278XXITHE WHITE BLACKBIRD
Refreshed by icy baths and clean linen, and now further fortified against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune by a supper of cold fowl and Moselle, Captain Renoux and Garret Barres sat in the apartment of the former gentleman, gaily exchanging Latin Quarter reminiscences through the floating haze of their cigars.
But the conversation soon switched back toward the far more serious business which alone accounted for their being there together after many years. For, as the French officer had remarked, a good deal remained to be said between them. And Barres knew what he meant, and was deeply concerned at the prospect.
But Renoux approached the matter with careless good humour and by a leisurely, circuitous route, which polite pussy-footing was obviously to prepare Barres for impending trouble.
He began by referring to his mission in America, admitting very frankly that he was a modest link in the system of military and political intelligence maintained by all European countries in the domains of their neighbours.
“I might as well say so,” he remarked, “because it’s known to the representatives of enemy governments here as well as to your own Government, that some of us are here; and anybody can imagine why.
“And, in the course of my—studies,” he said deliberately,279while his clear eyes twinkled, “it has come to my knowledge, and to the knowledge of the French Ambassador, that there is, in New York, a young woman who already has proven herself a dangerous enemy to my country.”
“That is interesting, if true,” said Barres, reddening to the temples. “But it is even more interesting if it is not true.... And it isn’t!”
“You think not?”
“I don’t think anything about it, Renoux; Iknow.”
“I am afraid you have been misled, Barres. And it is natural enough.”
“Why?”
“Because,” said Renoux serenely, “she is very beautiful, very clever, very young, very appealing.... Tell me, my friend, where did you meet her?”
Barres looked him in the eyes:
“Where did you learn that I had ever met her?”
“Through the ordinary channels which, if you will pardon me, I am not at liberty to discuss.”
“All right. It is sufficient that you know I have met her. Now, where did I meet her?”
“I don’t know,” said Renoux candidly.
“How long have I known her then?”
“Possibly a few weeks. Our information is that your acquaintance with her is not of long duration.”
“Wrong, my friend: I met her in France several years ago; I know her intimately.”
“Yes, the intimacy has been reported,” said Renoux, blandly. “But it doesn’t take long, sometimes.”
Barres reddened again and shook his head:
“You and your agents are all wrong, Renoux. So is your Government. Do you know what it’s doing—what you and your agents are doing? You’re playing a German game for Berlin!”
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This time Renoux flushed and there was a slight quiver to his lips and nostrils; but he said very pleasantly:
“That would be rather mortifying, mon ami, if it were true.”
“It is true. Berlin, the traitor in Paris, the conspirator in America, the German, Austrian, and Turkish diplomatic agents here ask nothing better than that you manage, somehow, to eliminate the person in question.”
“Why?” demanded Renoux.
“Because more than one of your public men in Paris will face charges of conspiracy and treason if the person in question ever has a fair hearing and a chance to prove her innocence of the terrible accusations that have been made against her.”
“Naturally,” said Renoux, “those accused bring counter charges. It is always the history of such cases, mon ami.”
“Your mind is already made up, then?”
“My mind is a real mind, Barres. Reason is what it seeks—the logical evidence that leads to truth. If there is anything I don’t know, then I wish to know it, and will spare no pains, permit no prejudice to warp my judgment.”
“All right. Now, let’s have the thing out between us, Renoux. We are not fencing in the dark; we understand each other and are honest enough to say so. Now, go on.”
Renoux nodded and said very quietly and pleasantly:
“The reference in one of these papers to the celebrated Nihla Quellen reminds me of the first time I ever saw her. I was quite bowled over, Barres, as you may easily imagine. She sang one of those Asiatic281songs—and then the dance!—a miracle!—a delight—apparently entirely unprepared, unpremeditated even—you know how she did it?—exquisite perfection—something charmingly impulsive and spontaneous—a caprice of the moment! Ah—there is a wonderful artiste, Nihla Quellen!”
Barres nodded, his level gaze fixed on the French officer.
“As for the document,” continued Renoux, “it does not entirely explain itself to me. You see, this Eurasian, Ferez Bey, was a very intimate friend of Nihla Quellen.”
