XXIV
A SILENT HOUSE
The guests from Hohenlinden had departed from Foreland Farms; thefamily had retired. Outside, under a sparkling galaxy of summer stars,tall trees stood unstirring; indoors nothing stirred except the familycat, darkly prowling on velvet-shod feet in eternal search of thoseviewless things which are manifest only to the feline race--sorcerersall, whether quadruped or human.
In various bedrooms upstairs lights went out, one after another, untilonly two windows remained illuminated, one in the west wing, one inthe north.
For Dulcie, in her negligee and night robe, still sat by the openwindow, chin resting on palm, her haunted gaze remotely lost somewherebeyond the July stars.
And, in his room, Garry had arrived only as far as removing coat andwaistcoat in the process of disrobing for the night. For his mind wasstill deeply preoccupied with Dulcie Soane and with the strangeexpression of her face at the piano--and with the profoundly alteredvisage of Murtagh Skeel.
And he was asking himself what could have happened between those twoin such a few minutes there at the piano in the music-room. For it wasevident to him that Skeel was labouring under poorly controlledemotion, was dazed by it, and was recovering self-possession only by amighty effort.
And when Skeel had finally taken his leave and had gone away with theGerhardts, he suddenly stopped on the porch, returned to themusic-room, and, bending down, had kissed Dulcie's hand with a graceand reverence which made the salute more of a serious ceremony thanthe impulsive homage of a romantic poet's whim.
Considered by itself, the abrupt return and quaintly perfect salutemight have been taken as a spontaneous effervescence of thatdelightful Celtic gallantry so easily stirred to ebullition by youthand beauty. And for that it was accepted by the others after MurtaghSkeel was gone; and everybody ventured to chaff Dulcie a little abouther conquest--merely the gentle humour of gentlefolk--a harmless wordor two, a smile in sympathy.
Garry alone saw in the girl's smile no genuine response to the lightbadinage, and he knew that her serenity was troubled, her carelesscomposure forced.
Later, he contrived to say good-night to her alone, and gave her achance to speak; but she only murmured her adieux and went slowly awayup the stairs with Thessalie, not looking back.
* * * * *
Now, sitting there in his dressing-gown, briar pipe alight, he frownedand pondered over the matter in the light of what he already knew ofDulcie, of the dead mother who bore her, of the grotesquely impossibleSoane, of this man, Murtagh Skeel.
What had he and Dulcie found in common to converse about so earnestlyand so long there in the music-room? What had they talked about todrive the colour from Dulcie's cheeks and alter Skeel's countenance sothat he had looked more like his own wraith than his living self?
That Dulcie's mother had known this man, had once, evidently, been inlove with him more or less, doubtless was revealed in theirconversation at the piano. Had Skeel enlightened Dulcie any further?And on what subject? Soane? Her mother? Her origin--in case the childhad admitted ignorance of it? Was Dulcie, now, in possession of newfacts concerning herself? Were they agreeable facts? Were theydepressing? Had she learned anything definite in regard to her birth?Her parentage? Did she know, now, who was her real father? Was theobvious absurdity of Soane finally exploded? Had she learned what thedrunken Soane meant by asserting that her name was not Soane butFane?
His pipe burned out and he laid it aside, but did not rise to resumehis preparation for bed.
Then, somewhere from the unlighted depths of the house came the soundof the telephone bell--at that hour of night always a slightly ominoussound.
He got up and went down stairs, not troubling to switch on any light,for the lustre of the starry night outside silvered every window andmade it possible for him to see his way.
At the clamouring telephone, finally, he unhooked the receiver:
"Hello?" he said. "Yes! Yes! Oh, is that _you_, Renoux? Where on earthare you?... At Northbrook?... Where?... At the Summit House? Well, whydidn't you come here to us?... Oh!... No, it isn't very late. Weretire early at Foreland.... Oh, yes, I'm dressed.... Certainly....Yes, come over.... Yes!... _Yes_!... I'll wait for you in thelibrary.... In an hour?... You bet. No, I'm not sleepy.... Surething!... Come on!"
He hung up the receiver, turned, and made his way through the dusktoward the library which was opposite the music-room across the bigentrance hall.
Before he turned on any light he paused to look out at the splendourof the stars. The night had grown warmer; there was no haze, now, onlyan argentine clarity in which shadowy trees stood mysterious andmotionless and the dim lawn stretched away to the distant avenue andwall, lost against their looming border foliage.
Once he thought he heard a slight sound somewhere in the house behindhim, but presently remembered that the family cat held sway among themice at such an hour.
A little later he turned from the window to light a lamp, and foundhimself facing a slim, white figure in the starry dusk.
"Dulcie!" he exclaimed under his breath.
"I want to talk to you."
"Why on earth are you wandering about at this hour?" he asked. "Youmade me jump, I can tell you."
