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“You like me, Thessa, don’t you?” he urged.
“Have I not admitted it? Do you know that you are becoming a serious responsibility to me? You worry me, too! You are like a boy with all your emotions reflected on your features and every thought perfectly unconcealed and every impulse followed by unconsidered behaviour.
“Be reasonable. I have asked it a hundred times of you in vain. I shall ask it, probably, innumerable times before you comply with my request. Don’t show so plainly that you imagine yourself in love. It embarrasses me, it annoys Garry, and I don’t know what his family will think——”
“But if Iamin love, why not——”
“Does one advertise all one’s most intimate and secret and—and sacred emotions?” she interrupted in sudden and breathless annoyance. “It is not the way that successful courtship is conducted, I warn you! It is not delicate, it is not considerate, it is not sensible.... And Idowant you to—to be always—sensible and considerate. Iwantto like you.”
He looked at her in a sort of dazed way:
“I’ll try to please you,” he said. “But it seems to confuse me—being so suddenly bowled over—a thing like that rather knocks a man out—so unexpected, you know!—and there isn’t much use pretending,” he went on excitedly. “I can’t see anybody else in the world except you! I can’t think of anybody else! I’m madly in love—blindly, desperately——”
“Oh, please,please!” she remonstrated. “I’m not a girl to be taken by storm! I’ve seen too much—lived too much! I’m not a Tzigane to be galloped alongside of and swung to a man’s saddle-bow! Also, I shall tell you one thing more. Happiness and laughter304are necessities to me! And they seem to be becoming extinct in you.”
“Hang it!” he demanded tragically, “how can I laugh when I’m in love!”
At that a sudden, irresponsible little peal of laughter parted her lips.
“Oh, dear!” she said, “youarefunny! Is it a matter of prayer and fasting, then, this gloomy sentiment which you say you entertain for me? I don’t know whether to be flattered or vexed—you aresofunny!” And her laughter rang out again, clear and uncontrolled.
The girl was quite irresistible in her care-free gaiety; her lovely face and delicious laughter no man could utterly withstand, and presently a faint grin became visible on his features.
“Now,” she cried gaily, “you are becoming human and not a Grecian mask or a gargoyle! Remain so, mon ami, if you expect me to wish you good luck in your love—your various affairs——” She blushed as she checked herself. But he said very quickly:
“Will you wish me luck, Thessa, in my various love affairs?”
“How many have you on hand?”
“Exactly one. Do you wish me a sporting chance? Do you, Thessa?”
“Why—yes——”
“Will you wish me good luck in my courtship of you?”
The quick colour again swept her cheeks at that, but she laughed defiantly:
“Yes,” she said, “I wish you luck in that, also. Only remember this—whether you win or lose you must laugh.Thatis good sportsmanship. Do you promise? Very well! Then I wish you the best of luck305in your—various—courtships! And may the girl you win at least know how to laugh!”
“She certainly does,” he said so naïvely that they both gave way to laughter again, finding each other delightfully absurd.
“It’s the key to my heart, laughter—in case you are looking for the key,” she said daringly. “The world is a grim scaffold, mon ami; mount it gaily and go to the far gods laughing. Tell me, is there a better way to go?”
“No; it’s the right way, Thessa. I shan’t be a gloom any more. Come on; let’s walk! What if you do get your bally shoes wet! I’m through mooning and fussing and worrying over you, young lady! You’re as sturdy and vigorous as I am. After all, it’s a comrade a man wants in the world—not a white mouse in cotton batting! Come! Are you going for a brisk walk across country? Or are you a white mouse?”
She stood up in her dainty shoes and frail gown and cast a glance of hurt reproach at him.
“Don’t be brutal,” she said. “I’m not dressed to climb trees and fences with you.”
“You won’t come?”
Their eyes met in silent conflict for a few moments. Then she said: “Please don’t make me.... It’s such a darling gown, Jim.”
A wave of deep happiness enveloped him and he laughed: “All right,” he said, “I won’t ask you to spoil your frock!” And he spread his coat on the pine needles for her once more.
She considered the situation for a few moments before she sat down. But she did seat herself.
