The Moonlit Way Part 34

"It is her evening off."

"Then your father ought to be here," he said, irritated, looking around the big, empty hallway.

But Dulcie only smiled and held out her slim hand:

"I couldn't sleep, anyway. I had really much rather sit here for a while and dream it all over again. Good-night.... Thank you--I can't say what I feel--but m-my heart is very faithful to you, Mr.

Barres--will always be--while I am alive ... because you are my first friend."

He stooped impulsively and touched her hair with his lips:

"You dear child," he said, "I _am_ your friend."

Halfway up the western staircase he called back:

"Ring me up, Dulcie, when the last mail comes!"

"I will," she nodded, almost blindly.

Out of her lovely, abashed eyes she watched him mount the stairs, her cheeks a riot of surging colour. It was some few minutes after he was gone that she recollected herself, turned, and, slowly traversing the east corridor, entered her bedroom.

Standing there in darkness, vaguely silvered by reflected moonlight, she heard through her door ajar the guests of the evening descending the western staircase; heard their gay adieux exchanged, distinguished Esme's impudent drawl, Westmore's lively accents, Mandel's voice, the easy laughter of Damaris, the smooth, affected tones of Mrs. Helmund.

But Dulcie listened in vain for the voice which had haunted her ears since she had left the studio--the lovely voice of Thessalie Dunois.

If this radiant young creature also had departed with the other guests, she had gone away in silence.... _Had_ she departed? Or was she still lingering upstairs in the studio for a little chat with the most wonderful man in the world?... A very, very beautiful girl....

And the most wonderful man in the world. Why should they not linger for a little chat together after the others had departed?

Dulcie sighed lightly, pensively, as one whose happiness lies in the happiness of others. To be a witness seemed enough for her.

For a little while longer she remained standing there in the silvery dusk, quite motionless, thinking of Barres.

The Prophet lay asleep, curled up on her bed; her alarm clock ticked noisily in the darkness, as though to mimic the loud, fast rhythm of her heart.

At last, and as in a dream, she groped for a match, lighted the gas jet, and began to disrobe. Slowly, dreamily, she put from her slender body the magic garments of light--_his_ gift to her.

But under these magic garments, clothing her newborn soul, remained the radiant rainbow robe of that new dawn into which this man had led her spirit. Did it matter, then, what dingy, outworn clothing covered her, outside?

Clad once more in her shabby, familiar clothes, and bedroom slippers, Dulcie opened the door of her dim room, and crept out into the whitewashed hall, moving as in a trance. And at her heels stalked the Prophet, softly, like a lithe shape that glides through dreams.

Awaiting the last mail, seated behind the desk on the worn leather chair, she dropped her linked fingers into her lap, and gazed straight into an invisible world peopled with enchanting phantoms. And, little by little, they began to crowd her vision, throng all about her, laughing, rosy wraiths floating, drifting, whirling in an endless dance. Everywhere they were invading the big, silent hall, where the candle's grotesque shadows wavered across whitewashed wall and ceiling. Drowsily, now, she watched them play and sway around her. Her head drooped; she opened her eyes.

The Prophet sat there, staring back at her out of depthless...o...b.. of jade, in which all the wisdom and mysteries of the centuries seemed condensed and concentrated into a pair of living sparks.

XII

THE LAST MAIL

The last mail had not yet arrived at Dragon Court.

Five people awaited it--Dulcie Soane, behind the desk in the entrance hall, already wandering drowsily with Barres along the fairy borderland of sleep; Thessalie Dunois in Barres' studio, her rose-coloured evening cloak over her shoulders, her slippered foot tapping the dance-scarred parquet; Barres opposite, deep in his favourite armchair, chatting with her; Soane on the roof, half stupid with drink, watching them through the ventilator; and, lurking in the moonlit court, outside the office window, the dimly sinister figure of the one-eyed man. He wore a white handkerchief over his face, with a single hole cut in it. Through this hole his solitary optic was now fixed upon the back of Dulcie's drowsy head.

As for the Prophet, perched on the desk top, he continued to gaze upon shapes invisible to all things mortal save only such as he.

The postman's lively whistle aroused Dulcie. The Prophet, knowing him, observed his advent with indifference.

"h.e.l.lo, girlie," he said;--he was a fresh-faced and flippant young man. "Where's Pop?" he added, depositing a loose sheaf of letters on the desk before her and sketching in a few jig steps with his feet.

"I don't know," she murmured, patting with one slim hand her pink and yawning lips, and watching him unlock the post-box and collect the outgoing mail. He lingered a moment to caress the Prophet, who endured it without grat.i.tude.

"You better go to bed if you want to grow up to be a big, sa.s.sy girl some day," he advised Dulcie. "And hurry up about it, too, because I'm going to marry you if you behave." And, with a last affable caress for the Prophet, the young man went his way, singing to himself, and slamming the iron grille smartly behind him.

Dulcie, rising from her chair, sorted the mail, sleepily tucking each letter and parcel into its proper pigeon-hole. There was a thick letter for Barres. This she held in her left hand, remembering his request that she call him up when the last mail arrived.

This she now prepared to do--had already reseated herself, her right hand extended toward the telephone, when a shadow fell across the desk, and the Prophet turned, snarled, struck, and fled.

At the same instant grimy fingers s.n.a.t.c.hed at the letter which she still held in her left hand, twisted it almost free of her desperate clutch, tore it clean in two at one violent jerk, leaving her with half the letter still gripped in her clenched fist.

She had not uttered a sound during the second's struggle. But instantly an ungovernable rage blazed up in her at the outrage, and she leaped clean over the desk and sprang at the throat of the one-eyed man.

His neck was bony and muscular; she could not compa.s.s it with her slender hands, but she struck at it furiously, driving a sound out of his throat, half roar, half cough.

"Give me my letter!" she breathed. "I'll kill you if you don't!" Her furious little hands caught his clenched fist, where the torn letter protruded, and she tore at it and beat upon it, her teeth set and her grey Irish eyes afire.

Twice the one-eyed man flung her to her knees on the pavement, but she was up again and clinging to him before he could tear free of her.

"My letter!" she gasped. "I shall kill you, I tell you--unless you return it!"

His solitary yellow eye began to glare and glitter as he wrenched and dragged at her wrists and arms about him.

"Schweinstuck!" he panted. "Let los, mioche de malheur! Eh! Los!--or I strike! No? Also! Attrape!--sale gallopin!----"

His blow knocked her reeling across the hall. Against the whitewashed wall she collapsed to her knees, got up half stunned, the clang of the outer grille ringing in her very brain.

With dazed eyes she gazed at the remnants of the torn letter, still crushed in her rigid fingers. Bright drops of blood from her mouth dripped slowly to the tessellated pavement.

Reeling still from the shock of the blow, she managed to reach the outer door, and stood swaying there, striving to pierce with confused eyes the lamplit darkness of the street. There was no sign of the one-eyed man. Then she turned and made her way back to the desk, supporting herself with a hand along the wall.

Waiting a few moments to control her breathing and her shaky limbs, she contrived finally to detach the receiver and call Barres. Over the wire she could hear the gramophone playing again in the studio.

"Please may I come up?" she whispered.