she was in America. But he knew her instantly, there amid the rush and
clatter of the street, recognised her even in the twilight of the
passing storm--perhaps not alone from the half-caught glimpse of her
shadowy, averted face, nor even from that young, lissome figure so
celebrated in Europe. There is a sixth sense--the sense of nearness to
what is familiar. When it awakes we call it premonition.
The shock of seeing her, the moment's exciting incredulity, passed
before he became aware that he was already following her through
swarming metropolitan throngs released from the toil of a long, wet
day in early spring.
Through every twilit avenue poured the crowds; through every
cross-street a rosy glory from the west was streaming; and in its
magic he saw her immortally transfigured, where the pink light
suffused the crossings, only to put on again her lovely mortality in
the shadowy avenue.
At Times Square she turned west, straight into the dazzling fire of
sunset, and he at her slender heels, not knowing why, not even asking
it of himself, not thinking, not caring.
A third figure followed them both.
The bronze giants south of them stirred, swung their great hammers
against the iron bell; strokes of the hour rang out above the din of
Herald Square, inaudible in the traffic roar another square away,
lost, drowned out long before the pleasant bell-notes penetrated to
Forty-second Street, into which they both had turned.
Yet, as though occultly conscious that some hour had struck on earth,
significant to her, she stopped, turned, and looked back--looked quite
through him, seeing neither him nor the one-eyed man who followed them
both--as though her line of vision were the East itself, where, across
the grey sea's peril, a thousand miles of cannon were sounding the
hour from the North Sea to the Alps.
He passed her at her very elbow--aware of her nearness, as though
suddenly close to a young orchard in April. The girl, too, resumed her
way, unconscious of him, of his youthful face set hard with controlled
emotion.
The one-eyed man followed them both.
A few steps further and she turned into the entrance to one of those
sprawling, pretentious restaurants, the sham magnificence of which
becomes grimy overnight. He halted, swung around, retraced his steps
and followed her. And at his heels two shapes followed them very
silently--her shadow and his own--so close together now, against the
stucco wall that they seemed like Destiny and Fate linked arm in arm.
The one-eyed man halted at the door for a few moments. Then he, too,
went in, dogged by his sinister shadow.
The red sunset's rays penetrated to the rotunda and were quenched
there in a flood of artificial light; and there their sun-born
shadows vanished, and three strange new shadows, twisted and
grotesque, took their places.
She continued on into the almost empty restaurant, looming dimly
beyond. He followed; the one-eyed man followed both.
The place into which they stepped was circular, centred by a waterfall
splashing over concrete rocks. In the ruffled pool goldfish glimmered,
nearly motionless, and mandarin ducks floated, preening exotic
plumage.
A wilderness of tables surrounded the pool, set for the expected
patronage of the coming evening. The girl seated herself at one of
these.
At the next table he found a place for himself, entirely unnoticed by
her. The one-eyed man took the table behind them. A waiter presented
himself to take her order; another waiter came up leisurely to attend
to him. A third served the one-eyed man. There were only a few inches
between the three tables. Yet the girl, deeply preoccupied, paid no
attention to either man, although both kept their eyes on her.
But already, under the younger man's spellbound eyes, an odd and
unforeseen thing was occurring: he gradually became aware that, almost
imperceptibly, the girl and the table where she sat, and the sleepy
waiter who was taking her orders, were slowly moving nearer to him on
a floor which was moving, too.
He had never before been in that particular restaurant, and it took
him a moment or two to realise that the floor was one of those trick
floors, the central part of which slowly revolves.
Her table stood on the revolving part of the floor, his upon fixed
terrain; and he now beheld her moving toward him, as the circle of
tables rotated on its axis, which was the waterfall and pool in the
middle of the restaurant.
A few people began to arrive--theatrical people, who are obliged to
dine early. Some took seats at tables placed upon the revolving
section of the floor, others preferred the outer circles, where he sat
in a fixed position.
Her table was already abreast of his, with only the circular crack in
the floor between them; he could easily have touched her.
As the distance began to widen between them, the girl, her gloved
hands clasped in her lap, and studying the table-cloth with unseeing
gaze, lifted her dark eyes--looked at him without seeing, and once
more gazed through him at something invisible upon which her thoughts
remained fixed--something absorbing, vital, perhaps tragic--for her
face had become as colourless, now, as one of those translucent
marbles, vaguely warmed by some buried vein of rose beneath the snowy
surface.
Slowly she was being swept away from him--his gaze following--hers
lost in concentrated abstraction.
He saw her slipping away, disappearing behind the noisy waterfall.
Around him the restaurant continued to fill, slowly at first, then
more rapidly after the orchestra had entered its marble gallery.
The music began with something Russian, plaintive at first, then
beguiling, then noisy, savage in its brutal precision--something
sinister--a trampling melody that was turning into thunder with the
throb of doom all through it. And out of the vicious, Asiatic
clangour, from behind the dash of too obvious waterfalls, glided the
girl he had followed, now on her way toward him again, still seated at
her table, still gazing at nothing out of dark, unseeing eyes.
It seemed to him an hour before her table approached his own again.
Already she had been served by a waiter--was eating.
He became aware, then, that somebody had also served him. But he could
not even pretend to eat, so preoccupied was he by her approach.
Scarcely seeming to move at all, the revolving floor was steadily
drawing her table closer and closer to his. She was not looking at the
strawberries which she was leisurely eating--did not lift her eyes as
her table swept smoothly abreast of his.
Scarcely aware that he spoke aloud, he said:
"Nihla--Nihla Quellen!..."
Like a flash the girl wheeled in her chair to face him. She had lost
all her colour. Her fork had dropped and a blood-red berry rolled over
the table-cloth toward him.
"I'm sorry," he said, flushing. "I did not mean to startle you----"
The girl did not utter a word, nor did she move; but in her dark eyes
he seemed to see her every sense concentrated upon him to identify his
features, made shadowy by the lighted candles behind his head.
By degrees, smoothly, silently, her table swept nearer, nearer,
bringing with it her chair, her slender person, her dark, intelligent
eyes, so unsmilingly and steadily intent on him.
He began to stammer:
"--Two years ago--at--the Villa Tresse d'Or--on the Seine.... And we
promised to see each other--in the morning----"
She said coolly:
"My name is Thessalie Dunois. You mistake me for another."
"No," he said, in a low voice, "I am not mistaken."
Her brown eyes seemed to plunge their clear regard into the depths of
his very soul--not in recognition, but in watchful, dangerous
defiance.
He began again, still stammering a trifle:
"--In the morning, we were to--to meet--at eleven--near the fountain
of Marie de Medicis--unless you do not care to remember----"
At that her gaze altered swiftly, melted into the exquisite relief of
recognition. Suspended breath, released, parted her blanched lips; her
little guardian heart, relieved of fear, beat more freely.
"Are you Garry?"
"Yes."
"I know you now," she murmured. "You are Garret Barres, of the rue
d'Eryx.... You _are_ Garry!" A smile already haunted her dark young
eyes; colour was returning to lip and cheek. She drew a deep,
noiseless breath.
The table where she sat continued to slip past him; the distance
between them was widening. She had to turn her head a little to face
him.
"You do remember me then, Nihla?"
The girl inclined her head a trifle. A smile curved her lips--lips now
vivid but still a little tremulous from the shock of the encounter.
"May I join you at your table?"
She smiled, drew a deeper breath, looked down at the strawberry on the
cloth, looked over her shoulder at him.
"You owe me an explanation," he insisted, leaning forward to span the
increasing distance between them.
"Do I?"
"Ask yourself."
After a moment, still studying him, she nodded as though the nod
answered some silent question of her own:
"Yes, I owe you one."
"Then may I join you?"
"My table is more prudent than I. It is running away from an
explanation." She fixed her eyes on her tightly clasped hands, as
though to concentrate thought. He could see only the back of her head,
white neck and lovely dark hair.
Her table was quite a distance away when she turned, leisurely, and
looked back at him.
"May I come?" he asked.
She lifted her delicate brows in demure surprise.
"I've been waiting for you," she said, amiably.
The one-eyed man had never taken his eyes off them.
IV
DUSK
She had offered him her hand; he had bent over it, seated himself, and
they smilingly exchanged the formal banalities of a pleasantly renewed
acquaintance.
A waiter laid a cover for him. She continued to concern herself,
leisurely, with her strawberries.
"When did you leave Paris?" she enquired.
"Nearly two years ago."
"Before war was declared?"
"Yes, in June of that year."
She looked up at him very seriously; but they both smiled as she
said:
"It was a momentous month for you then--the month of June, 1914?"
"Very. A charming young girl broke my heart in 1914; and so I came
home, a wreck--to recuperate."
At that she laughed outright, glancing at his youthful, sunburnt face
and lean, vigorous figure.
"When did _you_ come over?" he asked curiously.
"I have been here longer than you have. In fact, I left France the day
I last saw you."
"The same day?"
"I started that very same day--shortly after sunrise. I crossed the
Belgian frontier that night, and I sailed for New York the morning
after. I landed here a week later, and I've been here ever since.
That, monsieur, is my history."
"You've been here in New York for two years!" he repeated in
astonishment. "Have you really left the stage then? I supposed you had
just arrived to fill an engagement here."
"They gave me a try-out this afternoon."
"_You?_ A try-out!" he exclaimed, amazed.
She carelessly transfixed a berry with her fork:
"If I secure an engagement I shall be very glad to fill it ... and my
stomach, also. If I don't secure one--well--charity or starvation
confronts me."
He smiled at her with easy incredulity.
"I had not heard that you were here!" he repeated. "I've read nothing
at all about you in the papers----"
"No ... I am here incognito.... I have taken my sister's name. After
all, your American public does not know me."
"But----"
"Wait! I don't wish it to know me!"
"But if you----"
The girl's slight gesture checked him, although her smile became
humorous and friendly:
"Please! We need not discuss my future. Only the past!" She laughed:
"How it all comes back to me now, as you speak--that crazy evening of
ours together! What children we were--two years ago!"
Smilingly she clasped her hands together on the table's edge,
regarding him with that winning directness which was a celebrated part
of her celebrated personality; and happened to be natural to her.
"Why did I not recognise you immediately?" she demanded of herself,
frowning in self-reproof. "I _am_ stupid! Also I have, now and then,
thought about you----" She shrugged her shoulders, and again her face
faltered subtly:
"Much has happened to distract my memories," she added carelessly,
impaling a strawberry, "--since you and I took the key to the fields
and the road to the moon--like the pair of irresponsibles we were that
night in June."
"Have you really had trouble?"
Her slim figure straightened as at a challenge, then became adorably
supple again; and she rested her elbows on the table's edge and took
her cheeks between her hands.
"Trouble?" she repeated, studying his face. "I don't know that word,
trouble. I don't admit such a word to the honour of my happy
vocabulary."
They both laughed a little.
She said, still looking at him, and at first speaking as though to
herself:
"Of course, you are that same, delightful Garry! My youthful American
accomplice!... Quite unspoiled, still, but very, very irresponsible
... like all painters--like all students. And the mischief which is in
me recognised the mischief in you, I suppose.... I _did_ surprise you
that night, didn't I?... And what a night! What a moon! And how we
danced there on the wet lawn until my skirts and slippers and
stockings were drenched with dew!... And how we laughed! Oh, that
full-hearted, full-throated laughter of ours! How wonderful that we
have lived to laugh like that! It is something to remember after
death. Just think of it!--you and I, absolute strangers, dancing every
dance there in the drenched grass to the music that came through the
open windows.... And do you remember how we hid in the flowering
bushes when my sister and the others came out to look for me? How they
called, 'Nihla! Nihla! Little devil, where are you?' Oh, it was
funny--funny! And to see _him_ come out on the lawn--do you remember?
He looked so fat and stupid and anxious and bad-tempered! And you and
I expiring with stifled laughter! And he, with his sash, his
decorations and his academic palms! He'd have shot us both, you
know...."
They were laughing unrestrainedly now at the memory of that impossible
night a year ago; and the girl seemed suddenly transformed into an
irresponsible gamine of eighteen. Her eyes grew brighter with mischief
and laughter--laughter, the greatest magician and doctor emeritus of
them all! The immortal restorer of youth and beauty.
Bluish shadows had gone from under her lower lashes; her eyes were
starry as a child's.
"Oh, Garry," she gasped, laying one slim hand across his on the
table-cloth, "it was one of those encounters--one of those heavenly
accidents that reconcile one to living.... I think the moon had made
me a perfect lunatic.... Because you don't yet know what I risked....
Garry!... It ruined me--ruined me utterly--our night together under
the June moon!"
"What!" he exclaimed, incredulously.
But she only laughed her gay, undaunted little laugh:
"It was worth it! Such moments are worth anything we pay for them! I
laughed; I pay. What of it?"
"But if I am partly responsible I wish to know----"
"You shall know nothing about it! As for me, I care nothing about it.
I'd do it again to-night! That is living--to go forward, laugh, and
accept what comes--to have heart enough, gaiety enough, brains enough
to seize the few rare dispensations that the niggardly gods fling
across this calvary which we call life! _Tenez_, that alone is living;
the rest is making the endless stations on bleeding knees."
"Yet, if I thought--" he began, perplexed and troubled, "--if I
thought that through my folly----"
"Folly! _Non pas!_ Wisdom! Oh, my blessed accomplice! And do you
remember the canoe? Were we indeed quite mad to embark for Paris on
the moonlit Seine, you and I?--I in evening gown, soaked with dew to
the knees!--you with your sketching block and easel! _Quelle
demenagement en famille!_ Oh, Garry, my friend of gayer days, was that
really folly! No, no, no, it was infinite wisdom; and its memory is
helping me to live through this very moment!"
She leaned there on her elbows and laughed across the cloth at him.
The mockery began to dance again and glimmer in her eyes:
"After all I've told you," she added, "you are no wiser, are you?
You don't know why I never went to the Fountain of Marie de
Medicis--whether I forgot to go--whether I remembered but decided that
I had had quite enough of you. You don't know, do you?"
He shook his head, smiling. The girl's face grew gradually serious:
"And you never heard anything more about me?" she demanded.
"No. Your name simply disappeared from the billboards, kiosques, and
newspapers."
"And you heard no malicious gossip? None about my sister, either?"
"None."
She nodded:
"Europe is a senile creature which forgets overnight. _Tant mieux_....
You know, I shall sing and dance under my sister's name here. I told
you that, didn't I?"
"Oh! That would be a great mistake----"
"Listen! Nihla Quellen disappeared--married some fat bourgeois, died,
perhaps,"--she shrugged,--"anything you wish, my friend. Who cares to
listen to what is said about a dancing girl in all this din of war?
Who is interested?"
It was scarcely a question, yet her eyes seemed to make it so.
"Who cares?" she repeated impatiently. "Who remembers?"
"I have remembered you," he said, meeting her intently questioning
gaze.
"You? Oh, you are not like those others over there. Your country is
not at war. You still have leisure to remember. But they forget. They
haven't time to remember anything--anybody--over there. Don't you
think so?" She turned in her chair unconsciously, and gazed eastward.
"--They have forgotten me over there--" And her lips tightened,
contracted, bitten into silence.
