Road-to-ruin cocktails were served — frosted orange juice for Dulcie. Everybody drank her health. Then Aristocrates gracefully condescended to announce dinner. And Barres took out Dulcie, her arm resting light as a snowflake on his sleeve.
There were flowers everywhere in the dining-room; table, buffet, curtains, lustres were gay with early blossoms, exhaling the haunting scent of spring.
“Do you like it, Dulcie?” he whispered.
She merely turned and looked at him, quite unable to speak, and he laughed at her brilliant eyes and flushed cheeks, and, dropping his right hand, squeezed hers.
“It’s your party, Sweetness — all yours! You must have a good time every minute!” And he turned, still smiling, to Thessalie Dunois on his left:
“It’s quite wonderful, Thessa, to have you here — to be actually seated beside you at my own table. I shall not let you slip away from me again, you enchanting ghost! — and leave me with a dislocated heart.”
“Garry, that sounds almost sentimental. We’re not, you know.”
“How do I know? You never gave me a chance to be sentimental.”
She laughed mirthlessly:
“Never gave you a chance? And our brief but headlong career together, monsieur? What was it but a continuous cataract of chances?”
“But we were laughing our silly heads off every minute! I had no opportunity.”
That seemed to amuse her and awaken the ever-latent humour in her.
“Opportunity,” she observed demurely, “should be created and taken, not shyly awaited with eyes rolled upward and a sucked thumb.”
They both laughed outright. Her colour rose; the old humorous challenge was in her eyes again; the subtle mask was already slipping from her features, revealing them in all their charming recklessness.
“You know my creed,” she said; “to go forward — laugh — and accept what Destiny sends you — still laughing!” Her smile altered again, became, for a moment, strange and vague. “God knows that is what I am doing to-night,” she murmured, lifting her slim glass, in which the gush of sunny bubbles caught the candlelight. “To Destiny — whatever it may be! Drink with me, Garry!”
Around them the chatter and vivacity increased, as Damaris ended a duel of wit with Westmore and prepared for battle with Corot Mandel. Everybody seemed to be irresponsibly loquacious except Dulcie, who sat between Barres and Esmé Trenor, a silent, smiling, reserved little listener. For Barres was still conversationally involved with Thessalie, and Esmé Trenor, languid and detached, being entirely ignored by Damaris, whom he had taken out, awaited his own proper modicum of worship from his silent little neighbour on his left — which tribute he took for granted was his sacred due, and which, hitherto, he had invariably received from woman.
But nobody seemed to be inclined to worship; Damaris scarcely deigned to notice him, his impudence, perhaps, still rankling. Thessalie, laughingly engaged with Barres, remained oblivious to the fashionable portrait painter. As for Elsena Helmund, that youthful matron was busily pretending to comprehend Corot Mandel’s covert orientalisms, and secretly wondering whether they were, perhaps, as improper as Westmore kept whispering to her they were, urging her to pick up her skirts and run.
Esmé Trenor permitted a few weary but slightly disturbed glances to rest on Dulcie from time to time, but made no effort to entertain her.
And she, on her part, evinced no symptoms of worshipping him. And all the while he was thinking to himself:
“Can this be the janitor’s daughter? Is she the same rather soiled, impersonal child whom I scarcely ever noticed — the thin, immature, negligible little drudge with a head full of bobbed red hair?”
His lack of vision, of finer discernment, deeply annoyed him. Her lack of inclination to worship him, now that she had the God-sent opportunity, irritated him.
“The silly little bounder,” he thought, “how can she sit beside me without timidly venturing to entertain me?”
He stole another profoundly annoyed glance at Dulcie. The child was certainly beautiful — a slim, lovely, sensitive thing of qualities so delicate that the painter of pretty women became even more surprised and chagrined that it had taken Barres to discover this desirable girl in the silent, shabby child of Larry Soane.
Presently he lurched part way toward her in his chair, and looked at her with bored but patronising encouragement.
“Talk to me,” he said languidly.