“Now,” he said, “we are going to discuss a situation. This is the situation: I am deeply in love. And306you’re quite right, it’s no funeral; it’s a joyous thing to be in love. It’s a delight, a gaiety, a happy enchantment. Isn’t it?”
She cast a rather shy and apprehensive glance at him, but nodded slightly.
“Very well,” he said, “I’m in love, and I’m happy and proud to be in love. What I wish then, naturally, is marriage, a home, children——”
“Please, Jim!”
“But I can’t have ’em! Why? Because I’m going to France. And the girl I wish to marry is going also. And while I bang away at the boche she makes herself useful in canteens, rest-houses, hospitals, orphanages, everywhere, in fact, where she is needed.”
“Yes.”
“And after it’s all over—all over—and ended——”
“Yes?”
“Then—then if she finds out that she loves me——”
“Yes, Jim—if she finds that out.... And thank you for—asking me—so sweetly.”... She turned sharply and looked out over a valley suddenly blurred.
For it had been otherwise with her in years gone by, and men had spoken then quite as plainly but differently. Only d’Eblis, burnt out, done for, and obsessed, had wearily and unwillingly advanced that far.... And Ferez, too; but that was unthinkable of a creature in whom virtue and vice were of the same virus.
Looking blindly out over the valley she said:
“If my Government deals justly with me, then I shall go to France with you as your comrade. If I ever find that I love you I will be your wife.... Until then——” She stretched out her hand, not looking around at him; and they exchanged a quick, firm clasp.
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And so matters progressed between, these two—rather ominously for Barres, in case he entertained any really serious sentiments in regard to Thessalie. And, recently, he had been vaguely conscious that he entertained something or other concerning the girl which caused him to look with slight amazement and unsympathetic eyes upon the all too obvious behaviour of his comrade Westmore.
At present he was standing in the summer house which terminated the blossoming tunnel of the rose arbour, watching water falling into a stone basin from the fishy mouth of a wall fountain, and wondering where Thessalie and Westmore had gone.
Dulcie, in a thin white frock and leghorn hat, roaming entranced and at hazard over lawn and through shrubbery and garden, encountered him there, still squinting abstractedly at the water spout.
It was the first time the girl had seen him since their arrival at Foreland Farms. And now, as she paused under the canopy of fragrant rain-drenched roses and looked at this man who had made all this possible for her, she suddenly felt the change within herself, fitting her for it all—a subtle metamorphosis completing itself within her—the final accomplishment of a transmutation, deep, radical, permanent.
For her, the stark, starved visage which Life had worn had relaxed; in the grim, forbidding wall which had closed her horizon, a door opened, showing a corner of a world where she knew, somehow, she belonged.
And in her heart, too, a door seemed to open, and her youthful soul stepped out of it, naked, fearless, quite certain of itself and, for the first time during their brief and earthly partnership, quite certain of the body wherein it dwelt.
He was thinking of Thessalie when Dulcie came308up and stood beside him, looking down into the water where a few goldfish swam.
“Well, Sweetness,” he said, brightening, “you look very wonderful in white, with that big hat on your very enchanting red hair.”
“I feel both wonderful and enchanted,” she said, lifting her eyes. “I shall live in the country some day.”
“Really?” he said smiling.
“Yes, when I earn enough money. Do you remember the crazy way Strindberg rolls around? Well, I feel like doing it on that lawn.”
“Go ahead and do it,” he urged. But she only laughed and chased the goldfish around the basin with gentle fingers.
“Dulcie,” he said, “you’re unfolding, you’re blossoming, you’re developing feminine snap and go and pep and je-ne-sais-quoi.”
“You’re teasing. But I believe I’m very feminine—and mature—though you don’t think so.”
“Well, I don’t think you’re exactly at an age called well-preserved,” he said, laughing. He took her hands and drew her up to confront him. “You’re not too old to have me as a playmate, Sweetness, are you?”
She seemed to be doubtful.
“What! Nonsense! And you’re not too old to be bullied and coaxed and petted——”
“Yes, I am.”