The strange beauty of the girl left him dumb. He was recalling, now,
all that he had ever heard concerning her. The gossip of Europe had
informed him that, though Nihla Quellen was passionately and devotedly
French in soul and heart, her mother had been one of those unmoral and
lovely Georgians, and her father an Alsatian, named Dunois--a French
officer who entered the Russian service ultimately, and became a
hunting cheetah for the Grand Duke Cyril, until himself hunted into
another world by that old bag of bones on the pale and shaky nag. His
daughter took the name of Nihla Quellen and what money was left, and
made her debut in Constantinople.
As the young fellow sat there watching her, all the petty gossip of
Europe came back to him--anecdotes, panegyrics, eulogies, scandals,
stage chatter, Quarter "divers," paid reclames--all that he had ever
read and heard about this notorious young girl, now seated there
across the table, with her pretty head framed by slender, unjewelled
fingers. He remembered the gems she had worn that June night, a year
ago, and their magnificence.
"Well," she said, "life is a pleasantry, a jest, a bon-mot flung over
his shoulder by some god too drunk with nectar to invent a better
joke. Life is an Olympian epigram made between immortal yawns. What do
you think of _my_ epigram, Garry?"
"I think you are just as clever and amusing as I remember you,
Nihla."
"Amusing to _you_, perhaps. But I don't entertain myself very
successfully. I don't think poverty is a very funny joke. Do you?"
"Poverty!" he repeated, smiling his unbelief.
She smiled too, displayed her pretty, ringless hands humorously, for
his inspection, then framed her oval face between them again and made
a deliberate grimace.
"All gone," she said. "I am, as you say, here on my uppers."
"I can't understand, Nihla----"
"Don't try to. It doesn't concern you. Also, please forget me as Nihla
Quellen. I told you that I've taken my sister's name, Thessalie
Dunois."
"But all Europe knows you as Nihla Quellen----"
"Listen!" she interrupted sharply. "I have troubles enough. Don't add
to them, or I shall be sorry I met you again. I tell you my name is
Thessa. Please remember it."
"Very well," he said, reddening under the rebuke.
She noted the painful colour in his face, then looked elsewhere,
indifferently. Her features remained expressionless for a while. After
a few moments she looked around at him again, and her smile began to
glimmer:
"It's only this," she said; "the girl you met once in your life--the
dancing singing-girl they knew over there--is already an episode to be
forgotten. End her career any way you wish, Garry,--natural death,
suicide--or she can repent and take the veil, if you like--or perish
at sea--only end her.... Please?" she added, with the sweet, trailing
inflection characteristic of her.
He nodded. The girl smiled mischievously.
"Don't nod your head so owlishly and pretend to understand. You don't
understand. Only two or three people do. And I hope they'll believe me
dead, even if you are not polite enough to agree with them."
"How can you expect to maintain your incognito?" he insisted. "There
will be plenty of people in your very first audience----"
"I had a sister, did I not?"
"_Was_ she your sister?--the one who danced with you--the one called
Thessa?"
"No. But the play-bills said she was. Now, I've told you something
that nobody knows except two or three unpleasant devils--" She dropped
her arms on the table and leaned a trifle forward:
"Oh, pouf!" she said. "Don't let's be mysterious and dramatic, you and
I. I'll tell you: I gave that woman the last of my jewels and she
promised to disappear and leave her name to me to use. It was my own
name, anyway, Thessalie Dunois. Now, you know. Be as discreet and nice
as I once found you. Will you?"
"Of course."
"'Of course,'" she repeated, smiling, and with a little twitch of her
shoulders, as though letting fall a burdensome cloak. "Allons! With a
free heart, then! I am Thessalie Dunois; I am here; I am poor--don't
be frightened! I shall not borrow----"
"That's rotten, Thessa!" he said, turning very red.
"Oh, go lightly, please, my friend Garry. I have no claim on you.
Besides, I know men----"
"You don't appear to!"
"Tiens! Our first quarrel!" she exclaimed, laughingly. "This is indeed
serious----"
"If you need aid----"
"No, I don't! Please, why do you scowl at me? Do you then wish I
needed aid? Yours? Allez, Monsieur Garry, if I did I'd venture,
perhaps, to say so to you. Does that make amends?" she added sweetly.
She clasped her white hands on the cloth and looked at him with that
engaging, humorous little air which had so easily captivated her
audiences in Europe--that, and her voice with the hint of recklessness
ever echoing through its sweetness and youthful gaiety.
"What are you doing in New York?" she asked. "Painting?"
"I have a studio, but----"
"But no clients? Is that it? Pouf! Everybody begins that way. I sang
in a cafe at Dijon for five francs and my soup! At Rennes I nearly
starved. Oh, yes, Garry, in spite of a number of obliging gentlemen
who, like you, offered--first aid----"
"That is absolutely rotten of you, Thessa. Did I ever----"
"No! For goodness' sake let me jest with you without flying into
tempers!"
"But----"
"Oh, pouf! I shall not quarrel with you! Whatever you and I were going
to say during the next ten minutes shall remain unsaid!... Now, the
ten minutes are over; now, we're reconciled and you are in good humour
again. And now, tell me about yourself, your painting--in other
words, tell me the things about yourself that would interest a
friend."
"Are you?"
"Your friend? Yes, I am--if you wish."
"I do wish it."
"Then I am your friend. I once had a wonderful evening with you....
I'm having a very good time now. You were _nice_ to me, Garry. I
really was sorry not to see you again."
"At the fountain of Marie de Medicis," he said reproachfully.
"Yes. Flatter yourself, monsieur, because I did _not_ forget our
rendezvous. I might have forgotten it easily enough--there was
sufficient excuse, God knows--a girl awakened by the crash of
ruin--springing out of bed to face the end of the world without a
moment's warning--yes, the end of all things--death, too! Tenez, it
was permissible to forget our rendezvous under such circumstances, was
it not? But--I did _not_ forget. I thought about it in a dumb, calm
way all the while--even while _he_ stood there denouncing me,
threatening me, noisy, furious--with the button of the Legion in his
lapel--and an ugly pistol which he waved in the air--" She laughed:
"Oh, it was not at all gay, I assure you.... And even when I took to
my heels after he had gone--for it was a matter of life or death, and
I hadn't a minute to lose--oh, very dramatic, of course, for I ran
away in disguise and I had a frightful time of it leaving France!
Well, even then, at top speed and scared to death, I remembered the
fountain of Marie de Medicis, and you. Don't be too deeply flattered.
I remembered these items principally because they had caused my
downfall."
"I? I caused----"
"No. _I_ caused it! It was I who went out on the lawn. It was I who
came across to see who was painting by moonlight. That began
it--seeing you there--in moonlight bright enough to read by--bright
enough to paint by. Oh, Garry--and you were _so_ good-looking! It was
the moon--and the way you smiled at me. And they all were dancing
inside, and _he_ was so big and fat and complacent, dancing away in
there!... And so I fell a prey to folly."
"Was it really our escapade that--that ruined you?"
"Well--it was partly that. Pouf! It is over. And I am here. So are
you. It's been nice to see you.... Please call our waiter." She
glanced at her cheap, leather wrist watch.
As they rose and left the dining-room, he asked her if they were not
to see each other again. A one-eyed man, close behind them, listened
for her reply.
She continued to walk on slowly beside him without answering, until
they reached the rotunda.
"Do you wish to see me again?" she enquired abruptly.
"Don't you also wish it?"
"I don't know, Garry.... I've been annoyed in New
York--bothered--seriously.... I can't explain, but somehow--I don't
seem to wish to begin a friendship with anybody...."
"Ours began two years ago."
"Did it?"
"Did it not, Thessa?"
"Perhaps.... I don't know. After all--it doesn't matter. I think--I
think we had better say good-bye--until some happy hazard--like
to-day's encounter--" She hesitated, looked up at him, laughed:
"Where is your studio?" she asked mischievously.
The one-eyed man at their heels was listening.
V
IN DRAGON COURT
There was a young moon in the southwest--a slender tracery in the
April twilight--curved high over his right shoulder as he walked
northward and homeward through the flare of Broadway.
His thoughts were still occupied with the pleasant excitement of his
encounter with Thessalie Dunois; his mind and heart still responded to
the delightful stimulation. Out of an already half-forgotten realm of
romance, where, often now, he found it increasingly difficult to
realise that he had lived for five happy years, a young girl had
suddenly emerged as bodily witness, to corroborate, revive, and
refresh his fading faith in the reality of what once had been.
Five years in France!--France with its clear sun and lovely moon; its
silver-grey cities, its lilac haze, its sweet, deep greenness, its
atmosphere of living light!--France, the dwelling-place of God in all
His myriad aspects--in all His protean forms! France, the sanctuary of
Truth and all her ancient and her future liberties; France, blossoming
domain of Love in Love's million exquisite transfigurations, wherein
only the eye of faith can recognise the winged god amid his
camouflage!
* * * * *
Wine-strong winds of the Western World, and a pitiless Western sun
which etches every contour with terrible precision, leaving nothing to
imagination--no delicate mystery to rest and shelter souls--had swept
away and partly erased from his mind the actuality of those five past
years.
Already that past, of which he had been a part, was becoming
disturbingly unreal to him. Phantoms haunted its ever-paling sunlight;
its scenes were fading; its voices grew vague and distant; its hushed
laughter dwindled to a whisper, dying like a sigh.
Then, suddenly, against that misty tapestry of tinted spectres,
appeared Thessalie Dunois in the flesh!--straight out of the
phantom-haunted void had stepped this glowing thing of life! Into the
raw reek and familiar dissonance of Broadway she had vanished. Small
wonder that he had followed her to keep in touch with the vanishing
past, as a sleeper, waking against his will, strives still to grasp
the fragile fabric of a happy dream.
Yet, in spite of Thessalie, in spite of dreams, in spite of his own
home-coming, and the touch of familiar pavements under his own feet,
the past, to Barres, was utterly dead, the present strange and unreal,
the future obscure and all aflame behind a world afire with war.
For two years, now, no human mind in America had been able to adjust
itself to the new heaven and the new earth which had sprung into lurid
being at the thunderclap of war.
All things familiar had changed in the twinkling of an eye; all former
things had passed away, leaving the stunned brain of humanity dulled
under the shock.
Slowly, by degrees, the world was beginning to realise that the
civilisation of Christ was being menaced once again by a resurgence
from that ancient land of legend where the wild Hun denned;--that
again the endless hordes of barbarians were rushing in on Europe out
of their Eastern fastnesses--hordes which filled the shrinking skies
with their clamour, vaunting the might of Baal, cheering their
antichrist, drenching the knees of their own red gods with the blood
of little children.
It seemed impossible for Americans to understand that these things
could be--were really true--that the horrors the papers printed were
actualities happening to civilised people like themselves and their
neighbours.
Out of their own mouths the German tribes thundered their own disgrace
and condemnation, yet America sat dazed, incredulous, motionless.
Emperor and general, professor and junker, shouted at the top of their
lungs the new creed, horrible as the Black Mass, reversing every
precept taught by Christ.
Millions of Teuton mouths cheered fiercely for the new
religion--Frightfulness; worshipped with frantic yells the new
trinity--Wotan, Kaiser and Brute Strength.
Stunned, blinded, deafened, the Western World, still half-paralysed,
stirred stiffly from its inertia. Slowly, mechanically, its arteries
resumed their functions; the reflex, operating automatically, started
trade again in its old channels; old habits were timidly resumed;
minds groped backward, searching for severed threads which connected
yesterday with to-day--groped, hunted, found nothing, and, perplexed,
turned slowly toward the smoke-choked future for some reason for it
all--some outlook.
There was no explanation, no outlook--nothing save dust and flame and
the din of Teutonic hordes trampling to death the Son of Man.
So America moved about her worn, deep-trodden and familiar ways, her
mind slowly clearing from the cataclysmic concussion, her power of
vision gradually returning, adjusting itself, little by little, to
this new heaven and new earth and this hell entirely new.
The _Lusitania_ went down; the Great Republic merely quivered. Other
ships followed; only a low murmur of pain came from the Western
Colossus.
But now, after the second year, through the thickening nightmare the
Great Republic groaned aloud; and a new note of menace sounded in her
drugged and dreary voice.
And the thick ears of the Hun twitched and he paused, squatting
belly-deep in blood, to listen.
* * * * *
Barres walked homeward. Somewhere along in the 40's he turned eastward
into one of those cross-streets originally built up of brownstone
dwelling houses, and now in process of transformation into that
architectural and commercial miscellany which marks the transition
stage of the metropolis anywhere from Westchester to the sea.
Altered for business purposes, basements displayed signs and
merchandise of bootmakers, dealers in oriental porcelains, rare
prints, silverware; parlour windows modified into bay windows, sheeted
with plate-glass, exposed, perhaps, feminine headgear, or an expensive
model gown or two, or the sign of a real-estate man, or of an
upholsterer.
Above the parlour floors lived people of one sort or another;
furnished and unfurnished rooms and suites prevailed; and the
brownstone monotony was already indented along the building line by
brand-new constructions of Indiana limestone, behind the glittering
plate-glass of which were to be seen reticent displays of artistic
furniture, modern and antique oil paintings, here and there the
lace-curtained den of some superior ladies' hair-dresser, where
beautifying also was accomplished at a price, alas!
Halfway between Sixth Avenue and Fifth, on the north side of the
street, an enterprising architect had purchased half a dozen squatty,
three-storied houses, set back from the sidewalk behind grass-plots.
These had been lavishly stuccoed and transformed into abodes for those
irregulars in the army of life known as "artists."
In the rear the back fences had been levelled; six corresponding
houses on the next street had been purchased; a sort of inner court
established, with a common grass-plot planted with trees and
embellished by a number of concrete works of art, battered statues,
sundials, and well-curbs.
Always the army of civilisation trudges along screened, flanked, and
tagged after by life's irregulars, who cannot or will not conform to
routine. And these are always roaming around seeking their own
cantonments, where, for a while, they seem content to dwell at the end
of one more aimless etape through the world--not in regulation
barracks, but in regions too unconventional, too inconvenient to
attract others.
Of this sort was the collection of squatty houses, forming a
"community," where, in the neighbourhood of other irregulars, Garret
Barres dwelt; and into the lighted entrance of which he now turned,
still exhilarated by his meeting with Thessalie Dunois.
The architectural agglomeration was known as Dragon Court--a faience
Fu-dog above the electric light over the green entrance door
furnishing that priceless idea--a Fu-dog now veiled by mesh-wire to
provide against the indiscretions of sparrows lured thither by
housekeeping possibilities lurking among the dense screens of Japanese
ivy covering the facade.
Larry Soane, the irresponsible superintendent, always turned gardener
with April's advent in Dragon Court, contributions from its denizens
enabling him to pepper a few flower-beds with hyacinths and tulips,
and later with geraniums. These former bulbs had now gratefully
appeared in promising thickets, and Barres saw the dark form of the
handsome, reckless-looking Irishman fussing over them in the
lantern-lit dusk, while his little daughter, Dulcie, kneeling on the
dim grass, caressed the first blue hyacinth blossom with thin,
childish fingers.
Barres glanced into his letter-box behind the desk, above which a
drop-light threw more shadows than illumination. Little Dulcie Soane
was supposed to sit under it and emit information, deliver and receive
letters, pay charges on packages, and generally supervise things when
she was not attending school.