Dulcie turned and looked at him out of uninterested grey eyes.
“What?” she said.
“Talk to me,” he repeated pettishly.
“Talk to yourself,” retorted Dulcie, and turned again to listen to the gay nonsense which Damaris and Westmore were exchanging amid peals of general laughter.
But Esmé Trenor was thunderstruck. A deep and painful colour stained his pallid features. Never before had mortal woman so flouted him. It was unthinkable. It really wouldn’t do. There must be some explanation for this young girl’s monstrous attitude toward offered opportunity.
“I say,” he insisted, still very red, “are you bashful, by any chance?”
Dulcie slowly turned toward him again:
“Sometimes I am bashful; not now.”
“Oh. Then wouldn’t you like to talk to me?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Fancy! And why not, Dulcie?”
“Because I haven’t anything to say to you.”
“Dear child, that is the incentive to all conversation — lack of anything to say. You should practise the art of saying nothing politely.”
“You should have practised it enough to say good morning to me during these last five years,” said Dulcie gravely.
“Oh, I say! You’re rather severe, you know! You were just a little thing running about underfoot! — I’m sorry you feel angry — —”
“I do not. But how can I have anything to talk to you about, Mr. Trenor, when you have never even noticed me all these years, although often I have handed you your keys and your letters.”
“It was quite stupid of me. I’m sorry. But a man, you see, doesn’t notice children — —”
“Some men do.”
“You mean Mr. Barres! That is unkind. Why rub it in, Dulcie? I’m rather an interesting fellow, after all.”
“Are you?” she asked absently.
Her honest indifference to him was perfectly apparent to Esmé Trenor. This would never do. She must be subdued, made sane, disciplined!
“Do you know,” he drawled, leaning lankly nearer, dropping both arms on the cloth, and fixing his heavy-lidded eyes intensely on her,” — do you know — do you guess, perhaps, why I never spoke to you in all these years?”
“You did not trouble yourself to speak to me, I imagine.”
“You are wrong. I was afraid!” And he stared at her pallidly.
“Afraid?” she repeated, puzzled.
He leaned nearer, confidential, sad:
“Shall I tell you a precious secret, Dulcie? I am a coward. I am a slave of fear. I am afraid of beauty! Isn’t that a very strange thing to say? Can you understand the subtlety of that indefinable psychology? Fear is an emotion. Fear of the beautiful is still a subtler emotion. Fear, itself, is beautiful beyond words. Beauty is Fear. Fear is Beauty. Do you follow me, Dulcie?”
“No,” said the girl, bewildered.
Esmé sighed:
“Some day you will follow me. It is my destiny to be followed, pursued, haunted by loveliness impotently seeking to express itself to me, while I, fearing it, dare only to express my fear with brush and pencil!... When shall I paint you?” he added with sad benevolence.
“What?”
“When shall I try to interpret upon canvas my subtle fear of you?” And, as the girl remained mute: “When,” he explained languidly, “shall I appoint an hour for you to sit to me?”
“I am Mr. Barres’s model,” she said, flushing.
“I shall have to arrange it with him, then,” he nodded, wearily.
>
“I don’t think you can.”
“Fancy! Why not?”
“Because I do not wish to sit to anybody except Mr. Barres,” she said candidly, “and what you paint does not interest me at all.”
“Are you familiar with my work?” he asked incredulously.
She shook her head, shrugged, and turned to Barres, who had at last relinquished Thessalie to Westmore.
“Well, Sweetness,” he said gaily, “do you get on with Esmé Trenor?”
“He talked,” she said in a voice perfectly audible to Esmé.
Barres glanced toward Esmé, secretly convulsed, but that young apostle of Fear had swung one thin leg over the other and was now presenting one shoulder and the back of his head to them both, apparently in delightful conversation with Elsena Helmund, who was fed up on him and his fears.
“You must always talk to your neighbours at dinner,” insisted Barres, still immensely amused. “Esmé is a very popular man with fashionable women, Dulcie, — a painter in much demand and much adored.... Why do you smile?”
