She had offered him her hand; he had bent over it, seated himself, and
they smilingly exchanged the formal banalities of a pleasantly renewed
acquaintance.
A waiter laid a cover for him. She continued to concern herself,
leisurely, with her strawberries.
"When did you leave Paris?" she enquired.
"Nearly two years ago."
"Before war was declared?"
"Yes, in June of that year."
She looked up at him very seriously; but they both smiled as she
said:
"It was a momentous month for you then--the month of June, 1914?"
"Very. A charming young girl broke my heart in 1914; and so I came
home, a wreck--to recuperate."
At that she laughed outright, glancing at his youthful, sunburnt face
and lean, vigorous figure.
"When did _you_ come over?" he asked curiously.
"I have been here longer than you have. In fact, I left France the day
I last saw you."
"The same day?"
"I started that very same day--shortly after sunrise. I crossed the
Belgian frontier that night, and I sailed for New York the morning
after. I landed here a week later, and I've been here ever since.
That, monsieur, is my history."
"You've been here in New York for two years!" he repeated in
astonishment. "Have you really left the stage then? I supposed you had
just arrived to fill an engagement here."
"They gave me a try-out this afternoon."
"_You?_ A try-out!" he exclaimed, amazed.
She carelessly transfixed a berry with her fork:
"If I secure an engagement I shall be very glad to fill it ... and my
stomach, also. If I don't secure one--well--charity or starvation
confronts me."
He smiled at her with easy incredulity.
"I had not heard that you were here!" he repeated. "I've read nothing
at all about you in the papers----"
"No ... I am here incognito.... I have taken my sister's name. After
all, your American public does not know me."
"But----"
"Wait! I don't wish it to know me!"
"But if you----"
The girl's slight gesture checked him, although her smile became
humorous and friendly:
"Please! We need not discuss my future. Only the past!" She laughed:
"How it all comes back to me now, as you speak--that crazy evening of
ours together! What children we were--two years ago!"
Smilingly she clasped her hands together on the table's edge,
regarding him with that winning directness which was a celebrated part
of her celebrated personality; and happened to be natural to her.
"Why did I not recognise you immediately?" she demanded of herself,
frowning in self-reproof. "I _am_ stupid! Also I have, now and then,
thought about you----" She shrugged her shoulders, and again her face
faltered subtly:
"Much has happened to distract my memories," she added carelessly,
impaling a strawberry, "--since you and I took the key to the fields
and the road to the moon--like the pair of irresponsibles we were that
night in June."
"Have you really had trouble?"
Her slim figure straightened as at a challenge, then became adorably
supple again; and she rested her elbows on the table's edge and took
her cheeks between her hands.
"Trouble?" she repeated, studying his face. "I don't know that word,
trouble. I don't admit such a word to the honour of my happy
vocabulary."
They both laughed a little.
She said, still looking at him, and at first speaking as though to
herself:
"Of course, you are that same, delightful Garry! My youthful American
accomplice!... Quite unspoiled, still, but very, very irresponsible
... like all painters--like all students. And the mischief which is in
me recognised the mischief in you, I suppose.... I _did_ surprise you
that night, didn't I?... And what a night! What a moon! And how we
danced there on the wet lawn until my skirts and slippers and
stockings were drenched with dew!... And how we laughed! Oh, that
full-hearted, full-throated laughter of ours! How wonderful that we
have lived to laugh like that! It is something to remember after
death. Just think of it!--you and I, absolute strangers, dancing every
dance there in the drenched grass to the music that came through the
open windows.... And do you remember how we hid in the flowering
bushes when my sister and the others came out to look for me? How they
called, 'Nihla! Nihla! Little devil, where are you?' Oh, it was
funny--funny! And to see _him_ come out on the lawn--do you remember?
He looked so fat and stupid and anxious and bad-tempered! And you and
I expiring with stifled laughter! And he, with his sash, his
decorations and his academic palms! He'd have shot us both, you
know...."
They were laughing unrestrainedly now at the memory of that impossible
night a year ago; and the girl seemed suddenly transformed into an
irresponsible gamine of eighteen. Her eyes grew brighter with mischief
and laughter--laughter, the greatest magician and doctor emeritus of
them all! The immortal restorer of youth and beauty.
Bluish shadows had gone from under her lower lashes; her eyes were
starry as a child's.
"Oh, Garry," she gasped, laying one slim hand across his on the
table-cloth, "it was one of those encounters--one of those heavenly
accidents that reconcile one to living.... I think the moon had made
me a perfect lunatic.... Because you don't yet know what I risked....
Garry!... It ruined me--ruined me utterly--our night together under
the June moon!"
"What!" he exclaimed, incredulously.
But she only laughed her gay, undaunted little laugh:
"It was worth it! Such moments are worth anything we pay for them! I
laughed; I pay. What of it?"
"But if I am partly responsible I wish to know----"
"You shall know nothing about it! As for me, I care nothing about it.
I'd do it again to-night! That is living--to go forward, laugh, and
accept what comes--to have heart enough, gaiety enough, brains enough
to seize the few rare dispensations that the niggardly gods fling
across this calvary which we call life! _Tenez_, that alone is living;
the rest is making the endless stations on bleeding knees."