“You are quite mistaken,” interposed Barres. But the other merely smiled with a slight gesture of deference to his friend’s opinion, and went on.
“This Ferez is one of those persistent, annoying flies which buzz around chancelleries and stir up diplomats to pernicious activities. You know there isn’t much use in swatting, as you say, the fly. No. Better find the manure heap which hatched him and burn that!”
He smiled and shrugged, relighted his cigar, and continued:
“So, mon ami, I am here in your charming and hospitable city to direct the necessary sanitary measures, sub rosa, of course. You have been more than kind. My Government and I have you to thank for this batch of papers——” He tapped his breast pocket and made salutes which Frenchmen alone know how to make.
“Renoux,” said Barres bluntly, “you have learned somehow that Nihla Quellen is under my protection. You conclude I am her lover.”
The officer’s face altered gravely, but he said nothing.
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Barres leaned forward in his chair and laid a hand on his comrade’s shoulder:
“Renoux, do you trust me, personally?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. Then I shall trust you. Because there is nothing you can tell me about Nihla Quellen that I do not already know—nothing concerning herdossierin your secret archives, nothing in regard to the evidence against her and the testimony of the Count d’Eblis. And that clears the ground between you and me.”
If Renoux was surprised he scarcely showed it.
Barres said:
“As long as you know that she is under my protection, I want you to come to my place and talk to her. I don’t ask you to accept my judgment in regard to her; I merely wish you to listen to what she has to say, and then come to your own conclusions. Will you do this?”
For a few moments Renoux sat quite still, his clear, intelligent eyes fixed on the smoking tip of his cigar. Without raising them he said slowly:
“As we understand it, Nihla Quellen has been a spy from the very beginning. Our information is clear, concise, logical. We know her history. She was the mistress of Prince Cyril, then of Ferez, then of d’Eblis—perhaps of the American banker, Gerhardt, also. She came directly from the German Embassy at Constantinople to Paris, on Gerhardt’s yacht, theMirage, and under his protection and the protection of Comte Alexandre d’Eblis.
“Ferez was of the party. And that companionship of conspirators never was dissolved as long as Nihla Quellen remained in Europe.”
“That Nihla Quellen has ever been the mistress of283any man is singularly untrue,” said Barres coolly. “Your Government has to do with a chaste woman; and it doesn’t even know that much!”
Renoux regarded him curiously:
“You have seen her dance?” he enquired gravely.
“Often. And, Renoux, you are too much a man of the world to be surprised at the unexpected. Therearewhite blackbirds.”
“Yes, there are.”
“Nihla Quellen is one.”
“My friend, I desire to believe it if it would be agreeable to you.”
“I know, Renoux; I believe in your good-will. Also, I believe in your honesty and intelligence. And so I do not ask you to accept my word for what I tell you. Only remember that I am absolutely certain concerning my belief in Nihla Quellen.... I have no doubt that you think I am in love with her.... I can’t answer you. All Europe was in love with her. Perhaps I am.... I don’t know, Renoux. But this I do know; she is clean and sweet and honest from the crown of her head to the sole of her foot. In her heart there has never dwelt treachery. Talk to her to-night. You’re like the best of your compatriots, clear minded, logical, intelligent, and full of that legitimate imagination without which intellect is a machine. You know the world; you know men; you don’t know women and you know you don’t. Therefore, you are equipped to learn the truth—to divine it—from Nihla Quellen. Will you come over to my place now?”
“Yes,” said Renoux pleasantly.
The orchestra was playing as they passed through the hotel; supper rooms, corridors, café and lobby were crowded with post-theatre throngs in search of food284and drink and dance music; and although few theatres were open in July, Long Acre blazed under its myriad lights and the sidewalks were packed with the audiences filtering out of the various summer shows and into all-night cabarets.
They looked across at the distant war bulletins displayed on Times Square, around which the usual gesticulating crowd had gathered, but kept on across Long Acre, and west toward Sixth Avenue.
Midway in the block, Renoux touched his comrade silently on the arm, and halted.
“A few minutes, mon ami, if you don’t mind—time for you to smoke a cigarette while waiting.”