“And you’re not too old to pose for me——”
She grew pink and looked down at the submerged goldfish. And, keeping her eyes there:
“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. “And309I 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!Youjealous!—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 of310her 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 tocome! Iwantyou!’ And suddenly you got up and came!”
He looked at her out of curious, unsmiling eyes:
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“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 drewme, 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.
312XXIIIA 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.
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“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 atMandel’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 rather314annoying—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 who315would 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 the316air 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 like317lightning, 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?—theMurtagh 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 to318be 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 avon.
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,heis dangerous! That type always319is. He menaces the success of any enterprise to which his quixotic mind turns, 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.Notthe hunting cheetah Cyril and Ferez pretended. And it was indefenceof 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.
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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.
The subject, naturally, invaded the fairy lore, wild legend and lovely mysticism of the West Coast; and centred about his own exquisite work of interpreting it.
He spoke of it very modestly, as his source of inspiration, as the inception of his own creative work in that field. But always, through whatever he said, rang low and clear his passionate patriotism and the only motive which incited him to creative effort—his longing for national autonomy and the re-gathering of a scattered people in preparation for its massed journey toward its Destiny.
His voice was musical, his words unconscious poetry. Without effort, without pains, alas!—without logic—he held every ear enthralled there in the soft candlelight and subdued glimmer of crystal and of silver.
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His was the magic of shadow and half-lights, of vague nuances and lost outlines, and the valued degrees of impinging shade. No sharp contours, no stark, uncompromising shapes, no brutality of raw daylight, and—alas!—no threat of uncompromising logic invaded his realm of dreamy demi-lights and faded fantasies.
He reigned there, amid an enchanted twilight of his own creation, the embodiment of Irish romance, tender, gay, sweet-minded, persuasive, gallant—and tragic, when, at some unexpected moment, the frail veil of melancholy made his dark eyes less brilliant.
All yielded to his charm—even the stuffed Teutons, gorging gravy; all felt his sway over mind and heart, nor cared to analyse it, there in the soft light of candles and the scent of old-fashioned flowers.
There arose some question concerning Sir Roger Casement.
Murtagh Skeel spoke of him with the pure enthusiasm of passionate belief in a master by a humble disciple. And the Teutons grunted assent.
The subject of the war had been politely avoided, yet, somehow, it came out that Murtagh Skeel had served in Britain’s army overseas, as an enlisted man in some Irish regiment—a romantic impulse of the moment, involving a young man’s crazy plan to foment rebellion in India. Which little gem of a memoire presently made the fact of his exile self-explanatory. Yet, he contrived that the ugly revelation should end in laughter—an outbreak of spontaneous mirth through which his glittering wit passed like lightning, cauterising the running sore of treason....
Coffee served, the diners drifted whither it suited them, together or singly.
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Like an errant spirit, Dulcie moved about at hazard amid the softened lights, engaged here, approached there, pausing, wandering on, nowhere in particular, yet ever listlessly in motion.
Encountering her near the porch, Barres senior had paused to whisper that there was no hope for any fishing that evening; and she had lingered to smile after him, as, unreconciled, he took his stiff-shirted way toward the pallid, bejewelled, unanimated mass of Mrs. Gerhardt, settled in the widest armchair and absorbing cordial.
A moment later the girl encountered Garry. He remained with her for a while, evidently desiring to be near her without finding anything in particular to say. And when he, in turn, moved elsewhere, obeying some hazy mandate of hospitality, he became conscious of a reluctance to leave her.
“Do you know, Sweetness,” he said, lingering, “that you wear a delicate beauty to-night lovelier than I have ever seen in you? You are not only a wonderful girl, Dulcie; you are growing into an adorable woman.”
The girl looked back at him, blushing vividly in her sheer surprise—watched him saunter away out of her silent sphere of influence before she found any word to utter—if, indeed, she had been seeking any, so deeply, so painfully sweet had sunk his words into every fibre of her untried, defenceless youth.
Now, as her cheeks cooled, and she came to herself and moved again, there seemed to grow around her a magic and faintly fragrant radiance through which she passed—whither, she paid no heed, so exquisitely her breast was thrilling under the hurrying pulses of her little heart.... And presently found herself on the piano bench, quite motionless, her gaze remote, her fingers resting on the keys.... And, after a long323while, she heard an old air stealing through the silence, and her own voice,—à demi-voix—repeating her mother’s words:
I“Were they as wise as they are blue—My eyes—They’d teach me not to trust in you!—If they were wise as they are blue.But they’re as blithe as they are blue—My eyes—They bid my heart rejoice in you,Because they’re blithe as well as blue.Believe and love! my gay heart cries;Believe him not! my mind replies;What shall I doWhen heart affirms and sense deniesAll I reveal within my eyesTo you?II“If they were black instead of blue—My eyes—Perhaps they’d prove unkind to you!If they were black instead of blue.But God designed them blithe and blue—My eyes—Designed them to be kind to you,And made them tender, gay and true.Believe me, love, no maid is wiseWhen from the windows of her eyes,Her heart looks through!Alas! My heart, to its surprise,Has learned to look; and now it sighsFor you!”
I
I
“Were they as wise as they are blue—My eyes—They’d teach me not to trust in you!—If they were wise as they are blue.
“Were they as wise as they are blue—
My eyes—
They’d teach me not to trust in you!—
If they were wise as they are blue.
But they’re as blithe as they are blue—My eyes—They bid my heart rejoice in you,Because they’re blithe as well as blue.
But they’re as blithe as they are blue—
My eyes—
They bid my heart rejoice in you,
Because they’re blithe as well as blue.
Believe and love! my gay heart cries;Believe him not! my mind replies;What shall I doWhen heart affirms and sense deniesAll I reveal within my eyesTo you?
Believe and love! my gay heart cries;
Believe him not! my mind replies;
What shall I do
When heart affirms and sense denies
All I reveal within my eyes
To you?
II
II
“If they were black instead of blue—My eyes—Perhaps they’d prove unkind to you!If they were black instead of blue.
“If they were black instead of blue—
My eyes—
Perhaps they’d prove unkind to you!
If they were black instead of blue.
But God designed them blithe and blue—My eyes—Designed them to be kind to you,And made them tender, gay and true.
But God designed them blithe and blue—
My eyes—
Designed them to be kind to you,
And made them tender, gay and true.
Believe me, love, no maid is wiseWhen from the windows of her eyes,Her heart looks through!Alas! My heart, to its surprise,Has learned to look; and now it sighsFor you!”
Believe me, love, no maid is wise
When from the windows of her eyes,
Her heart looks through!
Alas! My heart, to its surprise,
Has learned to look; and now it sighs
For you!”
She became conscious of somebody near, as she ended. She turned and saw Murtagh Skeel at her324elbow—saw his agitated, ashen face—looked beyond him and discovered other people gathered in the tinted light beyond, listening; then she lifted her clear, still gaze again to the white-faced man beside her, and saw his shaken soul staring at her through the dark windows ofhiseyes.
“Where did you learn it?” he asked with a futile effort at that control so difficult for any Celt to grasp where the heart is involved.
“The song I sang? ‘Blue Eyes’?” she inquired.
“Yes—that.”
“I have the manuscript of the composer.”
“Could you tell me where you got it—and—and who wrote those words you sang?”
“The manuscript came to me from my mother.... She wrote it.... I think you knew her.”
His strong, handsome hand dropped on the piano’s edge, gripped it; and under his pale skin the quick blood surged to his temples.
“What was your—your mother’s name, Miss Soane?”
“She was Eileen Fane.”
The throbbing seconds passed and still they looked into each other’s eyes in silence. And at last:
“So you did know my mother,” she said under her breath; and the hushed finality of her words set his strong hand trembling.
“Eileen’s little daughter,” he repeated. “Eileen Fane’s child.... And grown to womanhood.... Yes, I knew your mother—many years ago.... When I enlisted and went abroad.... Was it Sir Terence Soane who married your mother?”