"Yet, if I thought--" he began, perplexed and troubled, "--if I
thought that through my folly----"
"Folly! _Non pas!_ Wisdom! Oh, my blessed accomplice! And do you
remember the canoe? Were we indeed quite mad to embark for Paris on
the moonlit Seine, you and I?--I in evening gown, soaked with dew to
the knees!--you with your sketching block and easel! _Quelle
demenagement en famille!_ Oh, Garry, my friend of gayer days, was that
really folly! No, no, no, it was infinite wisdom; and its memory is
helping me to live through this very moment!"
She leaned there on her elbows and laughed across the cloth at him.
The mockery began to dance again and glimmer in her eyes:
"After all I've told you," she added, "you are no wiser, are you?
You don't know why I never went to the Fountain of Marie de
Medicis--whether I forgot to go--whether I remembered but decided that
I had had quite enough of you. You don't know, do you?"
He shook his head, smiling. The girl's face grew gradually serious:
"And you never heard anything more about me?" she demanded.
"No. Your name simply disappeared from the billboards, kiosques, and
newspapers."
"And you heard no malicious gossip? None about my sister, either?"
"None."
She nodded:
"Europe is a senile creature which forgets overnight. _Tant mieux_....
You know, I shall sing and dance under my sister's name here. I told
you that, didn't I?"
"Oh! That would be a great mistake----"
"Listen! Nihla Quellen disappeared--married some fat bourgeois, died,
perhaps,"--she shrugged,--"anything you wish, my friend. Who cares to
listen to what is said about a dancing girl in all this din of war?
Who is interested?"
It was scarcely a question, yet her eyes seemed to make it so.
"Who cares?" she repeated impatiently. "Who remembers?"
"I have remembered you," he said, meeting her intently questioning
gaze.
"You? Oh, you are not like those others over there. Your country is
not at war. You still have leisure to remember. But they forget. They
haven't time to remember anything--anybody--over there. Don't you
think so?" She turned in her chair unconsciously, and gazed eastward.
"--They have forgotten me over there--" And her lips tightened,
contracted, bitten into silence.
The strange beauty of the girl left him dumb. He was recalling, now,
all that he had ever heard concerning her. The gossip of Europe had
informed him that, though Nihla Quellen was passionately and devotedly
French in soul and heart, her mother had been one of those unmoral and
lovely Georgians, and her father an Alsatian, named Dunois--a French
officer who entered the Russian service ultimately, and became a
hunting cheetah for the Grand Duke Cyril, until himself hunted into
another world by that old bag of bones on the pale and shaky nag. His
daughter took the name of Nihla Quellen and what money was left, and
made her debut in Constantinople.
As the young fellow sat there watching her, all the petty gossip of
Europe came back to him--anecdotes, panegyrics, eulogies, scandals,
stage chatter, Quarter "divers," paid reclames--all that he had ever
read and heard about this notorious young girl, now seated there
across the table, with her pretty head framed by slender, unjewelled
fingers. He remembered the gems she had worn that June night, a year
ago, and their magnificence.
"Well," she said, "life is a pleasantry, a jest, a bon-mot flung over
his shoulder by some god too drunk with nectar to invent a better
joke. Life is an Olympian epigram made between immortal yawns. What do
you think of _my_ epigram, Garry?"
"I think you are just as clever and amusing as I remember you,
Nihla."
"Amusing to _you_, perhaps. But I don't entertain myself very
successfully. I don't think poverty is a very funny joke. Do you?"
"Poverty!" he repeated, smiling his unbelief.
She smiled too, displayed her pretty, ringless hands humorously, for
his inspection, then framed her oval face between them again and made
a deliberate grimace.
"All gone," she said. "I am, as you say, here on my uppers."
"I can't understand, Nihla----"
"Don't try to. It doesn't concern you. Also, please forget me as Nihla
Quellen. I told you that I've taken my sister's name, Thessalie
Dunois."
"But all Europe knows you as Nihla Quellen----"
"Listen!" she interrupted sharply. "I have troubles enough. Don't add
to them, or I shall be sorry I met you again. I tell you my name is
Thessa. Please remember it."
"Very well," he said, reddening under the rebuke.
She noted the painful colour in his face, then looked elsewhere,
indifferently. Her features remained expressionless for a while. After
a few moments she looked around at him again, and her smile began to
glimmer:
"It's only this," she said; "the girl you met once in your life--the
dancing singing-girl they knew over there--is already an episode to be
forgotten. End her career any way you wish, Garry,--natural death,
suicide--or she can repent and take the veil, if you like--or perish
at sea--only end her.... Please?" she added, with the sweet, trailing
inflection characteristic of her.
He nodded. The girl smiled mischievously.
"Don't nod your head so owlishly and pretend to understand. You don't
understand. Only two or three people do. And I hope they'll believe me
dead, even if you are not polite enough to agree with them."
"How can you expect to maintain your incognito?" he insisted. "There
will be plenty of people in your very first audience----"
"I had a sister, did I not?"