They had stopped before a brownstone house which had been converted into a basement dwelling, and which was now recessed between two modern shops constructed as far as the building line.
All the shades and curtains in the house were drawn and the place appeared to be quite dark, but a ring at the bell brought a big, powerfully built porter, who admitted them to a brightly lighted reception room. Then the porter replaced the chains on the door of bronze.
“Just a little while, if you will be amiable enough to have patience,” said Renoux.
He went away toward the rear of the house and Barres seated himself. And in a few moments the burly porter reappeared with a tray containing a box of cigarettes and a tall glass of Moselle.
“Monsieur Renoux will not be long,” he said, bringing a sheaf of French illustrated periodicals to the little table at Barres’ elbow; and he retired with a bow and resumed his chair in the corridor by the bronze door.
Through closed doors, somewhere from the rear of285the silent house came the distant click of a typewriter. At moments, too, looking over the war pictures in the periodicals, Barres imagined that he heard a confused murmur as of many voices.
Later it became evident that there were a number of people somewhere in the house, because, now and then, the porter unlatched the door and drew the chains to let out some swiftly walking man.
Once two men came out together. One carried a satchel; the other halted in the hallway to slip a clip into an automatic pistol before dropping it into the side pocket of his coat.
And after a while Renoux appeared, bland, debonaire, evidently much pleased with whatever he had been doing.
Two other men appeared in the corridor behind him; he said something to them in a low voice; Barres imagined he heard the words, “Washington” and “Jusserand.”
Then the two men went out, walking at a smart pace, and Renoux sauntered into the tiny reception room.
“You don’t know,” he said, “what a very important service you have rendered us by catching that fellow to-night and stripping him of his papers.”
Barres rose and they walked out together.
“This city,” added Renoux, “is fairly verminous with disloyal Huns. The streets are crawling with them; every German resort, saloon, beer garden, keller, café, club, society—every German drug store, delicatessen shop, music store, tobacconist, is lousy with the treacherous swine.
“There are two great hotels where the boche gathers and plots; two great banking firms are centres of German propaganda; three great department stores, dozens of downtown commercial agencies; various286buildings and piers belonging to certain transatlantic steamship lines, the offices of certain newspapers and periodicals.... Tell me, Barres, did you know that the banker, Gerhardt, owns the building in which you live?”
“Dragon Court!”
“You didn’t know it, evidently. Yes, he owns it.”
“Is he really involved in pro-German intrigue?” asked Barres.
“That is our information.”
“I ask,” continued Barres thoughtfully, “because his summer home is at Northbrook, not far from my own home. And to me there is something peculiarly contemptible about disloyalty in the wealthy who owe every penny to the country they betray.”
“His place is called Hohenlinden,” remarked Renoux.
“Yes. Are you having it watched?”
Renoux smiled. Perhaps he was thinking about other places, also—the German Embassy, for example, where, inside the Embassy itself, not only France but also the United States Government was represented by a secret agent among the personnel.
“We try to learn what goes on among the boches,” he said carelessly. “They try the same game. But, Barres, they are singularly stupid at such things—not adroit, merely clumsy and brutal. The Hun cannot camouflage his native ferocity. He reveals himself.
“And in that respect it is fortunate for civilisation that it is dealing with barbarians. Their cunning is of the swinish sort. Their stench ultimately discovers them. You are discovering it for yourselves; you detected Dernberg; you already sniff Von Papen, Boy-ed, Bernstorff. All over the world the nauseous effluvia from the vast Teutonic hog-pen is being detected and287recognised. And civilisation is taking sanitary measures to abate the nuisance.... And your country, too, will one day send out a sanitary brigade to help clean up the world, just as you now supply our details with the necessary chlorides and antiseptics.”
Barres laughed:
“You are very picturesque,” he said. “And I’ll tell you one thing, if we don’t join the sanitary corps now operating, I shall go out with a bottle of chloride myself.”
They entered Dragon Court a few moments later. Nobody was at the desk, it being late.
“To-morrow,” said Barres, as they ascended the stairs, “my friends, Miss Soane, Miss Dunois, and Mr. Westmore are to be our guests at Foreland Farms. You didn’t know that, did you?” he added sarcastically.
