“I won’t torment you, Sweetness,” he said. “Only you ought not to let me, you know. It’s a temptation to make you blush; you do it so prettily.”
“Please — —” she said, still smiling but vividly disconcerted again.
“There, dear! I won’t. I’m a brute and a bully. But honestly, you ought not to let me.”
“I don’t know how to stop you,” she admitted, laughing. “I could kill myself for being so silly. Why is it, do you suppose, that I blu — —”
She checked herself, scarlet now, and sat motionless with her head bent over her clenched palm, and her lip bitten till it quivered. Perhaps a flash of sudden insight had answered her own question before she had even finished asking it. And the answer had left her silent, rigid, as though not daring to move. But her bitten lip trembled, and her breath, which had stopped, came swiftly now, desperately controlled. But there seemed to be no control for her violent little heart, which was racing away and setting every pulse a faster pace.
Barres, more uneasy than amused, now, and having before this very unwillingly suspected Dulcie of an exaggerated sentiment concerning him, inspected her furtively and sideways.
“I won’t tease you any more,” he repeated. “I’m sorry. But you understand, Sweetness; it’s just a friendly tease — just because we’re such good friends.”
“Yes,” she nodded breathlessly. “Don’t notice me, please. I don’t seem to know how to behave myself when I’m with you — —”
“What nonsense, Dulcie! You’re a wonderful comrade. We have bully times when we’re together. Don’t we?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, for the love of Mike! What’s a little teasing between friends? Buck up, Sweetness, and don’t ever let me upset you again.”
“No.” She turned and looked at him, laughed. But there was a wonderful beauty in her grey eyes and he noticed it.
“You little kiddie,” he said, “your eyes are all starry like a baby’s! You are not growing up as fast as you think you are!”
She laughed again deliciously:
“How wise you are,” she said.
“Aha! So you’re joshing me, now!”
“But aren’t you very, very wise?” she asked demurely.
“You bet I am. And I’m going to prove it.”
“How, please?”
“Listen, irreverent youngster! If you are going to Foreland Farms with me, you will require various species of clothes and accessories.”
At that she was frankly dismayed:
“But I can’t afford — —”
“Piffle! I advance you sufficient salary. Thessalie had better advise you in your shopping — —” He hesitated, then: “You and Thessa seem to have become excellent friends rather suddenly.”
“She was so sweet to me,” explained Dulcie. “I hadn’t cared for her very much — that evening of the party — but to-day she came into your room, where I was lying on the bed, and she stood looking at me for a moment and then she said, ‘Oh, you darling!’ and dropped on her knees and drew me into her arms.... Wasn’t that a curious thing to happen? I — I was too surprised to speak for a minute; then the loveliest shiver came over me and I — I cuddled up close to her — because I had never remembered being in mother’s arms — and it seemed wonderful — I had wanted it so — dreamed sometimes — and awoke and cried myself to sleep again.... She was so sweet to me.... We talked.... She told me, finally, about the reason of her visit to you. Then she told me about herself.... So I became her friend very quickly. And I am sure that I am going to love her dearly.... And when I love” — she looked steadily away from him— “I would die to serve — my friend.”
The girl’s quiet ardour, her simplicity and candour, attracted and interested him. Always he had seemed to be aware, in her, of hidden forces — of something fresh and charmingly impetuous held in leash — of controlled impulses, restless, uneasy, bitted, curbed, and reined in.
Pride, perhaps, a natural reticence in the opposite sex — perhaps the habit of control in a girl whose childhood had had no outlet — some of these, he concluded, accounted for her subdued air, her restraint from demonstration. Save for the impulsive little hand on his arm at times, the slightest quiver of lip and voice, there was no sign of the high-strung, fresh young force that he vaguely divined within her.
“Dulcie,” he said, “how much do you know about the romance of your mother?”
She lifted her grey eyes to his:
“What romance?”
“Why, her marriage.”
“Was that a romance?”
“I gather, from your father, that your mother was very much above him in station.”
“Yes. He was a gamekeeper for my grandfather.”
“What was your mother’s name?”
“Eileen.”
“I mean her family name.”
“Fane.”
He was silent. She remained thoughtful, her chin resting between two fingers.
“Once,” she murmured, as though speaking to herself, “when my father was intoxicated, he said that Fane is my name, not Soane.... Do you know what he meant?”
“No.... His name is Soane, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so.”
“Well, what do you suppose he meant, if he meant anything?”
“I don’t quite know.”
“He is your father, isn’t he?”
She shook her head slowly:
“Sometimes, when he is intoxicated, he says that he isn’t. And once he added that my name is not Soane but Fane.”
“Did you question him?”
“No. He only cries when he is that way.... Or talks about Ireland’s wrongs.”
“Ask him some time.”
“I have asked him when he was sober. But he denied ever saying it.”
“Then ask him when he’s the other way. I — well, to be frank, Dulcie, you haven’t the slightest resemblance to your father — not the slightest — not in any mental or physical particular.”
“He says I’m like mother.”
“And her name was Eileen Fane,” murmured Barres. “She must have been beautiful, Dulcie.”