"_Was_ she your sister?--the one who danced with you--the one called
Thessa?"
"No. But the play-bills said she was. Now, I've told you something
that nobody knows except two or three unpleasant devils--" She dropped
her arms on the table and leaned a trifle forward:
"Oh, pouf!" she said. "Don't let's be mysterious and dramatic, you and
I. I'll tell you: I gave that woman the last of my jewels and she
promised to disappear and leave her name to me to use. It was my own
name, anyway, Thessalie Dunois. Now, you know. Be as discreet and nice
as I once found you. Will you?"
"Of course."
"'Of course,'" she repeated, smiling, and with a little twitch of her
shoulders, as though letting fall a burdensome cloak. "Allons! With a
free heart, then! I am Thessalie Dunois; I am here; I am poor--don't
be frightened! I shall not borrow----"
"That's rotten, Thessa!" he said, turning very red.
"Oh, go lightly, please, my friend Garry. I have no claim on you.
Besides, I know men----"
"You don't appear to!"
"Tiens! Our first quarrel!" she exclaimed, laughingly. "This is indeed
serious----"
"If you need aid----"
"No, I don't! Please, why do you scowl at me? Do you then wish I
needed aid? Yours? Allez, Monsieur Garry, if I did I'd venture,
perhaps, to say so to you. Does that make amends?" she added sweetly.
She clasped her white hands on the cloth and looked at him with that
engaging, humorous little air which had so easily captivated her
audiences in Europe--that, and her voice with the hint of recklessness
ever echoing through its sweetness and youthful gaiety.
"What are you doing in New York?" she asked. "Painting?"
"I have a studio, but----"
"But no clients? Is that it? Pouf! Everybody begins that way. I sang
in a cafe at Dijon for five francs and my soup! At Rennes I nearly
starved. Oh, yes, Garry, in spite of a number of obliging gentlemen
who, like you, offered--first aid----"
"That is absolutely rotten of you, Thessa. Did I ever----"
"No! For goodness' sake let me jest with you without flying into
tempers!"
"But----"
"Oh, pouf! I shall not quarrel with you! Whatever you and I were going
to say during the next ten minutes shall remain unsaid!... Now, the
ten minutes are over; now, we're reconciled and you are in good humour
again. And now, tell me about yourself, your painting--in other
words, tell me the things about yourself that would interest a
friend."
"Are you?"
"Your friend? Yes, I am--if you wish."
"I do wish it."
"Then I am your friend. I once had a wonderful evening with you....
I'm having a very good time now. You were _nice_ to me, Garry. I
really was sorry not to see you again."
"At the fountain of Marie de Medicis," he said reproachfully.
"Yes. Flatter yourself, monsieur, because I did _not_ forget our
rendezvous. I might have forgotten it easily enough--there was
sufficient excuse, God knows--a girl awakened by the crash of
ruin--springing out of bed to face the end of the world without a
moment's warning--yes, the end of all things--death, too! Tenez, it
was permissible to forget our rendezvous under such circumstances, was
it not? But--I did _not_ forget. I thought about it in a dumb, calm
way all the while--even while _he_ stood there denouncing me,
threatening me, noisy, furious--with the button of the Legion in his
lapel--and an ugly pistol which he waved in the air--" She laughed:
"Oh, it was not at all gay, I assure you.... And even when I took to
my heels after he had gone--for it was a matter of life or death, and
I hadn't a minute to lose--oh, very dramatic, of course, for I ran
away in disguise and I had a frightful time of it leaving France!
Well, even then, at top speed and scared to death, I remembered the
fountain of Marie de Medicis, and you. Don't be too deeply flattered.
I remembered these items principally because they had caused my
downfall."
"I? I caused----"
"No. _I_ caused it! It was I who went out on the lawn. It was I who
came across to see who was painting by moonlight. That began
it--seeing you there--in moonlight bright enough to read by--bright
enough to paint by. Oh, Garry--and you were _so_ good-looking! It was
the moon--and the way you smiled at me. And they all were dancing
inside, and _he_ was so big and fat and complacent, dancing away in
there!... And so I fell a prey to folly."
"Was it really our escapade that--that ruined you?"
"Well--it was partly that. Pouf! It is over. And I am here. So are
you. It's been nice to see you.... Please call our waiter." She
glanced at her cheap, leather wrist watch.
As they rose and left the dining-room, he asked her if they were not
to see each other again. A one-eyed man, close behind them, listened
for her reply.
She continued to walk on slowly beside him without answering, until
they reached the rotunda.
"Do you wish to see me again?" she enquired abruptly.
"Don't you also wish it?"
"I don't know, Garry.... I've been annoyed in New
York--bothered--seriously.... I can't explain, but somehow--I don't
seem to wish to begin a friendship with anybody...."
"Ours began two years ago."
"Did it?"
"Did it not, Thessa?"
"Perhaps.... I don't know. After all--it doesn't matter. I think--I
think we had better say good-bye--until some happy hazard--like
to-day's encounter--" She hesitated, looked up at him, laughed:
"Where is your studio?" she asked mischievously.
The one-eyed man at their heels was listening.
V