The Moonlit Way Part 64

"Is it all right?" he whispered.

"I think so."

Barres turned and grasped Renoux by one hand.

The latter said:

"There is not the slightest doubt in my mind, mon ami. You were perfectly right. A frightful injustice has been done in this matter.

Of that I am absolutely convinced."

"You will do what you can to set things right?"

"Of course," said Renoux simply.

There was a moment's silence, then Renoux smiled:

"You know," he said lightly, "we French have a horror of any more mistakes like the Dreyfus case. We are terribly sensitive. Be a.s.sured that my Government will take up this affair instantly upon receiving my report."

He turned to Barres:

"Would you, perhaps, offer me a day's hospitality at your home in the country, if I should request it by telegram sometime this week or next?"

"You bet," replied Barres cordially.

Then Renoux made his adieux, as only such a Frenchman can make them, saying exactly the right thing to each, in exactly the right manner.

When he was gone, Barres took Thessalie's hands and pressed them:

"Pretty merle-blanc, your little friend Dulcie is already asleep. Tell us to-morrow how you convinced him that you are what you are--the dearest, sweetest girl in the world!"

She laughed demurely, then glanced apprehensively, sideways, at Westmore.

And the mute but infuriated expression on that young man's countenance seemed to cause her the loss of all self-possession, for she cast one more look at him and fled with a hasty "good-night!"

XXII

FORELAND FARMS

Toward three o'clock on the following afternoon the sun opened up like a searchlight through the veil of rain, dissolving it to a golden haze which gradually grew thinner and thinner, revealing glimpses of rolling country against a horizon of low mountains.

About the same time the covered station wagon turned in between the white gates of Foreland Farms, proceeded at a smart trot up the drive, and stopped under a dripping porte-cochere, where a smiling servant stood waiting to lift out the luggage.

A trim looking man of forty odd, in soft s.h.i.+rt and fawn coloured knickers, and wearing a monocle in his right eye and a flower in his b.u.t.tonhole, came out on the porch as Barres and his guests descended.

"Well, Garry," he said, "I'm glad you're home at last! But you're rather late for the fis.h.i.+ng." And to Westmore:

"How are you, Jim? Jolly to have you back! But I regret to inform you that the fis.h.i.+ng is very poor just now."

His son, who stood an inch or two taller than his debonaire parent, pa.s.sed one arm around his shoulders and patted them affectionately while the easy presentations were concluded.

At the same moment two women, beautifully mounted and very wet, galloped up to the porch and welcomed Garry's guests from their saddles in the pleasant, informal, incurious manner characteristic of Foreland Farm folk--a manner which seemed too amiably certain of itself to feel responsibility for anybody or anything else.

Easy, unconcerned, slender and clean-built women these--Mrs. Reginald Barres, Garry's mother, and her daughter, Lee. And in their smart, rain-wet riding clothes they might easily have been sisters, with a few years' difference between them, so agreeably had Time behaved toward Mrs. Barres, so closely her fair-haired, fair-skinned daughter resembled her.

They swung carelessly out of their saddles and set spurred foot to turf, and, with Garret and his guests, sauntered into the big living hall, where a maid waited with wine and biscuits and the housekeeper lingered to conduct Thessalie and Dulcie to their rooms.

Dulcie Soane, in her pretty travelling gown, walked beside Mrs.

Reginald Barres into the first great house she had ever entered.

Composed, but shyly enchanted, an odd but delightful sensation possessed her that she was where she belonged--that such environment, such people should always have been familiar to her--were logical and familiar to her now.

Mrs. Barres was saying:

"And if you like parties, there is always gaiety at Northbrook. But you don't have to go anywhere or do anything you don't wish to."

Dulcie said, diffidently, that she liked everything, and Mrs. Barres laughed.

"Then you'll be very popular," she said, tossing her riding crop onto the table and stripping off her wet gloves.

Barres senior was already in serious confab with Westmore concerning piscatorial conditions, the natural low water of midsummer, the capricious conduct of the trout in the streams and in the upper and lower lakes.

"They won't look at anything until sunset," he explained, "and then they don't mean business. You'll see, Jim. I'm sorry; you should have come in June."

Lee, Garret's boyishly slim sister, had already begun to exchange opinions about horses with Thessalie, for both had been familiar with the saddle since childhood, though the latter's Cossack horsemans.h.i.+p and mastery of the haute ecole, incident to her recent and irregular profession, might have astonished Lee Barres.

Mrs. Barres was saying to Dulcie:

"We don't try to entertain one another here, but everybody seems to have a perfectly good time. The main thing is that we all feel quite free at Foreland. You'll lose yourself indoors at first. The family for a hundred years has been adding these absurd two-story wings, so that the house wanders at random over the landscape, and you may have to inquire your way about in the beginning."

She smiled again at Dulcie and took her hand in both of hers:

"I'm sure you will like the Farms," she said, linking her other arm through her son's. "I'm rather wet, Garry," she added, "but I think Lee and I had better dry out in the saddle." And to Dulcie again: "Tea at five, if anybody wishes it. Would you like to see your room?"

Thessalie, conversing with Lee, turned smilingly to be included in the suggestion; and the maid came forward to conduct her and Dulcie through the intricacies of the big, casual, sprawling house, where rooms and corridors and halls rambled unexpectedly and irrelevantly in every direction, and one vista seemed to terminate in another.

When they had disappeared, the Barres family turned to inspect its son and heir with habitual and humorous insouciance, commenting frankly upon his personal appearance and concluding that his health still remained all that could be desired by the most solicitous of parents and sisters.

"There are rods already rigged up in the work-room," remarked his father, "if you and your guests care to try a dry-fly this evening. As for me, you'll find me somewhere around the upper lake, if you care to look for me----"

He fished out of his pocket a bewildering tangle of fine mist-leaders, and, leisurely disentangling them, strolled toward the porch, still talking:

"There's only one fly they deign to notice, now--a dust-coloured midge tied in reverse with no hackle, no tinsel, a May-fly tail, and barred canary wing----" He nodded wisely over his shoulder at his son and Westmore, as though sharing with them a delightful secret of world-wide importance, and continued on toward the porch, serenely interested in his tangled leaders.

Garret glanced at his mother and sister; they both laughed. He said: