The weather was turning hot in New York, and by the middle of the week
the city sweltered.
Barres, dropping his brushes and laying aside a dozen pictures in all
stages of incompletion; and being, otherwise, deeply bitten by the
dangerously enchanting art of Manship--dangerous as inspiration but
enchanting to gaze upon--was very busy making out of wax a diminutive
figure of the running Arethusa.
And Dulcie, poor child, what with being poised on the ball of one
little foot and with the other leg slung up in a padded loop, almost
perished. Perspiration spangled her body like dew powdering a rose;
sweat glistened on the features and shoulder-bared arms of the
impassioned sculptor, even blinding him at times; but he worked on in
a sort of furious exaltation, reeking of ill-smelling wax. And Dulcie,
perfectly willing to die at her post, thought she was going to, and
finally fainted away with an alarming thud.
Which brought Barres to his senses, even before she had recovered
hers; and he proclaimed a vacation for his overworked Muse and his
model, too.
"Do you feel better, Sweetness?" he enquired, as she opened her eyes
when Selinda exchanged a wet compress for an ice-bag.
Dulcie, flat on the lounge, swathed in a crash bathrobe, replied only
by a slight but reassuring flutter of one hand.
Esme Trenor sauntered in for a gossip, wearing his celebrated
lilac-velvet jacket and Louis XV slippers.
"Oh, the devil," he drawled, looking from Dulcie to the Arethusa;
"she's worth more than your amateurish statuette, Garry."
"You bet she is. And here's where her vacation begins."
Esme turned to Dulcie, lifting his eyebrows:
"You go away with him?"
The idea had never before entered Barres's head. But he said:
"Certainly; we both need the country for a few weeks."
"You'll go to one of those damned artists' colonies, I suppose,"
remarked Esme; "otherwise, washed and unwashed would expel shrill
cries."
"Probably not in my own home," returned Barres, coolly. "I shall write
my family about it to-day."
Corot Mandel dropped in, also, that morning--he and Esme were ever
prowling uneasily around Dulcie in these days--and he studied the
Arethusa through a foggy monocle, and he loitered about Dulcie's
couch.
"You know," he said to Barres, "there's nothing like dancing to
recuperate from all this metropolitan pandemonium. If you like, I can
let Dulcie in on that thing I'm putting on at Northbrook."
"That's up to her," said Barres. "It's her vacation, and she can do
what she likes with it----"
Esme interposed with characteristic impudence:
"Barres imitates Manship with impunity; I'd like to have a plagiaristic
try at Sorolla and Zuloaga, if Dulcie says the word. Very agreeable job
for a girl in hot weather," he added, looking at Dulcie, "--an easy
swimming pose in some nice cool little Adirondack lake----"
"Seriously," interrupted Mandel, twirling his monocle impatiently by
its greasy string, "I mean it, Barres." He turned and looked at the
lithely speeding Arethusa. "If that is Dulcie, I can give her a good
part in----"
"You hear, Dulcie?" enquired Barres. "These two kind gentlemen have
what they consider attractive jobs for you. All I can offer you is
liberty to tumble around the hayfields at Foreland Farms, with my
sketching easel in the middle distance. Now, choose your job,
Sweetness."
"The hayfields and----"
Dulcie's voice faded to a whisper; Barres, seated beside her, leaned
nearer, bending his head to listen.
"And _you_," she murmured again, "--if you want me."
"I always want you," he whispered laughingly, in return.
Esme regarded the scene with weariness and chagrin.
"Come on," he said languidly to Mandel, "we'll buy her some flowers
for the evil she does us. She'll need 'em; she'll be finished before
this amateur sculptor finishes his blooming Arethusa."
Mandel lingered:
"I'm going up to Northbrook in a day or two, Barres. If you
change--change Dulcie's mind for her, just call me up at the Adolf
Gerhardt's."
"Dulcie will call you up if she changes my mind."
Dulcie laughed.
When they had gone, Barres said:
"You know I haven't thought about the summer. What was your idea about
it?"
"My--idea?"
"Yes. You'd want a couple of weeks in the country somewhere, wouldn't
you?"
"I don't know. I never went away," she replied vaguely.
It occurred to him, now, that for all his pleasant toleration of
Soane's little daughter during the two years and more of his residence
in Dragon Court, he had never really interested himself in her
well-being, never thought to enquire about anything which might really
concern her. He had taken it for granted that most people have some
change from the stifling, grinding, endless routine of their
lives--some respite, some quiet interval for recovery and rest.
And so, returning from his own vacations, it never occurred to him
that the shy girl whom he permitted within his precincts, when
convenient, never knew any other break in the grey monotony--never
left the dusty, soiled, and superheated city from one year's summer to
another.
Now, for the first time, he realised it.
"We'll go up there," he said. "My family is accustomed to models I
bring there for my summer work. You'll be very comfortable, and you'll
feel quite at home. We live very simply at Foreland Farms. Everybody
will be kind and nobody will bother you, and you can do exactly as you
please, because we all do that at Foreland Farms. Will you come when
I'm ready to go up?"
She gave him a sweet, confused glance from her grey eyes.
"Do you think your family would mind?"
"Mind?" He smiled. "We never interfere with one another's affairs.
