The Moonlit Way: A Novel

Barres ascended the two low, easy flights of stairs and unlocked his door. Aristocrates, setting the table 66 in the dining-room, approached gracefully and relieved his master of hat, coat, and stick.

Half an hour later, a bath and fresh linen keyed up his already lively spirits; he whistled while he tied his tie, took a critical look at himself, and, dropping both hands into the pockets of his dinner jacket, walked out into the big studio, which also was his living-room.

There was a piano there; he sat down and rattled off a rollicking air from the most recent spring production, beginning to realise that he was keyed up for something livelier than a solitary dinner at home.

His hands fell from the keys and he swung around on the piano stool and looked into the dining-room rather doubtfully.

“Aristocrates!” he called.

The tall pullman butler sauntered gracefully in.

Barres gave him a telephone number to call. Aristocrates returned presently with the information that the lady was not at home.

“All right. Try Amsterdam 6703. Ask for Miss Souval.”

But Miss Souval, also, was out.

Barres possessed a red-leather covered note-book; he went to his desk and got it; and under his direction Aristocrates called up several numbers, reporting adversely in every case.

It was a fine evening; ladies were abroad or preparing to fulfil engagements wisely made on such a day as this had been. And the more numbers he called up the lonelier the young man began to feel.

Thessalie had not given him either her address or telephone number. It would have been charming to have her dine with him. He was now thoroughly inclined for company. He glanced at the empty dining-room with aversion.

“All right; never mind,” he said, dismissing Aristocrates, who receded as lithely as though leading a cake-walk.

“The devil,” muttered the young fellow. “I’m not going to dine here alone. I’ve had too happy a day of it.”

He got up restlessly and began to pace the studio. He knew he could get some man, but he didn’t want one. However, it began to look like that or a solitary dinner.

So after a few more moments’ scowling cogitation he went out and down the stairs, with the vague idea of inviting some brother painter – any one of the regular irregulars who inhabited Dragon Court.

Dulcie sat behind the little desk near the door, head bowed, her thin hands clasped over the closed ledger, and in her pallid face the expressionless dullness of a child forgotten.

“Hello, Sweetness!” he said cheerfully.

She looked up; a slight colour tinted her cheeks, and she smiled.

“What’s the matter, Dulcie?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? That’s a very dreary malady – nothing. You look lonely. Are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know whether you are lonely or not?” he demanded.

“I suppose I am,” she ventured, with a shy smile.

“Where is your father?”

“He went out.”

“Any letters for me – or messages?”

“A man – he had one eye – came. He asked who you are.”

“What?”

“I think he was German. He had only one eye. He asked your name.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him. Then he went away.”

Barres shrugged:

“Somebody who wants to sell artists’ materials,” he concluded. Then he looked at the girl: “So you’re lonely, are you? Where are your three cats? Aren’t they company for you?”

“Yes…”

“Well, then,” he said gaily, “why not give a party for them? That ought to amuse you, Dulcie.”

The child still smiled; Barres walked on past her a pace or two, halted, turned irresolutely, arrived at some swift decision, and came back, suddenly understanding that he need seek no further – that he had discovered his guest of the evening at his very elbow.

“Did you and your father have your supper, Dulcie?”

“My father went out to eat at Grogan’s.”

“How about you?”

“I can find something.”

“Why not dine with me?” he suggested.

The child stared, bewildered, then went a little pale.

“Shall we have a dinner party for two – you and I, Dulcie? What do you say?”

She said nothing, but her big grey eyes were fixed on him in a passion of inquiry.

“A real party,” he repeated. “Let the people get their own mail and packages until your father returns. Nobody’s going to sneak in, anyway. Or, if that won’t do, I’ll call up Grogan’s and tell your father to come back because you are going to dine in my studio with me. Do you know the telephone number? Very well; get Grogan’s for me. I’ll speak to your father.”

Dulcie’s hand trembled on the receiver as she called up Grogan’s; Barres bent over the transmitter:

“Soane, Dulcie is going to take dinner in my studio with me. You’ll have to come back on duty, when you’ve eaten.” He hung up, looked at Dulcie and laughed.

“I wanted company as much as you did,” he confessed. “Now, go and put on your prettiest frock, and we’ll be very grand and magnificent. And afterward we’ll talk and look at books and pretty things – and maybe we’ll turn on the Victrola and I’ll teach you to dance – ” He had already begun to ascend the stairs:

“In half an hour, Dulcie!” he called back; “ – and you may bring the Prophet if you like… Shall I ask Mr. Westmore to join us?”

