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 ménage 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 débutante 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,” mutte
red 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 rôle 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 fi
gure 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 naïvely.
“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.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 863