“I wanted to ask you,” she said, “how much longer you think you would require me — that way.”
There was a silence. Then she looked at him out of her frank grey eyes.
“You know I’ll do what you wish,” she said. “And I know it is quite all right....” She smiled at him. “I belong to you: you made me.... And you know all about me. So you ought to use me as you wish.”
“You don’t want to pose?” he said.
“Yes, except — —”
“Very well.”
“Are you annoyed?”
“No, Sweetness. It’s all right.”
“You are annoyed — disappointed! And I won’t have it. I — I couldn’t stand it — to have you displeased — —”
He said pleasantly:
“I’m not displeased, Dulcie. And there’s no use discussing it. If you have the slightest feeling that way, when we go back to town I’ll do things like the Arethusa from somebody else — —”
“Please don’t!” she exclaimed in such naïve alarm that he began to laugh and she blushed vividly.
“Oh, you are feminine, all right!” he said. “If it isn’t to be you it isn’t to be anybody.”
“I didn’t mean that.... Yes, I did!”
“Oh, Dulcie! Shame! You jealous! — even to the verge of sacrificing your own feelings — —”
“I don’t know what it is, but I’d rather you used me for your Arethusa. You know,” she added wistfully, “that we began it together.”
“Right, Sweetness. And we’ll finish it together or not at all. Are you satisfied?”
She smiled, sighed, nodded. He released her lovely, childlike hands and she walked to the doorway of the summer house and looked out over the wall-bed, where tall thickets of hollyhock and blue larkspur stretched away in perspective toward a grove of trees and a little pond beyond.
His painter’s eye, already busy with the beauty of her face and figure against the riot of flowers, and almost mechanically transposing both into terms of colour and value, went blind suddenly as she turned and looked at him.
And for the first time — perhaps with truer vision — he became aware of what else this young girl was besides a satisfying combination of tint and contour — this lithe young thing palpitating with life — this slender, gently breathing girl with her grey eyes meeting his so candidly — this warm young human being who belonged more truly in the living scheme of things than she did on painted canvas or in marble.
From this unexpected angle, and suddenly, he found himself viewing her for the first time — not as a plaything, not as a petted model, not as an object appealing to his charity, not as an experiment in altruism — nor sentimentally either, nor as a wistful child without a childhood.
Perhaps, to him, she had once been all of these. He looked at her with other eyes now, beginning, possibly, to realise something of the terrific responsibility he was so lightly assuming.
He got up from his bench and went over to her; and the girl turned a trifle pale with excitement and delight.
“Why did you come to me?” she asked breathlessly.
“I don’t know.”
“Did you know I was trying to make you get up and come to me?”
“What?”
“Yes! Isn’t it curious? I looked at you and kept thinking, ‘I want you to get up and come to me! I want you to come! I want you!’ And suddenly you got up and came!”
He looked at her out of curious, unsmiling eyes:
“It’s your turn, after all, Dulcie.”
“How is it my turn?”
“I drew you — in the beginning,” he said slowly.
There was a silence. Then, abruptly, her heart began to beat very rapidly, scaring her dumb with its riotous behaviour. When at length her consternation subsided and her irregular breathing became composed, she said, quite calmly:
“You and all that you are and believe in and care for very naturally attracted me — drew me one evening to your open door.... It will always be the same — you, and what of life and knowledge you represent — will never fail to draw me.”
“But — though I am just beginning to divine it — you also drew me, Dulcie.”
“How could that be?”
“You did. You do still. I am just waking up to that fact. And that starts me wondering what I’d do without you.”
“You don’t have to do without me,” she said, instinctively laying her hand over her heart; it was beating so hard and, she feared, so loud. “You can always have me when you wish. You know that.”
“For a while, yes. But some day, when — —”
“Always!”
He laughed without knowing why.
“You’ll marry some day, Sweetness,” he insisted.
She shook her head.
“Oh, yes you will — —”
“No!”
“Why?”
But she only looked away and shook her head. And the silent motion of dissent gave him an odd sense of relief.
CHAPTER XXIII
A LION IN THE PATH
With the decline of day came enough of a chill to spin a delicate cobweb of mist across the country and cover forests and hills with a bluish bloom.
The sunset had become a splashy crimson affair, perhaps a bit too theatrical. In the red blaze Thessalie and Westmore came wandering down from the three pines on the hill, and found Barres on the lawn scowling at the celestial conflagration in the west, and Dulcie seated near on the fountain rim, silent, distrait, watching the scarlet ripples spreading from the plashing central jet.
“You can’t paint a thing like that, Garry,” remarked Westmore. Barres looked around:
“I don’t want to. Where have you been, Thessa?”
“Under those pines over there. We supposed you’d see us and come up.”
Barres glanced at her with an inscrutable expression; Dulcie’s grey eyes rested on Barres. Thessalie walked over to the reddened pool.
“It’s like a prophecy of blood, that water,” she said. “And over there the world is in flames.”
“The Western World,” added Westmore, “I hope it’s an omen that we shall soon catch fire. How long are you going to wait, Garry?”
Barres started to answer, but checked himself, and glanced across at Dulcie without knowing exactly why.
“I don’t know,” he said irresolutely. “I’m fed up now.... But — —” he continued to look vaguely at Dulcie, as though something of his uncertainty remotely concerned her.
“I’m ready to go over when you are,” remarked Westmore, placidly smiling at Thessalie, who immediately presented her pretty profile to him and settled down on the fountain rim beside Dulcie.
“Darling,” she said, “it’s about time to dress. Are you going to wear that enchanting white affair we discovered at Mandel’s?”
Barres senior came sauntering out of the woods and through the wall gate, switching a limber rod reflectively. He obligingly opened his creel and displayed half a dozen long, slim trout.
“They all took that midge fly I described to you this afternoon,” he said, with the virtuous satisfaction of all prophets.
Everybody inspected the crimson-flecked fish while Barres senior stood twirling his monocle.
“Are we dining at home?” inquired his son.
“I believe so. There is a guest of honour, if I recollect — some fellow they’re lionising — I don’t remember.... And one or two others — the Gerhardts, I believe.”
“Then we’d better dress, I think,” said Thessalie, encircling Dulcie’s waist.
“Sorry,” said Barres senior, “hoped to take you young ladies out on the second lake and let you try for a big fish this evening.”
He walked across the lawn beside them, switching his rod as complacently as a pleased cat twitches its tail.
“We’ll try it to-morrow evening,” he continued reassuringly, as though all their most passionate hopes had been bound up in the suggested sport; “it’s rather a
nnoying — I can’t remember who’s dining with us — some celebrated Irishman — poet of sorts — literary chap — guest of the Gerhardts — neighbours, you know. It’s a nuisance to bother with dinner when the trout rise only after sunset.”
“Don’t you ever dine willingly, Mr. Barres, while the trout are rising?” inquired Thessalie, laughing.
“Never willingly,” he replied in a perfectly sincere voice. “I prefer to remain near the water and have a bit of supper when I return.” He smiled at Thessalie indulgently. “No doubt it amuses you, but I wager that you and little Miss Soane here will feel exactly as I do after you’ve caught your first big trout.”
They entered the house together, followed by Garry and Westmore.
A dim, ruddy glow still lingered in the quiet rooms; every window glass was still lighted by the sun’s smouldering ashes sinking in the west; no lamps had yet been lighted on the ground floor.
“It’s the magic hour on the water,” Barres senior confided to Dulcie, “and here I am, doomed to a stiff shirt and table talk. In other words, nailed!” And he gave her a mysterious, melancholy, but significant look as though she alone were really fitted to understand the distressing dilemmas of an angler.
“Would it be too late to fish after dinner?” ventured Dulcie. “I’d love to go with you — —”
“Would you, really!” he exclaimed, warmly grateful. “That is the spirit I admire in a girl! It’s human, it’s discriminating! And yet, do you know, nobody except myself in this household seems to care very much about angling? And, actually, I don’t believe there is another soul in this entire house who would care to miss dinner for the sake of landing the finest trout in the second lake! — unless you would?”