“I’d rather be all alone with you,” she said shyly.

He laughed and ran on up the stairs.

In half an hour the electric bell rang very timidly. Aristocrates, having been instructed and rehearsed, and, loftily condescending to his rôle in a kindly comedy to be played seriously, announced: “Miss Soane!” in his most courtly manner.

Barres threw aside the evening paper and came forward, taking both hands of the white and slightly frightened child.

“Aristocrates ought to have announced the Prophet, too,” he said gaily, breaking the ice and swinging Dulcie around to face the open door again.

The Prophet entered, perfectly at ease, his eyes of living jade shining, his tail urbanely hoisted.

Dulcie ventured to smile; Barres laughed outright; Aristocrates surveyed the Prophet with toleration mingled with a certain respect. For a black cat is never without occult significance to a gentleman of colour.

With Dulcie’s hand still in his, Barres led her into the living-room, where, presently, Aristocrates brought a silver tray upon which was a glass of iced orange juice for Dulcie, and a “Bronnix,” as Aristocrates called it, for the master.

“To your health and good fortune in life, Dulcie,” he said politely.

The child gazed mutely at him over her glass, then, blushing, ventured to taste her orange juice.

When she finished, Barres drew her frail arm through his and took her out, seating her. Ceremonies began in silence, and the master of the place was not quite sure whether the flush on Dulcie’s face indicated unhappy embarrassment or pleasure.

He need not have worried: the child adored it all. The Prophet came in and gravely seated himself on a neighbouring chair, whence he could survey the table and seriously inspect each course.

“Dulcie,” he said, “how grown-up you look with your bobbed hair put up, and your fluffy gown.”

She lifted her enchanted eyes to him:

“It is my first communion dress… I’ve had to make it longer for a graduation dress.”

“Oh, that’s so; you’re graduating this summer!”

“Yes.”

“And what then?”

“Nothing.” She sighed unconsciously and sat very still with folded hands, while Aristocrates refilled her glass of water.

She no longer felt embarrassed; her gravity matched Aristocrates’s; she seriously accepted whatever was offered or set before her, but Barres noticed that she ate it all, merely leaving on her plate, with inculcated and mathematical precision, a small portion as concession to good manners.

They had, toward the banquet’s end, water ices, bon-bons, French pastry, and ice cream. And presently a slight and blissful sigh of repletion escaped the child’s red lips. The symptoms were satisfactory but unmistakable; Dulcie was perfectly feminine; her capacity had proven it.

The Prophet’s stately self-control in the fragrant vicinity of nourishment was now to be rewarded: Barres conducted Dulcie to the studio and installed her among cushions upon a huge sofa. Then, lighting a cigarette, he dropped down beside her and crossed one knee over the other.

“Dulcie,” he said in his lazy, humorous way, “it’s a funny old world any way you view it.”

“Do you think it is always funny?” inquired the child, her deep, grey eyes on his face.

He smiled:

“Yes, I do; but sometimes the joke in on one’s self. And then, although it is still a funny world, from the world’s point of view, you, of course, fail to see the humour of it… I don’t suppose you understand.”

“I do,” nodded the child, with the ghost of a smile.

“Really? Well, I was afraid I’d been talking nonsense, but if you understand, it’s all right.”

They both laughed.

“Do you want to look at some books?” he suggested.

“I’d rather listen to you.”

He smiled:

“All right. I’ll begin at this corner of the room and tell you about the things in it.” And for a while he rambled lazily on about old French chairs and Spanish chests, and the panels of Mille Fleur tapestry which hung behind them; the two lovely pre-Raphael panels in their exquisite ancient frames; the old Venetian velvet covering triple choir-stalls in the corner; the ivory-toned 72 marble figure on its wood and compos pedestal, where tendrils and delicate foliations of water gilt had become slightly irridescent, harmonising with the patine on the ancient Chinese garniture flanking a mantel clock of dullest gold.

About these things, their workmanship, the histories of their times, he told her in his easy, unaccented voice, glancing sideways at her from time to time to note how she stood it.

But she listened, fascinated, her gaze moving from the object discussed to the man who discussed it; her slim limbs curled under her, her hands clasped around a silken cushion made from the robe of some Chinese princess.