“Oh, yes,” replied Renoux, much amused. “Miss Dunois, as you call her, sent her trunks away this evening.”
Barres, surprised and annoyed, halted on the landing:
“Your people didn’t interfere, I hope.”
“No. There was nothing in them of interest to us,” said Renoux naïvely. “I sent a report when I sent on to Washington the papers which you secured for us.”
Barres paused before his studio door, key in hand. They could hear the gramophone going inside. He said:
“I don’t have to ask you to be fair, Renoux, because the man who is unfair to others swindles himself, and you are too decent, too intelligent to do that. I am going to present you to Thessalie Dunois, which happens to be her real name, and I am going to tell her in your presence who you are. Then I shall leave you alone with her.”
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He fitted his latchkey and opened the door.
Westmore was trying fancy dancing with Dulcie on one side, and Thessalie on the other—the latter evidently directing operations.
“Garry!” exclaimed Thessalie.
“You’re a fine one! Where have you been?” began Westmore. Then he caught sight of Renoux and became silent.
Barres led his comrade forward and presented him:
“A fellow student of the Beaux Arts,” he explained, “and we’ve had a very jolly evening together. And, Thessa, there is something in particular that I should like to have you explain to Monsieur Renoux, if you don’t mind....” He turned and looked at Dulcie: “If you will pardon us a moment, Sweetness.”
She nodded and smiled and took Westmore’s arm again, and continued the dance alone with him while Barres, drawing Thessalie’s arm through his, and passing his other arm through Renoux’s, walked leisurely through his studio, through the now open folding doors, past his bedroom and Westmore’s, and into the latter’s studio beyond.
“Thessa, dear,” he said very quietly, “I feel very certain that the worst of your troubles are about to end——” He felt her start slightly. “And,” he continued, “I have brought my comrade, Renoux, here to-night so that you and he can clear up a terrible misunderstanding.
“And Monsieur Renoux, once a student of architecture at the Beaux Arts, is now Captain Renoux of the Intelligence Department in the French Army——”
Thessalie lost her colour and a tremor passed through the arm which lay within his.
But he said calmly:
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“It is the only way as well as the best way, Thessa. I know you are absolutely innocent. I am confident that Captain Renoux is going to believe it, too. If he does not, you are no worse off. Because it has already become known to the French Government that you are here. Renoux knew it.”
They had halted; Barres led Thessalie to a seat. Renoux, straight, deferential, correct, awaited her pleasure.
She looked up at him; his keen, intelligent eyes met hers.
“If you please, Captain Renoux, will you do me the honour to be seated?” she said in a low voice.
Barres went to her, bent over her hand, touched it with his lips.
“Just tell him the truth, Thessa, dear,” he said.
“Everything?” she smiled faintly, “including our first meeting?”
Barres flushed, then laughed:
“Yes, tell him about that, too. It was too charming for him not to appreciate.”
And with a half mischievous, half amused nod to Renoux he went back to find the dancers, whom he could hear laughing far away in his own studio.
It was nearly one o’clock when Dulcie, who had been sleeping with Thessalie, whispered to Barres that she was ready to retire.
“Indeed, you had better,” he said, releasing her as the dance music ran down and ceased. “If you don’t get some sleep you won’t feel like travelling to-morrow.”
“Will you explain to Thessa?”
“Of course. Good-night, dear.”
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She gave him her hand in silence, turned and offered it to Westmore, then went away toward her room.
Westmore, who had been fidgeting a lot since Thessalie had retired for a tête-à-tête with a perfectly unknown and alarmingly good-looking young man whom he never before had laid eyes on, finally turned short in his restless pacing of the studio.
“What the deuce can be keeping Thessa?” he demanded. “And who the devil is that black-eyed young sprig of France you brought home with you?”
“Sit down and I’ll tell you,” said Barres crisply, instinctively resenting his friend’s uncalled for solicitude in Thessalie’s behalf.
So Westmore seated himself and Barres told him all about the evening’s adventures. And he was still lingering unctuously over the details of the battle at Grogan’s, the recital of which, Westmore demanding, he had begun again, when at the farther end of the studio Thessalie appeared, coming toward them.