There were no letters for the young man. He examined a package, found
it contained his collars from the laundry, tucked them under his left
arm, and walked to the door looking out upon the dusky interior
court.
"Soane," he said, "your garden begins to look very fine." He nodded
pleasantly to Dulcie, and the child responded to his friendly greeting
with the tired but dauntless smile of the young who are missing those
golden years to which all childhood has a claim.
Dulcie's three cats came strolling out of the dusk across the lamplit
grass--a coal black one with sea-green eyes, known as "The Prophet,"
and his platonic mate, white as snow, and with magnificent azure-blue
eyes which, in white cats, usually betokens total deafness. She was
known as "The Houri" to the irregulars of Dragon Court. The third cat,
unanimously but misleadingly christened "Strindberg" by the dwellers
in Dragon Court, has already crooked her tortoise-shell tail and was
tearing around in eccentric circles or darting halfway up trees in a
manner characteristic, and, possibly accounting for the name, if not
for the sex.
"Thim cats of the kid's," observed Soane, "do be scratchin' up the
plants all night long--bad cess to thim! Barrin' thim three omadhauns
yonder, I'd show ye a purty bed o' poisies, Misther Barres. But
Sthrin'berg, God help her, is f'r diggin' through to China."
Dulcie impulsively caressed the Prophet, who turned his solemn,
incandescent eyes on Barres. The Houri also looked at him, then,
intoxicated by the soft spring evening, rolled lithely upon the new
grass and lay there twitching her snowy tail and challenging the stars
out of eyes that matched their brilliance.
Dulcie got up and walked slowly across the grass to where Barres
stood:
"May I come to see you this evening?" she asked, diffidently, and with
a swift, sidelong glance toward her father.
"Ah, then, don't be worritin' him!" grumbled Soane. "Hasn't Misther
Barres enough to do, what with all thim idees he has slitherin' in his
head, an' all the books an' learnin' an' picters he has to think
of--whithout the likes of you at his heels every blessed minute, day
an' night!----"
"But he always lets me--" she remonstrated.
"G'wan, now, and lave the poor gentleman be! Quit your futtherin' an'
muttherin'. G'wan in the house, ye little scut, an' see what there is
f'r ye to do!----"
"What's the matter with you, Soane?" interrupted Barres good-humouredly.
"Of course she can come up if she wants to. Do you feel like paying me
a visit, Dulcie, before you go to bed?"
"Yes," she nodded diffidently.
"Well, come ahead then, Sweetness! And whenever you want to come you
say so. Your father knows well enough I like to have you."
He smiled at Dulcie; the child's shy preference for his society always
had amused him. Besides, she was always docile and obedient; and she
was very sensitive, too, never outwearing her welcome in his studio,
and always leaving without a murmur when, looking up from book or
drawing he would exclaim cheerfully: "Now, Sweetness! Time's up! Bed
for yours, little lady!"
It had been a very gradual acquaintance between them--more than two
years in developing. From his first pleasant nod to her when he first
came to live in Dragon Court, it had progressed for a few months,
conservatively on her part, and on his with a detached but kindly
interest born of easy sympathy for youth and loneliness.
But he had no idea of the passionate response he was stirring in the
motherless, neglected child--of what hunger he was carelessly
stimulating, what latent qualities and dormant characteristics he was
arousing.
Her appearance, one evening, in her night-dress at his studio doorway,
accompanied by her three cats, began to enlighten him in regard to her
mental starvation. Tremulous, almost at the point of tears, she had
asked for a book and permission to remain for a few moments in the
studio. He had rung for Selinda, ordered fruit, cake, and a glass of
milk, and had installed Dulcie upon the sofa with a lapful of books.
That was the beginning.
But Barres still did not entirely understand what particular magnet
drew the child to his studio. The place was full of beautiful things,
books, rugs, pictures, fine old furniture, cabinets glimmering with
porcelains, ivories, jades, Chinese crystals. These all, in minutest
detail, seemed to fascinate the girl. Yet, after giving her permission
to enter whenever she desired, often while reading or absorbed in
other affairs, he became conscious of being watched; and, glancing up,
would frequently surprise her sitting there very silently, with an
open book on her knees, and her strange grey eyes intently fixed on
him.
Then he would always smile and say something friendly; and usually
forget her the next moment in his absorption of whatever work he had
under way.
Only one other man inhabiting Dragon Court ever took the trouble to
notice or speak to the child--James Westmore, the sculptor. And he was
very friendly in his vigorous, jolly, rather boisterous way, catching
her up and tossing her about as gaily and irresponsibly as though she
were a rag doll; and always telling her he was her adopted godfather
and would have to chastise her if she ever deserved it. Also, he was
always urging her to hurry and grow up, because he had a wedding
present for her. And though Dulcie's smile was friendly, and
Westmore's nonsense pleased the shy child, she merely submitted, never
made any advance.
* * * * *
Barres's menage was accomplished by two specimens of mankind, totally
opposite in sex and colour; Selinda, a blonde, slant-eyed, and very
trim Finn, doing duty as maid; and Aristocrates W. Johnson, lately
employed in the capacity of waiter on a dining-car by the New York
Central Railroad--tall, dignified, graceful, and Ethiopian--who cooked
as daintily as a debutante trifling with culinary duty, and served at
table with the languid condescension of a dilettante and wealthy
amateur of domestic arts.
* * * * *
Barres ascended the two low, easy flights of stairs and unlocked his
door. Aristocrates, setting the table in the dining-room, approached
gracefully and relieved his master of hat, coat, and stick.
Half an hour later, a bath and fresh linen keyed up his already
lively spirits; he whistled while he tied his tie, took a critical
look at himself, and, dropping both hands into the pockets of his
dinner jacket, walked out into the big studio, which also was his
living-room.
There was a piano there; he sat down and rattled off a rollicking air
from the most recent spring production, beginning to realise that he
was keyed up for something livelier than a solitary dinner at home.
His hands fell from the keys and he swung around on the piano stool
and looked into the dining-room rather doubtfully.
"Aristocrates!" he called.
The tall pullman butler sauntered gracefully in.
Barres gave him a telephone number to call. Aristocrates returned
presently with the information that the lady was not at home.
"All right. Try Amsterdam 6703. Ask for Miss Souval."
But Miss Souval, also, was out.
Barres possessed a red-leather covered note-book; he went to his desk
and got it; and under his direction Aristocrates called up several
numbers, reporting adversely in every case.
It was a fine evening; ladies were abroad or preparing to fulfil
engagements wisely made on such a day as this had been. And the more
numbers he called up the lonelier the young man began to feel.
Thessalie had not given him either her address or telephone number. It
would have been charming to have her dine with him. He was now
thoroughly inclined for company. He glanced at the empty dining-room
with aversion.
"All right; never mind," he said, dismissing Aristocrates, who receded
as lithely as though leading a cake-walk.
"The devil," muttered the young fellow. "I'm not going to dine here
alone. I've had too happy a day of it."
He got up restlessly and began to pace the studio. He knew he could
get some man, but he didn't want one. However, it began to look like
that or a solitary dinner.
So after a few more moments' scowling cogitation he went out and down
the stairs, with the vague idea of inviting some brother painter--any
one of the regular irregulars who inhabited Dragon Court.
Dulcie sat behind the little desk near the door, head bowed, her thin
hands clasped over the closed ledger, and in her pallid face the
expressionless dullness of a child forgotten.
"Hello, Sweetness!" he said cheerfully.
She looked up; a slight colour tinted her cheeks, and she smiled.
"What's the matter, Dulcie?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing? That's a very dreary malady--nothing. You look lonely. Are
you?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know whether you are lonely or not?" he demanded.
"I suppose I am," she ventured, with a shy smile.
"Where is your father?"
"He went out."
"Any letters for me--or messages?"
"A man--he had one eye--came. He asked who you are."
"What?"
"I think he was German. He had only one eye. He asked your name."
"What did you say?"
"I told him. Then he went away."
Barres shrugged:
"Somebody who wants to sell artists' materials," he concluded. Then he
looked at the girl: "So you're lonely, are you? Where are your three
cats? Aren't they company for you?"
"Yes...."
"Well, then," he said gaily, "why not give a party for them? That
ought to amuse you, Dulcie."
The child still smiled; Barres walked on past her a pace or two,
halted, turned irresolutely, arrived at some swift decision, and came
back, suddenly understanding that he need seek no further--that he had
discovered his guest of the evening at his very elbow.
"Did you and your father have your supper, Dulcie?"
"My father went out to eat at Grogan's."
"How about you?"
"I can find something."
"Why not dine with me?" he suggested.
The child stared, bewildered, then went a little pale.
"Shall we have a dinner party for two--you and I, Dulcie? What do you
say?"
She said nothing, but her big grey eyes were fixed on him in a passion
of inquiry.
"A real party," he repeated. "Let the people get their own mail and
packages until your father returns. Nobody's going to sneak in,
anyway. Or, if that won't do, I'll call up Grogan's and tell your
father to come back because you are going to dine in my studio with
me. Do you know the telephone number? Very well; get Grogan's for me.
I'll speak to your father."
Dulcie's hand trembled on the receiver as she called up Grogan's;
Barres bent over the transmitter:
"Soane, Dulcie is going to take dinner in my studio with me. You'll
have to come back on duty, when you've eaten." He hung up, looked at
Dulcie and laughed.
"I wanted company as much as you did," he confessed. "Now, go and put
on your prettiest frock, and we'll be very grand and magnificent. And
afterward we'll talk and look at books and pretty things--and maybe
we'll turn on the Victrola and I'll teach you to dance--" He had
already begun to ascend the stairs:
"In half an hour, Dulcie!" he called back; "--and you may bring the
Prophet if you like.... Shall I ask Mr. Westmore to join us?"
"I'd rather be all alone with you," she said shyly.
He laughed and ran on up the stairs.
* * * * *
In half an hour the electric bell rang very timidly. Aristocrates,
having been instructed and rehearsed, and, loftily condescending to
his role in a kindly comedy to be played seriously, announced: "Miss
Soane!" in his most courtly manner.
Barres threw aside the evening paper and came forward, taking both
hands of the white and slightly frightened child.
"Aristocrates ought to have announced the Prophet, too," he said
gaily, breaking the ice and swinging Dulcie around to face the open
door again.
The Prophet entered, perfectly at ease, his eyes of living jade
shining, his tail urbanely hoisted.
Dulcie ventured to smile; Barres laughed outright; Aristocrates
surveyed the Prophet with toleration mingled with a certain respect.
For a black cat is never without occult significance to a gentleman of
colour.
With Dulcie's hand still in his, Barres led her into the living-room,
where, presently, Aristocrates brought a silver tray upon which was
a glass of iced orange juice for Dulcie, and a "Bronnix," as
Aristocrates called it, for the master.
"To your health and good fortune in life, Dulcie," he said politely.
The child gazed mutely at him over her glass, then, blushing, ventured
to taste her orange juice.
When she finished, Barres drew her frail arm through his and took her
out, seating her. Ceremonies began in silence, and the master of the
place was not quite sure whether the flush on Dulcie's face indicated
unhappy embarrassment or pleasure.
He need not have worried: the child adored it all. The Prophet came in
and gravely seated himself on a neighbouring chair, whence he could
survey the table and seriously inspect each course.
"Dulcie," he said, "how grown-up you look with your bobbed hair put
up, and your fluffy gown."
She lifted her enchanted eyes to him:
"It is my first communion dress.... I've had to make it longer for a
graduation dress."
"Oh, that's so; you're graduating this summer!"
"Yes."
"And what then?"
"Nothing." She sighed unconsciously and sat very still with folded
hands, while Aristocrates refilled her glass of water.
She no longer felt embarrassed; her gravity matched Aristocrates's;
she seriously accepted whatever was offered or set before her, but
Barres noticed that she ate it all, merely leaving on her plate, with
inculcated and mathematical precision, a small portion as concession
to good manners.
They had, toward the banquet's end, water ices, bon-bons, French
pastry, and ice cream. And presently a slight and blissful sigh of
repletion escaped the child's red lips. The symptoms were satisfactory
but unmistakable; Dulcie was perfectly feminine; her capacity had
proven it.
The Prophet's stately self-control in the fragrant vicinity of
nourishment was now to be rewarded: Barres conducted Dulcie to the
studio and installed her among cushions upon a huge sofa. Then,
lighting a cigarette, he dropped down beside her and crossed one knee
over the other.
"Dulcie," he said in his lazy, humorous way, "it's a funny old world
any way you view it."
"Do you think it is always funny?" inquired the child, her deep, grey
eyes on his face.
He smiled:
"Yes, I do; but sometimes the joke in on one's self. And then,
although it is still a funny world, from the world's point of view,
you, of course, fail to see the humour of it.... I don't suppose you
understand."
"I do," nodded the child, with the ghost of a smile.
"Really? Well, I was afraid I'd been talking nonsense, but if you
understand, it's all right."
They both laughed.
"Do you want to look at some books?" he suggested.
"I'd rather listen to you."
He smiled:
"All right. I'll begin at this corner of the room and tell you about
the things in it." And for a while he rambled lazily on about old
French chairs and Spanish chests, and the panels of Mille Fleur
tapestry which hung behind them; the two lovely pre-Raphael panels in
their exquisite ancient frames; the old Venetian velvet covering
triple choir-stalls in the corner; the ivory-toned marble figure on
its wood and compos pedestal, where tendrils and delicate foliations
of water gilt had become slightly irridescent, harmonising with the
patine on the ancient Chinese garniture flanking a mantel clock of
dullest gold.
About these things, their workmanship, the histories of their times,
he told her in his easy, unaccented voice, glancing sideways at her
from time to time to note how she stood it.
But she listened, fascinated, her gaze moving from the object
discussed to the man who discussed it; her slim limbs curled under
her, her hands clasped around a silken cushion made from the robe of
some Chinese princess.
Lounging there beside her, amused, humorously flattered by her
attention, and perhaps a little touched, he held forth a little
longer.
"Is it a nice party, so far, Dulcie?" he concluded with a smile.
She flushed, found no words, nodded, and sat with lowered head as
though pondering.
"What would you rather do if you could do what you want to in the
world, Dulcie?"
"I don't know."
"Think a minute."
She thought for a while.
"Live with you," she said seriously.
"Oh, Dulcie! That is no sort of ambition for a growing girl!" he
laughed; and she laughed, too, watching his every expression out of
grey eyes that were her chiefest beauty.
"You're a little too young to know what you want yet," he concluded,
still smiling. "By the time that bobbed mop of red hair grows to a
proper length, you'll know more about yourself."
"Do you like it up?" she enquired naively.
"It makes you look older."
"I want it to."
"I suppose so," he nodded, noticing the snowy neck which the new
coiffure revealed. It was becoming evident to him that Dulcie had her
own vanities--little pathetic vanities which touched him as he glanced
at the reconstructed first communion dress and the drooping hyacinth
pinned at the waist, and the cheap white slippers on a foot as
slenderly constructed as her long and narrow hands.
"Did your mother die long ago, Dulcie?"
"Yes."
"In America?"
"In Ireland."
"You look like her, I fancy--" thinking of Soane.
"I don't know."