“She was — —” A bright blush stained her face, but this time she looked steadily at Barres and neither of them smiled.
“She was in love with Murtagh Skeel,” said Dulcie. “I wonder why she did not marry him.”
“You say her family objected.”
“Yes, but what of that, if she loved him?”
“But even in those days he may have been a troublemaker and revolutionist — —”
“Does that matter if a girl is in love?”
In Dulcie’s voice there was again that breathless tone through which something rang faintly — something curbed back, held in restraint.
“I suppose,” he said, smiling, “that if one is in love nothing else matters.”
“Nothing matters,” she said, half to herself. And he looked askance at her, and looked again with increasing curiosity.
Westmore called across the room:
“Thessalie and I are going shopping! Any objections?”
A sudden and totally unexpected dart seemed to penetrate the heart region of Garret Barres. It was jealousy and it hurt.
“No objection at all,” he said, wondering how the devil Westmore had become so familiar with her name in such a very brief encounter.
Thessalie rose and came over:
“Dulcie, will you come with us?” she asked gaily.
“That’s a first rate idea,” said Barres, cheering up. “Dulcie, tell her what things you have and she’ll tell you what you need for Foreland Farms.”
“Indeed I will,” cried Thessalie. “We’ll make her perfectly adorable in a most economical manner. Shall we, dear?”
And she held out her hand to Dulcie, and, smiling, turned her head and looked across the room at Westmore.
Which troubled Barres and left him rather silent there in the studio after they had gone away
. For he had rather fancied himself as the romance in Thessalie’s life, and, at times, was inclined to sentimentalise a little about her.
And now he permitted himself to wonder how much there really might be to that agreeable sentiment he entertained for, perhaps, the prettiest girl he had ever met in his life, and, possibly, the most delightful.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE BABBLER
The double apartment in Dragon Court, swept by such vagrant July breezes as wandered into the heated city, had become lively with preparations for departure.
Barres fussed about, collecting sketching paraphernalia, choosing brushes, colours, canvases, field kits, and costumes from his accumulated store, and boxing them for transportation to Foreland Farms, with the languid assistance of Aristocrates.
Westmore had only to ship a modelling stand, a handful of sculptors’ tools, and a ton or two of Plasteline, an evil-smelling composite clay, very useful to work with.
But the storm centre of preparation revolved around Dulcie. And Thessalie, enchanted with her new rôle as adviser, bargainer, and purchaser, and always attaching either Westmore or Barres to her skirts when she and Dulcie sallied forth, was selecting and accumulating a charming and useful little impedimenta. For the young girl had never before owned a single pretty thing, except those first unpremeditated gifts of Barres’, and her happiness in these expeditions was alloyed with trepidation at Thessalie’s extravagance, and deep misgivings concerning her ultimate ability to repay out of the salary allowed her as a private model.
Intoxicated by ownership, she watched Thessalie and Selinda laying away in her brand-new trunk the lovely things which had been selected. And one day, thrilled but bewildered, she went into the studio, where Barres sat opening his mail, and confessed her fear that only lifelong devotion in his service could ever liquidate her overwhelming financial obligations to him.
He had begun to laugh when she opened the subject:
“Thessa is managing it,” he said. “It looks like a lot of expense, but it isn’t. Don’t worry about it, Sweetness.”
“I do worry — —”
“Now, what a ridiculous thing to do!” he interrupted. “It’s merely advanced salary — your own money. I told you to blow it; I’m responsible. And I shall arrange it so you won’t notice that you are repaying the loan. All I want you to do is to have a good time about it.”
“I am having a good time — when it doesn’t scare me to spend so much for — —”
“Can’t you trust Thessa and me?”
The girl dropped to her knees beside his chair in a swift passion of gratitude:
“Oh, I trust you — I do — —” But she could not utter another word, and only pressed her face against his arm in the tense silence of emotions which were too powerful to express, too deep and keen to comprehend or to endure.
And she sprang to her feet, flushed, confused, turning from him as he retained one hand and drew her back:
“Dear child,” he said, in his pleasant voice, “this is really a very little thing I do for you, compared to the help you have given me by hard, unremitting, uncomplaining physical labour and endurance. There is no harder work than holding a pose for painter or sculptor — nothing more cruelly fatiguing. Add to that your cheerfulness, your willingness, your quiet, loyal, unobtrusive companionship — and the freshness and inspiration and interest ever new which you always awake in me — tell me, Sweetness, are you really in my debt, or am I in yours?”
“I am in yours. You made me.”
“You always say that. It’s foolish. You made yourself, Dulcie. You are making yourself all the while. Why, good heavens! — if you hadn’t had it in you, somehow, to ignore your surroundings — take the school opportunities offered you — close your eyes and ears to the sights and sounds and habits of what was supposed to be your home — —”
He checked himself, thinking of Soane, and his brogue, and his ignorance and his habits.
“How the devil you escaped it all I can’t understand,” he muttered to himself. “Even when I first knew you, there was nothing resembling your — your father about you — even if you were almost in rags!”