Lounging there beside her, amused, humorously flattered by her attention, and perhaps a little touched, he held forth a little longer.

“Is it a nice party, so far, Dulcie?” he concluded with a smile.

She flushed, found no words, nodded, and sat with lowered head as though pondering.

“What would you rather do if you could do what you want to in the world, Dulcie?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think a minute.”

She thought for a while.

“Live with you,” she said seriously.

“Oh, Dulcie! That is no sort of ambition for a growing girl!” he laughed; and she laughed, too, watching his every expression out of grey eyes that were her chiefest beauty.

“You’re a little too young to know what you want yet,” he concluded, still smiling. “By the time that bobbed mop of red hair grows to a proper length, you’ll know more about yourself.”

“Do you like it up?” she enquired naïvely.

“It makes you look older.”

“I want it to.”

“I suppose so,” he nodded, noticing the snowy neck which the new coiffure revealed. It was becoming evident to him that Dulcie had her own vanities – little pathetic vanities which touched him as he glanced at the reconstructed first communion dress and the drooping hyacinth pinned at the waist, and the cheap white slippers on a foot as slenderly constructed as her long and narrow hands.

“Did your mother die long ago, Dulcie?”

“Yes.”

“In America?”

“In Ireland.”

“You look like her, I fancy – ” thinking of Soane.

“I don’t know.”

Barres had heard Soane hold forth in his cups on one or two occasions – nothing more than the vague garrulousness of a Celt made more loquacious by the whiskey of one Grogan – something about his having been a gamekeeper in his youth, and that his wife – “God rest her!” – might have held up her head with “anny wan o’ thim in th’ Big House.”

Recollecting this, he idly wondered what the story might have been – a young girl’s perverse infatuation for her father’s gamekeeper, perhaps – a handsome, common, ignorant youth, reckless and irresponsible enough to take advantage of her – probably some such story – resembling similar histories of chauffeurs, riding-masters, grooms, and coachmen at home.

The Prophet came noiselessly into the studio, stopped at sight of his little mistress, twitched his tail reflectively, then leaped onto a carved table and calmly began his ablutions.

Barres got up and wound up the Victrola. Then he kicked aside a rug or two.

“This is to be a real party, you know,” he remarked. “You don’t dance, do you?”

“Yes,” she said diffidently, “a little.”

“Oh! That’s fine!” he exclaimed.

Dulcie got off the sofa, shook out her reconstructed gown. When he came over to where she stood, she laid her hand in his almost solemnly, so overpowering had become the heavenly sequence of events. For the rite of his hospitality had indeed become a rite to her. Never before had she stood in awe, enthralled before such an altar as this man’s hearthstone. Never had she dreamed that he who so wondrously served it could look at such an offering as hers – herself.

But the miracle had happened; altar and priest were accepting her; she laid her hand, which trembled, in his; gave herself to his guidance and to the celestial music, scarcely seeing, scarcely hearing his voice.

“You dance delightfully,” he was saying; “you’re a born dancer, Dulcie. I do it fairly well myself, and I ought to know.”

He was really very much surprised. He was enjoying it immensely. When the Victrola gave up the ghost he wound it again and came back to resume. Under his suggestions and tutelage, they tried more intricate steps, devious and ambitious, and Dulcie, unterrified by terpsichorean complications, surmounted every one with his whispered coaching and expert aid.

Now it came to a point where time was not for him. He was too interested, enjoying it too genuinely.

Sometimes, when they paused to enable him to resurrect the defunct music in the Victrola, they laughed at the Prophet, who sat upon the ancient carved table, gravely surveying them. Sometimes they rested because 75 he thought she ought to – himself a trifle pumped – only to find, to his amazement, that he need not be solicitous concerning her.

A tall and ancient clock ringing midnight from clear, uncompromising bells, brought Barres to himself.

“Good Lord!” he exclaimed, “this won’t do! Dear child, I’m having a wonderful time, but I’ve got to deliver you to your father!”

He drew her arm through his, laughingly pretending horror and haste; she fled lightly along beside him as he whisked her through the hall and down the stairs.

A candle burned on the desk. Soane sat there, asleep, and odorous of alcohol, his flushed face buried in his arms.

But Soane was what is known as a “sob-souse”; never ugly in his cups, merely inclined to weep over the immemorial wrongs of Ireland.

He woke up when Barres touched his shoulder, rubbed his swollen eyes and black, curly head, gazed tragically at his daughter:

“G’wan to bed, ye little scut!” he said, getting to his feet with a terrific yawn.

Barres took her hand:

“We’ve had a wonderful party, haven’t we, Sweetness?”

“Yes,” whispered the child.

The next instant she was gone like a ghost, through the dusky, whitewashed corridor where distorted shadows trembled in the candlelight.

“Soane,” said Barres, “this won’t do, you know. They’ll sack you if you keep on drinking.”

The man, not yet forty, a battered, middle-aged by-product of hale and reckless vigour, passed his hands 76 over his temples with the dignity of a Hibernian Hamlet:

“The harp that wanst through Tara’s halls – ” he began; but memory failed; and two tears – by-products, also, of Grogan’s whiskey – sparkled in his reproachful eyes.

“I’m merely telling you,” remarked Barres. “We all like you, Soane, but the landlord won’t stand for it.”

“May God forgive him,” muttered Soane. “Was there ever a landlord but he was a tyrant, too?”

Barres blew out the candle; a faint light above the Fu-dog outside, over the street door, illuminated the stone hall.

“You ought to keep sober for your little daughter’s sake,” insisted Barres in a low voice. “You love her, don’t you?”

“I do that!” said Soane – “God bless her and her poor mother, who could hould up her pretty head with anny wan till she tuk up with th’ like o’ me!”

His brogue always increased in his cups; devotion to Ireland and a lofty scorn of landlords grew with both.

“You’d better keep away from Grogan’s,” remarked Barres.

“I had a bite an’ a sup at Grogan’s. Is there anny harrm in that, sorr?”

“Cut out the ‘sup,’ Larry. Cut out that gang of bums at Grogan’s, too. There are too many Germans hanging out around Grogan’s these days. You Sinn Feiners or Clan-na-Gael, or whatever you are, had better manage your own affairs, anyway. The old-time Feinans stood on their own sturdy legs, not on German beer-skids.”

“Wisha then, sorr, d’ye mind th’ ould song they sang in thim days:

“Then up steps BonypartyAn’ takes me by the hand,And how is ould Ireland,And how does she shtand?It’s a poor, disthressed countryAs ever yet was seen,And they’re hangin’ men and womenFor the wearing of the green!Oh, the wearing of the— ”

“That’ll do,” said Barres drily. “Do you want to wake the house? Don’t go to Grogan’s and talk about Ireland to any Germans. I’ll tell you why: we’ll probably be at war with Germany ourselves within a year, and that’s a pretty good reason for you Irish to keep clear of all Germans. Go to bed!”

VI

DULCIE

One warm afternoon late in spring, Dulcie Soane, returning from school to Dragon Court, found her father behind the desk, as usual, awaiting his daughter’s advent, to release him from duty.

A tall, bony man with hectic and sunken cheeks and only a single eye was standing by the desk, earnestly engaged in whispered conversation with her father.

He drew aside instantly as Dulcie came up and laid her school books on the desk. Soane, already redolent of Grogan’s whiskey, pushed back his chair and got to his feet.

“G’wan in f’r a bite an’ a sup,” he said to his daughter, “while I talk to the gintleman.”

So Dulcie went slowly into the superintendent’s dingy quarters for her mid-day meal, which was dinner; and between her and a sloppy scrub-woman who cooked for them, she managed to warm up and eat what Soane had left for her from his own meal.

When she returned to the desk in the hall, the one-eyed man had gone. Soane sat on the chair behind the desk, his face over-red and shiny, his heels drumming the devil’s tattoo on the tessellated pavement.

“I’ll be at Grogan’s,” he said, as Dulcie seated herself in the ancient leather chair behind the desk telephone, and began to sort the pile of mail which the postman evidently had just delivered.

“Very well,” she murmured absently, turning around 79 and beginning to distribute the letters and parcels in the various numbered compartments behind her. Soane slid off his chair to his feet and straightened up, stretching and yawning.

“Av anny wan tilliphones to Misther Barres,” he said, “listen in.”

“What!”

“Listen in, I’m tellin’ you. And if it’s a lady, ask her name first, and then listen in. And if she says her name is Quellen or Dunois, mind what she says to Misther Barres.”

“Why?” enquired Dulcie, astonished.

“Becuz I’m tellin’ ye!”

“I shall not do that,” said the girl, flushing up.