Barres had heard Soane hold forth in his cups on one or two
occasions--nothing more than the vague garrulousness of a Celt made
more loquacious by the whiskey of one Grogan--something about his
having been a gamekeeper in his youth, and that his wife--"God rest
her!"--might have held up her head with "anny wan o' thim in th' Big
House."
Recollecting this, he idly wondered what the story might have been--a
young girl's perverse infatuation for her father's gamekeeper,
perhaps--a handsome, common, ignorant youth, reckless and irresponsible
enough to take advantage of her--probably some such story--resembling
similar histories of chauffeurs, riding-masters, grooms, and
coachmen at home.
The Prophet came noiselessly into the studio, stopped at sight of his
little mistress, twitched his tail reflectively, then leaped onto a
carved table and calmly began his ablutions.
Barres got up and wound up the Victrola. Then he kicked aside a rug or
two.
"This is to be a real party, you know," he remarked. "You don't dance,
do you?"
"Yes," she said diffidently, "a little."
"Oh! That's fine!" he exclaimed.
Dulcie got off the sofa, shook out her reconstructed gown. When he
came over to where she stood, she laid her hand in his almost
solemnly, so overpowering had become the heavenly sequence of events.
For the rite of his hospitality had indeed become a rite to her. Never
before had she stood in awe, enthralled before such an altar as this
man's hearthstone. Never had she dreamed that he who so wondrously
served it could look at such an offering as hers--herself.
But the miracle had happened; altar and priest were accepting her; she
laid her hand, which trembled, in his; gave herself to his guidance
and to the celestial music, scarcely seeing, scarcely hearing his
voice.
"You dance delightfully," he was saying; "you're a born dancer,
Dulcie. I do it fairly well myself, and I ought to know."
He was really very much surprised. He was enjoying it immensely. When
the Victrola gave up the ghost he wound it again and came back to
resume. Under his suggestions and tutelage, they tried more intricate
steps, devious and ambitious, and Dulcie, unterrified by terpsichorean
complications, surmounted every one with his whispered coaching and
expert aid.
Now it came to a point where time was not for him. He was too
interested, enjoying it too genuinely.
Sometimes, when they paused to enable him to resurrect the defunct
music in the Victrola, they laughed at the Prophet, who sat upon the
ancient carved table, gravely surveying them. Sometimes they rested
because he thought she ought to--himself a trifle pumped--only to
find, to his amazement, that he need not be solicitous concerning
her.
* * * * *
A tall and ancient clock ringing midnight from clear, uncompromising
bells, brought Barres to himself.
"Good Lord!" he exclaimed, "this won't do! Dear child, I'm having a
wonderful time, but I've got to deliver you to your father!"
He drew her arm through his, laughingly pretending horror and haste;
she fled lightly along beside him as he whisked her through the hall
and down the stairs.
A candle burned on the desk. Soane sat there, asleep, and odorous of
alcohol, his flushed face buried in his arms.
But Soane was what is known as a "sob-souse"; never ugly in his cups,
merely inclined to weep over the immemorial wrongs of Ireland.
He woke up when Barres touched his shoulder, rubbed his swollen eyes
and black, curly head, gazed tragically at his daughter:
"G'wan to bed, ye little scut!" he said, getting to his feet with a
terrific yawn.
Barres took her hand:
"We've had a wonderful party, haven't we, Sweetness?"
"Yes," whispered the child.
The next instant she was gone like a ghost, through the dusky,
whitewashed corridor where distorted shadows trembled in the
candlelight.
"Soane," said Barres, "this won't do, you know. They'll sack you if
you keep on drinking."
The man, not yet forty, a battered, middle-aged by-product of hale and
reckless vigour, passed his hands over his temples with the dignity
of a Hibernian Hamlet:
"The harp that wanst through Tara's halls--" he began; but memory
failed; and two tears--by-products, also, of Grogan's whiskey--sparkled
in his reproachful eyes.
"I'm merely telling you," remarked Barres. "We all like you, Soane,
but the landlord won't stand for it."
"May God forgive him," muttered Soane. "Was there ever a landlord but
he was a tyrant, too?"
Barres blew out the candle; a faint light above the Fu-dog outside,
over the street door, illuminated the stone hall.
"You ought to keep sober for your little daughter's sake," insisted
Barres in a low voice. "You love her, don't you?"
"I do that!" said Soane--"God bless her and her poor mother, who could
hould up her pretty head with anny wan till she tuk up with th' like
o' me!"
His brogue always increased in his cups; devotion to Ireland and a
lofty scorn of landlords grew with both.
"You'd better keep away from Grogan's," remarked Barres.
"I had a bite an' a sup at Grogan's. Is there anny harrm in that,
sorr?"
"Cut out the 'sup,' Larry. Cut out that gang of bums at Grogan's, too.
There are too many Germans hanging out around Grogan's these days. You
Sinn Feiners or Clan-na-Gael, or whatever you are, had better manage
your own affairs, anyway. The old-time Feinans stood on their own
sturdy legs, not on German beer-skids."
"Wisha then, sorr, d'ye mind th' ould song they sang in thim days:
"_Then up steps Bonyparty
An' takes me by the hand,
And how is ould Ireland,
And how does she shtand?
It's a poor, disthressed country
As ever yet was seen,
And they're hangin' men and women
For the wearing of the green!_
_Oh, the wearing of the_----"
"That'll do," said Barres drily. "Do you want to wake the house? Don't
go to Grogan's and talk about Ireland to any Germans. I'll tell you
why: we'll probably be at war with Germany ourselves within a year,
and that's a pretty good reason for you Irish to keep clear of all
Germans. Go to bed!"
VI
DULCIE
One warm afternoon late in spring, Dulcie Soane, returning from school
to Dragon Court, found her father behind the desk, as usual, awaiting
his daughter's advent, to release him from duty.
A tall, bony man with hectic and sunken cheeks and only a single eye
was standing by the desk, earnestly engaged in whispered conversation
with her father.
He drew aside instantly as Dulcie came up and laid her school books on
the desk. Soane, already redolent of Grogan's whiskey, pushed back his
chair and got to his feet.
"G'wan in f'r a bite an' a sup," he said to his daughter, "while I
talk to the gintleman."
So Dulcie went slowly into the superintendent's dingy quarters for her
mid-day meal, which was dinner; and between her and a sloppy
scrub-woman who cooked for them, she managed to warm up and eat what
Soane had left for her from his own meal.
When she returned to the desk in the hall, the one-eyed man had gone.
Soane sat on the chair behind the desk, his face over-red and shiny,
his heels drumming the devil's tattoo on the tessellated pavement.
"I'll be at Grogan's," he said, as Dulcie seated herself in the
ancient leather chair behind the desk telephone, and began to sort the
pile of mail which the postman evidently had just delivered.
"Very well," she murmured absently, turning around and beginning
to distribute the letters and parcels in the various numbered
compartments behind her. Soane slid off his chair to his feet and
straightened up, stretching and yawning.
"Av anny wan tilliphones to Misther Barres," he said, "listen in."
"What!"
"Listen in, I'm tellin' you. And if it's a lady, ask her name first,
and then listen in. And if she says her name is Quellen or Dunois,
mind what she says to Misther Barres."
"Why?" enquired Dulcie, astonished.
"Becuz I'm tellin' ye!"
"I shall not do that," said the girl, flushing up.
"Ah, bother! Sure, there's no harm in it, Dulcie! Would I be askin' ye
to do wrong, asthore? Me who is your own blood and kin? Listen then:
'Tis a woman what do be botherin' the poor young gentleman, an' I'll
not have him f'r to be put upon. Listen, m'acushla, and if airy a lady
tilliphones, or if she comes futtherin' an' muttherin' around here,
call me at Grogan's and I'll be soon dishposen' av the likes av her."
"Has she ever been here--this lady?" asked the girl, uncertain and
painfully perplexed.
"Sure has she! Manny's the time I've chased her out," replied Soane
glibly.
"Oh. What does she look like?"
"God knows--annything ye don't wish f'r to look like yourself! Sure, I
disremember what make of woman she might be--her name's enough for
you. Call me up if she comes or rings. She may be a dangerous woman,
at that," he added, "so speak fair to her and listen in to what she
says."
Dulcie slowly nodded, looking at him hard.
Soane put on his faded brown hat at an angle, fished a cigar with a
red and gold band from his fancy but soiled waistcoat, scratched a
match on the seat of his greasy pants, and sauntered out through the
big, whitewashed hallway into the street, with a touch of the swagger
which always characterised him.
* * * * *
Dulcie, both hands buried in her ruddy hair and both thin elbows on
the desk, sat poring over her school books.
Graduation day was approaching; there was much for her to absorb, much
to memorise before then.
As she studied she hummed to herself the air of the quaint song which
she was to sing at her graduation exercises. That did not interfere
with her concentration; but as she finished one lesson, cast aside the
book, and opened another to prepare the next lesson, vaguely happy
memories of her evening party with Barres came into her mind to
disturb her thoughts, tempting her to reverie and the delicious
idleness she knew only when alone and absorbed in thoughts of him.
But she resolutely put him out of her mind and opened her book.
The hall clock ticked loudly through the silence; slanting sun rays
fell through the street grille, across the tessellated floor where
flies crawled and buzzed.
The Prophet sat full in a bar of sunlight and gravely followed the
movements of the flies as though specialising on the study of those
amazing insects.
Tenants of Dragon Court passed out or entered at intervals, pausing to
glance at their letter-boxes or requesting their keys.
Westmore came down the eastern staircase, like an avalanche, with a
cheery:
"Hello, Dulcie! Any letters? All right, old dear! If you see Mr.
Mandel, tell him I'll be at the club!"
Corot Mandel came in presently, and she gave him Westmore's message.
"Thanks," he said, not even glancing at the thin figure in the shabby
dress too small for her. And, after peering into his letter-box, he
went away with the indolent swing of a large and powerful plantigrade,
gazing fixedly ahead of him out of heavy, oriental eyes, and twisting
up his jet black, waxed moustache.
A tall, handsome girl called and enquired for Mr. Trenor. Dulcie
returned her amiable smile, unhooked the receiver, and telephoned up.
But nobody answered from Esme Trenor's apartment, and the girl, whose
name was Damaris Souval, and whose profession varied between the stage
and desultory sitting for artists, smiled once more on Dulcie and
sauntered out in her very charming summer gown.
The shabby child looked after her through the sunny hallway, the smile
still curving her lips--a sensitive, winning smile, untainted by envy.
Then she resumed her book, serenely clearing her youthful mind of
vanity and desire for earthly things.
Half an hour later Esme Trenor sauntered in. His was a sensitive
nature and fastidious, too. Dinginess, obscurity--everything that was
shabby, tarnished, humble in life, he consistently ignored. He had
ignored Dulcie Soane for three years: he ignored her now.
He glanced indifferently into his letter-box as he passed the desk.
Dulcie said, with the effort it always required for her to speak to
him:
"Miss Souval called, but left no message."
Trenor's supercilious glance rested on her for the fraction of a
second, then, with a bored nod, he continued on his way and up the
stairs. And Dulcie returned to her book.
The desk telephone rang: a Mrs. Helmund desired to speak to Mr.
Trenor. Dulcie switched her on, rested her chin on her hand, and
continued her reading.
Some time afterward the telephone rang again.
"Dragon Court," said Dulcie, mechanically.
"I wish to speak to Mr. Barres, please."
"Mr. Barres has not come in from luncheon."
"Are you sure?" said the pretty, feminine voice.
"Quite sure," replied Dulcie. "Wait a minute----"
She called Barres's apartment; Aristocrates answered and confirmed his
master's absence with courtly effusion.
"No, he is not in," repeated Dulcie. "Who shall I say called him?"
"Say that Miss Dunois called him up. If he comes in, say that Miss
Thessalie Dunois will come at five to take tea with him. Thank you.
Good-bye."
Startled to hear the very name against which her father had warned
her, Dulcie found it difficult to reconcile the sweet voice that came
to her over the wire with the voice of any such person her father had
described.
Still a trifle startled, she laid aside the receiver with a disturbed
glance toward the wrought-iron door at the further end of the hall.
She had no desire at all to call up her father at Grogan's and inform
him of what had occurred. The mere thought of surreptitious listening
in, of eavesdropping, of informing, reddened her face. Also, she had
long since lost confidence in the somewhat battered but jaunty man who
had always neglected her, although never otherwise unkind, even when
intoxicated.
No, she would neither listen in nor inform on anybody at the behest of
a father for whom, alas, she had no respect, merely those shreds of
conventional feeling which might once have been filial affection, but
had become merely an habitual solicitude.
No, her character, her nature refused such obedience. If there was
trouble between the owner of the unusually sweet voice and Mr. Barres,
it was their affair, not hers, not her father's.
This settled in her mind, she opened another book and turned the pages
slowly until she came to the lesson to be learned.
It was hard to concentrate; her thoughts were straying, now, to
Barres.
And, as she leaned there, musing above her dingy school book, through
the grilled door at the further end of the hall stepped a young girl
in a light summer gown--a beautiful girl, lithe, graceful, exquisitely
groomed--who came swiftly up to the desk, a trifle pale and
breathless:
"Mr. Barres? He lives here?"
"Yes."
"Please announce Miss Dunois."
Dulcie flushed deeply under the shock:
"Mr.--Mr. Barres is still out----"
"Oh. Was it you I talked to over the telephone?" asked Thessalie
Dunois.
"Yes."
"Mr. Barres has not returned?"
"No."
Thessalie bit her lip, hesitated, turned to go. And at the same
instant Dulcie saw the one-eyed man at the street door, peering
through the iron grille.
Thessalie saw him, too, stiffened to marble, stood staring straight at
him.
He turned and went away up the street. But Dulcie, to whom the
incident signified nothing in particular except the impudence of a
one-eyed man, was not prepared for the face which Thessalie Dunois
turned toward her. Not a vestige of colour remained in it, and her
dark eyes seemed feverish and too large.
"You need not give Mr. Barres any message from me," she said in an
altered voice, which sounded strained and unsteady. "Please do not
even say that I came or mention my name.... May I ask it of you?"
Dulcie, very silent in her surprise, made no reply.
"Please may I ask it of you?" whispered Thessalie. "Do you mind not
telling anybody that I was here?"
"If--you wish it."
"I do. May I trust you?"
"Y-yes."
"Thank you--" A bank bill was in her gloved fingers; intuition warned
her; she took another swift look at Dulcie. The child's face was
flaming scarlet.
"Forgive me," whispered Thessalie.... "And thank you, dear--" She bent
over quickly, took Dulcie's hand, pressed it, looking her in the
eyes.
"It's all right," she whispered. "I am not asking you to do anything
you shouldn't. Mr. Barres will understand it all when I write to
him.... Did you see that man at the street door, looking through the
grating?"
"Yes."
"Do you know who he is?" whispered Thessalie.
"No."
"Have you never before seen him?"
"Yes. He was here at two o'clock talking to my father."
"Your father?"
"My father's name is Lawrence Soane. He is superintendent of Dragon
Court."
"What is your name?"
"Dulcie Soane."
Thessalie still held her hand tightly. Then with a quick but forced
smile, she pressed it, thanking the girl for her consideration, turned
and walked swiftly through the hall out into the street.
* * * * *
Dulcie, dreaming over her closed books in the fading light, vaguely
uneasy lest her silence might embrace the faintest shadow of
disloyalty to Barres, looked up quickly at the sound of his familiar
footsteps on the pavement.
"Hello, little comrade," he called to her on his way to the stairs.
"Didn't we have a jolly party the other evening? I'm going out to
another party this evening, but I bet it won't be as jolly as ours!"
The girl smiled happily.
"Any letters, Sweetness?"
"None, Mr. Barres."
"All the better. I have too many letters, too many visitors. It leaves
me no time to have another party with you. But we shall have another,
Dulcie--never fear. That is," he added, pretending to doubt her
receptiveness of his invitation, "if you would care to have another
with me."
She merely looked at him, smiling deliciously.
"Be a good child and we'll have another!" he called back to her,
running on up the western staircase.
* * * * *
Around seven o'clock her father came in, steady enough of foot but
shiny-red in the face and maudlin drunk.
"That woman was here," he whined, "an' ye never called me up! I am
b-bethrayed be me childer--wurra the day----"
"Please, father! If any one sees you----"
"An' phwy not! Am I ashamed o' the tears I shed? No, I am not. No
Irishman need take shame along av the tears he sheds for Ireland--God
bless her where she shtands!--wid the hob-nails av the crool tyrant
foreninst her bleeding neck an'----"
"Father, please----"
"That woman I warned ye of! She was here! 'Twas the wan-eyed lad who
seen her----"
Dulcie rose and took him by his arm. He made no resistance; but he
wept while she conducted him bedward, as the immemorial wrongs of
Ireland tore his soul.
VII
OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS
The tremendous tragedy in Europe, now nearing the end of the second
act, had been slowly shaking the drowsy Western World out of its snug
slumber of complacency. Young America was already sitting up in bed,
awake, alert, listening. Older America, more difficult to convince,
rolled solemn and interrogative eyes toward Washington, where the
wooden gods still sat nodding in a row, smiling vacuously at destiny
out of carved and painted features. Eyes had they but they saw not,
ears but they heard not; neither spake they through their mouths.
Yet, they that made them were no longer like unto them, for many an
anxious idolater no longer trusted in them. For their old God's voice
was sounding in their ears.
The voice of a great ex-president, too, had been thundering from the
wilderness; lesser prophets, endowed, however, with intellect and
vision, had been warning the young West that the second advent of
Attila was at hand; an officer of the army, inspired of God, had
preached preparedness from the market places and had established for
its few disciples an habitation; and a great Admiral had died of a
broken heart because his lips had been officially sealed--the wisest
lips that ever told of those who go down to the sea in ships.
Plainer and plainer in American ears sounded the mounting surf of
that blood-red sea thundering against the frontiers of Democracy;
clearer and clearer came the discordant clamour of the barbaric
hordes; louder and more menacing the half-crazed blasphemies of their
chief, who had given the very name of the Scourge of God to one among
the degenerate litter he had sired.
* * * * *
Garret Barres had been educated like any American of modern New York
type. Harvard, then five years abroad, and a return to his native city
revealed him as an ambitious, receptive, intelligent young man, deeply
interested in himself and his own affairs, theoretically patriotic, a
good citizen by intention, an affectionate son and brother, and
already a pretty good painter of the saner species.
A modest income of his own enabled him to bide his time and decline
pot-boilers. A comparatively young father and an even more youthful
mother, both of sporting proclivities, together with a sister of the
same tastes, were his preferred companions when he had time to go home
to the family rooftree in northern New York. His lines, indeed, were
cast in pleasant places. Beside still waters in green pastures, he
could always restore his city-tarnished soul when he desired to retire
for a while from the battleground of endeavour.
The city, after all, offered him a world-wide battlefield; for Garret
Barres was by choice a painter of thoroughbred women, of cosmopolitan
men--a younger warrior of the brush imbued with the old traditions of
those great English captains of portraiture, who recorded for us the
more brilliant human truths of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.
From their stately canvases aglow, the eyes of the lovely dead look
out at us; the eyes of ambition, of pride, of fatuous complacency;
the haunted eyes of sorrow; the clear eyes of faith. Out of the past
they gaze--those who once lived--deathlessly recorded by Van Dyck,
Lely, Kneller; by Gainsborough, Reynolds, Hoppner, Lawrence, Raeburn;
or consigned to a dignified destiny by Stuart, Sully, Inman, and
Vanderlyn.
* * * * *
When Barres returned to New York after many years, he found that the
aspect of the city had not altered very greatly. The usual dirt,
disorder, and municipal confusion still reigned; subways were being
dug, but since the memory of man runneth, the streets of the
metropolis have been dug up, and its market places and byways have
been an abomination.
The only visible excitement, however, was in the war columns of the
newspapers, and, sometimes, around bulletin boards where wrangling
groups were no uncommon sight, citizens and aliens often coming into
verbal collision--sometimes physical--promptly suppressed by bored
policemen.
There was a "preparedness" parade; thousands of worthy citizens
marched in it, nervously aware, now, that the Great Republic's only
mobile military division was on the Mexican border, where also certain
Guard regiments were likely to be directed to reinforce the
regulars--pet regiments from the city, among whose corps of officers
and enlisted men everybody had some friend or relative.
But these regiments had not yet entrained. There were few soldiers to
be seen on the streets. Khaki began to be noticeable in New York only
when the Plattsburg camps opened. After that there was an interim of
the usual dull, unaccented civilian monotony, mitigated at rare
intervals by this dun-coloured ebb and flow from Plattsburg.
Like the first vague premonitions of a nightmare the first ominous
symptoms of depression were slowly possessing hearts already uneasy
under two years' burden of rumours unprintable, horrors incredible to
those aloof and pursuing the peaceful tenor of their ways.
A growing restlessness, unbelief, the incapacity to
understand--selfishness, rapacity, self-righteousness, complacency,
cowardice, even stupidity itself were being jolted and shocked into
something resembling a glimmer of comprehension as the hunnish U-boats,
made ravenous by the taste of blood, steered into western shipping lanes
like a vast shoal of sharks.
And always thicker and thicker came the damning tales of rape
and murder, of cowardly savagery, brutal vileness, degenerate
bestiality--clearer, nearer, distinctly audible, the sigh of a
ravaged and expiring civilisation trampled to obliteration by the
slavering, ferocious swine of the north.
* * * * *
Fires among shipping, fires amid great stores of cotton and grain
destined for France or England, explosions of munitions of war ordered
by nations of the Entente, the clumsy propaganda or impudent sneers of
German and pro-German newspapers; reports of German meddling in
Mexico, in South America, in Japan; more sinister news concerning the
insolent activities of certain embassies--all these were beginning to
have their logical effect among a fat and prosperous people which
simply could not bear to be aroused from pleasant dreams of
brotherhood to face the raw and hellish truth.
* * * * *
"For fifty years," remarked Barres to his neighbour, Esme Trenor,
also a painter of somewhat eccentric portraits, "our national
characteristic has been a capacity for absorbing bunk and a fixed
determination to kid ourselves. There really is a war, Trenor, old
top, and we're going to get into it before very long."
Trenor, a tall, tired, exquisitely groomed young man, who once had
painted a superficially attractive portrait of a popular debutante,
and had been overwhelmed with fashionable orders ever since, was the
adored of women. He dropped one attenuated knee over the other and
lighted an attenuated cigarette.
"Fancy anybody bothering enough about anything to fight over it!" he
said languidly.
"We're going to _war_, Trenor," repeated Barres, jamming his brushes
into a bowl of black soap. "That's my positive conviction."
"Yours is so disturbingly positive a nature," remonstrated the other.
"Why ever raise a row? Nothing positive is of any real importance--not
even opinions."
Barres, vigorously cleaning his brushes in turpentine and black soap,
glanced around at Trenor, and in his quick smile there glimmered a
hint of good-natured malice. For Esme Trenor was notoriously anything
except positive in his painting, always enveloping a lack of technical
knowledge with a veil of camouflage. Behind this pretty veil hid many
defects, perhaps even deformities--protected by vague, indefinite
shadows and the effrontery of an adroit exploiter of the restless
sex.
But Esme Trenor was both clever and alert. He had not even missed that
slight and momentary glimmer of good-humoured malice in the pleasant
glance of Barres. But, like his more intelligent prototype, Whistler,
it was impossible to know whether or not discovery ever made any
particular difference to him. He tucked a lilac-bordered handkerchief
a little deeper into his cuff, glanced at his jewelled wrist-watch,
shook the long ash from his cigarette.
"To be positive in anything," he drawled, "is an effort; effort
entails exertion; exertion is merely a degree of violence; violence
engenders toxins; toxins dull the intellect. Quod erat, dear friend.
You see?"
"Oh, yes, I see," nodded Barres, always frankly amused at Trenor and
his ways.
"Well, then, if you see----" Trenor waved a long, bony, over-manicured
hand, expelled a ring or two of smoke, meditatively; then, in his
characteristically languid voice: "To be positive closes the door to
further observation and pulls down the window shades. Nothing remains
except to go to bed. Is there anything more uninteresting than to go
to bed? Is there anything more depressing than to know all about
something?"
"You do converse like an ass sometimes," remarked Barres.
"Yes--sometimes. Not now, Barres. I don't desire to know all about
anybody or anything. Fancy my knowing all about art, for example!"
"Yes, fancy!" repeated Barres, laughing.
"Or about anything specific--a woman, for example!" He shrugged
wearily.
"If you meet a woman and like her, don't you want to know all there is
to know about her?" inquired Barres.
"I should say not!" returned the other with languid contempt. "I don't
wish to know anything at all about her."
"Well, we differ about that, old top."
"Religiously. A woman can be only an incidental amusement in one's
career. You don't go to a musical comedy twice, do you? And any woman
will reveal herself sufficiently in one evening."
"Nice, kindly domestic instincts you have, Trenor."
"I'm merely fastidious," returned the other, dropping his cigarette
out of the open window. He rose, yawned, took his hat, stick and
gloves.
"Bye," he said languidly. "I'm painting Elsena Helmund this morning."
Barres said, with good-humoured envy:
"I've neither commission nor sitter. If I had, you bet I'd not stand
there yawning at my luck."
"It is you who have the luck, not I," drawled Trenor. "I give a
portion of my spiritual and material self with every brush stroke,
while you remain at liberty to flourish and grow fat in idleness. I
perish as I create; my life exhausts itself to feed my art. What you
call my good luck is my martyrdom. You see, dear friend, how fortunate
you are?"
"I see," grinned Barres. "But will your spiritual nature stand such a
cruel drain? Aren't you afraid your morality may totter?"
"Morality," mused Esme, going; "that is one of those early Gothic
terms now obsolete, I believe----"
He sauntered out with his hat and gloves and stick, still murmuring:
"Morality? Gothic--very Gothic--"
Barres, still amused, sorted his wet brushes, dried them carefully one
by one on a handful of cotton waste, and laid them in a neat row
across the soapstone top of his palette-table.
"Hang it!" he muttered cheerfully. "I could paint like a streak this
morning if I had the chance--"
He threw himself back in his chair and sat there smoking for a while,
his narrowing eyes fixed on a great window which opened above the
court. Soft spring breezes stirred the curtains; sparrows were noisy
out there; a strip of cobalt sky smiled at him over the opposite
chimneys; an April cloud floated across it.
He rose, walked over to the window and glanced down into the court.
Several more hyacinths were now in blossom. The Prophet dozed
majestically, curled up on an Italian garden seat. Beside him sprawled
the snow white Houri, stretched out full length in the sun, her
wonderful blue eyes following the irrational gambols of the
tortoise-shell cat, Strindberg, who had gone loco, as usual, and was
tearing up and down trees, prancing sideways with flattened ears and
crooked tail, in terror at things invisible, or digging furiously
toward China amid the hyacinths.
Dulcie Soane came out into the court presently and expostulated with
Strindberg, who suffered herself to be removed from the hyacinth bed,
only to make a hysterical charge on her mistress's ankles.
"Stop it, you crazy thing!" insisted Dulcie, administering a gentle
slap which sent the cat bucketing and corvetting across the lawn,
where the eccentric course of a dead leaf, blown by the April wind,
instantly occupied its entire intellectual vacuum.
Barres, leaning on the window-sill, said, without raising his voice:
"Hello, Dulcie! How are you, after our party?"
The child looked up, smiled shyly her response through the pale glory
of the April sunshine.
"What are you doing to-day?" he inquired, with casual but friendly
interest.
"Nothing."
"Isn't there any school?"
"It's Saturday."
"That's so. Well, if you're doing nothing you're just as busy as I
am," he remarked, smiling down at her where she stood below his
window.
"Why don't you paint pictures?" ventured the girl diffidently.
"Because I haven't any orders. Isn't that sad?"
"Yes.... But you could paint a picture just to please yourself,
couldn't you?"
"I haven't anybody to paint from," he explained with amiable
indifference, lazily watching the effect of alternate shadow and
sunlight on her upturned face.
"Couldn't you find--somebody?" Her heart had suddenly begun to beat
very fast.
Barres laughed:
"Would you like to have your portrait painted?"
She could scarcely find voice to reply:
"Will you--let me?"
The slim young figure down there in the April sunshine had now
arrested his professional attention. With detached interest he
inspected her for a few moments; then:
"You'd make an interesting study, Dulcie. What do you say?"
"Do--do you mean that you _want_ me?"
"Why--yes! Would you like to pose for me? It's pin-money, anyway.
Would you like to try it?"
"Y-yes."
"Are you quite sure? It's hard work."
"Quite--sure----" she stammered. The little flushed face was lifted
very earnestly to his now, almost beseechingly. "I am quite sure," she
repeated breathlessly.
"So you'd really like to pose for me?" he insisted in smiling surprise
at the girl's visible excitement. Then he added abruptly: "I've half a
mind to give you a job as my private model!"
Through the rosy confusion of her face her grey eyes were fixed on him
with a wistful intensity, almost painful. For into her empty heart and
starved mind had suddenly flashed a dazzling revelation. Opportunity
was knocking at her door. Her chance had come! Perhaps it had been
inherited from her mother--God knows!--this deep, deep hunger for
things beautiful--this passionate longing for light and knowledge.
Mere contact with such a man as Barres had already made endurable a
solitary servitude which had been subtly destroying her child's
spirit, and slowly dulling the hunger in her famished mind. And now to
aid him--to feel that he was using her--was to arise from her rags of
ignorance and emerge upright into the light which filled that
wonder-house wherein he dwelt, and on the dark threshold of which her
lonely little soul had crouched so long in silence.
* * * * *
She looked up almost blindly at the man who, in careless friendliness,
had already opened his door to her, had permitted her to read his
wonder-books, had allowed her to sit unreproved and silent from sheer
happiness, and gaze unsatiated upon the wondrous things within the
magic mansion where he dwelt.
And now to serve this man; to aid him, to creep into the light in
which he stood and strive to learn and see!--the thought already had
produced a delicate intoxication in the child, and she gazed up at
Barres from the sunny garden with her naked soul in her eyes. Which
confused, perplexed, and embarrassed him.
"Come on up," he said briefly. "I'll tell your father over the
'phone."
* * * * *
She entered without a sound, closed the door which he had left open
for her, advanced across the thick-meshed rug. She still wore her blue
gingham apron; her bobbed hair, full of ruddy lights, intensified the
whiteness of her throat. In her arms she cradled the Prophet, who
stared solemnly at Barres out of depthless green eyes.