Dulcie smiled again, deliciously.
“Anyway,” continued Barres, “you must now give the signal for us to rise by standing up. I’m so proud of you, Dulcie, darling!” he added impulsively; “ — and everybody is mad about you!”
“You made me—” she laughed mischievously, “ — out of a rag and a bone and a hank of hair!”
“You made yourself out of nothing, child! And everybody thinks you delightful.”
“Do you?”
“You dear girl! — of course I do. Does it make such a difference to you, Dulcie — my affection for you?”
“Is it — affection?”
“It certainly is. Didn’t you know it?”
“I didn’t — know — what it was.”
“Of course it is affection. Who could be with you as I have been and not grow tremendously fond of you?”
“Nobody ever did except you. Mr. Westmore was always nice. But — but you are so kind — I can’t express — I — c-can’t — —” Her emotion checked her.
“Don’t try, dear!” he said hastily. “We’re going in to have a jolly dance now. You and I begin it together. Don’t you let any other fellow take you away!”
She looked up, laughed blissfully, gazing at him with brilliant eyes a little dimmed.
“They’ll all be at your heels,” he said, beginning to comprehend the beauty he had let loose on the world, “ — every man-jack of them, mark my prophecy! But ours is the first dance, Dulcie. Promise?”
“I do. And I promise you the next — please — —”
“Well, I’m host,” he said doubtfully, and a trifle taken aback. “We’ll have some other dances together, anyway. But I couldn’t monopolise you, Sweetness.”
The girl looked at him silently, then her grey, intelligent eyes rested directly on Thessalie Dunois.
“Will you dance with her?” she asked gravely.
“Yes, of course. And with the others, too. Tell me, Dulcie, did you find Miss Dunois agreeable?”
“I — don’t — know.”
“Why, you ought to like her. She’s very attractive.”
“She is quite beautiful,” said the girl, watching Thessalie across his shoulder.
“Yes, she really is. What did you and she talk about?”
“Father,” replied Dulcie, determined to have no further commerce with Thessalie Dunois which involved a secrecy excluding Barres. “She asked me if he were not my father. Then she asked me a great many stupid questions about him. And about Miss Kurtz, who takes the desk when father is out. Also, she asked me about the mail and whether the postman delivered letters at the desk or in the box outside, and about the tenants’ mail boxes, and who distributed the letters through them. She seemed interested,” added the girl indifferently, “but I thought it a silly subject for conversation.”
Barres, much perplexed, sat gazing at Dulcie in silence for a moment, then recollecting his duty, he smiled and whispered:
“Stand up, now, Dulcie. You are running this show.”
The girl flushed and rose, and the others stood up. Barres took her to the studio door, then returned to the table with the group of men.
“Well,” he exclaimed happily, “what do you fellows think of Soane’s little girl now? Isn’t she the sweetest thing you ever heard of?”
“A peach!” said Westmore, in his quick, hearty voice. “What’s the idea, Garry? Is it to be her career, this posing business? And where is it going to land her? In the Winter Garden?”
“Where is it going to land you?” added Esmé impudently.
“Why, I don’t know, myself,” replied Barres, with a troubled smile. “The little thing always appealed to me — her loneliness and neglect, and — and something about the child — I can’t define it — —”
“Possibilities?” suggested Mandel viciously. “Take it from me, you’re some picker, Garry.”
“Perhaps. Anyway, I’ve given her the run of my place for the last two years and more. And she has been growing up all the while, and I didn’t notice it. And suddenly, this spring, I discovered her for the first time.... And — well, look at her to-night!”
“She’s your private model, isn’t she?” persisted Mandel.
“Entirely,” replied Barres drily.
“Selfish dog!” remarked Westmore, with his lively, wholesome laugh. “I once asked her to sit for me — more out of good nature than anything else. And a jolly fine little model she ought to make you, Garry. She’s beginning to acquire a figure.”
“She’s quite wonderful that way, too,” nodded Barres.
“Undraped?” inquired Esmé.
