VIII
DULCIE ANSWERS
The studio door bell rang while Barres was at breakfast one morninglate in June. Aristocrates leisurely answered the door, but shut itagain immediately and walked out into the kitchenette without anyexplanation.
Selinda removed the breakfast cover and fetched the newspaper. Later,Aristocrates, having washed his master's brushes, brought them intothe studio mincingly, upon a silver service-salver.
"No letters?" inquired Barres, glancing up over the morning paper andlaying aside his cigarette.
"No letters, suh. No co'espondence in any shape, fo'm or manner,suh."
"Anybody to see me?" inquired Barres, always amused at Aristocrates'flights of verbiage.
"Nobody, suh, excusin' a persistless 'viduality inquihin' fo' you,suh."
"What persistless individuality was that?" asked Barres.
"A ve'y or-nary human objec', suh, pahshially afflicted with one badeye."
"That one-eyed man? He's been here several times, hasn't he? Why doeshe come?"
"Fo' commercial puhposes, suh."
"Oh, a pedlar?"
"He mentions a desiah, suh, to dispose, commercially, of vahiousimpo'ted materials requiahed by ahtists."
"Didn't you show him the sign in the hall, 'No pedlars allowed'?"
"Yaas, suh."
"What did he say?"
"I would not demean myse'f to repeat what this human objec' said,suh."
"And what did you do then?"
"Mistuh Barres, suh, I totally igno'hed that man," replied Aristocrateslanguidly.
"Quite right. But you tell Soane to enforce the rule against pedlars.Every day there are two or three of them ringing at the studio, tryingto sell colours, laces, or fake oriental rugs. It annoys me. Selindacan't hear the bell and I have to leave my work and open the door.Tell that persistless one-eyed man to keep away. Tell Soane to bouncehim next time he enters Dragon Court. Do you understand?"
"Yaas, suh. But Soane, suh, he's a might friendly Irish. He's spo'tin''round Grogan's nights, 'longa this here one-eyed 'viduality. Yaas,suh. I done seen 'em co-gatherin' on vahious occasionalities."
"Oho!" commented Barres. "It's graft, is it? This one-eyed pedlarmeets Soane at Grogan's and bribes him with a few drinks to let himpeddle colours in Dragon Court! That's the Irish of it, Aristocrates.I began to suspect something like that. All right. I'll speak to Soanemyself.... Leave the studio door open; it's warm in here."
* * * * *
The month of May was now turning somewhat sultry as it melted intoJune. Every pivot-pane in the big studio window had been swung wideopen. The sun had already clothed every courtyard tree with dense andtender foliage; hyacinth and tulip were gone and Soane's subscriptiongeraniums blazed in their place like beds of coals heaped up on thegrass plot of Dragon Court.
But blue sky, sunshine of approaching summer, gentle winds andfreshening rains brought only restlessness to New Yorkers that monthof May.
Like the first two years of the war, the present year seemed strange,unreal; its vernal breezes brought no balm, its blue skies no content.The early summer sunlight seemed almost uncanny in a world where,beyond the sea, millions of men at arms swayed ceaselessly under sunand moon alike, interlocked in one gigantic death grip!--a horribleand blood-drenched human chain of butchery stretching half around theearth.
Into every Western human eye had come strange and subtle shadows whichdid not depart with moments of forgetful mirth, intervals ofself-absorption, hours filled with familiar interests--the passions,hopes, perplexities of those years which were now no more.
Those years of yesterdays! A vast and depthless cleft already dividedthem from to-day. They seemed as remote as dusty centuries--those daysof an ordered and tranquil world--those days of little obvious faithsunshattered--even those days of little wars, of petty local strifes,of an almost universal calm and peace and trust in brotherhood and inthe obligations of civilisation.
Familiar yesterday had vanished, its creeds forgotten. It was alreadydecades away, and fading like a legend in the ever-increasing glare ofthe red and present moment.
And the month of May seemed strange, and its soft skies and sun seemedout of place in a world full of dying--a world heavy with death--awestern world aloof from the raging hell beyond the seas, yet alreadytense under the distant threat of three continents in flames--and allaquiver before the deathly menace of that horde of blood-crazed demonsstill at large, still unsubdued, still ranging the ruins of the planetwhich they had so insanely set on fire.
Entire nations were still burning beyond the ocean; other nations hadsunk into cinders. Over the Eastern seas the furnace breath began tobe felt along the out-thrust coast lines of the Western World. Inland,not yet; but every seaward city became now conscious of that firstfaint warning wave of heat from hell. Millions of ears strained tocatch the first hushed whisper of the tumult. Silent in its suspensethe Great Republic listened. Only the priesthood of the deaf andwooden gods continued voluble. But Israel had already begun to lift upits million eyes; and its ancient faith began to glow again; and itstrust was becoming once more a living thing--the half-forgotten trustof Israel in that half-forgotten Lord, who, in the beginning, had beentheir helper and their shield.
