As the young fellow sat there watching her, all the petty gossip of Europe came back to him anecdotes, panegyrics, eulogies, scandals, stage chatter, Quarter divers, paid réclames all that he had ever read and heard about this notorious young girl, now seated there 52 across the table, with her pretty head framed by slender, unjewelled fingers. He remembered the gems she had worn that June night, a year ago, and their magnificence.
Well, she said, life is a pleasantry, a jest, a bon-mot flung over his shoulder by some god too drunk with nectar to invent a better joke. Life is an Olympian epigram made between immortal yawns. What do you think of my epigram, Garry?
I think you are just as clever and amusing as I remember you, Nihla.
Amusing to you, perhaps. But I dont entertain myself very successfully. I dont think poverty is a very funny joke. Do you?
Poverty! he repeated, smiling his unbelief.
She smiled too, displayed her pretty, ringless hands humorously, for his inspection, then framed her oval face between them again and made a deliberate grimace.
All gone, she said. I am, as you say, here on my uppers.
I cant understand, Nihla
Dont try to. It doesnt concern you. Also, please forget me as Nihla Quellen. I told you that Ive taken my sisters name, Thessalie Dunois.
But all Europe knows you as Nihla Quellen
Listen! she interrupted sharply. I have troubles enough. Dont add to them, or I shall be sorry I met you again. I tell you my name is Thessa. Please remember it.
Very well, he said, reddening under the rebuke.
She noted the painful colour in his face, then looked elsewhere, indifferently. Her features remained expressionless for a while. After a few moments she looked around at him again, and her smile began to glimmer:
Its only this, she said; the girl you met once in 53 your life the dancing singing-girl they knew over there is already an episode to be forgotten. End her career any way you wish, Garry, natural death, suicide or she can repent and take the veil, if you like or perish at sea only end her Please? she added, with the sweet, trailing inflection characteristic of her.
He nodded. The girl smiled mischievously.
Dont nod your head so owlishly and pretend to understand. You dont understand. Only two or three people do. And I hope theyll believe me dead, even if you are not polite enough to agree with them.
How can you expect to maintain your incognito? he insisted. There will be plenty of people in your very first audience
I had a sister, did I not?
Was she your sister? the one who danced with you the one called Thessa?
No. But the play-bills said she was. Now, Ive told you something that nobody knows except two or three unpleasant devils She dropped her arms on the table and leaned a trifle forward:
Oh, pouf! she said. Dont lets be mysterious and dramatic, you and I. Ill tell you: I gave that woman the last of my jewels and she promised to disappear and leave her name to me to use. It was my own name, anyway, Thessalie Dunois. Now, you know. Be as discreet and nice as I once found you. Will you?
Of course.
Of course, she repeated, smiling, and with a little twitch of her shoulders, as though letting fall a burdensome cloak. Allons! With a free heart, then! I am Thessalie Dunois; I am here; I am poor dont be frightened! I shall not borrow
Thats rotten, Thessa! he said, turning very red.
Oh, go lightly, please, my friend Garry. I have no claim on you. Besides, I know men
You dont appear to!
Tiens! Our first quarrel! she exclaimed, laughingly. This is indeed serious
If you need aid
No, I dont! Please, why do you scowl at me? Do you then wish I needed aid? Yours? Allez, Monsieur Garry, if I did Id venture, perhaps, to say so to you. Does that make amends? she added sweetly.
She clasped her white hands on the cloth and looked at him with that engaging, humorous little air which had so easily captivated her audiences in Europe that, and her voice with the hint of recklessness ever echoing through its sweetness and youthful gaiety.
What are you doing in New York? she asked. Painting?
I have a studio, but
But no clients? Is that it? Pouf! Everybody begins that way. I sang in a café at Dijon for five francs and my soup! At Rennes I nearly starved. Oh, yes, Garry, in spite of a number of obliging gentlemen who, like you, offered first aid
That is absolutely rotten of you, Thessa. Did I ever
No! For goodness sake let me jest with you without flying into tempers!
But
Oh, pouf! I shall not quarrel with you! Whatever you and I were going to say during the next ten minutes shall remain unsaid!.. Now, the ten minutes are over; now, were reconciled and you are in good humour again. And now, tell me about yourself, your 55 painting in other words, tell me the things about yourself that would interest a friend.