She shook her head. He stared at her, striving to concentrate, to think. “There were other Soanes,” he muttered, “the Ellet Water folk—no?——But325there were many Soanes among the landed gentry in the East and North.... I cannot seem to recollect—the sudden shock—hearing a song unexpectedly——”
His white forehead had grown damp under the curly hair now clinging to it. He passed his handkerchief over his brow in a confused way, then leaned heavily on the piano with both hands grasping it. For the ghost of his youth was interfering, disputing his control over his own mind, filling his ear with forgotten words, taking possession of his memory and tormenting it with the distant echoes of a voice long dead.
Through the increasing chaos in his brain his strained gaze sought to fix itself on this living, breathing face before him—the child of Eileen Fane.
He made the effort:
“There were the Soanes of Colross——” But he got no farther that way, for the twin spectres of his youth andherswere busy with his senses now; and he leaned more heavily on the piano, enduring with lowered head the ghostly whirlwind rushing up out of that obscurity and darkness where once, under summer skies, he had sowed a zephyr.
The girl had become rather white, too. One slim hand still rested on the ivory keys, the other lay inert in her lap. And after a while she raised her grey eyes to this man standing beside her:
“Did you ever hear of my mother’s marriage?”
He looked at her in a dull way:
“No.”
“You heard—nothing?”
“I heard that your mother had left Fane Court.”
“What was Fane Court?”
Murtagh Skeel stared at her in silence.
“I don’t know,” she said, trembling a little. “I326know nothing about my mother. She died when I was a few months old.”
“Do you mean that you don’t know who your mother was? You don’t know who she married?” he asked, astounded.
“No.”
“Good God!” he said, gazing at her. His tense features were working now; the battle for self-control was visible to her, and she sat there dumbly, looking on at the mute conflict which suddenly sent the tears flashing into his dark eyes and left his sensitive mouth twitching.
“I shall not ask you anything now,” he said unsteadily; “I shall have to see you somewhere else—where there are no people—to interrupt.... But I shall tell you all I know about—your mother.... I was in trouble—in India. Somehow or other I heard indirectly that your mother had left Fane Court. Later it was understood that she had eloped.... Nobody could tell me the man’s name.... My people in Ireland did not know.... And I was not on good terms with your grandfather. So there was no hope of information from Fane Court.... I wrote, indeed, begging, beseeching for news of your mother. Sir Barry—your grandfather—returned my letters unopened.... And that is all I have ever heard concerning Eileen Fane—your mother—with whom I—fell in love—nearly twenty years ago.”
Dulcie, marble pale, nodded.
“I knew you cared for my mother,” she said.
“How did you learn it?”
“Some letters of hers written to you. Letters from you to her. I have nothing else of hers except some verses and little songs—like the one you recognised.”
“Child, she wrote it as I sat beside her!——” His327voice choked, broke, and his lips quivered as he fought for self-control again.... “I was not welcome at Fane Court.... Sir Barry would not tolerate me.... Your mother was more kind.... She was very young. And so was I, Dulcie.... There were political troubles. I was always involved. God knows which was the stronger passion—it must have been love of country—the other seeming hopeless—with the folk at Fane Court my bitter enemies—only excepting your mother.... So I went away.... And which of the Soanes your mother eloped with I have never learned.... Now, tell me—for you surely know that much.”
She said:
“There is a man called Soane who tells me sometimes that he was once a gamekeeper at what he calls ‘the big house.’ I have always supposed him to be my father until within the last year. But recently, when he has been drinking heavily, he sometimes tells me that my name is not Soane but Fane.... Did you ever know of such a man?”
“No. There were gamekeepers about.... No. I cannot recall—and it is impossible! A gamekeeper! And yourmother! The man is mad! What in God’s name does all this mean!——”
He began to tremble, and his white forehead under the clustering curls grew damp and pinched again.
“If you are Eileen’s daughter——” But his face went dead white and he got no further.
People were approaching from behind them, too; voices grew distinct in conversation; somebody turned up another lamp.
“Do sing that little song again—the one you sang for Mr. Skeel,” said Lee Barres, coming up to the piano on her brother’s arm. “Mrs. Gerhardt has been waiting very patiently for an opportunity to ask you.”