“Ah, bother! Sure, there’s no harm in it, Dulcie! Would I be askin’ ye to do wrong, asthore? Me who is your own blood and kin? Listen then: ’Tis a woman what do be botherin’ the poor young gentleman, an’ I’ll not have him f’r to be put upon. Listen, m’acushla, and if airy a lady tilliphones, or if she comes futtherin’ an’ muttherin’ around here, call me at Grogan’s and I’ll be soon dishposen’ av the likes av her.”

“Has she ever been here – this lady?” asked the girl, uncertain and painfully perplexed.

“Sure has she! Manny’s the time I’ve chased her out,” replied Soane glibly.

“Oh. What does she look like?”

“God knows – annything ye don’t wish f’r to look like yourself! Sure, I disremember what make of woman she might be – her name’s enough for you. Call me up if she comes or rings. She may be a dangerous woman, at that,” he added, “so speak fair to her and listen in to what she says.”

Dulcie slowly nodded, looking at him hard.

Soane put on his faded brown hat at an angle, fished 80 a cigar with a red and gold band from his fancy but soiled waistcoat, scratched a match on the seat of his greasy pants, and sauntered out through the big, whitewashed hallway into the street, with a touch of the swagger which always characterised him.

Dulcie, both hands buried in her ruddy hair and both thin elbows on the desk, sat poring over her school books.

Graduation day was approaching; there was much for her to absorb, much to memorise before then.

As she studied she hummed to herself the air of the quaint song which she was to sing at her graduation exercises. That did not interfere with her concentration; but as she finished one lesson, cast aside the book, and opened another to prepare the next lesson, vaguely happy memories of her evening party with Barres came into her mind to disturb her thoughts, tempting her to reverie and the delicious idleness she knew only when alone and absorbed in thoughts of him.

But she resolutely put him out of her mind and opened her book.

The hall clock ticked loudly through the silence; slanting sun rays fell through the street grille, across the tessellated floor where flies crawled and buzzed.

The Prophet sat full in a bar of sunlight and gravely followed the movements of the flies as though specialising on the study of those amazing insects.

Tenants of Dragon Court passed out or entered at intervals, pausing to glance at their letter-boxes or requesting their keys.

Westmore came down the eastern staircase, like an avalanche, with a cheery:

“Hello, Dulcie! Any letters? All right, old dear! If you see Mr. Mandel, tell him I’ll be at the club!”

Corot Mandel came in presently, and she gave him Westmore’s message.

“Thanks,” he said, not even glancing at the thin figure in the shabby dress too small for her. And, after peering into his letter-box, he went away with the indolent swing of a large and powerful plantigrade, gazing fixedly ahead of him out of heavy, oriental eyes, and twisting up his jet black, waxed moustache.

A tall, handsome girl called and enquired for Mr. Trenor. Dulcie returned her amiable smile, unhooked the receiver, and telephoned up. But nobody answered from Esmé Trenor’s apartment, and the girl, whose name was Damaris Souval, and whose profession varied between the stage and desultory sitting for artists, smiled once more on Dulcie and sauntered out in her very charming summer gown.

The shabby child looked after her through the sunny hallway, the smile still curving her lips – a sensitive, winning smile, untainted by envy. Then she resumed her book, serenely clearing her youthful mind of vanity and desire for earthly things.

Half an hour later Esmé Trenor sauntered in. His was a sensitive nature and fastidious, too. Dinginess, obscurity – everything that was shabby, tarnished, humble in life, he consistently ignored. He had ignored Dulcie Soane for three years: he ignored her now.

He glanced indifferently into his letter-box as he passed the desk. Dulcie said, with the effort it always required for her to speak to him:

“Miss Souval called, but left no message.”

Trenor’s supercilious glance rested on her for the fraction of a second, then, with a bored nod, he continued on his way and up the stairs. And Dulcie returned to her book.

The desk telephone rang: a Mrs. Helmund desired 82 to speak to Mr. Trenor. Dulcie switched her on, rested her chin on her hand, and continued her reading.

Some time afterward the telephone rang again.

“Dragon Court,” said Dulcie, mechanically.

“I wish to speak to Mr. Barres, please.”

“Mr. Barres has not come in from luncheon.”

“Are you sure?” said the pretty, feminine voice.

“Quite sure,” replied Dulcie. “Wait a minute – ”

She called Barres’s apartment; Aristocrates answered and confirmed his master’s absence with courtly effusion.

“No, he is not in,” repeated Dulcie. “Who shall I say called him?”