"I was awake--not in bed yet. I heard the telephone. Then I went outinto the west corridor and saw you going down stairs.... Is it allright for me to sit here in my night dress with you?"
He smiled:
"Well, considering----"
"Of course!" she said hastily, "only I didn't know whether outsideyour studio----"
"Oh, Dulcie, you're becoming self-conscious! Stop it, Sweetness. Don'tspoil things. Here--tuck yourself into this big armchair!--curl up!There you are. And here I am----" dropping into another wide, deepchair. "Lord! but you're a pretty thing, Dulcie, with your hair downand all glimmering with starlight! We'll try painting you that waysome day--I wouldn't know how to go about it offhand, either. Maybe ascreened arc-lamp in a dark partition, and a peep-hole--I don'tknow----"
He lay back in his chair, studying her, and she watched him in silencefor a while. Presently she sighed, stirred, placed her feet on thefloor as though preparing to rise. And he came out of his impersonalabstraction:
"What is it you want to say, Sweetness?"
"Another time," she murmured. "I don't----"
"You dear child, you came to me needing the intimacy of ourcomradeship--perhaps its sympathy. My mind was wandering--you are solovely in the starlight. But you ought to know where my heart is."
"Is it open--a little?"
"Knock and see, Sweetness."
"Well, then, I came to ask you--Mr. Skeel is coming to-morrow--to seeme--alone. Could it be contrived--without offending?"
"I suppose it could.... Yes, of course.... Only it will be conspicuous.You see, Mr. Skeel is much sought after in certain circles--beginning tobe pursued and----"
"He asked me."
"Dear, it's quite all right----"
"Let me tell you, please.... He _did_ know my mother."
"I supposed so."
"Yes. He was the man. I want you to know what he told me.... I alwayswish you to know everything that is in my--mind--always, for ever."
She leaned forward in her chair, her pretty, bare feet extended. Onesilken sleeve of her negligee had fallen to the shoulder, revealingthe perfect symmetry of her arm. But he put from his mind the everlatent artistic delight in her, closed his painter's eye to herprotean possibilities, and resolutely concentrated his mental forcesupon what she was now saying:
"He turns out to be the same man my mother wrote to--and who wrote toher.... They were in love, then. He didn't say why he went away,except that my mother's family disliked him.... She lived at a housecalled Fane Court.... He spoke of my mother's father as Sir BarryFane...."
"That doesn't surprise me, Sweetness."
"Did _you_ know?"
"Nothing definite." He looked at the lovely, slender-limbed girl therein the starry dusk
. "I knew nothing definite," he repeated, "but therewas no mistaking the metal from which you had been made--or the mould,either. And as for Soane----" he smiled.
She said:
"If my name is really Fane, there can be only one conclusion; somekinsman of that name must have married my mother."
He said:
"Of course," very gravely.
"Then who was he? My mother never mentioned him in her letters. Whatbecame of him? He must have been my father. Is he living?"
"Did you ask Mr. Skeel?"
"Yes. He seemed too deeply affected to answer me. He must have lovedmy mother very dearly to show such emotion before me."
"What did you ask him, Dulcie?"
"After we left the piano?"
"Yes."
"I asked him that. I had only a few more moments alone with him beforehe left. I asked him about my mother--to tell me how she looked--so Icould think of her more clearly. He has a picture of her on ivory. Heis to bring it to me and tell me more about her. That is why I mustsee him to-morrow--so I may ask him again about my father."
"Yes, dear...." He sat very silent for a while, then rose, came over,and seated himself on the padded arm of Dulcie's chair, and took bothher hands into his:
"Listen, Sweetness. You are what you are to me--my dear comrade, myfaithful partner sharing our pretty partnership in art; and, more thanthese, Dulcie, you are my friend.... Never doubt that. Never forgetit. Nothing can alter it--nothing you learn about your origin canexalt that friendship.... Nothing lessen it. Do you understand?_Nothing_ can _lessen_ it, save only if you prove untrue to what youare--your real self."
She had rested her cheek against his arm while he was speaking. It laythere now, pressed closer.
"As for Murtagh Skeel," he said, "he is a charming, cultivated,fascinating man. But if he attempts to carry out his agitator'sschemes and his revolutionary propaganda in this country, he is headedfor most serious trouble."
"Why does he?"
"Don't ask me why men of his education and character do such things.They do; that's all I know. Sir Roger Casement is another man notunlike Skeel. There are many, hot-hearted, generous, brave,irrational. There is no use blaming them--no justice in it, either.The history of British rule in Ireland is a matter of record.
"But, Dulcie, he who strikes at England to-day strikes at civilisation,at liberty, at God! This is no time to settle old grievances. And toattempt to do it by violence, by propaganda--to attempt a reckoning ofancient wrongs in any way, to-day, is a crime--the crime of treacheryagainst Christ's teachings--of treason against Lord Christ Himself!"
