Chambers Robert William
The Moonlit Way: A Novel
She shook her head, shrugged, and turned to Barres, who had at last relinquished Thessalie to Westmore.
“Well, Sweetness,” he said gaily, “do you get on with Esmé Trenor?”
“He talked,” she said in a voice perfectly audible to Esmé.
Barres glanced toward Esmé, secretly convulsed, but that young apostle of Fear had swung one thin leg over the other and was now presenting one shoulder and the back of his head to them both, apparently in delightful conversation with Elsena Helmund, who was fed up on him and his fears.
“You must always talk to your neighbours at dinner,” insisted Barres, still immensely amused. “Esmé 140 is a very popular man with fashionable women, Dulcie, – a painter in much demand and much adored… Why do you smile?”
Dulcie smiled again, deliciously.
“Anyway,” continued Barres, “you must now give the signal for us to rise by standing up. I’m so proud of you, Dulcie, darling!” he added impulsively; “ – and everybody is mad about you!”
“You made me – ” she laughed mischievously, “ – out of a rag and a bone and a hank of hair!”
“You made yourself out of nothing, child! And everybody thinks you delightful.”
“Do you?”
“You dear girl! – of course I do. Does it make such a difference to you, Dulcie – my affection for you?”
“Is it —affection?”
“It certainly is. Didn’t you know it?”
“I didn’t – know – what it was.”
“Of course it is affection. Who could be with you as I have been and not grow tremendously fond of you?”
“Nobody ever did except you. Mr. Westmore was always nice. But – but you are so kind – I can’t express – I – c-can’t – ” Her emotion checked her.
“Don’t try, dear!” he said hastily. “We’re going in to have a jolly dance now. You and I begin it together. Don’t you let any other fellow take you away!”
She looked up, laughed blissfully, gazing at him with brilliant eyes a little dimmed.
“They’ll all be at your heels,” he said, beginning to comprehend the beauty he had let loose on the world, “ – every man-jack of them, mark my prophecy! But ours is the first dance, Dulcie. Promise?”
“I do. And I promise you the next – please – ”
“Well, I’m host,” he said doubtfully, and a trifle taken aback. “We’ll have some other dances together, anyway. But I couldn’t monopolise you, Sweetness.”
The girl looked at him silently, then her grey, intelligent eyes rested directly on Thessalie Dunois.
“Will you dance with her?” she asked gravely.
“Yes, of course. And with the others, too. Tell me, Dulcie, did you find Miss Dunois agreeable?”
“I – don’t – know.”
“Why, you ought to like her. She’s very attractive.”
“She is quite beautiful,” said the girl, watching Thessalie across his shoulder.
“Yes, she really is. What did you and she talk about?”
“Father,” replied Dulcie, determined to have no further commerce with Thessalie Dunois which involved a secrecy excluding Barres. “She asked me if he were not my father. Then she asked me a great many stupid questions about him. And about Miss Kurtz, who takes the desk when father is out. Also, she asked me about the mail and whether the postman delivered letters at the desk or in the box outside, and about the tenants’ mail boxes, and who distributed the letters through them. She seemed interested,” added the girl indifferently, “but I thought it a silly subject for conversation.”
Barres, much perplexed, sat gazing at Dulcie in silence for a moment, then recollecting his duty, he smiled and whispered:
“Stand up, now, Dulcie. You are running this show.”
The girl flushed and rose, and the others stood up. Barres took her to the studio door, then returned to the table with the group of men.
“Well,” he exclaimed happily, “what do you fellows think of Soane’s little girl now? Isn’t she the sweetest thing you ever heard of?”
“A peach!” said Westmore, in his quick, hearty voice. “What’s the idea, Garry? Is it to be her career, this posing business? And where is it going to land her? In the Winter Garden?”
“Where is it going to land you?” added Esmé impudently.
“Why, I don’t know, myself,” replied Barres, with a troubled smile. “The little thing always appealed to me – her loneliness and neglect, and – and something about the child – I can’t define it – ”
“Possibilities?” suggested Mandel viciously. “Take it from me, you’re some picker, Garry.”
“Perhaps. Anyway, I’ve given her the run of my place for the last two years and more. And she has been growing up all the while, and I didn’t notice it. And suddenly, this spring, I discovered her for the first time… And – well, look at her to-night!”
“She’s your private model, isn’t she?” persisted Mandel.
“Entirely,” replied Barres drily.
“Selfish dog!” remarked Westmore, with his lively, wholesome laugh. “I once asked her to sit for me – more out of good nature than anything else. And a jolly fine little model she ought to make you, Garry. She’s beginning to acquire a figure.”
“She’s quite wonderful that way, too,” nodded Barres.
“Undraped?” inquired Esmé.
“A miracle,” nodded Barres absently. “Paint is becoming inadequate. I shall model her this summer. I tell you I have never seen anything to compare to her. Never!”
“What else will you do with her?” drawled Esmé. “You’ll go stale on her some day, of course. Am I next?”
“No!.. I don’t know what she’ll do. It begins to look like a responsibility, doesn’t it? She’s such a fine little girl,” explained Barres warmly. “I’ve grown quite fond of her – interested in her. Do you know she has an excellent mind? And nice, fastidious instincts? She thinks straight. That souse of a father of hers ought to be jailed for the way he neglects her.”
“Are you thinking of adopting her?” asked Trenor, with the faintest of sneers, which escaped Barres.
“Adopt a girl? Oh, Lord, no! I can’t do anything like that. Yet – I hate to think of her future, too … unless somebody looks out for her. But it isn’t possible for me to do anything for her except to give her a good job with a decent man – ”
“Meaning yourself,” commented Mandel, acidly.
“Well, I am decent,” retorted Barres warmly, amid general laughter. “You fellows know what chances she might take with some men,” he added, laughing at his own warm retort.
Esmé and Corot Mandel nodded piously, each perfectly aware of what chance any attractive girl would run with his predatory neighbour.
“To shift the subject of discourse – that girl, Thessalie Dunois,” began Westmore, in his energetic way, “is about the cleverest and prettiest woman I’ve seen in New York outside the theatre district.”
“I met her in France,” said Barres, carelessly. “She really is wonderfully clever.”
“I shall let her talk to me,” drawled Esmé, flicking at his cigarette. “It will be a liberal education for her.”
Mandel’s slow, oriental eyes blinked contempt; he 144 caressed his waxed moustache with nicotine-stained fingers:
“I am going to direct an out-of-door spectacle – a sort of play – not named yet – up your way, Barres – at Northbrook. It’s for the Belgians… If Miss Dunois – unless,” he added sardonically, “you have her reserved, also – ”
“Nonsense! You cast Thessalie Dunois and she’ll make your show for you, Mandel!” exclaimed Barres. “I know and I’m telling you. Don’t make any mistake: there’s a girl who can make good!”
“Oh. Is she a professional?”
It was on the tip of Barres’s tongue to say “Rather!” But he checked himself, not knowing Thessalie’s wishes concerning details of her incognito.
“Talk to her about it,” he said, rising.
The others laid aside cigars and followed him into the studio, where already the gramophone was going and Aristocrates and Selinda were rolling up the rugs.
Barres and Dulcie danced until the music, twice revived, expired in husky dissonance, and a new disc was substituted by Westmore.
“By heaven!” he said, “I’ll dance this with my godchild or I’ll murder you, Garry. Back up, there! – you soulless monopolist!” And Dulcie, half laughing, half vexed, was swept away in Westmore’s vigorous arms, with a last, long, appealing look at Barres.
The latter danced in turn with his feminine guests, as in duty bound – in pleasure bound, as far as concerned Thessalie.
“And to think, to think,” he repeated, “that you and I, who once trod the moonlit way, June-mad, moon-mad, should be dancing here together once more!”
“Alas,” she said, “though this is June again, moon 145 and madness are lacking. So is the enchanted river and your canoe. And so is that gay heart of mine – that funny, careless little heart which was once my comrade, sending me into a happy gale of laughter every time it counselled me to folly.”
“What is the matter, Thessa?”
“Garry, there is so much the matter that I don’t know how to tell you… And yet, I have nobody else to tell… Is that maid of yours German?”
“No, Finnish.”
“You can’t be certain,” she murmured. “Your guests are all American, are they not?”
“Yes.”
“And the little Soane girl? Are her sympathies with Germany?”
“Why, certainly not! What gave you that idea, Thessa?”
The music ran down; Westmore, the indefatigable, still keeping possession of Dulcie, went over to wind up the gramophone.
