Chambers Robert William
The Moonlit Way: A Novel
“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 314 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 315 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 316 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 317 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 318 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 319 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 323 while, she heard an old air stealing through the silence, and her own voice, —à 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?
II
“If they were black instead of blue —
My eyes —
Perhaps they’d prove unkind to you!
If they were black instead of blue.
But God designed them blithe and blue —
My eyes —
Designed them to be kind to you,
And made them tender, gay and true.
Believe me, love, no maid is wise
When from the windows of her eyes,
Her heart looks through!
Alas! My heart, to its surprise,
Has learned to look; and now it sighs
For you!”
She became conscious of somebody near, as she ended. She turned and saw Murtagh Skeel at her 324 elbow – saw his agitated, ashen face – looked beyond him and discovered other people gathered in the tinted light beyond, listening; then she lifted her clear, still gaze again to the white-faced man beside her, and saw his shaken soul staring at her through the dark windows of his eyes.
“Where did you learn it?” he asked with a futile effort at that control so difficult for any Celt to grasp where the heart is involved.
“The song I sang? ‘Blue Eyes’?” she inquired.
“Yes – that.”
“I have the manuscript of the composer.”
“Could you tell me where you got it – and – and who wrote those words you sang?”
“The manuscript came to me from my mother… She wrote it… I think you knew her.”
His strong, handsome hand dropped on the piano’s edge, gripped it; and under his pale skin the quick blood surged to his temples.
“What was your – your mother’s name, Miss Soane?”
“She was Eileen Fane.”
The throbbing seconds passed and still they looked into each other’s eyes in silence. And at last:
“So you did know my mother,” she said under her breath; and the hushed finality of her words set his strong hand trembling.
“Eileen’s little daughter,” he repeated. “Eileen Fane’s child… And grown to womanhood… Yes, I knew your mother – many years ago… When I enlisted and went abroad… Was it Sir Terence Soane who married your mother?”
She shook her head. He stared at her, striving to concentrate, to think. “There were other Soanes,” he muttered, “the Ellet Water folk – no? – But 325 there were many Soanes among the landed gentry in the East and North… I cannot seem to recollect – the sudden shock – hearing a song unexpectedly – ”
His white forehead had grown damp under the curly hair now clinging to it. He passed his handkerchief over his brow in a confused way, then leaned heavily on the piano with both hands grasping it. For the ghost of his youth was interfering, disputing his control over his own mind, filling his ear with forgotten words, taking possession of his memory and tormenting it with the distant echoes of a voice long dead.
Through the increasing chaos in his brain his strained gaze sought to fix itself on this living, breathing face before him – the child of Eileen Fane.
He made the effort:
“There were the Soanes of Colross – ” But he got no farther that way, for the twin spectres of his youth and hers were busy with his senses now; and he leaned more heavily on the piano, enduring with lowered head the ghostly whirlwind rushing up out of that obscurity and darkness where once, under summer skies, he had sowed a zephyr.
The girl had become rather white, too. One slim hand still rested on the ivory keys, the other lay inert in her lap. And after a while she raised her grey eyes to this man standing beside her:
“Did you ever hear of my mother’s marriage?”
He looked at her in a dull way:
“No.”
“You heard – nothing?”
“I heard that your mother had left Fane Court.”
“What was Fane Court?”
Murtagh Skeel stared at her in silence.
“I don’t know,” she said, trembling a little. “I 326 know nothing about my mother. She died when I was a few months old.”
“Do you mean that you don’t know who your mother was? You don’t know who she married?” he asked, astounded.
“No.”
“Good God!” he said, gazing at her. His tense features were working now; the battle for self-control was visible to her, and she sat there dumbly, looking on at the mute conflict which suddenly sent the tears flashing into his dark eyes and left his sensitive mouth twitching.
“I shall not ask you anything now,” he said unsteadily; “I shall have to see you somewhere else – where there are no people – to interrupt… But I shall tell you all I know about – your mother… I was in trouble – in India. Somehow or other I heard indirectly that your mother had left Fane Court. Later it was understood that she had eloped… Nobody could tell me the man’s name… My people in Ireland did not know… And I was not on good terms with your grandfather. So there was no hope of information from Fane Court… I wrote, indeed, begging, beseeching for news of your mother. Sir Barry – your grandfather – returned my letters unopened… And that is all I have ever heard concerning Eileen Fane – your mother – with whom I – fell in love – nearly twenty years ago.”
Dulcie, marble pale, nodded.
“I knew you cared for my mother,” she said.
“How did you learn it?”
“Some letters of hers written to you. Letters from you to her. I have nothing else of hers except some verses and little songs – like the one you recognised.”
“Child, she wrote it as I sat beside her! – ” His 327 voice choked, broke, and his lips quivered as he fought for self-control again… “I was not welcome at Fane Court… Sir Barry would not tolerate me… Your mother was more kind… She was very young. And so was I, Dulcie… There were political troubles. I was always involved. God knows which was the stronger passion – it must have been love of country – the other seeming hopeless – with the folk at Fane Court my bitter enemies – only excepting your mother… So I went away… And which of the Soanes your mother eloped with I have never learned… Now, tell me – for you surely know that much.”
She said:
“There is a man called Soane who tells me sometimes that he was once a gamekeeper at what he calls ‘the big house.’ I have always supposed him to be my father until within the last year. But recently, when he has been drinking heavily, he sometimes tells me that my name is not Soane but Fane… Did you ever know of such a man?”
“No. There were gamekeepers about… No. I cannot recall – and it is impossible! A gamekeeper! And your mother! The man is mad! What in God’s name does all this mean! – ”
He began to tremble, and his white forehead under the clustering curls grew damp and pinched again.
“If you are Eileen’s daughter – ” But his face went dead white and he got no further.
People were approaching from behind them, too; voices grew distinct in conversation; somebody turned up another lamp.
“Do sing that little song again – the one you sang for Mr. Skeel,” said Lee Barres, coming up to the piano on her brother’s arm. “Mrs. Gerhardt has been waiting very patiently for an opportunity to ask you.”
