The Moonlit Way Part 23

"All right," replied the child happily. And the morning seance was on.

Barres was usually inclined to ramble along conversationally in his pleasant, detached way while at work, particularly if work went well.

"Where were we yesterday, Dulcie? Oh, yes; we were talking about the Victorian era and its art; and we decided that it was not the barren desert that the ultra-moderns would have us believe. That's what we decided, wasn't it?"

"_You_ decided," she said.

"So did you, Dulcie. It was a unanimous decision. Because we both concluded that some among the Victorians were full of that sweet, clean sanity which alone endures. You recollect how our decision started?"

"Yes. It was about my new pleasure in Tennyson, Browning, Morris, Arnold, and Swinburne."

"Exactly. Victorian poets, if sometimes a trifle stilted and self-conscious, wrote n.o.bly; makers of Victorian prose displayed qualities of breadth, imagination and vision and a technical cultivation unsurpa.s.sed. The musical compositions of that epoch were melodious and sometimes truly inspired; never brutal, never vulgar, never degenerate. And the Victorian sculptors and painters--at first perhaps austerely pedantic--became, as they should be, recorders of the times and customs of thought, bringing the end of the reign of a great Queen to an admirable renaissance."

Dulcie's grey eyes never left his. And if she did not quite understand every word, already the dawning familiarity with his vocabulary and a general comprehension of his modes of self-expansion permitted her to follow him.

"A great Queen, a great reign, a great people," he rambled on, painting away all the while. "And if in that era architecture declined toward its lowest level of stupidity, and if taste in furniture and in the plastic, decorative, and textile arts was steadily sinking toward its lowest ebb, and if Mrs. Grundy trudged the Empire, paramount, dull and smugly ferocious, while all sn.o.bbery saluted her and the humble grovelled before her dusty brogans, yet, Dulcie, it was a great era.

"It was great because its faith had not been radically impaired; it was sane because Germany had not yet inoculated the human race with its porcine political vulgarities, its b.e.s.t.i.a.l degeneracy in art....

And if, perhaps, the sentimental in British art and literature predominated, thank G.o.d it had not yet been tainted with the stark ugliness, the swinish nakedness, the ferocious leer of things Teutonic!"

He continued to paint in silence for a while. Presently the Prophet yawned on Dulcie's knees, displaying a pink cavern.

"Better rest," he said, nodding smilingly at Dulcie. She released the cat, who stretched, arched his back, yawned again gravely, and stalked away over the velvety Eastern carpet.

Dulcie got up lithely and followed him on little jade-encrusted, naked feet.

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 hand she groped for a bon-bon, her grey eyes riveted on the pages before her.

During these intervals between poses it was the young man's custom to make chalk sketches of the girl, recording swiftly any unstudied att.i.tude, any unconscious phase of youthful grace that interested him.

Dulcie, in the beginning, diffidently aware of this, had now become entirely accustomed to it, and no longer felt any responsibility to remain motionless while he was busy with red chalk or charcoal.

When she had rested sufficiently, she laid aside her book, hunted up the Prophet, who lazily endured the gentle tyranny, and resumed her place on the model stand.

And so they worked away all the morning, until luncheon was served in the studio by Aristocrates; and Barres in his blouse, and Dulcie in her peac.o.c.k silk, her jade, and naked feet, gravely or lightly as their moods dictated, discussed an omelette and a pot of tea or chocolate, and the ways and manners and customs of a world which Dulcie now was discovering as a brand new and most enchanting planet.

IX

HER DAY

June was ending in a very warm week. Work in the studio lagged, partly because Dulcie, preparing for graduation, could give Barres little time; partly because, during June, that young man had been away spending the week-ends with his parents and his sister at Foreland Farms, their home.

From one of these visits he returned to the city just in time to read a frantic little note from Dulcie Soane:

"DEAR MR. BARRES, please, _please_ come to my graduation. I do want _somebody_ there who knows me. And my father is not well. Is it too much to ask of you? I hadn't the courage to speak to you about it when you were here, but I have ventured to write because it will be so lonely for me to graduate without having anybody there I know.

"DULCIE SOANE."

It was still early in the morning; he had taken a night train to town.

So when he had been freshened by a bath and change of linen, he took his hat and went down stairs.

A heavy, pasty-visaged young woman sat at the desk in the entrance hall.

"Where is Soane?" he inquired.

"He's sick."

"_Where_ is he?"

"In bed," she replied indifferently. The woman's manner just verged on impertinence. He hesitated, then walked across to the superintendent's apartments and entered without knocking.

Soane, in his own room, lay sleeping off the consequences of an evening at Grogan's. One glance was sufficient for Barres, and he walked out.

On Madison Avenue he found a florist, selected a bewildering bouquet, and despatched it with a hasty note, by messenger, to Dulcie at her school. In the note he wrote:

"I shall be there. Cheer up!"

He also sent more flowers to his studio, with pencilled orders to Aristocrates.

In a toy-shop he found an appropriate decoration for the centre of the lunch table.

Later, in a jeweller's, he discovered a plain gold locket, shaped like a heart and inset with one little diamond. A slender chain by which to suspend it was easily chosen; and an extra payment admitted him to the emergency department where he looked on while an expert engraved upon the locket: "Dulcie Soane from Garret Barres," and the date.

After that he went into the nearest telephone booth and called up several people, inviting them to dine with him that evening.

It was nearly ten o'clock now. He took his little gift, stopped a taxi, and arrived at the big brick high-school just in time to enter with the last straggling parents and family friends.

The hall was big and austerely bare, except for the ribbons and flags and palms which decorated it. It was hot, too, though all the great blank windows had been swung open wide.

The usual exercises had already begun; there were speeches from Authority; prayers by Divinity; choral effects by graduating pulchritude.

The cla.s.s, attired in white, appeared to average much older than Dulcie. He could see her now, in her reconstructed communion dress, holding the big bouquet which he had sent her, one madonna lily of which she had detached and pinned over her breast.

Her features were composed and delicately flushed; her bobbed hair was tucked up, revealing the snowy neck.

One girl after another advanced and read or spoke, performing the particular parlour trick a.s.signed her in the customary and perfectly unremarkable manner characteristic of such affairs.

Rapturous parental demonstrations greeted each effort; piano, violin and harp filled in n.o.bly. A slight haze of dust, incident to pedalistic applause, invaded the place; there was an odour of flowers in the heated atmosphere.

Glancing at a programme which he had found on his seat, Barres read: "Song: Dulcie Soane."

Looking up at her where she sat on the stage, among her comrades in white, he noticed that her eyes were busy searching the audience--possibly for him, he thought, experiencing an oddly pleasant sensation at the possibility.