After a long interval:
"You are going to this war quite soon. Mr. Westmore said so."
"I am going--with my country or without it."
"When?"
"When I finally lose patience and self-respect.... I don't knowexactly when, but it will be pretty soon."
"Could I go with you?"
"Do you wish to?"
She pressed her cheek against his arm in silence.
He said:
"That has troubled me a lot, Dulcie. Of course you could stay here; Ican arrange--I had come to a conclusion in regard to financialmatters----"
"I can't," she whispered.
"Can't what?"
"Stay here--take anything from you--accept without service inreturn."
"What would you do?"
"I wouldn't care--if you--leave me here alone."
"But, Dulcie----"
"I know. You said it this evening. There will come a time when youwould not find it convenient to have me--around----"
"Dear, it's only because a man and a woman in this world cannotcontinue anything of enduring intimacy without business as an excuse.And even then, the pleasant informality existing now could not becontinued with anything except very serious disadvantage to you."
"You will grow tired of painting me," she said under her breath.
"No. But your life is all before you, Dulcie. Girls usually marrysooner or later."
"Men do too."
"That's not what I meant----"
"You will marry," she whispered.
Again, at her words, the same odd uneasiness began to possess him asthough something obscure, unformulated as yet, must some day becleared up by him and decided.
"Don't leave me--yet," she said.
"I couldn't take you with me to France."
"Let me enlist for service. Could you be patient for a few months sothat I might learn something--anything!--I don't care what, if only Ican go with you? Don't they require women to scrub and do unpleasantthings--humble, unclean, necessary things?"
"You couldn't--with your slender youth and delicate beauty----"
"Oh," she whispered, "you don't know what I could do to be near you!That is all I want--all I want in the world!--just to be somewhere nottoo far away. I couldn't stand it, now, if you left me.... I couldn'tlive----"
"Dulcie!"
But, suddenly, it was a hot-faced, passionate, sobbing child who wasclinging desperately to his arm and staunching her tears againstit--saying nothing more, merely clinging close with quivering lips.
"Listen," he said impulsively. "I'll give you time. If there'sanything you can learn that will admit you to France, come back totown with me and learn it.... Because I don't want to leave you,either.... There ought to be some way--some way----" He checkedhimself abruptly, stared at the bowed head under its torrent ofsplendid hair--at the desperate white little hands holding so fast tohis sleeve, at the slender body gathered there in the deep chair, andall aquiver now.
"We'll go--together," he said unsteadily.... "I'll do what I can; Ipromise.... You must go upstairs to bed, now.... Dulcie!... deargirl...."
She released his arm, tried to get up from her chair obediently,blinded by tears and groping in the starlight.
"Let me guide you----" His voice was strained, his touch feverish andunsteady, and the convulsive closing of her fingers over his seemed toburn to his very bones.
At the stairs she tried to speak, thanking him, asking pardon for hertears, her loss of self-command, penitent, afraid that she had loweredherself, strained his friendship--troubled him----
"No. I--_want_ you," he said in an odd, indistinct, hesitating voice...."Things must be cleared up--matters concerning us--affairs----" hemuttered.
She closed her eyes a moment and rested both hands on the banisters asthough fatigued, then she looked down at him where he stood watchingher:
"If you had rather go without me--if it is better for you--lesstroublesome----"
"I've told you," he said in a dull voice, "I want you. You must fityourself to go."
"You are so kind to me--so wonderful----"
He merely stared at her; she turned almost wearily to resume herascent.
"Dulcie!"
She had reached the landing above. She bent over, looking down at himin the dusk.
"Did you understand?"
"I--yes, I think so."
"That I _want_ you?"
"Yes."
"It is true. I want you always. I'm just beginning to understand thatmyself. Please don't ever forget what I say to you now, Dulcie; I wantyou. I shall always want you. Always! As long as I live."
She leaned heavily on the newel-post above, looking down.
He could not see that her eyes were closed, that her lips moved invoiceless answer. She was only a vague white shape there in the duskabove him--a mystery which seemed to have been suddenly born out ofsome poignant confusion of his own mind.
He saw her turn, fade into the darkness. And he stood there, notmoving, aware of the chaos within him, of shapeless questions beingevolved out of this profound disturbance--of an inner consciousnessgroping with these questions--questions involving other questions andmenacing him with the necessity of decision.
After a while, too, he became conscious of his own voice soundingthere in the darkness:
"I am very near to love.... I have been close to it.... It would bevery
easy to fall in love to-night.... But I am wondering--aboutto-morrow.... And afterward.... But I have been very near--very nearto love, to-night...."
The front doorbell rang through the darkness.