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_.
Later, as dinner was announced, he contrived to speak to Thessalie
aside:
"Gerhardt," he whispered, "doesn't recognise you, of course."
"No; I'm not at all apprehensive."
"Yet, it was on his yacht----"
"He never even looked twice at me. You know what he thought me to be?
Very well, he had only social ambitions then. I think that's all he
has now. You see what he got with his Red Eagle," nodding calmly
toward Mrs. Gerhardt, who now was being convoyed out by the monocled
martyr in the "stiff shirt."
The others passed out informally; Lee had slipped her arm around
Dulcie. As Garry and Thessalie turned to follow, he said in a low
voice:
"You feel quite secure, then, Thessa?"
She halted, put her lips close to his ear, unnoticed by those ahead:
"Perfectly. The Gerhardts are what you call fatheads--easily used by
anybody, dangerous to no one, governed by greed alone, without a
knowledge of any honour except the German sort. But that Irish dreamer
over there, _he_ is dangerous! That type always is. He menaces the
success of any enterprise to which his quixotic mind turns, because it
instantly becomes a fixed idea with him--an obsession, a monomania!"
She took his arm and walked on beside him.
"I know that fascinating, hot-headed, lovable type of mystic
visionary," she said, "handsome, romantic, illogical, governed
entirely by emotion, not fickle yet never to be depended on; not
faithless, but absolutely irresponsible and utterly ignorant of
fear!... My father was that sort. _Not_ the hunting cheetah Cyril and
Ferez pretended. And it was in _defence_ of a woman that my father
died.... Thank God!"
"Who told you?"
"Captain Renoux--the other night."
"I'm so glad, Thessa!"
She held her flushed head high and smiled at him.
"You see," she said, "after all it is in my blood to be decent."
* * * * *
The Gerhardts, racially vulgar and socially blunt--for the inherent
vulgarity of the Teutonic peoples is an axiom among the civilised--made
themselves characteristically conspicuous at the flower-laden table;
but it was on Murtagh Skeel that all eyes became ultimately focused to
the limit of good-breeding. He was the lode-star--he was the magnet,
the vanishing point for all curiosity, all surmises, all interest.
Perfect breeding, perfect unconsciousness of self, were his minted
marks to guarantee the fineness of his metal. He was natural without
effort, winning in voice, in manner, in grace of mind and body, this
fascinating Irishman of letters--a charming listener, a persuasive
speaker, modest, light hearted, delightfully deferential.
Seated on the right of Mrs. Barres, his smiling hostess very quickly
understood the situation and made it pleasantly plain to everybody
that her guest of honour was not to be privately monopolised.
So almost immediately all currents of conversation flowed from all
sides toward this dark-eyed, handsome man, and in return the
silver-tongued tide of many currents--the Irish Sea at its sparkling
flood--flowed prettily and spread out from its perennial source
within him, and washed and rippled gently over every separate dinner
plate, so that nobody seemed neglected, and there was jetsam and
beach-combing for all.
And it was inevitable, presently, that Murtagh Skeel's conversation
should become autobiographical in some degree, and his careless,
candid, persuasive phrases turn into little gemlike memories. For he
came ultimately, of course, to speak of Irish nationalism and what it
meant; of the Celt as he had been and must remain--utterly unchanged,
as long as the last Celt remained alive on earth.
The subject, naturally, invaded the fairy lore, wild legend and lovely
mysticism of the West Coast; and centred about his own exquisite work
of interpreting it.
He spoke of it very modestly, as his source of inspiration, as the
inception of his own creative work in that field. But always, through
whatever he said, rang low and clear his passionate patriotism and the
only motive which incited him to creative effort--his longing for
national autonomy and the re-gathering of a scattered people in
preparation for its massed journey toward its Destiny.
His voice was musical, his words unconscious poetry. Without effort,
without pains, alas!--without logic--he held every ear enthralled
there in the soft candlelight and subdued glimmer of crystal and of
silver.
His was the magic of shadow and half-lights, of vague nuances and lost
outlines, and the valued degrees of impinging shade. No sharp
contours, no stark, uncompromising shapes, no brutality of raw
daylight, and--alas!--no threat of uncompromising logic invaded his
realm of dreamy demi-lights and faded fantasies.
He reigned there, amid an enchanted twilight of his own creation, the
embodiment of Irish romance, tender, gay, sweet-minded, persuasive,
gallant--and tragic, when, at some unexpected moment, the frail veil
of melancholy made his dark eyes less brilliant.
All yielded to his charm--even the stuffed Teutons, gorging gravy; all
felt his sway over mind and heart, nor cared to analyse it, there in
the soft light of candles and the scent of old-fashioned flowers.
There arose some question concerning Sir Roger Casement.
Murtagh Skeel spoke of him with the pure enthusiasm of passionate
belief in a master by a humble disciple. And the Teutons grunted
assent.
The subject of the war had been politely avoided, yet, somehow, it
came out that Murtagh Skeel had served in Britain's army overseas, as
an enlisted man in some Irish regiment--a romantic impulse of the
moment, involving a young man's crazy plan to foment rebellion in
India. Which little gem of a memoire presently made the fact of his
exile self-explanatory. Yet, he contrived that the ugly revelation
should end in laughter--an outbreak of spontaneous mirth through which
his glittering wit passed like lightning, cauterising the running sore
of treason....
* * * * *
Coffee served, the diners drifted whither it suited them, together or
singly.
Like an errant spirit, Dulcie moved about at hazard amid the softened
lights, engaged here, approached there, pausing, wandering on, nowhere
in particular, yet ever listlessly in motion.
Encountering her near the porch, Barres senior had paused to
whisper that there was no hope for any fishing that evening; and she
had lingered to smile after him, as, unreconciled, he took his
stiff-shirted way toward the pallid, bejewelled, unanimated mass of
Mrs. Gerhardt, settled in the widest armchair and absorbing cordial.
A moment later the girl encountered Garry. He remained with her for a
while, evidently desiring to be near her without finding anything in
particular to say. And when he, in turn, moved elsewhere, obeying some
hazy mandate of hospitality, he became conscious of a reluctance to
leave her.
"Do you know, Sweetness," he said, lingering, "that you wear a
delicate beauty to-night lovelier than I have ever seen in you? You
are not only a wonderful girl, Dulcie; you are growing into an
adorable woman."
The girl looked back at him, blushing vividly in her sheer
surprise--watched him saunter away out of her silent sphere of
influence before she found any word to utter--if, indeed, she had been
seeking any, so deeply, so painfully sweet had sunk his words into
every fibre of her untried, defenceless youth.
Now, as her cheeks cooled, and she came to herself and moved again,
there seemed to grow around her a magic and faintly fragrant radiance
through which she passed--whither, she paid no heed, so exquisitely
her breast was thrilling under the hurrying pulses of her little
heart.... And presently found herself on the piano bench, quite
motionless, her gaze remote, her fingers resting on the keys.... And,
after a long while, she heard an old air stealing through the
silence, and her own voice,--_a demi-voix_--repeating her mother's
words:
I
"Were they as wise as they are blue--
My eyes--
They'd teach me not to trust in you!--
If they were wise as they are blue.
But they're as blithe as they are blue--
My eyes--
They bid my heart rejoice in you,
Because they're blithe as well as blue.
Believe and love! my gay heart cries;
Believe him not! my mind replies;
What shall I do
When heart affirms and sense denies
All I reveal within my eyes
To you?