Are you?
Your friend? Yes, I am if you wish.
I do wish it.
Then I am your friend. I once had a wonderful evening with you Im having a very good time now. You were nice to me, Garry. I really was sorry not to see you again.
At the fountain of Marie de Médicis, he said reproachfully.
Yes. Flatter yourself, monsieur, because I did not forget our rendezvous. I might have forgotten it easily enough there was sufficient excuse, God knows a girl awakened by the crash of ruin springing out of bed to face the end of the world without a moments warning yes, the end of all things death, too! Tenez, it was permissible to forget our rendezvous under such circumstances, was it not? But I did not forget. I thought about it in a dumb, calm way all the while even while he stood there denouncing me, threatening me, noisy, furious with the button of the Legion in his lapel and an ugly pistol which he waved in the air She laughed:
Oh, it was not at all gay, I assure you And even when I took to my heels after he had gone for it was a matter of life or death, and I hadnt a minute to lose oh, very dramatic, of course, for I ran away in disguise and I had a frightful time of it leaving France! Well, even then, at top speed and scared to death, I remembered the fountain of Marie de Médicis, and you. Dont be too deeply flattered. I remembered these items principally because they had caused my downfall.
I? I caused
No. I caused it! It was I who went out on the lawn. It was I who came across to see who was painting by moonlight. That began it seeing you there in moonlight bright enough to read by bright enough to paint by. Oh, Garry and you were so good-looking! It was the moon and the way you smiled at me. And they all were dancing inside, and he was so big and fat and complacent, dancing away in there!.. And so I fell a prey to folly.
Was it really our escapade that that ruined you?
Well it was partly that. Pouf! It is over. And I am here. So are you. Its been nice to see you Please call our waiter. She glanced at her cheap, leather wrist watch.
Was it really our escapade that that ruined you?
Well it was partly that. Pouf! It is over. And I am here. So are you. Its been nice to see you Please call our waiter. She glanced at her cheap, leather wrist watch.
As they rose and left the dining-room, he asked her if they were not to see each other again. A one-eyed man, close behind them, listened for her reply.
She continued to walk on slowly beside him without answering, until they reached the rotunda.
Do you wish to see me again? she enquired abruptly.
Dont you also wish it?
I dont know, Garry Ive been annoyed in New York bothered seriously I cant explain, but somehow I dont seem to wish to begin a friendship with anybody
Ours began two years ago.
Did it?
Did it not, Thessa?
Perhaps I dont know. After all it doesnt matter. I think I think we had better say good-bye until some happy hazard like to-days encounter She hesitated, looked up at him, laughed:
Where is your studio? she asked mischievously.
The one-eyed man at their heels was listening.
V
IN DRAGON COURT
There was a young moon in the southwest a slender tracery in the April twilight curved high over his right shoulder as he walked northward and homeward through the flare of Broadway.
His thoughts were still occupied with the pleasant excitement of his encounter with Thessalie Dunois; his mind and heart still responded to the delightful stimulation. Out of an already half-forgotten realm of romance, where, often now, he found it increasingly difficult to realise that he had lived for five happy years, a young girl had suddenly emerged as bodily witness, to corroborate, revive, and refresh his fading faith in the reality of what once had been.
Five years in France! France with its clear sun and lovely moon; its silver-grey cities, its lilac haze, its sweet, deep greenness, its atmosphere of living light! France, the dwelling-place of God in all His myriad aspects in all His protean forms! France, the sanctuary of Truth and all her ancient and her future liberties; France, blossoming domain of Love in Loves million exquisite transfigurations, wherein only the eye of faith can recognise the winged god amid his camouflage!
Wine-strong winds of the Western World, and a pitiless Western sun which etches every contour with terrible precision, leaving nothing to imagination no delicate 58 mystery to rest and shelter souls had swept away and partly erased from his mind the actuality of those five past years.
Already that past, of which he had been a part, was becoming disturbingly unreal to him. Phantoms haunted its ever-paling sunlight; its scenes were fading; its voices grew vague and distant; its hushed laughter dwindled to a whisper, dying like a sigh.