* * * * *
Through the open studio door came Dulcie Soane. The Prophet followedat her slender heels, gently waving an urbane tail.
* * * * *
After his first smiling greeting--he always rose, advanced, and tookher hand with that pleasant appearance of formality so adored byfemininity, youthful or mature--he resumed his seat and continued towrite his letters.
These finished, he stamped them, rang for Aristocrates, picked up hispalette and brushes, and pulled out the easel upon which was thecanvas for the morning.
Dulcie, still in the hands of Selinda, had not yet emerged. TheProphet sat upright on the carved table, motionless as a cat of ebonywith green-jewelled eyes.
"Well, old sport," said Barres, stepping across the rug to caress thecat, "you and your pretty mistress begin to look very interesting onmy canvas."
The Prophet received the blandishments with dignified gratitude. Adiscreet and feathery purring filled the room as Barres stroked thejet black, silky fur.
"Fine cat, you are," commented the young man, turning as Dulcieentered.
She laid one hand on his extended arm and sprang lightly to the modelstand. And the next moment she was seated--a slim, gemmed thingglimmering with imperial jade from top to toe.
Barres laid the Prophet in her arms, stepped back while Dulciearranged the docile cat, then retreated to his canvas.
"All right, Sweetness?"
"All right," replied the child happily. And the morning seance wason.
Barres was usually inclined to ramble along conversationally in hispleasant, detached way while at work, particularly if work went well.
"Where were we yesterday, Dulcie? Oh, yes; we were talking about theVictorian era and its art; and we decided that it was not the barrendesert that the ultra-moderns would have us believe. That's what wedecided, wasn't it?"
"_You_ decided," she said.
"So did you, Dulcie. It was a unanimous decision. Because we bothconcluded that some among the Victorians were full of that sweet,clean sanity which alone endures. You recollect how our decisionstarted?"
"Yes. It was about my new pleasure in Tennyson, Browning, Morris,Arnold, and Swinburne."
"Exactly. Victorian poets, if sometimes a trifle stilted andself-conscious, wrote nobly; makers of Victorian prose displayedqualities of breadth, imagination and vision and a technicalcultivation unsurpassed. The musical compositions of that epoch weremelodious and sometimes truly inspired; never brutal, never vulgar,never degenerate. And the Victorian sculptors and painters--at firstperhaps austerely pedantic--became, as they should be, recorders ofthe times and customs of thought, bringing the end of the reign of agreat Que
en to an admirable renaissance."
Dulcie's grey eyes never left his. And if she did not quite understandevery word, already the dawning familiarity with his vocabulary and ageneral comprehension of his modes of self-expansion permitted her tofollow him.
"A great Queen, a great reign, a great people," he rambled on,painting away all the while. "And if in that era architecture declinedtoward its lowest level of stupidity, and if taste in furniture and inthe plastic, decorative, and textile arts was steadily sinking towardits lowest ebb, and if Mrs. Grundy trudged the Empire, paramount, dulland smugly ferocious, while all snobbery saluted her and the humblegrovelled before her dusty brogans, yet, Dulcie, it was a great era.
"It was great because its faith had not been radically impaired; itwas sane because Germany had not yet inoculated the human race withits porcine political vulgarities, its bestial degeneracy in art....And if, perhaps, the sentimental in British art and literaturepredominated, thank God it had not yet been tainted with the starkugliness, the swinish nakedness, the ferocious leer of thingsTeutonic!"
He continued to paint in silence for a while. Presently the Prophetyawned on Dulcie's knees, displaying a pink cavern.
"Better rest," he said, nodding smilingly at Dulcie. She released thecat, who stretched, arched his back, yawned again gravely, and stalkedaway over the velvety Eastern carpet.
Dulcie got up lithely and followed him on little jade-encrusted, nakedfeet.
A box of bon-bons lay on the sofa; she picked up Rossetti's poems,turned the leaves with jewel-laden fingers, while with the other handshe groped for a bon-bon, her grey eyes riveted on the pages beforeher.
During these intervals between poses it was the young man's custom tomake chalk sketches of the girl, recording swiftly any unstudiedattitude, any unconscious phase of youthful grace that interestedhim.
Dulcie, in the beginning, diffidently aware of this, had now becomeentirely accustomed to it, and no longer felt any responsibility toremain motionless while he was busy with red chalk or charcoal.
When she had rested sufficiently, she laid aside her book, hunted upthe Prophet, who lazily endured the gentle tyranny, and resumed herplace on the model stand.
And so they worked away all the morning, until luncheon was served inthe studio by Aristocrates; and Barres in his blouse, and Dulcie inher peacock silk, her jade, and naked feet, gravely or lightly astheir moods dictated, discussed an omelette and a pot of tea orchocolate, and the ways and manners and customs of a world whichDulcie now was discovering as a brand new and most enchanting planet.