Renoux was beside her, very deferential and graceful in his attendance, and with that niceness of attitude which confesses respect in every movement.
Thessalie came forward; Barres advanced to meet her with the unspoken question in his eyes, and she gave him both her hands with a tremulous little smile of happiness.
“Is it all right?” he whispered.
“I think so.”
Barres turned and grasped Renoux by one hand.
The latter said:
“There is not the slightest doubt in my mind, mon ami. You were perfectly right. A frightful injustice has been done in this matter. Of that I am absolutely convinced.”
“You will do what you can to set things right?”
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“Of course,” said Renoux simply.
There was a moment’s silence, then Renoux smiled:
“You know,” he said lightly, “we French have a horror of any more mistakes like the Dreyfus case. We are terribly sensitive. Be assured that my Government will take up this affair instantly upon receiving my report.”
He turned to Barres:
“Would you, perhaps, offer me a day’s hospitality at your home in the country, if I should request it by telegram sometime this week or next?”
“You bet,” replied Barres cordially.
Then Renoux made his adieux, as only such a Frenchman can make them, saying exactly the right thing to each, in exactly the right manner.
When he was gone, Barres took Thessalie’s hands and pressed them:
“Pretty merle-blanc, your little friend Dulcie is already asleep. Tell us to-morrow how you convinced him that you are what you are—the dearest, sweetest girl in the world!”
She laughed demurely, then glanced apprehensively, sideways, at Westmore.
And the mute but infuriated expression on that young man’s countenance seemed to cause her the loss of all self-possession, for she cast one more look at him and fled with a hasty “good-night!”
292XXIIFORELAND FARMS
Toward three o’clock on the following afternoon the sun opened up like a searchlight through the veil of rain, dissolving it to a golden haze which gradually grew thinner and thinner, revealing glimpses of rolling country against a horizon of low mountains.
About the same time the covered station wagon turned in between the white gates of Foreland Farms, proceeded at a smart trot up the drive, and stopped under a dripping porte-cochère, where a smiling servant stood waiting to lift out the luggage.
A trim looking man of forty odd, in soft shirt and fawn coloured knickers, and wearing a monocle in his right eye and a flower in his buttonhole, came out on the porch as Barres and his guests descended.
“Well, Garry,” he said, “I’m glad you’re home at last! But you’re rather late for the fishing.” And to Westmore:
“How are you, Jim? Jolly to have you back! But I regret to inform you that the fishing is very poor just now.”
His son, who stood an inch or two taller than his debonaire parent, passed one arm around his shoulders and patted them affectionately while the easy presentations were concluded.
At the same moment two women,beautifullymounted293and very wet, galloped up to the porch and welcomed Garry’s guests from their saddles in the pleasant, informal, incurious manner characteristic of Foreland Farm folk—a manner which seemed too amiably certain of itself to feel responsibility for anybody or anything else.
Easy, unconcerned, slender and clean-built women these—Mrs. Reginald Barres, Garry’s mother, and her daughter, Lee. And in their smart, rain-wet riding clothes they might easily have been sisters, with a few years’ difference between them, so agreeably had Time behaved toward Mrs. Barres, so closely her fair-haired, fair-skinned daughter resembled her.
They swung carelessly out of their saddles and set spurred foot to turf, and, with Garret and his guests, sauntered into the big living hall, where a maid waited with wine and biscuits and the housekeeper lingered to conduct Thessalie and Dulcie to their rooms.
Dulcie Soane, in her pretty travelling gown, walked beside Mrs. Reginald Barres into the first great house she had ever entered. Composed, but shyly enchanted, an odd but delightful sensation possessed her that she was where she belonged—that such environment, such people should always have been familiar to her—were logical and familiar to her now.
Mrs. Barres was saying:
“And if you like parties, there is always gaiety at Northbrook. But you don’t have to go anywhere or do anything you don’t wish to.”
Dulcie said, diffidently, that she liked everything, and Mrs. Barres laughed.
“Then you’ll be very popular,” she said, tossing her riding crop onto the table and stripping off her wet gloves.