Then, suddenly, against that misty tapestry of tinted spectres, appeared Thessalie Dunois in the flesh! straight out of the phantom-haunted void had stepped this glowing thing of life! Into the raw reek and familiar dissonance of Broadway she had vanished. Small wonder that he had followed her to keep in touch with the vanishing past, as a sleeper, waking against his will, strives still to grasp the fragile fabric of a happy dream.
Yet, in spite of Thessalie, in spite of dreams, in spite of his own home-coming, and the touch of familiar pavements under his own feet, the past, to Barres, was utterly dead, the present strange and unreal, the future obscure and all aflame behind a world afire with war.
For two years, now, no human mind in America had been able to adjust itself to the new heaven and the new earth which had sprung into lurid being at the thunderclap of war.
All things familiar had changed in the twinkling of an eye; all former things had passed away, leaving the stunned brain of humanity dulled under the shock.
Slowly, by degrees, the world was beginning to realise that the civilisation of Christ was being menaced once again by a resurgence from that ancient land of legend where the wild Hun denned; that again the endless hordes of barbarians were rushing in on Europe out of their Eastern fastnesses hordes which filled the 59 shrinking skies with their clamour, vaunting the might of Baal, cheering their antichrist, drenching the knees of their own red gods with the blood of little children.
It seemed impossible for Americans to understand that these things could be were really true that the horrors the papers printed were actualities happening to civilised people like themselves and their neighbours.
Out of their own mouths the German tribes thundered their own disgrace and condemnation, yet America sat dazed, incredulous, motionless. Emperor and general, professor and junker, shouted at the top of their lungs the new creed, horrible as the Black Mass, reversing every precept taught by Christ.
Millions of Teuton mouths cheered fiercely for the new religion Frightfulness; worshipped with frantic yells the new trinity Wotan, Kaiser and Brute Strength.
Stunned, blinded, deafened, the Western World, still half-paralysed, stirred stiffly from its inertia. Slowly, mechanically, its arteries resumed their functions; the reflex, operating automatically, started trade again in its old channels; old habits were timidly resumed; minds groped backward, searching for severed threads which connected yesterday with to-day groped, hunted, found nothing, and, perplexed, turned slowly toward the smoke-choked future for some reason for it all some outlook.
There was no explanation, no outlook nothing save dust and flame and the din of Teutonic hordes trampling to death the Son of Man.
So America moved about her worn, deep-trodden and familiar ways, her mind slowly clearing from the cataclysmic concussion, her power of vision gradually returning, adjusting itself, little by little, to this new heaven and new earth and this hell entirely new.
The Lusitania went down; the Great Republic merely quivered. Other ships followed; only a low murmur of pain came from the Western Colossus.
But now, after the second year, through the thickening nightmare the Great Republic groaned aloud; and a new note of menace sounded in her drugged and dreary voice.
And the thick ears of the Hun twitched and he paused, squatting belly-deep in blood, to listen.
Barres walked homeward. Somewhere along in the 40s he turned eastward into one of those cross-streets originally built up of brownstone dwelling houses, and now in process of transformation into that architectural and commercial miscellany which marks the transition stage of the metropolis anywhere from Westchester to the sea.
Altered for business purposes, basements displayed signs and merchandise of bootmakers, dealers in oriental porcelains, rare prints, silverware; parlour windows modified into bay windows, sheeted with plate-glass, exposed, perhaps, feminine headgear, or an expensive model gown or two, or the sign of a real-estate man, or of an upholsterer.
Above the parlour floors lived people of one sort or another; furnished and unfurnished rooms and suites prevailed; and the brownstone monotony was already indented along the building line by brand-new constructions of Indiana limestone, behind the glittering plate-glass of which were to be seen reticent displays of artistic furniture, modern and antique oil paintings, here and there the lace-curtained den of some superior ladies hair-dresser, where beautifying also was accomplished at a price, alas!
Halfway between Sixth Avenue and Fifth, on the 61 north side of the street, an enterprising architect had purchased half a dozen squatty, three-storied houses, set back from the sidewalk behind grass-plots. These had been lavishly stuccoed and transformed into abodes for those irregulars in the army of life known as artists.