“I had been with the Sisters until I went to high school,” she murmured. “It makes a difference in a child’s mind what is said and thought by those around her.”
“Of course. But, Dulcie, it is usually the unfortunate rule that the lower subtly contaminates the higher, even in casual association — that the weaker gradually undermines the stronger until it sinks to lesser levels. It has not been so with you. Your clear mind remained untarnished, your aspiration uncontaminated. Somewhere within you had been born the quality of recognition; and when your eyes opened on better things you recognised them and did not forget after they disappeared — —”
Again he ceased speaking, aware, suddenly, that for the first time he was making the effort to analyse this girl for his own information. Heretofore, he had accepted her, sometimes curious, sometimes amused, puzzled, doubtful, even uneasy as her mind revealed itself by degrees and her character glimmered through in little fitful gleams from that still hidden thing, herself.
He began to speak again, before he knew he was speaking — indeed, as though within him somewhere another man were using his lips and voice as vehicles:
“You know, Dulcie, it’s not going to end — our companionship. Your real life is all ahead of you; it’s already beginning — the life which is properly yours to shape and direct and make the most of.
“I don’t know what kind of life yours is going to be; I know, merely, that your career doesn’t lie down stairs in the superintendent’s lodgings. And this life of ours here in the studio is only temporary, only a phase of your development toward clearer aims, higher aspiration, nobler effort.
“Tranquillity, self-respect, intelligent responsibility, the happiness of personal independence are the prizes: the path on which you have started leads to the only pleasure man has ever really known — labour.”
He looked down at her hand lying within his own, stroked the slender fingers thoughtfully, noticing the whiteness and fineness of them, now that they had rested for three months from their patient martyrdom in Soane’s service.
“I’ll talk to my mother and sister about it,” he concluded. “All you need is a start in whatever you’re going to do in life. And you bet you’re going to get it, Sweetness!”
He patted her hand, laughed, and released it. She couldn’t speak just then — she tried to as she stood there, head averted and grey eyes brilliant with tears — but she could not utter a sound.
Perhaps aware that her overcharged heart was meddling with her voice, he merely smiled as he watched her moving slowly back to Thessalie’s room, where the magic trunk was being packed. Then he turned to his letters again. One was from his mother:
“Garry darling, anybody you bring to Foreland is always welcome, as you know. Your family never inquires of its members concerning any guests they may see fit to invite. Bring Miss Dunois and Dulcie Soane, your little model, if you like. There’s a world of room here; nobody ever interferes with anybody else. You and your guests have two thousand acres to roam about in, ride over, fish over, paint over. There’s plenty for everybody to do, alone or in company.
“Your father is well. He looks little older than you. He’s fishing most of the time, or busy reforesting that sandy region beyond the Foreland hills.
“Your sister and I ride as usual and continue to improve the breeds of the various domestic creatures in which we are interested and you are not.
“The pheasants are doing well this year, and we’re beginning to turn them out with their foster-mothers.
“Your father wishes me to tell you and Jim Westmore that the trout fishing is still fairly good, although it was better, of course, in May and June.
“The usual parties and social amenities continue in Northbrook. Everybody included in that colony seems to have arrived, also the usual influx of guests, and there is muc
h entertaining, tennis, golf, dances — the invariable card always offered there.
“Claire and I go enough to keep from being too completely forgotten. Your father seldom bothers himself.
“Also, the war in Europe has made us, at Foreland, disinclined to frivolity. Others, too, of the older society in Northbrook are more subdued than usual, devote themselves to quieter pursuits. And those among us who have sons of military age are prone to take life soberly in these strange, oppressive days when even under sunny skies in this land aloof from war, all are conscious of the tension, the vague foreboding, the brooding stillness that sometimes heralds storms.
“But all north-country folk do not feel this way. The Gerhardts, for example, are very gay with a house full of guests and overflowing week-ends. The German Embassy, as always, is well represented at Hohenlinden. Your father won’t go there at all now. As for Claire and myself, we await political ruptures before we indulge in social ones. And it doesn’t look like war, now that Von Tirpitz has been sent to Coventry.
“This, Garry darling, is my budget of news. Bring your guests whenever you please. You wouldn’t bring anybody you oughtn’t to; your family is liberal, informal, pleasantly indifferent, and always delightfully busy with its individual manias and fads; so come as soon as you please — sooner, please — because, strange as it may seem, your mother would like to see you.”
The letter was what he had expected. But, as always, it made him very grateful.
“Wonderful mother I have,” he murmured, opening another letter from his father:
“DEAR GARRET:
“Why the devil don’t you come up? You’ve missed the cream of the fishing. There’s nothing doing in the streams now, but at sunrise and toward evening they’re breaking nicely in the lake.
“I’ve put in sixty thousand three-year transplants this year on that sandy stretch. They are white, Scotch and Austrian. Your children will enjoy them.
“The dogs are doing well. There’s one youngster, the litter-tyrant of Goldenrod’s brood, who ought to make a field winner. But there’s no telling. You and I’ll have ’em out on native woodcock.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 877