“I really would!” said Dulcie, smiling. “Please try me, Mr. Barres.”
“Indeed, I shall! I’ll give you one of my pet rods, too! I’ll — —”
The rich, metallic murmur of a temple gong broke out in the dim quiet of the house. It was the dressing bell.
“We’ll talk it over at dinner — if they’ll let me sit by you,” whispered Barres senior. And with the smile and the cautionary gesture of the true conspirator, he went away in the demi-light.
Thessalie came from the bay window, where she had been with Westmore and Garry, and she and Dulcie walked away toward the staircase hall, leisurely followed by the two men who, however, turned again into the western wing.
* * * * *
Dulcie was the first to reappear and descend the stairs of the north wing — a willowy white shape in the early dusk, slim as a young spirit in the lamplit silence.
Nobody else had come down; a maid was turning up a lamp here and there; the plebeian family cat came out of the shadows from somewhere and made advances as though divining that this quiet stranger was a friend to cats.
So Dulcie stooped to pet her, then wandered on through the place and finally into the music room, where she seated herself at the piano and touched the keys softly in the semi-dusk.
Among the songs — words and music — which her mother had left in manuscript, was one which she had learned recently,— “Blue Eyes” — and she played the air now, seated there all alone in the subdued lamp light.
Presently people began to appear from above — Mrs. Barres, who motioned her not to rise, and who seated herself near, watching the girl’s slender fingers moving on the keys; then Lee, who came and stood beside her, followed in a few moments by Thessalie and the two younger men.
“What is that lovely little air you are playing?” inquired Mrs. Barres.
“It is called ‘Blue Eyes,’” said Dulcie, absently.
“I have never before heard it.”
The girl looked up:
“No, my mother wrote it.”
After a silence:
“It is really exquisite,” said Mrs. Barres. “Are there words to it?”
Some people had come into the entrance hall beyond; there was the low whirring of an automobile outside.
“Yes, my mother made some verses for it,” replied Dulcie.
“Will you sing them for me after dinner?”
“Yes, I shall be happy to.”
Mrs. Barres turned to welcome her new guests, now entering the music room convoyed by Barres senior, who was arrayed in the dreaded “stiff shirt” and already indulging in “table talk.”
“They took,” he was explaining, “a midge-fly with no hackle — Claire, here are the Gerhardts and Mr. Skeel!” And while his wife welcomed them and introductions were effected, he continued explaining the construction of the midge to anybody who listened.
At the first mention of Murtagh Skeel’s name, the glances of Westmore, Garry and Thessalie crossed like lightning, then their attention became riveted on this tall, graceful, romantic looking man of early middle age, who was being lionised at Northbrook.
The next moment Garry stepped back beside Dulcie Soane, who had turned white as a flower and was gazing at Skeel as though she had seen a ghost.
“Do you suppose he can be the same man your mother knew?” he whispered, dropping his arm and taking her trembling hand in a firm clasp.
“I don’t know.... I seem to feel so.... I can’t explain to you how it pierced my heart — the sound of his name.... Oh, Garry! — suppose it is true — that he is the man my mother knew — and cared for!”
Before he could speak, cocktails were served, and Adolf Gerhardt, a large, bearded, pompous man, engaged him in explosive conversation:
“Yes, this fellow Corot Mandel is producing a new spectacle-play on my lawn to-morrow evening. Your family and your guests are invited, of course. And for the dance, also — —” He included Dulcie in a pompous bow, finished his cocktail with another flourish:
“You will find my friend Skeel very attractive,” he went on. “You know who he is? — the Murtagh Skeel who writes those Irish poems of the West Coast — and is not, I believe, very well received in England just now — a matter of nationalism — patriotism, eh? Why should it surprise your Britisher, eh? — if a gentleman like Murtagh Skeel displays no sympathy for England? — if a gentleman like my friend, Sir Roger Casement, prefers to live in Germany?”