Barres senior was already in serious confab with294Westmore concerning piscatorial conditions, the natural low water of midsummer, the capricious conduct of the trout in the streams and in the upper and lower lakes.
“They won’t look at anything until sunset,” he explained, “and then they don’t mean business. You’ll see, Jim. I’m sorry; you should have come in June.”
Lee, Garret’s boyishly slim sister, had already begun to exchange opinions about horses with Thessalie, for both had been familiar with the saddle since childhood, though the latter’s Cossack horsemanship and mastery of the haute école, incident to her recent and irregular profession, might have astonished Lee Barres.
Mrs. Barres was saying to Dulcie:
“We don’t try to entertain one another here, but everybody seems to have a perfectly good time. The main thing is that we all feel quite free at Foreland. You’ll lose yourself indoors at first. The family for a hundred years has been adding these absurd two-story wings, so that the house wanders at random over the landscape, and you may have to inquire your way about in the beginning.”
She smiled again at Dulcie and took her hand in both of hers:
“I’m sure you will like the Farms,” she said, linking her other arm through her son’s. “I’m rather wet, Garry,” she added, “but I think Lee and I had better dry out in the saddle.” And to Dulcie again: “Tea at five, if anybody wishes it. Would you like to see your room?”
Thessalie, conversing with Lee, turned smilingly to be included in the suggestion; and the maid came forward to conduct her and Dulcie through the intricacies of the big, casual, sprawling house, where rooms and corridors and halls rambled unexpectedly and irrelevantly295in every direction, and one vista seemed to terminate in another.
When they had disappeared, the Barres family turned to inspect its son and heir with habitual and humorous insouciance, commenting frankly upon his personal appearance and concluding that his health still remained all that could be desired by the most solicitous of parents and sisters.
“There are rods already rigged up in the work-room,” remarked his father, “if you and your guests care to try a dry-fly this evening. As for me, you’ll find me somewhere around the upper lake, if you care to look for me——”
He fished out of his pocket a bewildering tangle of fine mist-leaders, and, leisurely disentangling them, strolled toward the porch, still talking:
“There’s only one fly they deign to notice, now—a dust-coloured midge tied in reverse with no hackle, no tinsel, a May-fly tail, and barred canary wing——” He nodded wisely over his shoulder at his son and Westmore, as though sharing with them a delightful secret of world-wide importance, and continued on toward the porch, serenely interested in his tangled leaders.
Garret glanced at his mother and sister; they both laughed. He said:
“Dad is one of those rarest of modern beings, a genuine angler of the old school. After all the myriad trout and salmon he has caught in a career devoted to fishing, the next fish he catches gives him just as fine a thrill as did the very first one he ever hooked! It’s quite wonderful, isn’t it, mother?”
“It’s probably what keeps him so youthful,” remarked Westmore. “The thing to do is to have something to do. That’s the elixir of youth. Look at296your mother, Garry. She’s had a busy handful bringing you up!”
Garret looked at his slender, attractive mother and laughed again:
“Is that what keeps you so young and pretty, mother?—looking after me?”
“Alas, Garry, I’m over forty, and I look it!”
“Do you?—you sweet little thing!” he interrupted, picking her up suddenly from the floor and marching proudly around the room with her. “Gaze upon my mother, Jim! Isn’t she cunning? Isn’t she the smartest little thing in America? Behave yourself, mother! Your grateful son is showing you off to the appreciative young gentleman from New York——”
“You’re ridiculous! Jim! Make him put me down!”
But her tall son swung her to his shoulder and placed her high on the mantel shelf over the huge fireplace; where she sat beside the clock, charming, resentful, but helpless, her spurred boots dangling down.
“Come on, Lee!” cried her brother, “I’m going to put you up beside her. That mantel needs ornamental bric-a-brac and objets d’art——”
Lee turned to escape, but her brother cornered and caught her, and swung her high, seating her beside his indignant mother.
“Just as though we were two Angora kittens,” remarked Lee, sidling along the stone shelf toward her mother. Then she glanced out through the open front door. “Lift us down, quick, Garry. You’d better! The horses are in the flower beds and there’ll be no more bouquets for the table in another minute!”
