Part 20

"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: