The Moonlit Way: A Novel

“Whatever the normal Hun touches he vulgarises; whatever the decadent Boche touches he soils and degrades and transforms into a horrible abomination. This he has done under your eyes in art, in literature, in architecture, in modern German music.

“His filthy touch is even on your domestic life – this Barbarian who feeds grossly, whose personal habits are a by-word among civilised and cultured people, whose raw ferocity is being now revealed to the world day by day in Europe, whose proverbial clumsiness and stupidity have long furnished your stage with its oafs and clowns.

“This is the thing that is now also invading you with thousands of spies, betraying you with millions of traitors, 181 and which will one day turn on you and tear you and trample you like an enraged hog, unless you and your people awake to what is passing in the world you live in!”

She was on her feet now, flushed, lovely, superb in her deep and controlled excitement.

“I’ll tell you this much,” she said. “It is Germany that wishes my destruction. Germany trapped me; Germany would have destroyed me in the trap had I not escaped. Now, Germany is afraid of me, knowing what I know. And her agents follow me, spy on me, thwart me, prevent me from earning my living, until I – I can scarcely endure it – this hounding and persecution – ” Her voice broke; she waited to control it:

“I am not a spy. I never was one. I never betrayed a human soul – no, nor any living thing that ever trusted me! These people who hound me know that I am not guilty of that for which another Government is ready to try me – and condemn me. They fear that I shall prove to this other Government my innocence. I can’t. But they fear I can. And the Hun is afraid of me. Because, if I ever proved my innocence, it would involve the arrest and trial and certain execution of men high in rank in the capital of this other country. So – the Hun dogs me everywhere I go. I do not know why he does not try to kill me. Possibly he lacks courage, so far. Possibly he has not had any good opportunity, because I am very careful, Garry.”

“But this – this is outrageous!” broke out Barres. “You can’t stand this sort of thing, Thessa! It’s a matter for the police – ”

“Don’t interfere!”

“But – ”

“Don’t interfere! The last thing I want is publicity. The last thing I wish for is that your city, state, or national government should notice me at all or have any curiosity concerning me or any idea of investigating my affairs.”

“Why?”

“Because, although as soon as your country is at war with Germany, my danger from Germany ceases, on the other hand another very deadly danger begins at once to threaten me.”

“What danger?”

“It will come from a country with which your country will be allied. And I shall be arrested here as a German spy, and I shall be sent back to the country which I am supposed to have betrayed. And there nothing in the world could save me.”

“You mean – court-martial?”

“A brief one, Garry. And then the end.”

“Death?”

She nodded.

After a few moments she moved toward the door. He went with her, picking up his hat.

“I can’t let you go with me,” she said with a faint smile.

“Why not?”

“You are involved sufficiently already.”

“What do I care for – ”

“Hush, Garry. Do you wish to displease me?”

“No, but I – ”

“Please! Call me a taxicab. I wish to go back alone.”

In spite of argument she remained smilingly firm. Finally he rang up a taxi for her. When it signalled he walked down stairs, through the dim hall and out to the grilled gateway beside her.

“Good-bye,” she said, giving her hand. He detained it:

“I can’t bear to have you go alone – ”

“I’m perfectly safe, mon ami. I’ve had a delightful time at your party – really I have. This affair of the letter does not spoil it. I’m accustomed to similar episodes. So now, good-night.”

“Am I to see you again soon?”

“Soon? Ah, I can’t tell you that, Garry.”

“When it is convenient then?”

“Yes.”

“And will you telephone me on your safe arrival home to-night?”

She laughed:

“If you wish. You’re so sweet to me, Garry. You always have been. Don’t worry about me. I am not in the least apprehensive. You see I’m rather a clever girl, and I know something about the Boche.”

“You had your letter stolen.”

“Only half of it!” she retorted gaily. “She is a gallant little thing, your friend Dulcie. Please give her my love. As for your other friends, they were amusing… Mr. Mandel spoke to me about an engagement.”

“Why don’t you consider it? Corot Mandel is the most important producer in New York.”

“Is he, really? Well, if I’m not interfered with perhaps I shall go to call on Mr. Mandel.” She began to laugh mischievously to herself: “There was one man there who never gave me a moment’s peace until I promised to lunch with him at the Ritz.”

“Who the devil – ”

“Mr. Westmore,” she said demurely.

“Oh, Jim Westmore! Well, Thessa, he’s a corker. 184 He’s really a splendid fellow, but look out for him! He’s also a philanderer.”

“Oh, dear. I thought he was just a sculptor and a rather strenuous young man.”

“I wasn’t knocking him,” said Barres, laughing, “but he falls in love with every pretty woman he meets. I’m merely warning you.”

“Thank you, Garry,” she smiled. She gave him her hand again, pulled the rose-coloured cloak around her bare shoulders, ran across the sidewalk to the taxi, and whispered to the driver.

“You’ll telephone me when you get home?” he reminded her, baffled but smiling.

She laughed and nodded. The cab wheeled out into the street, backed, turned, and sped away eastward.

Half an hour later his telephone rang:

“Garry, dear?”

“Is it you, Thessa?”

“Yes. I’m going to bed… Tell Mr. Westmore that I’m not at all sure I shall meet him at the Ritz on Monday.”

“He’ll go, anyway.”

“Will he? What devotion. What faith in woman! What a lively capacity for hope eternal! What vanity! Well, then, tell him he may take his chances.”

“I’ll tell him. But I think you might make a date with me, too, you little fraud!”

“Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll drop in to see you unexpectedly some morning. And don’t let me catch you philandering in your studio with some pretty woman!”

“No fear, Thessa.”

“I’m not at all sure. And your little model, Dulcie, is dangerously attractive.”

“Piffle! She’s a kid!”

“Don’t be too sure of that, either! And tell Mr. Westmore that I may keep my engagement. And then again I may not! Good-night, Garry, dear!”

“Good-night!”

Walking slowly back to extinguish the lights in the studio before retiring to his own room for the night, Barres noticed a piece of paper on the table under the lamp, evidently a fragment from the torn letter.

The words “Ferez Bey” and “Murtagh” caught his eye before he realised that it was not his business to decipher the fragment.

So he lighted a match, held the shred of letter paper to the flame, and let it burn between his fingers until only a blackened cinder fell to the floor.

But the two names were irrevocably impressed on his mind, and he found himself wondering who these men might be, as he stood by his bed, undressing.

XIV

PROBLEMS

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.

Esmé 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.”

Esmé 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 Esmé; “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 Esmé 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 – ”

Esmé 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.

Esmé 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 190 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 192 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 Liège 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 193 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.

XV

BLACKMAIL

She came in swiftly, stirring the sultry stillness of the studio with a little breeze from her gown, faintly fragrant.

“Garry, dear! – ” She gave him both her hands and looked at him; and he saw the pink tint of excitement in her cheeks and her dark eyes brilliant.

“Thessa, this is charming of you – ”

“No! I came – ” She cast a swift glance around her, beheld Westmore, gave him one hand as he came forward.

“How do you do?” she said, almost breathlessly, plainly controlling some inward excitement.

But Westmore retained her hand and laid the other over it.

“You said you’d come to the Ritz – ”

“I’m sorry… I have been – bothered – with matters – affairs – ”

“You are bothered now,” he said. “If you have something to say to Garry, I’ll go about my business… Only I’m sorry it’s not your business, too.”

He released her hand and reached for the door-knob: her dark eyes were resting on him with a strained, intent expression. On impulse she thrust out her arm and closed the door, which he had begun to open.

“Please – Mr. Westmore… I do want to see you. I’m trying to think clearly – ” She turned and looked at Barres.

“Is it serious?” he said in a low voice.

“I – suppose so… Garry, I wish to – to come here … and stay.”

“What!”

She nodded.

“Is it all right?”

“All right,” he replied pleasantly, bewildered and almost inclined to laugh.

She said in a low, tense voice.

“I’m really in trouble, Garry. I told you once that the word was not in my vocabulary… I’ve had to include it.”

“I’m so sorry! Tell me all about – ”

He checked himself: she turned to Westmore – a deeper flush came into her cheeks – then she said gravely:

“I scarcely know Mr. Westmore, but if he is like you, Garry – your sort – perhaps he – ”

“He’d do anything for you, Thessa, if you’ll let him. Have you confidence in me?”

“You know I have.”

“Then you can have the same confidence in Jim. I suggest it because I have a hazy idea what your trouble is. And if you came to ask advice, then I think that you’ll get double value if you include Jim Westmore in your confidence.”

She stood silent and with heightened colour for a moment, then her expression became humorous, and, partly turning, she put out her gloved hand behind her and took hold of Westmore’s sleeve. It was at once an appeal and an impulsive admission of her confidence in this young man whom she had liked from the beginning, and who must be trustworthy because he was the friend of Garret Barres.

“I’m scared half to death,” she remarked, without a 196 quaver in her voice, but her smile had now become forced, and a quick, uneven little sigh escaped her as she passed her arms through Barres’ and Westmore’s, and, moving across the carpet between them, suffered herself to be installed among the Chinese cushions upon the lounge by the open window.

In her distractingly pretty summer hat and gown, and with her white gloves and gold-mesh purse in her lap – her fresh, engaging face and daintily rounded figure – Thessalie Dunois seemed no more mature, no more experienced in worldly wisdom, than the charming young girls one passes on Fifth Avenue on a golden morning in early spring.

But Westmore, looking into her dark eyes, divined, perhaps, something less inexperienced, less happy in their lovely, haunted depths. And, troubled by he knew not what, he waited in silence for her to speak.

Barres said to her:

“You are being annoyed, Thessa, dear. I gather that much from what has already happened. Can Jim and I do anything?”

“I don’t know… It’s come to a point where I – I’m afraid – to be alone.”

Her gaze fell; she sat brooding for a few moments, then, with a quick intake of breath:

“It humiliates me to come to you. Would you believe that of me, Garry, that it has come to a point where I am actually afraid to be alone? I thought I had plenty of what the world calls courage.”

“You have!”

“I had. I don’t know what’s become of it – what has happened to me… I don’t want to tell you more than I have to – ”

“Tell us as much as you think necessary,” said Barres, watching her.

“Thank you… Well, then, some years ago I earned the enmity of a man. And, through him, a European Government blacklisted me. It was a terrible thing. I did not fully appreciate what it meant at the time.” She turned to Westmore in her pretty, impulsive way: “This European Government, of which I speak, believes me to be the agent of another foreign government – believes that I betrayed its interests. This man whom I offended, to punish me and to cover his own treachery, furnished evidence which would have convicted me of treachery and espionage.”

The excited colour began to dye her cheeks again; she stretched out one arm in appeal to Westmore:

“Please believe me! I am no spy. I never was. I was too young, too stupid, too innocent in such matters to know what this man was about – that he had very cleverly implicated me in this abhorrent matter. Do you believe me, Mr. Westmore?”

“Of course I do!” he said with a fervour not, perhaps, necessary. “If you’ll be kind enough to point out that gentleman – ”

“Wait, Jim,” interposed Barres, nodding to Thessalie to proceed.

She had been looking at Westmore, apparently much interested in his ardour, but she came to herself when Barres interrupted, and sat silent again as though searching her mind concerning what further she might say. Slowly the forced smile curved her lips again. She said:

“I don’t know just what that enraged European Government might have done to me had I been arrested, because I ran away … and came here… But the man whom I offended discovered where I was and never for a day even have his agents ceased to watch me, annoy me – ”