So he lifted them off the mantel and they hastily departed, each administering correction with her riding crop as she dodged past him and escaped.
“If your guests want horses you know where to find297them!” called back his sister from the porch. And presently she and his mother, securely mounted, went cantering away across country, where grass and fern and leaf and blossom were glistening in the rising breeze, weighted down with diamond drops of rain.
Westmore walked leisurely toward his quarters, to freshen up and don knickers. Garret followed him into the west wing, whistling contentedly under his breath, inspecting each remembered object with great content as he passed, nodding smilingly to the servants he encountered, lingering on the landing to acknowledge the civilities of the ancient family cat, who recognised him with effusion but coyly fled the advances of Westmore, ignoring all former and repeated introductions.
Their rooms adjoined and they conversed through the doorway while engaged in ablutions.
Presently, from behind his sheer sash-curtains, Westmore caught sight of Thessalie on the west terrace below. She wore a shell-pink frock and a most distractingly pretty hat; and he hurried his dressing as much as he could without awaking Garret’s suspicions.
A few minutes later, radiant in white flannels, he appeared on the terrace, breathing rather fast but wreathed in persuasive smiles.
“I know this place; I’ll take you for a walk where you won’t get your shoes wet. Shall I?” he suggested, with all his guile and cunning quite plain to Thessalie, and his purpose perfectly transparent to her smiling eyes.
But she consented prettily, and went with him without demurring, picking her way over the stepping-stone walk with downcast gaze and the trace of a smile on her lips—a smile as delicately indefinable as the fancy which moved her to accept this young man’s headlong advances—which had recognized them and accepted298them from the first. But why, she did not even yet understand.
“Agreeable weather, isn’t it?” said Westmore, fatuously revealing his present paucity of ideas apart from those which concerned the wooing of her. And he was an intelligent young man at that, and a sculptor of attainment, too. But now, in his infatuated head, there remained room only for one thought, the thought of this girl who walked so demurely and daintily beside him over the flat, grass-set stepping stones toward the three white pines on the little hill.
For it had been something or other at first sight with Westmore—love, perhaps—anyway that is what he called the mental chaos which now disorganised him. And it was certain that something happened to him the first time he laid eyes on Thessalie Dunois. He knew it, and she could not avoid seeing it, so entirely naïve his behaviour, so utterly guileless his manœuvres, so direct, unfeigned and childish his methods of approach.
At moments she felt nervous and annoyed by his behaviour; at other times apprehensive and helpless, as though she were responsible for something that did not know how to take care of itself—something immature, irrational, and entirely at her mercy. And it may have been the feminine response to this increasing sense of obligation—the confused instinct to guide, admonish and protect—that began being the matter with her.
Anyway, from the beginning the man had a certain fascination for her, unwillingly divined on her part, yet specifically agreeable even to the point of exhilaration. Also, somehow or other, the girl realised he had a brain.
And yet he was a pitiably hopeless case; for even now he was saying such things as:
“Are you quite sure that your feet are dry? I299should never forgive myself, Thessa, if you took cold.... Are you tired?... How wonderful it is to be here alone with you, and strive to interpret the mystery of your mind and heart! Sit here under the pines. I’ll spread my coat for you.... Nature is wonderful, isn’t it, Thessa?”
And when she gravely consented to seat herself he dropped recklessly onto the wet pine needles at her feet, and spoke with imbecile delight again of nature—of how wonderful were its protean manifestations, and how its beauties were not meant to be enjoyed alone but in mystic communion with another who understood.
It was curious, too, but this stuff seemed to appeal to her, some commonplace chord within her evidently responding. She sighed and looked at the mountains. They really were miracles of colour—masses of purest cobalt, now, along the horizon.
But perhaps the trite things they uttered did not really matter; probably it made no difference to them what they said. And even if he had murmured: “There are milestones along the road to Dover,” she might have responded: “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe”; and neither of them would have heard anything at all except the rapid, confused, and voiceless conversation of two youthful human hearts beating out endless questions and answers that never moved their smiling lips. There was the mystery, if any—the constant wireless current under the haphazard flow of words.