“Isn’t there some place where I could be alone with you for a few minutes?” whispered Thessalie.
“There’s a balcony under the middle window. It overlooks the court.”
She nodded and laid her hand on his arm, and they walked to the long window, opened it, and stepped out.
Moonlight fell into the courtyard, silvering everything. Down there on the grass the Prophet sat, motionless as a black sphynx in the lustre of the moon.
Thessalie looked down into the shadowy court, then turned and glanced up at the tiled roof just above them, where a chimney rose in silhouette against the pale radiance of the sky.
Behind the chimney, flat on their stomachs, lay two men who had been watching, through an upper ventilating 146 pane of glass, the scene in the brilliantly lighted studio below them.
The men were Soane and his crony, the one-eyed pedlar. But neither Thessalie nor Barres could see them up there behind the chimney.
Yet the girl, as though some unquiet instinct warned her, glanced up at the eaves above her head once more, and Barres looked up, too.
“What do you see up there?” he inquired.
“Nothing… There could be nobody up there to listen, could there?”
He laughed:
“Who would want to climb up on the roof to spy on you or me – ”
“Don’t speak so loud, Garry – ”
“What on earth is the trouble?”
“The same trouble that drove me out of France,” she said in a low voice. “Don’t ask me what it was. All I can tell you is this: I am followed everywhere I go. I cannot make a living. Whenever I secure an engagement and return at the appointed time to fill it, something happens.”
“What happens?” he asked bluntly.
“They repudiate the agreement,” she said in a quiet voice. “They give no reasons; they simply tell me that they don’t want me. Do you remember that evening when I left the Palace of Mirrors?”
“Indeed, I do – ”
“That was only one example. I left with an excellent contract, signed. The next day, when I returned, the management took my contract out of my hands and tore it up.”
“What! Why, that’s outrageous – ”
“Hush! That is only one instance. Everywhere it is the same. I am accepted after a try-out; then, 147 without apparent reason, I am told not to return.”
“You mean there is some conspiracy – ” he began incredulously, but she interrupted him with a white hand over his, nervously committing him to silence:
“Listen, Garry! Men have followed me here from Europe. I am constantly watched in New York. I cannot shake off this surveillance for very long at a time. Sooner or later I become conscious again of curious eyes regarding me; of features that all at once become unpleasantly familiar in the throng. After several encounters in street or car or restaurant, I recognise these. Often and often instinct alone warns me that I am followed; sometimes I am so certain of it that I take pains to prove it.”
“Do you prove it?”
“Usually.”
“Well, what the devil – ”
“Hush! I seem to be getting into deeper trouble than that, Garry. I have changed my residence so many, many times! – but every time people get into my room when I am away and ransack my effects… And now I never enter my room unless the landlady is with me, or the janitor – especially after dark.”
“Good Lord! – ”
“Listen! I am not really frightened. It isn’t fear, Garry. That word isn’t in my creed, you know. But it bewilders me.”
“In the name of common sense,” he demanded, “what reason has anybody to annoy you – ”
Her hand tightened on his:
“If I only knew who these people are – whether they are agents of the Count d’Eblis or of the – the French Government! But I can’t determine. They steal letters directed to me; they steal letters which I write and mail with my own hands. I wrote to you yesterday, 148 because I – I felt I couldn’t stand this persecution – any – longer – ”
Her voice became unsteady; she waited, gripping his hand, until self-control returned. When she was mistress of herself again, she forced a smile and her tense hand relaxed.
“You know,” she said, “it is most annoying to have my little love-letter to you intercepted.”
But his features remained very serious:
“When did you mail that letter to me?”
“Yesterday evening.”
“From where?”
“From a hotel.”
He considered.
“I ought to have had it this morning, Thessa. But the mails, lately, have been very irregular. There have been other delays. This is probably an example.”
“At latest,” she said, “you should have my letter this evening.”
“Y-yes. But the evening is young yet.”
After a moment she drew a light sigh of relief, or perhaps of apprehension, he was not quite sure which.
“But about this other matter – men following and annoying you,” he began.
“Not now, Garry. I can’t talk about it now. Wait until we are sure about my letter – ”
“But, Thessa – ”
“Please! If you don’t receive it before I leave, I shall come to you again and ask your aid and advice – ”
“Will you come here?”