Garry, under his own roof, said pleasantly:
“It wouldn’t do for us to discuss those things, I fear, Mr. Gerhardt. And your Irish lion seems to be very gentle and charming. He must be fascinating to women.”
Gerhardt threw up his hands:
“Oh, Lord! They would like to eat him! Or be eaten by him! You know? It is that way always between the handsome poet and the sex. Which eats which is of no consequence, so long as they merge. Eh?” And his thunderous laughter set the empty glasses faintly ringing on the butler’s silver tray.
Garry spoke to Mrs. Gerhardt, a large, pallid, slabby German who might have been somebody’s kitchen maid, but had been born a von.
Later, as dinner was announced, he contrived to speak to Thessalie aside:
“Gerhardt,” he whispered, “doesn’t recognise you, of course.”
“No; I’m not at all apprehensive.”
“Yet, it was on his yacht — —”
“He never even looked twice at me. You know what he thought me to be? Very well, he had only social ambitions then. I think that’s all he has now. You see what he got with his Red Eagle,” nodding calmly toward Mrs. Gerhardt, who now was being convoyed out by the monocled martyr in the “stiff shirt.”
The others passed out informally; Lee had slipped her arm around Dulcie. As Garry and Thessalie turned to follow, he said in a low voice:
“You feel quite secure, then, Thessa?”
She halted, put her lips close to his ear, unnoticed by those ahead:
“Perfectly. The Gerhardts are what you call fatheads — easily used by anybody, dangerous to no one, governed by greed alone, without a knowledge of any honour except the German sort. But that Irish dreamer over there, he is dangerous! That type always is. He menaces the success of any enterprise to which his quixotic mind turn
s, because it instantly becomes a fixed idea with him — an obsession, a monomania!”
She took his arm and walked on beside him.
“I know that fascinating, hot-headed, lovable type of mystic visionary,” she said, “handsome, romantic, illogical, governed entirely by emotion, not fickle yet never to be depended on; not faithless, but absolutely irresponsible and utterly ignorant of fear!... My father was that sort. Not the hunting cheetah Cyril and Ferez pretended. And it was in defence of a woman that my father died.... Thank God!”
“Who told you?”
“Captain Renoux — the other night.”
“I’m so glad, Thessa!”
She held her flushed head high and smiled at him.
“You see,” she said, “after all it is in my blood to be decent.”
* * * * *
The Gerhardts, racially vulgar and socially blunt — for the inherent vulgarity of the Teutonic peoples is an axiom among the civilised — made themselves characteristically conspicuous at the flower-laden table; but it was on Murtagh Skeel that all eyes became ultimately focused to the limit of good-breeding. He was the lode-star — he was the magnet, the vanishing point for all curiosity, all surmises, all interest.
Perfect breeding, perfect unconsciousness of self, were his minted marks to guarantee the fineness of his metal. He was natural without effort, winning in voice, in manner, in grace of mind and body, this fascinating Irishman of letters — a charming listener, a persuasive speaker, modest, light hearted, delightfully deferential.
Seated on the right of Mrs. Barres, his smiling hostess very quickly understood the situation and made it pleasantly plain to everybody that her guest of honour was not to be privately monopolised.
So almost immediately all currents of conversation flowed from all sides toward this dark-eyed, handsome man, and in return the silver-tongued tide of many currents — the Irish Sea at its sparkling flood — flowed prettily and spread out from its perennial source within him, and washed and rippled gently over every separate dinner plate, so that nobody seemed neglected, and there was jetsam and beach-combing for all.
And it was inevitable, presently, that Murtagh Skeel’s conversation should become autobiographical in some degree, and his careless, candid, persuasive phrases turn into little gemlike memories. For he came ultimately, of course, to speak of Irish nationalism and what it meant; of the Celt as he had been and must remain — utterly unchanged, as long as the last Celt remained alive on earth.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 884