"Upon my word," thought Barres to himself, "I believe I have found a
model and an uncommon one!"
Dulcie, watching his expression, smiled slightly and stroked the
Prophet.
"I'll paint you that way! Don't stir," said the young fellow
pleasantly. "Just stand where you are, Dulcie. You're quite all right
as you are----" He lifted a half-length canvas, placed it on his heavy
easel and clamped it.
"I feel exactly like painting," he continued, busy with his brushes
and colours. "I'm full of it to-day. It's in me. It's got to come
out.... And you certainly are an interesting subject--with your big
grey eyes and bobbed red hair--oh, quite interesting constructively,
too--as well as from the colour point."
He finished setting his palette, gathered up a handful of brushes:
"I won't bother to draw you except with a brush----"
He looked across at her, remained looking, the pleasantly detached
expression of his features gradually changing to curiosity, to the
severity of increasing interest, to concentrated and silent
absorption.
"Dulcie," he presently concluded, "you are so unusually interesting
and paintable that you make me think very seriously.... And I'm hanged
if I'm going to waste you by slapping a technically adequate sketch of
you onto this nice new canvas ... which might give me pleasure while
I'm doing it ... and might even tickle my vanity for a week ... and
then be laid away to gather dust ... and be covered over next year and
used for another sketch.... No.... _No_!... You're worth more than
that!"
He began to pace the place to and fro, thinking very hard, glancing
around at her from moment to moment, where she stood, obediently
immovable on the blue meshed rug, clasping the Prophet to her breast.
"Do you want to become my private model?" he demanded abruptly. "I
mean seriously. Do you?"
"Yes."
"I mean a real model, from whom I can ask anything?"
"Oh, yes, please," pleaded the girl, trembling a little.
"Do you understand what it means?"
"Yes."
"Sometimes you'll be required to wear few clothes. Sometimes none. Did
you know that?"
"Yes. Mr. Westmore asked me once."
"You didn't care to?"
"Not for him."
"You don't mind doing it for me?"
"I'll do anything you ask me," she said, trying to smile and shivering
with excitement.
"All right. It's a bargain. You're my model, Dulcie. When do you
graduate from school?"
"In June."
"Two months! Well--all right. Until then it will be a half day through
the week, and all day Saturdays and Sundays, if I require you. You'll
have a weekly salary----" He smiled and mentioned the figure, and the
girl blushed vividly. She had, it appeared, expected nothing.
"Why, Dulcie!" he exclaimed, immensely amused. "You didn't intend to
come here and give me all your time for nothing, did you?"
"Yes."
"But why on earth should you do such a thing for me?"
She found no words to explain why.
"Nonsense," he continued; "you're a business woman now. Your father
will have to find somebody to cook for him and take the desk when he's
out at Grogan's. Don't worry; I'll fix it with him.... By the way,
Dulcie, supposing you sit down."
She found a chair and took the Prophet onto her lap.
"Now, this will be very convenient for me," he went on, inspecting her
with increasing satisfaction. "If I ever have any orders--any
sitters--you can have a vacation, of course. Otherwise, I'll always
have an interesting model at hand--I've got chests full of wonderful
costumes--genuine ones----" He fell silent, his eyes studying her.
Already he was planning half a dozen pictures, for he was just
beginning to perceive how adaptable the girl might be. And there was
about her that indefinable something which, when a painter discovers
it, interests him and arouses his intense artistic curiosity.
"You know," he said musingly, "you are something more than pretty,
Dulcie.... I could put you in eighteenth century clothes and you'd
look logical. Yes, and in seventeenth century clothes, too.... I could
do some amusing things with you in oriental garments.... A young
Herodiade ... Calypso ... Theodora.... She was a child, too, you know.
There's a portrait with bobbed hair--a young girl by Van Dyck.... You
know you are quite stimulating to me, Dulcie. You excite a painter's
imagination. It's rather odd," he added naively, "that I never
discovered you before; and I've known you over two years."
He had seated himself on the sofa while discoursing. Now he got up,
touched a bell twice. The Finnish maid, Selinda, with her high
cheek-bones, frosty blue eyes and colourless hair, appeared in cap and
apron.
"Selinda," he said, "take Miss Dulcie into my room. In a long, leather
Turkish box on the third shelf of my clothes closet is a silk and gold
costume and a lot of jade jewelry. Please put her into it."
So Dulcie Soane went away with her cat in her arms, beside the neat
and frosty-eyed Selinda; and Barres opened a portfolio of engravings,
where were gathered the lovely aristocrats of Van Dyck and Rubens and
Gainsborough and his contemporaries--a charmingly mixed company,
separated by centuries and frontiers, yet all characterised by a
common _something_--some inexplicable similarity which Barres
recognised without defining.
"It's rather amusing," he murmured, "but that kid, Dulcie, seems to
remind me of these people--somehow or other.... One scarcely looks for
qualities in the child of an Irish janitor.... I wonder who her mother
was...."
* * * * *
When he looked up again Dulcie was standing there on the thick rug. On
her naked feet were jade bracelets, jade-set rings on her little toes;
a cascade of jade and gold falling over her breasts to the straight,
narrow breadth of peacock hue which fell to her ankles. And on her
childish head, clasping the ruddy bobbed hair, glittered the
jade-incrusted diadem of a fairy princess of Cathay.
[Illustration: "YOU LITTLE MIRACLE!"]
The Prophet, gathered close to her breast, stared back at Barres with
eyes that dimmed the splendid jade about him.
"That settles it," he said, the tint of excitement rising in his
cheeks. "I _have_ discovered a model and a wonder! And right here is
where I paint my winter Academy--right here and right now!... And I
call it 'The Prophets.' Climb up on that model stand and squat there
cross-legged, and stare at me--straight at me--the way your cat
stares!... There you are. That's right! Don't move. Stay put or I'll
come over and bow-string you!--you little miracle!"
"Do--you mean me?" faltered Dulcie.
"You bet, Sweetness! Do you know how beautiful you are? Well, never
mind----" He had begun already to draw with a wet brush, and now he
relapsed into absorbed silence.
The Prophet watched him steadily. The studio became intensely still.
VIII
DULCIE ANSWERS
The studio door bell rang while Barres was at breakfast one morning
late in June. Aristocrates leisurely answered the door, but shut it
again immediately and walked out into the kitchenette without any
explanation.
Selinda removed the breakfast cover and fetched the newspaper. Later,
Aristocrates, having washed his master's brushes, brought them into
the studio mincingly, upon a silver service-salver.
"No letters?" inquired Barres, glancing up over the morning paper and
laying aside his cigarette.
"No letters, suh. No co'espondence in any shape, fo'm or manner,
suh."
"Anybody to see me?" inquired Barres, always amused at Aristocrates'
flights of verbiage.
"Nobody, suh, excusin' a persistless 'viduality inquihin' fo' you,
suh."
"What persistless individuality was that?" asked Barres.
"A ve'y or-nary human objec', suh, pahshially afflicted with one bad
eye."
"That one-eyed man? He's been here several times, hasn't he? Why does
he come?"
"Fo' commercial puhposes, suh."
"Oh, a pedlar?"
"He mentions a desiah, suh, to dispose, commercially, of vahious
impo'ted materials requiahed by ahtists."
"Didn't you show him the sign in the hall, 'No pedlars allowed'?"
"Yaas, suh."
"What did he say?"
"I would not demean myse'f to repeat what this human objec' said,
suh."
"And what did you do then?"
"Mistuh Barres, suh, I totally igno'hed that man," replied Aristocrates
languidly.
"Quite right. But you tell Soane to enforce the rule against pedlars.
Every day there are two or three of them ringing at the studio, trying
to sell colours, laces, or fake oriental rugs. It annoys me. Selinda
can't hear the bell and I have to leave my work and open the door.
Tell that persistless one-eyed man to keep away. Tell Soane to bounce
him next time he enters Dragon Court. Do you understand?"
"Yaas, suh. But Soane, suh, he's a might friendly Irish. He's spo'tin'
'round Grogan's nights, 'longa this here one-eyed 'viduality. Yaas,
suh. I done seen 'em co-gatherin' on vahious occasionalities."
"Oho!" commented Barres. "It's graft, is it? This one-eyed pedlar
meets Soane at Grogan's and bribes him with a few drinks to let him
peddle colours in Dragon Court! That's the Irish of it, Aristocrates.
I began to suspect something like that. All right. I'll speak to Soane
myself.... Leave the studio door open; it's warm in here."
* * * * *
The month of May was now turning somewhat sultry as it melted into
June. Every pivot-pane in the big studio window had been swung wide
open. The sun had already clothed every courtyard tree with dense and
tender foliage; hyacinth and tulip were gone and Soane's subscription
geraniums blazed in their place like beds of coals heaped up on the
grass plot of Dragon Court.
But blue sky, sunshine of approaching summer, gentle winds and
freshening rains brought only restlessness to New Yorkers that month
of May.
Like the first two years of the war, the present year seemed strange,
unreal; its vernal breezes brought no balm, its blue skies no content.
The early summer sunlight seemed almost uncanny in a world where,
beyond the sea, millions of men at arms swayed ceaselessly under sun
and moon alike, interlocked in one gigantic death grip!--a horrible
and blood-drenched human chain of butchery stretching half around the
earth.
Into every Western human eye had come strange and subtle shadows which
did not depart with moments of forgetful mirth, intervals of
self-absorption, hours filled with familiar interests--the passions,
hopes, perplexities of those years which were now no more.
Those years of yesterdays! A vast and depthless cleft already divided
them from to-day. They seemed as remote as dusty centuries--those days
of an ordered and tranquil world--those days of little obvious faiths
unshattered--even those days of little wars, of petty local strifes,
of an almost universal calm and peace and trust in brotherhood and in
the obligations of civilisation.
Familiar yesterday had vanished, its creeds forgotten. It was already
decades away, and fading like a legend in the ever-increasing glare of
the red and present moment.
And the month of May seemed strange, and its soft skies and sun seemed
out of place in a world full of dying--a world heavy with death--a
western world aloof from the raging hell beyond the seas, yet already
tense under the distant threat of three continents in flames--and all
aquiver before the deathly menace of that horde of blood-crazed demons
still at large, still unsubdued, still ranging the ruins of the planet
which they had so insanely set on fire.
Entire nations were still burning beyond the ocean; other nations had
sunk into cinders. Over the Eastern seas the furnace breath began to
be felt along the out-thrust coast lines of the Western World. Inland,
not yet; but every seaward city became now conscious of that first
faint warning wave of heat from hell. Millions of ears strained to
catch the first hushed whisper of the tumult. Silent in its suspense
the Great Republic listened. Only the priesthood of the deaf and
wooden gods continued voluble. But Israel had already begun to lift up
its million eyes; and its ancient faith began to glow again; and its
trust was becoming once more a living thing--the half-forgotten trust
of Israel in that half-forgotten Lord, who, in the beginning, had been
their helper and their shield.
* * * * *
Through the open studio door came Dulcie Soane. The Prophet followed
at her slender heels, gently waving an urbane tail.
* * * * *
After his first smiling greeting--he always rose, advanced, and took
her hand with that pleasant appearance of formality so adored by
femininity, youthful or mature--he resumed his seat and continued to
write his letters.
These finished, he stamped them, rang for Aristocrates, picked up his
palette and brushes, and pulled out the easel upon which was the
canvas for the morning.
Dulcie, still in the hands of Selinda, had not yet emerged. The
Prophet sat upright on the carved table, motionless as a cat of ebony
with green-jewelled eyes.
"Well, old sport," said Barres, stepping across the rug to caress the
cat, "you and your pretty mistress begin to look very interesting on
my canvas."
The Prophet received the blandishments with dignified gratitude. A
discreet and feathery purring filled the room as Barres stroked the
jet black, silky fur.
"Fine cat, you are," commented the young man, turning as Dulcie
entered.
She laid one hand on his extended arm and sprang lightly to the model
stand. And the next moment she was seated--a slim, gemmed thing
glimmering with imperial jade from top to toe.
Barres laid the Prophet in her arms, stepped back while Dulcie
arranged the docile cat, then retreated to his canvas.
"All right, Sweetness?"
"All right," replied the child happily. And the morning seance was
on.
Barres was usually inclined to ramble along conversationally in his
pleasant, detached way while at work, particularly if work went well.
"Where were we yesterday, Dulcie? Oh, yes; we were talking about the
Victorian era and its art; and we decided that it was not the barren
desert that the ultra-moderns would have us believe. That's what we
decided, wasn't it?"
"_You_ decided," she said.
"So did you, Dulcie. It was a unanimous decision. Because we both
concluded that some among the Victorians were full of that sweet,
clean sanity which alone endures. You recollect how our decision
started?"
"Yes. It was about my new pleasure in Tennyson, Browning, Morris,
Arnold, and Swinburne."
"Exactly. Victorian poets, if sometimes a trifle stilted and
self-conscious, wrote nobly; makers of Victorian prose displayed
qualities of breadth, imagination and vision and a technical
cultivation unsurpassed. The musical compositions of that epoch were
melodious and sometimes truly inspired; never brutal, never vulgar,
never degenerate. And the Victorian sculptors and painters--at first
perhaps austerely pedantic--became, as they should be, recorders of
the times and customs of thought, bringing the end of the reign of a
great Queen to an admirable renaissance."
Dulcie's grey eyes never left his. And if she did not quite understand
every word, already the dawning familiarity with his vocabulary and a
general comprehension of his modes of self-expansion permitted her to
follow him.
"A great Queen, a great reign, a great people," he rambled on,
painting away all the while. "And if in that era architecture declined
toward its lowest level of stupidity, and if taste in furniture and in
the plastic, decorative, and textile arts was steadily sinking toward
its lowest ebb, and if Mrs. Grundy trudged the Empire, paramount, dull
and smugly ferocious, while all snobbery saluted her and the humble
grovelled before her dusty brogans, yet, Dulcie, it was a great era.
"It was great because its faith had not been radically impaired; it
was sane because Germany had not yet inoculated the human race with
its porcine political vulgarities, its bestial degeneracy in art....
And if, perhaps, the sentimental in British art and literature
predominated, thank God it had not yet been tainted with the stark
ugliness, the swinish nakedness, the ferocious leer of things
Teutonic!"
He continued to paint in silence for a while. Presently the Prophet
yawned on Dulcie's knees, displaying a pink cavern.
"Better rest," he said, nodding smilingly at Dulcie. She released the
cat, who stretched, arched his back, yawned again gravely, and stalked
away over the velvety Eastern carpet.
Dulcie got up lithely and followed him on little jade-encrusted, naked
feet.
A box of bon-bons lay on the sofa; she picked up Rossetti's poems,
turned the leaves with jewel-laden fingers, while with the other hand
she groped for a bon-bon, her grey eyes riveted on the pages before
her.
During these intervals between poses it was the young man's custom to
make chalk sketches of the girl, recording swiftly any unstudied
attitude, any unconscious phase of youthful grace that interested
him.
Dulcie, in the beginning, diffidently aware of this, had now become
entirely accustomed to it, and no longer felt any responsibility to
remain motionless while he was busy with red chalk or charcoal.
