Chapter IX: Part 9

The orchestra was playing as they passed through the hotel; supper rooms, corridors, cafe and lobby were crowded with post-theatre throngs in search of food and 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 of the 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, cafe, 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; various buildings 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 and recognised. 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 naively. "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."

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:

"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."

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 tete-a-tete 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?"

"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!"

XXII

FORELAND 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-cochere, 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, beautifully mounted and 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 with Westmore 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 ecole, 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 irrelevantly in 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 at your 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 find them!" 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 accepted them 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 naive his behaviour, so utterly guileless his manoeuvres, 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? I should 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.

"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.

"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:

"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.

"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 I _am_ in 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 I _do_ want you to--to be always--sensible and considerate. I _want_ to 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 laughter are 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, "you _are_ funny! 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 are _so_ funny!" 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. _That_ is good sportsmanship. Do you promise? Very well! Then I wish you the best of luck in your--various--courtships! And may the girl you win at least know how to laugh!"

"She certainly does," he said so naively 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. And you'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.

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 came up 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. "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 naive 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.

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 annoying--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_.