It's not like many families, I fancy. We take it for granted that
nobody in the family could do anything not entirely right. So we take
that for granted and it's a jolly sensible arrangement."
She turned her face on the pillow presently; the ice-bag slid off;
she sat up in her bathrobe, stretched her arms, smiled faintly:
"Shall I try again?" she asked.
"Oh, Lord!" he said, "_would_ you? Upon my word, I believe you would!
No more posing to-day! I'm not a murderer. Lie there until you're
ready to dress, and then ring for Selinda."
"Don't you want me?"
"Yes, but I want you alive, not dead! Anyway, I've got to talk to
Westmore this morning, so you may be as lazy as you like--lounge
about, read----" He went over to her, patted her cheek in the smiling,
absent-minded way he had with her: "Tell me, ducky, how are you
feeling, anyway?"
It confused her dreadfully to blush when he touched her, but she
always did; and she turned her face away now, saying that she was
quite all right again.
Preoccupied with his own thoughts, he nodded:
"That's fine," he said. "Now, trot along to Selinda, and when you're
fixed up you can have the run of the place to yourself."
"Could I have my slippers?" She was very shy even about her bare feet
when she was not actually posing.
He found her slippers for her, laid them beside the lounge, and
strolled away. Westmore rang a moment later, but when he blew in like
a noisy breeze Dulcie had disappeared.
"My little model toppled over," said Barres, taking his visitor's
outstretched hand and wincing under the grip. "I shall cut out work
while this weather lasts."
Westmore turned toward the Arethusa, laughed at the visible influence
of Manship.
"All the same, Garry," he said, "there's a lot in your running nymph.
It's nice; it's knowing."
"That is pleasant to hear from a sculptor."
"Sculptor? Sometimes I feel like a sculpin--prickly heat, you know."
He laughed heartily at his own witticism, slapped Barres on the
shoulder, lighted a pipe, and flung himself on the couch recently
vacated by Dulcie.
"This damned war," he said, "takes the native gaiety out of a
man--takes the laughter out of life. Over two years of it now, Garry;
and it's as though the sun is slowly growing dimmer every day."
"I know," nodded Barres.
"Sure you feel it. Everybody does. By God, I have periods of sickness
when the illustrated London periodicals arrive, and I see those dead
men pictured there--such fine, clean fellows--our own kind--half of
them just kids!--well, it hurts me to look at them, and, for the sheer
pain of it, I'm always inclined to shirk and turn that page quickly.
But I say to myself, 'Jim, they're dead fighting Christ's own battle,
and the least you can do is to read their names and ages, and look
upon their faces.'... And I do it."
"So do I," nodded Barres, sombrely gazing at the carpet.
After a silence, Westmore said:
"Well, the Boche has taken his medicine and canned Tirpitz--the wild
swine that he is. So I don't suppose we'll get mixed up in it."
"The Hun is a great liar," remarked Barres. "There's no telling."
"Are you going to Plattsburg again this year?" enquired Westmore.
"I don't know. Are you?"
"In the autumn, perhaps.... Garry, it's discouraging. Do you realise
what a gigantic task we have ahead of us if the Hun ever succeeds in
kicking us into this war? And what a gigantic mess we've made of two
years' inactivity?"
Barres, pondering, scowled at his own thoughts.
"And now," continued the other, "the Guard is off to the border, and
here we are, stripped clean, with the city lousy with Germans and
every species of Hun deviltry hatching out fires and explosions and
disloyal propaganda from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Lakes
to the Gulf!
"A fine mess!--no troops, nothing to arm them with, no modern
artillery, no preparations; the Boche growing more insolent, more
murderous, but slyer; a row on with Mexico, another brewing with
Japan, all Europe and Great Britain regarding us with contempt--I ask
you, can you beat it, Garry? Are there any lower depths for us?--any
sub-cellars of iniquity into which we can tumble, like the basket of
jelly-fish we seem to be!"
"It's a nightmare," said Barres. "Since Liege and the _Lusitania_,
it's been a bad dream getting worse. We'll have to wake, you know. If
we don't, we're of no more substance than the dream itself:--we _are_
the dream, and we'll end like one."
"I'm going to wait a bit longer," said Westmore restlessly, "and if
there's nothing doing, it's me for the other side."
"For me, too, Jim."
"Is it a bargain?"
"Certainly.... I'd rather go under my own flag, of course.... We'll
see how this Boche backdown turns out. I don't think it will last. I
believe the Huns have been stirring up the Mexicans. It wouldn't
surprise me if they were at the bottom of the Japanese menace. But
what angers me is to think that we have received with innocent
hospitality these hundreds of thousands of Huns in America, and that
now, all over the land, this vast, acclimated nest of snakes rises
hissing at us, menacing us with their filthy fangs!"
"Thank God our police is still half Irish," growled Westmore, puffing
at his pipe. "These dirty swine might try to rush the city if war
comes while the Guard is away."
"They're doing enough damage as it is," said Barres, "with their
traitorous press, their pacifists, their agents everywhere inciting
labour to strike, teaching disorganisation, combining commercially,
directing blackmail, bomb outrages, incendiaries, and infesting the
Republic with a plague of spies----"
The studio bell rang sharply. Barres, who stood near the door, opened
it.
"Thessa!" he exclaimed, astonished and delighted.