“Yes. Now take me in… Because I am not quite certain about your maid – and perhaps one other person – ”
His expression of astonishment checked her for a 149 moment, then the old irresistible laughter rang out sweetly in the moonlight.
“Oh, Garry! It is funny, isn’t it! – to be dogged and hunted day and night by a pack of shadows? If I only knew who casts them!”
She took his arm gaily, with that little, courageous lifting of the head:
“Allons! We shall dance again and defy the devil! And you may send your servant down to see whether my letter has arrived – not that maid with slanting eyes! – I have no confidence in her – but your marvellous major-domo, Garry – ”
Her smile was bright and untroubled as she stepped back into the studio, leaning on his arm.
“You dear boy,” she whispered, with the irresponsible undertone of laughter ringing in her voice, “thank you for bothering with my woes. I’ll be rid of them soon, I hope, and then – perhaps – I’ll lead you another dance along the moonlit way!”
On the roof, close to the chimney, the one-eyed man and Soane peered down into the studio through the smeared ventilator.
In the studio Dulcie’s first party was drawing to an early but jolly end.
She had danced a dozen times with Barres, and her heart was full of sheerest happiness – the unreasoning bliss which asks no questions, is endowed with neither reason nor vision – the matchless delight which fills the candid, unquestioning heart of Youth.
Nothing had marred her party for her, not even the importunity of Esmé Trenor, which she had calmly disregarded as of no interest to her.
True, for a few moments, while Barres and Thessalie were on the balcony outside, Dulcie had become 150 a trifle subdued. But the wistful glances she kept casting toward the long window were free from meaner taint; neither jealousy nor envy had ever found lodging in the girl’s mind or heart. There was no room to let them in now.
Also, she was kept busy enough, one man after another claiming her for a dance. And she adored it – even with Trenor, who danced extremely well when he took the trouble. And he was taking it now with Dulcie; taking a different tone with her, too. For if it were true, as some said, that Esmé Trenor was three-quarters charlatan, he was no fool. And Dulcie began to find him entertaining to the point of a smile or two, as her spontaneous tribute to Esmé’s efforts.
That languid apostle said afterward to Mandel, where they were lounging over the piano:
“Little devil! She’s got a mind of her own, and she knows it. I’ve had to make efforts, Corot! – efforts, if you please, to attract her mere attention. I’m exhausted! – never before had to make any efforts – never in my life!”
Mandel’s heavy-lidded eyes of a big bird rested on Dulcie, where she was seated. Her gaze was lifted to Barres, who bent over her in jesting conversation.
Mandel, watching her, said to Esmé:
“I’m always ready to train– that sort of girl; always on the lookout for them. One discovers a specimen once or twice in a decade… Two or three in a lifetime: that’s all.”
“Train them?” repeated Esmé, with an indolent smile. “Break them, you mean, don’t you?”
“Yes. The breaking, however, is usually mutual. However, that girl could go far under my direction.”
“Yes, she could go as far as hell.”
“I mean artistically,” remarked Mandel, undisturbed.
“As what, for example?”
“As anything. After all, I have flaire, even if it failed me this time. But now I see. It’s there, in her – what I’m always searching for.”
“What may that be, dear friend?”
“What Westmore calls ‘the goods.’”
“And just what are they in her case?” inquired Esmé, persistent as a stinging gnat around a pachyderm.
“I don’t know – a voice, maybe; maybe the dramatic instinct – genius as a dancer – who knows? All that is necessary is to discover it – whatever it may be – and then direct it.”
“Too late, O philanthropic Pasha!” remarked Esmé with a slight sneer. “I’d be very glad to paint her, too, and become good friends with her – so would many an honest man, now that she’s been discovered – but our friend Barres, yonder, isn’t likely to encourage either you or me. So” – he shrugged, but his languid gaze remained on Dulcie – “so you and I had better kiss all hope good-bye and toddle home.”
Westmore and Thessalie still danced together; Mrs. Helmund and Damaris were trying new steps in new dances, much interested, indulging in much merriment. Barres watched them casually, as he conversed with Dulcie, who, deep in an armchair, never took her eyes from his smiling face.