There was no wind in the pines; meadow and pasture, woodland and swale stretched away at their feet to the distant, dark-blue hills. And all around them hung the rain-washed fragrance of midsummer under a still, cloudless sky.
300
“It seems impossible that there can be war anywhere in the world,” she said.
“You know,” he began, “it’s getting on my nerves the way those swine from the Rhine are turning this decent green world into a bloody wallow! Unless we do something about it pretty soon, I think I’ll go over.”
She looked up:
“Where?”
“To France.”
She remained silent for a while, merely lifting her dark eyes to him at intervals; then she grew preoccupied with other thoughts that left her brows bent slightly inward and her mouth very grave.
He gazed reflectively out over the fields and woods:
“Yes, I can’t stand it much longer,” he mused aloud.
“What would you do there?” she inquired.
“Anything. I could drive a car. But if they’ll take me in some Canadian unit—or one of the Foreign Legions—it would suit me.... You know a man can’t go on just living in the world while this beastly business continues—can’t go on eating and sleeping and shaving and dressing as though half of civilisation were not rolling in agony and blood, stabbed through and through——”
His voice caught—he checked himself and slowly passed his hand over his smoothly shaven face.
“Those splendid poilus,” he said; “where they stand we Americans ought to be standing, too.... God knows why we hesitate.... I can’t tell you what we think.... Some of us—don’t agree—with the Administration.”
His jaws snapped on the word; he stared out through the sunshine at the swallows, now skimming the uncut hay fields in their gusty evening flight.
301
“Are you really going?” she asked, at length.
“Yes. I’ll wait a little while longer to see what my country is going to do. If it doesn’t stir during the next month or two, I shall go. I think Garry will go, too.”
She nodded.
“Of course,” he remarked, “we’d prefer our own flag, Garry and I. But if it is to remain furled——” He shrugged, picked a spear of grass, and sat brooding and breaking it into tiny pieces.
“The only thing that troubles me,” he went on presently, keeping his gaze riveted on his busy fingers, “the only thing that worries me is you!”
“Me?” she exclaimed softly. And an inexplicable little thrill shot through her.
“You,” he repeated. “You worry me to death.”
She considered him a moment, her lips parted as though she were about to say something, but it remained unsaid, and a slight colour came into her cheeks.
“What am I to do about you?” he went on, apparently addressing the blade of grass he was staring at. “I can’t leave you as matters stand.”
She said:
“Please, you are not responsible for me, are you?” And tried to laugh, but scarcely smiled.
“I want to be,” he muttered. “I desire to be entirely——”
“Thank you. You have been more than kind. And very soon I hope I shall be on happy terms with my own Government again. Then your solicitude should cease.”
“If your Government listens to reason——”
“Then I also could go to France!” she interrupted. “Merely to think of it excites me beyond words!”
He looked up quickly:
302
“You wish to go back?”
“Of course!”
“Why?”
“How can you ask that! If you had been a disgraced exile as I have been, as I still am—and falsely accused of shameful things—annoyed, hounded, blackmailed, offered bribes, constantly importuned to become what I am not—a traitor to my own people—would you not be wildly happy to be proven innocent? Would you not be madly impatient to return and prove your devotion to your own land?”
“I understand,” he said in a low voice.
“Of course you understand. Do you imagine that I, a French girl, would have remained here in shameful security if I could have gone back to France and helped? I would have done anything—anything, I tell you—scrubbed the floors of hospitals, worked my fingers to the bone——”
“I’ll wait till you go,” he said.... “They’ll clear your record very soon, I expect. I’ll wait. And we’ll go together. Shall we, Thessa?”
But she had not seemed to hear him; her dark eyes grew remote, her gaze swept the sapphire distance. It was his hand laid lightly over hers that aroused her, and she withdrew her fingers with a frown of remonstrance.
“Won’t you let me speak?” he said. “Won’t you let me tell you what my heart tells me?”
She shook her head slowly:
“I don’t desire to hear yet—I don’t know where my own heart—or even my mind is—or what I think about—anything. Please be reasonable.” She stole a look at him to see how he was taking it, and there was concern enough in her glance to give him a certain amount of hope had he noticed it.