When she had rested sufficiently, she laid aside her book, hunted up
the Prophet, who lazily endured the gentle tyranny, and resumed her
place on the model stand.
And so they worked away all the morning, until luncheon was served in
the studio by Aristocrates; and Barres in his blouse, and Dulcie in
her peacock silk, her jade, and naked feet, gravely or lightly as
their moods dictated, discussed an omelette and a pot of tea or
chocolate, and the ways and manners and customs of a world which
Dulcie now was discovering as a brand new and most enchanting planet.
IX
HER DAY
June was ending in a very warm week. Work in the studio lagged, partly
because Dulcie, preparing for graduation, could give Barres little
time; partly because, during June, that young man had been away
spending the week-ends with his parents and his sister at Foreland
Farms, their home.
From one of these visits he returned to the city just in time to read
a frantic little note from Dulcie Soane:
"DEAR MR. BARRES, please, _please_ come to my graduation. I do
want _somebody_ there who knows me. And my father is not well. Is
it too much to ask of you? I hadn't the courage to speak to you
about it when you were here, but I have ventured to write because
it will be so lonely for me to graduate without having anybody
there I know.
"DULCIE SOANE."
It was still early in the morning; he had taken a night train to
town.
So when he had been freshened by a bath and change of linen, he took
his hat and went down stairs.
A heavy, pasty-visaged young woman sat at the desk in the entrance
hall.
"Where is Soane?" he inquired.
"He's sick."
"_Where_ is he?"
"In bed," she replied indifferently. The woman's manner just
verged on impertinence. He hesitated, then walked across to the
superintendent's apartments and entered without knocking.
Soane, in his own room, lay sleeping off the consequences of an
evening at Grogan's. One glance was sufficient for Barres, and he
walked out.
On Madison Avenue he found a florist, selected a bewildering bouquet,
and despatched it with a hasty note, by messenger, to Dulcie at her
school. In the note he wrote:
"I shall be there. Cheer up!"
He also sent more flowers to his studio, with pencilled orders to
Aristocrates.
In a toy-shop he found an appropriate decoration for the centre of the
lunch table.
Later, in a jeweller's, he discovered a plain gold locket, shaped like
a heart and inset with one little diamond. A slender chain by which to
suspend it was easily chosen; and an extra payment admitted him to the
emergency department where he looked on while an expert engraved upon
the locket: "Dulcie Soane from Garret Barres," and the date.
After that he went into the nearest telephone booth and called up
several people, inviting them to dine with him that evening.
It was nearly ten o'clock now. He took his little gift, stopped a
taxi, and arrived at the big brick high-school just in time to enter
with the last straggling parents and family friends.
The hall was big and austerely bare, except for the ribbons and flags
and palms which decorated it. It was hot, too, though all the great
blank windows had been swung open wide.
The usual exercises had already begun; there were speeches from
Authority; prayers by Divinity; choral effects by graduating
pulchritude.
The class, attired in white, appeared to average much older than
Dulcie. He could see her now, in her reconstructed communion dress,
holding the big bouquet which he had sent her, one madonna lily of
which she had detached and pinned over her breast.
Her features were composed and delicately flushed; her bobbed hair was
tucked up, revealing the snowy neck.
One girl after another advanced and read or spoke, performing the
particular parlour trick assigned her in the customary and perfectly
unremarkable manner characteristic of such affairs.
Rapturous parental demonstrations greeted each effort; piano, violin
and harp filled in nobly. A slight haze of dust, incident to
pedalistic applause, invaded the place; there was an odour of flowers
in the heated atmosphere.
Glancing at a programme which he had found on his seat, Barres read:
"Song: Dulcie Soane."
Looking up at her where she sat on the stage, among her comrades in white,
he noticed that her eyes were busy searching the audience--possibly
for him, he thought, experiencing an oddly pleasant sensation at the
possibility.
* * * * *
The time at length arrived for Dulcie to do her parlour trick;
she rose and came forward, clasping the big, fragrant bouquet,
prettily flushed but self-possessed. The harp began a little minor
prelude--something Irish and not very modern. Then Dulcie's pure,
untrained voice stole winningly through the picked harp-strings'
hesitation:
"Heart of a colleen,
Where do you roam?
Heart of a colleen,
Far from your home?
Laden with love you stole from her breast!
Wandering dove, return to your nest!
Sodgers are sailin'
Away to the wars;
Ladies are wailin'
Their woe to the stars;
Why is the heart of you straying so soon--
Heart that was part of you, Eileen Aroon?
Lost to a sodger,
Gone is my heart!
Lost to a sodger,
Now we must part----
I and my heart--for it journeys afar
Along with the sodgers who sail to the war!
Tears that near blind me
My pride shall dry,----
Wisha! don't mind me!
Lave a lass cry!
Only a sodger can whistle the tune
That coaxes the heart out of Eileen Aroon!"
And Dulcie's song ended.
* * * * *
Almost instantly the audience had divined in the words she sang a
significance which concerned them--a warning--perhaps a prophecy. The
69th Regiment of New York infantry was Irish, and nearly every seat in
the hall held a relative of some young fellow serving in its ranks.
The applause was impulsive, stormy, persistent; the audience was
demanding the young girl's recall; the noise they made became
overwhelming, checking the mediating music and baffling the next
embarrassed graduate, scheduled to read an essay, and who stood there
mute, her manuscript in her hand.
Finally the principal of the school arose, went over to Dulcie, and
exchanged a few words with her. Then he came forward, hand lifted in
appeal for silence.
"The music and words of the little song you have just heard," he said,
"were written, I have just learned, by the mother of the girl who sang
them. They were written in Ireland a number of years ago, when Irish
regiments were sent away for over-seas service. Neither words nor song
have ever been published. Miss Soane found them among her mother's
effects.
"I thought the story of the little song might interest you. For,
somehow, I feel--as I think you all feel--that perhaps the day may
come--may be near--when the hearts of our women, too, shall be given
to their soldiers--sons, brothers, fathers--who are 'sailin' away to
the wars.' But if that time comes--which God avert!--then I know that
every man here will do his duty.... And every woman.... And I know
that:
'Tears that near blind you,
Your pride shall dry!----'"
He paused a moment:
"Miss Soane has prepared no song to sing as an encore. In her behalf,
and in my own, I thank you for your appreciation. Be kind enough to
permit the exercises to proceed."
And the graduating exercises continued.
Barres waited for Dulcie. She came out among the first of those
departing, walking all alone in her reconstructed white dress, and
carrying his bouquet. When she caught sight of him, her face became
radiant and she made her way toward him through the crowd, seeking his
outstretched hand with hers, clinging to it in a passion of gratitude
and emotion that made her voice tremulous:
"My bouquet--it is so wonderful! I love every flower in it! Thank you
with all my heart. You are so kind to have come--so kind to me--so
k-kind----"
"It is I who should be grateful, Dulcie, for your charming little
song," he insisted. "It was fascinating and exquisitely done."
"Did you really like it?" she asked shyly.
"Indeed I did! And I quite fell in love with your voice, too--with
that trick you seem to possess of conveying a hint of tears through
some little grace-note now and then.... And there _were_ tears hidden
in the words; and in the melody, too.... And to think that your mother
wrote it!"
"Yes."
After a short interval of silence he released her hand.
"I have a taxi for you," he said gaily. "We'll drive home in state."
The girl flushed again with surprise and gratitude:
"Are--are _you_ coming, too?"
"Certainly I'm going to take you home. Don't you belong to me?" he
demanded laughingly.
"Yes," she said. But her forced little smile made the low-voiced
answer almost solemn.
"Well, then!" he said cheerfully. "Come along. What's mine I look
after. We'll have lunch together in the studio, if you are too proud
to pose for a poor artist this afternoon."
At this her sensitive face cleared and she laughed happily.
"The pride of a high-school graduate!" he commented, as he seated
himself beside her in the taxicab. "Can anything equal it?"
"Yes."
"What?"
"Her pride in your--friendship," she ventured.
Which unexpected reply touched and surprised him.
"You dear child!" he said; "I'm proud of your friendship, too. Nothing
ought to make a man prouder than winning a young girl's confidence."
"You are so kind," she sighed, touching the blossoms in her bouquet
with slender fingers that trembled a little. For she would have
offered him a flower from it had she found courage; but it seemed
presumptuous and she dropped her hand into her lap again.
* * * * *
Aristocrates opened the door for them: Selinda took her away.
Barres had ordered flowers for the table. In the middle of it a doll
stood, attired in academic cap and gown, the Stars and Stripes in one
hand, in the other a green flag bearing a gold harp.
When Dulcie came in she stopped short, enchanted at the sight of the
decorated table. But when Aristocrates opened the kitchen door and her
three cats came trotting in, she was overcome.
For each cat wore a red, white and blue cravat on which was pinned a
silk shamrock; and although Strindberg immediately keeled over on the
rug and madly attacked her cravat with her hind toes, the general
effect remained admirable.
Aristocrates seated Dulcie. Upon her plate was the box containing
chain and locket. And the girl cast a swift, inquiring glance across
the centre flowers at Barres.
"Yes, it's for you, Dulcie," he said.
She turned quite pale at sight of the little gift. After a silence she
leaned on the table with both elbows, shading her face with her
hands.
He let her alone--let the first tense moment in her youthful life ebb
out of it; nor noticed, apparently, the furtive and swift touch of her
best handkerchief to her closed eyes.
Aristocrates brought her a little glass of frosted orange juice. After
an interval, not looking at Barres, she sipped it. Then she took the
locket and chain from the satin-lined box, read the inscription,
closed her lids for a second's silent ecstasy, opened them looking at
him through rapturous tears, and with her eyes still fixed on him
lifted the chain and fastened it around her slender neck.
The luncheon then proceeded, the Prophet gravely assisting from the
vantage point of a neighbouring chair, the Houri, more emotional,
promenading earnestly at the heels of Aristocrates. As for Strindberg,
she possessed neither manners nor concentration, and she alternately
squalled her desires for food or frisked all over the studio,
attempting complicated maneuvres with every curtain-cord and tassel
within reach.
Dulcie had found her voice again--a low, uncertain, tremulous little
voice when she tried to thank him for the happiness he had given
her--a clearer, firmer voice when he dexterously led the conversation
into channels more familiar and serene.
They talked of the graduating exercises, of her part in them, of her
classmates, of education in general.
She told him that since she was quite young she had learned to play
the piano by remaining for an hour every day after school, and
receiving instruction from a young teacher who needed a little extra
pin money.
As for singing, she had had no instruction. Her voice had never been
tried, never been cultivated.
"We'll have it tried some day," he said casually.
But Dulcie shook her head, explaining that it was an expensive process
and not to be thought of.
"How did you pay for your piano lessons?" he asked.
"I paid twenty-five cents an hour. My mother left a little money for
me when I was a baby. I spent it all that way."
"Every bit of it?"
"Yes. I had $500. It lasted me seven years--from the time I was ten to
now."
"_Are_ you seventeen? You don't look it."
"I know I don't. My teachers tell me that my mind is very quick but my
body is slow. It annoys me to be mistaken for a child of fifteen. And
I have to dress that way, too, because my dresses still fit me and
clothes are very expensive."
"Are they?"
Dulcie became confidential and loquacious:
"Oh, very. You don't know about girls' clothes, I suppose. But they
cost a very great deal. So I've had to wear out dresses I've had ever
since I was fourteen and fifteen. And so I can't put up my hair
because it would make my dresses look ridiculous; and that renders the
situation all the worse--to be obliged to go about with bobbed hair,
you see? There doesn't seem to be any way out of it," she ended, with
a despairing little laugh, "and I was seventeen last February!"
"Cheer up! You'll grow old fast enough. And now you're going to have a
jolly little salary as my model, and you ought to be able to buy
suitable clothes. Oughtn't you?"
She did not answer, and he repeated the question. And drew from her,
reluctantly, that her father, so far, had absorbed what money she had
earned by posing.
A dull red gathered under the young man's cheek-bones, but he said
carelessly:
"That won't do. I'll talk it over with your father. I'm very sure
he'll agree with me that you should bank your salary and draw out what
you need for your personal expenses."
Dulcie sat silent over her fruit and bon-bons. Reaction from the keen
emotions of the day had, perhaps, begun to have their effect.
They rose and reseated themselves on the sofa, where she sat in the
corner among gorgeous Chinese cushions, her reconstructed dress now
limp and shabby, the limp madonna lily hanging from her breast.
It had been for her the happiest day of her life. It had dawned the
loneliest, but under the magic of this man's kindness the day was
ending like a day in Paradise.
To Dulcie, however, happiness was less dependent upon receiving than
upon giving; and like all things feminine, mature and immature, she
desired to serve where her heart was enlisted--began to experience the
restless desire to give. What? And as the question silently presented
itself, she looked up at Barres:
"Could I pose for you?"
"On a day like this! Nonsense, Dulcie. This is your holiday."
"I'd really like to--if you want me----"
"No. Curl up here and take a nap. Slip off your gown so you won't muss
it and ask Selinda for a kimono. Because you're going to need your
gown this evening," he added smilingly.
"Why? _Please_ tell me why?"
"No. You've had enough excitement. Tell Selinda to give you a kimono.
Then you can lie down in my room if you like. Selinda will call you in
plenty of time. And after that I'll tell you how we're going to bring
your holiday to a gay conclusion."
She seemed disinclined to stir, curled up there, her eyes brilliant
with curiosity, her lips a trifle parted in a happy smile. She lay
that way for a few moments, looking up at him, her fingers caressing
the locket, then she sat up swiftly.
"Must I take a nap?"
"Certainly."
She sprang to her feet, flashed past him, and disappeared in the
corridor.
"Don't forget to wake me!" she called back.
"I won't forget!"
When he heard her voice again, conversing with Selinda, he opened the
studio door and went down stairs.
Soane, rather the worse for wear, was at the desk, and, standing
beside him, was a one-eyed man carrying two pedlar's boxes under his
arms. They both looked around quickly when Barres appeared. Before he
reached the desk the one-eyed man turned and walked out hastily into
the street.
"Soane," said Barres, "I've one or two things to say to you. The first
is this: if you don't stop drinking and if you don't keep away from
Grogan's, you'll lose your job here."
"Musha, then, Misther Barres----"
"Wait a moment; I'm not through. I advise you to stop drinking and to
keep away from Grogan's. That's the first thing. And next, go on and
graft as much as you like, only warn your pedlar-friends to keep away
from Studio No. 9. Do you understand?"
"F'r the love o' God----"
"Cut out the injured innocence, Soane. I'm telling you how to avoid
trouble, that's all."
"Misther Barres, sorr! As God sees me----"
"I can see you, too. I want you to behave, Soane. This is friendly
advice. That one-eyed pedlar who just beat it has been bothering me.
Other pedlars come ringing at the studio and interrupt and annoy me.
You know the rules. If the other tenants care to stand for it, all
right. But I'm through. Is that plain?"
"It is, sorr," said the unabashed delinquent. The faintest glimmer of
a grin came into his battered eyes. "Sorra a wan o' thim ever lays a
hand to No. 9 bell or I'll have his life!"
"One thing more," continued Barres, smiling in spite of himself at the
Irish of it all. "I am paying Dulcie a salary----"
"Wisha then----"
"Stop! I tell you that she's in my employment on a salary. Don't ever
touch a penny of it again."