“Now, Sweetness,” he was saying, “it’s early yet, I know, but your party ought to end, because you are coming to sit for me in the morning, and you and I ought to get plenty of sleep. If we don’t, I shall have an unsteady hand, and you a pair of sleepy eyes. Come on, ducky!” He glanced across at the clock:
“It’s very early yet, I know,” he repeated, “but you 152 and I have had rather a long day of it. And it’s been a very happy one, hasn’t it, Dulcie?”
As she smiled, the youthful soul of her itself seemed to be gazing up at him out of her enraptured eyes.
“Fine!” he said, with deepest satisfaction. “Now, you’ll put your hand on my arm and we’ll go around and say good-night to everybody, and then I’ll take you down stairs.”
So she rose and placed her hand lightly on his arm, and together they made her adieux to everybody, and everybody was cordially demonstrative in thanking her for her party.
So he took her down stairs to her apartment, off the hall, noticing that neither Soane nor Miss Kurtz was on duty at the desk, as they passed, and that a pile of undistributed mail lay on the desk.
“That’s rotten,” he said curtly. “Will you have to change your clothes, sort this mail, and sit here until the last mail is delivered?”
“I don’t mind,” she said.
“But I wanted you to go to sleep. Where is Miss Kurtz?”
“It is her evening off.”
“Then your father ought to be here,” he said, irritated, looking around the big, empty hallway.
But Dulcie only smiled and held out her slim hand:
“I couldn’t sleep, anyway. I had really much rather sit here for a while and dream it all over again. Good-night… Thank you – I can’t say what I feel – but m-my heart is very faithful to you, Mr. Barres – will always be – while I am alive … because you are my first friend.”
He stooped impulsively and touched her hair with his lips:
“You dear child,” he said, “I am your friend.”
Halfway up the western staircase he called back:
“Ring me up, Dulcie, when the last mail comes!”
“I will,” she nodded, almost blindly.
Out of her lovely, abashed eyes she watched him mount the stairs, her cheeks a riot of surging colour. It was some few minutes after he was gone that she recollected herself, turned, and, slowly traversing the east corridor, entered her bedroom.
Standing there in darkness, vaguely silvered by reflected moonlight, she heard through her door ajar the guests of the evening descending the western staircase; heard their gay adieux exchanged, distinguished Esmé’s impudent drawl, Westmore’s lively accents, Mandel’s voice, the easy laughter of Damaris, the smooth, affected tones of Mrs. Helmund.
But Dulcie listened in vain for the voice which had haunted her ears since she had left the studio – the lovely voice of Thessalie Dunois.
If this radiant young creature also had departed with the other guests, she had gone away in silence… Had she departed? Or was she still lingering upstairs in the studio for a little chat with the most wonderful man in the world?.. A very, very beautiful girl… And the most wonderful man in the world. Why should they not linger for a little chat together after the others had departed?
Dulcie sighed lightly, pensively, as one whose happiness lies in the happiness of others. To be a witness seemed enough for her.
For a little while longer she remained standing there in the silvery dusk, quite motionless, thinking of Barres.
The Prophet lay asleep, curled up on her bed; her alarm clock ticked noisily in the darkness, as though to mimic the loud, fast rhythm of her heart.
At last, and as in a dream, she groped for a match, 154 lighted the gas jet, and began to disrobe. Slowly, dreamily, she put from her slender body the magic garments of light —his gift to her.
But under these magic garments, clothing her newborn soul, remained the radiant rainbow robe of that new dawn into which this man had led her spirit. Did it matter, then, what dingy, outworn clothing covered her, outside?
Clad once more in her shabby, familiar clothes, and bedroom slippers, Dulcie opened the door of her dim room, and crept out into the whitewashed hall, moving as in a trance. And at her heels stalked the Prophet, softly, like a lithe shape that glides through dreams.
Awaiting the last mail, seated behind the desk on the worn leather chair, she dropped her linked fingers into her lap, and gazed straight into an invisible world peopled with enchanting phantoms. And, little by little, they began to crowd her vision, throng all about her, laughing, rosy wraiths floating, drifting, whirling in an endless dance. Everywhere they were invading the big, silent hall, where the candle’s grotesque shadows wavered across whitewashed wall and ceiling. Drowsily, now, she watched them play and sway around her. Her head drooped; she opened her eyes.
The Prophet sat there, staring back at her out of depthless orbs of jade, in which all the wisdom and mysteries of the centuries seemed condensed and concentrated into a pair of living sparks.