“A miracle,” nodded Barres absently. “Paint is becoming inadequate. I shall model her this summer. I tell you I have never seen anything to compare to her. Never!”
“What else will you do with her?” drawled Esmé. “You’ll go stale on her some day, of course. Am I next?”
“No!... I don’t know what she’ll do. It begins to look like a responsibility, doesn’t it? She’s such a fine little girl,” explained Barres warmly. “I’ve grown quite fond of her — interested in her. Do you know she has an excellent mind? And nice, fastidious instincts? She thinks straight. That souse of a father of hers ought to be jailed for the way he neglects her.”
“Are you thinking of adopting her?” asked Trenor, with the faintest of sneers, which escaped Barres.
“Adopt a girl? Oh, Lord, no! I can’t do anything like that. Yet — I hate to think of her future, too ... unless somebody looks out for her. But it isn’t possible for me to do anything for her except to give her a good job with a decent man — —”
“Meaning yourself,” commented Mandel, acidly.
“Well, I am decent,” retorted Barres warmly, amid general laughter. “You fellows know what chances she might take with some men,” he added, laughing at his own warm retort.
Esmé and Corot Mandel nodded piously, each perfectly aware of what chance any attractive girl would run with his predatory neighbour.
“To shift the subject of discourse — that girl, Thessalie Dunois,” began Westmore, in his energetic way, “is about the cleverest and prettiest woman I’ve seen in New York outside the theatre district.”
“I met her in France,” said Barres, carelessly. “She really is wonderfully clever.”
“I shall let her talk to me,” drawled Esmé, flicking at his cigarette. “It will be a liberal education for her.”
Mandel’s slow, oriental eyes blinked contempt; he caressed his waxed moustache with nicotine-stained fingers:
“I am going to direct an out-of-door spectacle — a sort of play — not named yet — up your way, Barres — at Northbrook. It’s for the Belgians.... If Miss Dunois — unless,” he added sardonically, “you have her reserved, also — —”
“Nonsense! You cast Thessalie Dunois and she’ll make your show for you, Mandel!” exclaimed Barres. “I know and I’m telling you. Don’t m
ake any mistake: there’s a girl who can make good!”
“Oh. Is she a professional?”
It was on the tip of Barres’s tongue to say “Rather!” But he checked himself, not knowing Thessalie’s wishes concerning details of her incognito.
“Talk to her about it,” he said, rising.
The others laid aside cigars and followed him into the studio, where already the gramophone was going and Aristocrates and Selinda were rolling up the rugs.
* * * * *
Barres and Dulcie danced until the music, twice revived, expired in husky dissonance, and a new disc was substituted by Westmore.
“By heaven!” he said, “I’ll dance this with my godchild or I’ll murder you, Garry. Back up, there! — you soulless monopolist!” And Dulcie, half laughing, half vexed, was swept away in Westmore’s vigorous arms, with a last, long, appealing look at Barres.
The latter danced in turn with his feminine guests, as in duty bound — in pleasure bound, as far as concerned Thessalie.
“And to think, to think,” he repeated, “that you and I, who once trod the moonlit way, June-mad, moon-mad, should be dancing here together once more!”
“Alas,” she said, “though this is June again, moon and madness are lacking. So is the enchanted river and your canoe. And so is that gay heart of mine — that funny, careless little heart which was once my comrade, sending me into a happy gale of laughter every time it counselled me to folly.”
“What is the matter, Thessa?”
“Garry, there is so much the matter that I don’t know how to tell you.... And yet, I have nobody else to tell.... Is that maid of yours German?”
“No, Finnish.”
“You can’t be certain,” she murmured. “Your guests are all American, are they not?”
“Yes.”
“And the little Soane girl? Are her sympathies with Germany?”
“Why, certainly not! What gave you that idea, Thessa?”
The music ran down; Westmore, the indefatigable, still keeping possession of Dulcie, went over to wind up the gramophone.
“Isn’t there some place where I could be alone with you for a few minutes?” whispered Thessalie.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 869