"Sure the child's wages----"
"No, they _don't_ belong to the father. Legally, perhaps, but the law
doesn't suit me. So if you take the money that she earns, and blow it
in at Grogan's, I'll have to discharge her because I won't stand for
what you are doing."
"Would you do that, Mr. Barres?"
"I certainly would."
The Irishman scratched his curly head in frank perplexity.
"Dulcie needs clothes suitable to her age," continued Barres. "She
needs other things. I'm going to take charge of her savings so don't
you attempt to tamper with them. You wouldn't do such a thing, anyway,
Soane, if this miserable drink habit hadn't got a hold on you. If you
don't quit, it will down you. You'll lose your place here. You know
that. Try to brace up. This is a rotten deal you're giving yourself
and your daughter."
Soane wept easily. He wept now. Tearful volubility followed--picturesque,
lit up with Hibernian flashes, then rambling, and a hint of slyness in
it which kept one weeping eye on duty watching Barres all the while.
"All right; behave yourself," concluded Barres. "And, Soane, I shall
have three or four people to dinner and a little dancing afterward. I
want Dulcie to enjoy her graduating dance."
"Sure, Misther Barres, you're that kind to the child----"
"_Somebody_ ought to be. Do you know that there was nobody she knew to
see her graduate to-day, excepting myself?"
"Oh, the poor darling! Sure, I was that busy----"
"Busy sleeping off a souse," said Barres drily. "And by the way, who
is that stolid, German-looking girl who alternates with you here at
the desk?"
"Miss Kurtz, sorr."
"Oh. She seems stupid. Where did you dig her up?"
"A fri'nd o' mine riccominds her highly, sorr."
"Is that so? Who is he? One of your German pedlar friends at Grogan's?
Be careful, Soane. You Sinn Feiners are headed for trouble."
He turned and mounted the stairs. Soane looked after him with an
uneasy expression, partly humorous.
"Ah, then, Mr. Barres," he said, "don't be botherin' afther the likes
of us poor Irish. Is there anny harrm in a sup o' beer av a Dootchman
pays?"
Barres looked back at him:
"A one-eyed Dutchman?"
"Ah, g'wan, sorr, wid yer hokin' an' jokin'! Is it graft ye say? An'
how can ye say it, sorr, knowin' me as ye do, Misther Barres?"
The impudent grin on the Irishman's face was too much for the young
man. He continued to mount the stairs, laughing.
X
HER EVENING
As he entered the studio he heard the telephone ringing. Presently
Selinda marched in:
"A lady, sir, who will not giff her name, desires to spik to Mr.
Barres."
"I don't talk to anonymous people," he said curtly.
"I shall tell her, sir?"
"Certainly. Did you make Miss Dulcie comfortable?"
"Yess, sir."
"That's right. Now, take that dress of Miss Dulcie's, go out to some
shop on Fifth Avenue, buy a pretty party gown of similar dimensions,
and bring it back with you. Take a taxi both ways. Wait--take her
stockings and slippers, too, and buy her some fine ones. And some
underwear suitable." He went to a desk, unlocked it, and handed the
maid a flat packet of bank-notes. "Be sure the things are nice," he
insisted.
Selinda, starched, immaculate, frosty-eyed, marched out. She returned
a few moments later, wearing jacket and hat.
"Sir, the lady on the telephone hass called again. The lady would
inquire of Mr. Barres if perhaps he has recollection of the Fountain
of Marie de Medicis."
Barres reddened with surprise and pleasure:
"Oh! Yes, indeed, I'll speak to _that_ lady. Hang up the service
receiver, Selinda." And he stepped to the studio telephone.
"Nihla?" he exclaimed in a low, eager voice.
"C'est moi, Thessa! Have you a letter from me?"
"No, you little wretch! Oh, Thessa, you're certainly a piker! Fancy my
not hearing one word from you since April!--not a whisper, not a sign
to tell me that you are alive----"
"Garry, hush! It was not because I did not wish to see you----"
"Yes, it was! You knew bally well that I hadn't your address and that
you had mine! Is that what you call friendship?"
"You don't understand what you are saying. I wanted to see you. It has
been impossible----"
"You are not singing and dancing anywhere in New York. I watched the
papers. I even went to the Palace of Mirrors to enquire if you had
signed with them there."
"Wait! Be careful, please!----"
"Why?"
"Be careful what you say over the telephone. For my sake, Garry. Don't
use my former name or say anything to identify me with any place or
profession. I've been in trouble. I'm in trouble still. Had you no
letter from me this morning?"
"No."
"That is disquieting news. I posted a letter to you last night. You
should have had it in your morning mail."
"No letter has come from you. I had no letters at all in the morning
mail, and only one or two important business letters since."
"Then I'm deeply worried. I shall have to see you unless that letter
is delivered to you by evening."
"Splendid! But you'll have to come to me, Thessa. I've invited a few
people to dine here and dance afterwards. If you'll dine with us, I'll
get another man to balance the table. Will you?"
After a moment she said:
"Yes. What time?"
"Eight! This is wonderful of you, Thessa!" he said excitedly. "If
you're in trouble we'll clear it up between us. I'm so happy that you
will give me this proof of friendship."
"You dear boy," she said in a troubled voice. "I should be more of a
friend if I kept away from you."
"Nonsense! You promise, don't you?"
"Yes ... Do you realise that to-night another summer moon is to
witness our reunion?... I shall come to you once more under a full
June moon.... And then, perhaps, no more.... Never.... Unless after
the world ends I come to you through shadowy outer space--a ghost
drifting--a shred of mist across the moon, seeking you once
more!----"
"My poor child," he said laughing, "you must be in no end of low
spirits to talk that way."
"It does sound morbid. But I have plenty of courage, Garry. I shall
not snivel on the starched bosom of your evening shirt when we meet.
Donc, a bientot, monsieur. Soyez tranquille! You shall not be ashamed
of me among your guests."
"Fancy!" he laughed happily. "Don't worry, Thessa. We'll fix up
whatever bothers you. Eight o'clock! Don't forget!"
"I am not likely to," she said.
* * * * *
Until Selinda returned from her foray along Fifth Avenue, Barres
remained in the studio, lying in his armchair, still possessed by the
delightful spell, still excited by the prospect of seeing Thessalie
Dunois again, here, under his own roof.
But when the slant-eyed and spotlessly blond Finn arrived, he came
back out of his retrospective trance.
"Did you get some pretty things for Miss Soane?" he enquired.
"Yess, sir, be-ootiful." Selinda deposited on the table a sheaf of
paid bills and the balance of the bank-notes. "Would Mr. Barres be
kind enough to inspect the clothes for Miss Soane?"
"No, thanks. You say they're all right?"
"Yess, sir. They are heavenly be-ootiful."
"Very well. Tell Aristocrates to lay out my clothes after you have
dressed Miss Dulcie. There will be two extra people to dinner. Tell
Aristocrates. Is Miss Dulcie still asleep?"
"Yess, sir."
"All right. Wake her in time to dress her so she can come out here and
give me a chance----" He glanced at the clock "Better wake her now,
Selinda. It's time for her to dress and evacuate my quarters. I'll
take forty winks here until she's ready."
* * * * *
Barres lay dozing on the sofa when Dulcie came in.
Selinda, enraptured by her own efficiency in grooming and attiring the
girl, marched behind her, unable to detach herself from her own
handiwork.
From crown to heel the transfiguration was absolute--from the point of
her silk slipper to the topmost curl on the head which Selinda had
dressed to perfection.
For Selinda had been a lady's maid in great houses, and also had a
mania for grooming herself with the minute and thorough devotion of a
pedigreed cat. And Dulcie emerged from her hands like some youthful
sea-nymph out of a bath of foam, snowy-sweet as some fresh and
slender flower.
With a shy courage born with her own transfiguration, she went to
Barres, where he lay on the sofa, and bent over him.
She had made no sound; perhaps her nearness awoke him, for he opened
his eyes.
"Dulcie!" he exclaimed.
"Do I please you?" she whispered.
He sat up abruptly.
"You wonderful child!" he said, frankly astonished. Whereupon he got
off the sofa, walked all around her inspecting her.
"What a get-up! What a girl!" he murmured. "You lovely little thing,
you astound me! Selinda, you certainly know a thing or two. Take it
from me, you do Miss Soane and yourself more credit in your way than I
do with paint and canvas."
Dulcie blushed vividly; the white skin of Selinda also reddened with
pleasure at her master's enthusiasm.
"Tell Aristocrates to fix my bath and lay out my clothes," he said.
"I've guests coming and I've got to hustle!" And to Dulcie: "We're
going to have a little party in honour of your graduation. That's what
I have to tell you, dear. Does it please you? Do your pretty clothes
please you?"
The girl, overwhelmed, could only look at him. Her lips, vivid and
slightly parted, quivered as her breath came irregularly. But she
found no words--nothing to say except in the passionate gratitude of
her grey eyes.
"You dear child," he said gently. Then, after a moment's silence, he
eased the tension with his quick smile: "Wonder-child, go and seat
yourself very carefully, and be jolly careful you don't rumple your
frock, because I want you to astonish one or two people this
evening."
Dulcie found her voice:
"I--I'm so astonished at myself that I don't seem real. I seem to be
somebody else--long ago!" She stepped close to him, opened her locket
for his inspection, holding it out to him as far as the chain
permitted. It framed a miniature of a red-haired, grey-eyed girl of
sixteen.
"Your mother, Dulcie?"
"Yes. How perfectly it fits into my locket! I carry it always in my
purse."
"It might easily be yourself, Dulcie," he said in a low voice. "You
are her living image."
"Yes. That is what astonishes me. To-night, for the first time in my
life, it occurred to me that I look like this girl picture of my
mother."
"You never thought so before?"
"Never." She stood looking down at the laughing face in the locket for
a few moments, then, lifting her eyes to his:
"I've been made over, in a day, to look like this.... You did it!"
"Nonsense! Selinda and her curling iron did it."
They laughed a little.
"No," she said, "you have made me. You began to make me all over three
months ago--oh, longer ago than that!--you began to remake me the
first time you ever spoke to me--the first time you opened your door
to me. That was nearly two years ago. And ever since I have been
slowly becoming somebody quite new--inside and outside--until
to-night, you see, I begin to look like my mother." She smiled at him,
drew a deep breath, closed the locket, dropped it on her breast.
"I mustn't keep you," she said. "I wanted to show the picture--so you
can understand what you have done for me to make me look like that."
* * * * *
When Barres returned to the studio, freshened and groomed for the
evening, he found Dulcie at the piano, playing the little song she had
sung that morning, and singing the words under her breath. But she
ceased as he came up, and swung around on the piano-stool to confront
him with the most radiant smile he had ever seen on a human face.
"What a day this has been!" she said, clasping her hands tightly. "I
simply cannot make it seem real."
He laughed:
"It isn't ended yet, either. There's a night to every day, you know.
And your graduation party will begin in a few moments."
"I know. I'm fearfully excited. You'll stay near me, won't you?"
"You bet! Did I tell you who are coming? Well, then, you won't feel
strange, because I've merely asked two or three men who live in Dragon
Court--men you see every day--Mr. Trenor, Mr. Mandel, and Mr.
Westmore."
"Oh," she said, relieved.
"Also," he said, "I have asked Miss Souval--that tall, pretty girl who
sometimes sits for Mr. Trenor--Damaris Souval. You remember her?"
"Yes."
"Also," he continued, "Mr. Mandel wishes to bring a young married
woman who has developed a violent desire for the artistic and
informal, but who belongs in the Social Register." He laughed. "It's
all right if Corot Mandel wants her. Her name is Mrs. Helmund--Elsena
Helmund. Mr. Trenor is painting her."
Dulcie's face was serious but calm.
"And then, to even the table," concluded Barres smilingly, "I invited
a girl I knew long ago in Paris. Her name is Thessalie Dunois; and
she's very lovely to look upon, Dulcie. I am very sure you will like
her."
There was a silence; then the electric bell rang in the corridor,
announcing the arrival of the first guest. As Barres rose, Dulcie laid
her hand on his arm--a swift, involuntary gesture--as though the girl
were depending on his protection.
The winning appeal touched him and amused him, too.
"Don't worry, dear," he said. "You'll have the prettiest frock in the
studio--if you need that knowledge to reassure you----"
The corridor door opened and closed. Somebody went into his bedroom
with Selinda--that being the only available cloak-room for women.
XI
HER NIGHT
"Thessalie Dunois! This is charming of you!" said Barres, crossing the
studio swiftly and taking her hand in both of his.
"I'm so glad to see you, Garry--" she looked past him across the
studio at Dulcie, and her voice died out for a moment. "Who is that
girl?" she enquired under her breath.
"I'll present you----"
"Wait. _Who_ is she?"
"Dulcie Soane----"
"_Soane?_"
"Yes. I'll tell you about her later----"
"In a moment, Garry." Thessalie looked across the room at the girl for
a second or two longer, then turned a troubled, preoccupied gaze on
Barres. "Have you a letter from me? I posted it last night."
"Not yet."
The doorbell rang. He could hear more guests entering the corridor
beyond. A faint smile--the forced smile of courage--altered
Thessalie's features now, until it became a fixed and pretty mask.
"Contrive to give me a moment alone with you this evening," she
whispered. "My need is great, Garry."
"Whenever you say! Now?"
"No. I want to talk to that young girl first."
They walked over to where Dulcie stood by the piano, silent and
self-possessed.
"Thessa," he said, "this is Miss Soane, who graduated from high school
to-day, and in whose honour I am giving this little party." And to
Dulcie he said: "Miss Dunois and I were friends when I lived in
France. Please tell her about your picture, which you and I are
doing." He turned as he finished speaking, and went forward to welcome
Esme Trenor and Damaris Souval, who happened to arrive together.
"Oh, the cunning little girl over there!" exclaimed the tall and
lovely Damaris, greeting Barres with cordial, outstretched hands.
"Where did you find such an engaging little thing?"
"You don't recognise her?" he asked, amused.
"I? No. Should I?"
"She's Dulcie Soane, the girl at the desk down-stairs!" said Barres,
delighted. "This is her party. She has just graduated from high
school, and she----"
"Belongs to Barres," interrupted Esme Trenor in his drawling voice.
"Unusual, isn't she, Damaris?--logical anatomy, ornamental, vague
development; nice lines, not obvious--like yours, Damaris," he added
impudently. Then waving his lank hand with its over-polished nails: "I
like the indefinite accented with one ripping value. Look at that
hair!--lac and burnt orange rubbed in, smeared, then wiped off with
the thumb! You follow the intention, Barres?"
"You talk too much, Esme," interrupted Damaris tartly. "Who is that
lovely being talking to the little Soane girl, Garry?"
"A friend of my Paris days--Thessalie Dunois----" Again he checked
himself to turn and greet Corot Mandel, subtle creator and director of
exotic spectacles--another tall and rather heavily built man, with a
mop of black and shiny hair, a monocle, and sanguine features slightly
oriental.
With Corot Mandel had come Elsena Helmund--an attractive woman of
thoroughbred origin and formal environment, and apparently fed up with
both. For she frankly preferred "grades" to "registered stock," and
she prowled through eve
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