The Moonlit Way Part 21

She looked up almost blindly at the man who, in careless friendliness, had already opened his door to her, had permitted her to read his wonder-books, had allowed her to sit unreproved and silent from sheer happiness, and gaze unsatiated upon the wondrous things within the magic mansion where he dwelt.

And now to serve this man; to aid him, to creep into the light in which he stood and strive to learn and see!--the thought already had produced a delicate intoxication in the child, and she gazed up at Barres from the sunny garden with her naked soul in her eyes. Which confused, perplexed, and embarra.s.sed him.

"Come on up," he said briefly. "I'll tell your father over the 'phone."

She entered without a sound, closed the door which he had left open for her, advanced across the thick-meshed rug. She still wore her blue gingham ap.r.o.n; her bobbed hair, full of ruddy lights, intensified the whiteness of her throat. In her arms she cradled the Prophet, who stared solemnly at Barres out of depthless green eyes.

"Upon my word," thought Barres to himself, "I believe I have found a model and an uncommon one!"

Dulcie, watching his expression, smiled slightly and stroked the Prophet.

"I'll paint you that way! Don't stir," said the young fellow pleasantly. "Just stand where you are, Dulcie. You're quite all right as you are----" He lifted a half-length canvas, placed it on his heavy easel and clamped it.

"I feel exactly like painting," he continued, busy with his brushes and colours. "I'm full of it to-day. It's in me. It's got to come out.... And you certainly are an interesting subject--with your big grey eyes and bobbed red hair--oh, quite interesting constructively, too--as well as from the colour point."

He finished setting his palette, gathered up a handful of brushes:

"I won't bother to draw you except with a brush----"

He looked across at her, remained looking, the pleasantly detached expression of his features gradually changing to curiosity, to the severity of increasing interest, to concentrated and silent absorption.

"Dulcie," he presently concluded, "you are so unusually interesting and paintable that you make me think very seriously.... And I'm hanged if I'm going to waste you by slapping a technically adequate sketch of you onto this nice new canvas ... which might give me pleasure while I'm doing it ... and might even tickle my vanity for a week ... and then be laid away to gather dust ... and be covered over next year and used for another sketch.... No.... _No_!... You're worth more than that!"

He began to pace the place to and fro, thinking very hard, glancing around at her from moment to moment, where she stood, obediently immovable on the blue meshed rug, clasping the Prophet to her breast.

"Do you want to become my private model?" he demanded abruptly. "I mean seriously. Do you?"

"Yes."

"I mean a real model, from whom I can ask anything?"

"Oh, yes, please," pleaded the girl, trembling a little.

"Do you understand what it means?"

"Yes."

"Sometimes you'll be required to wear few clothes. Sometimes none. Did you know that?"

"Yes. Mr. Westmore asked me once."

"You didn't care to?"

"Not for him."

"You don't mind doing it for me?"

"I'll do anything you ask me," she said, trying to smile and shivering with excitement.

"All right. It's a bargain. You're my model, Dulcie. When do you graduate from school?"

"In June."

"Two months! Well--all right. Until then it will be a half day through the week, and all day Sat.u.r.days and Sundays, if I require you. You'll have a weekly salary----" He smiled and mentioned the figure, and the girl blushed vividly. She had, it appeared, expected nothing.

"Why, Dulcie!" he exclaimed, immensely amused. "You didn't intend to come here and give me all your time for nothing, did you?"

"Yes."

"But why on earth should you do such a thing for me?"

She found no words to explain why.

"Nonsense," he continued; "you're a business woman now. Your father will have to find somebody to cook for him and take the desk when he's out at Grogan's. Don't worry; I'll fix it with him.... By the way, Dulcie, supposing you sit down."

She found a chair and took the Prophet onto her lap.

"Now, this will be very convenient for me," he went on, inspecting her with increasing satisfaction. "If I ever have any orders--any sitters--you can have a vacation, of course. Otherwise, I'll always have an interesting model at hand--I've got chests full of wonderful costumes--genuine ones----" He fell silent, his eyes studying her.

Already he was planning half a dozen pictures, for he was just beginning to perceive how adaptable the girl might be. And there was about her that indefinable something which, when a painter discovers it, interests him and arouses his intense artistic curiosity.

"You know," he said musingly, "you are something more than pretty, Dulcie.... I could put you in eighteenth century clothes and you'd look logical. Yes, and in seventeenth century clothes, too.... I could do some amusing things with you in oriental garments.... A young Herodiade ... Calypso ... Theodora.... She was a child, too, you know.

There's a portrait with bobbed hair--a young girl by Van Dyck.... You know you are quite stimulating to me, Dulcie. You excite a painter's imagination. It's rather odd," he added navely, "that I never discovered you before; and I've known you over two years."

He had seated himself on the sofa while discoursing. Now he got up, touched a bell twice. The Finnish maid, Selinda, with her high cheek-bones, frosty blue eyes and colourless hair, appeared in cap and ap.r.o.n.

"Selinda," he said, "take Miss Dulcie into my room. In a long, leather Turkish box on the third shelf of my clothes closet is a silk and gold costume and a lot of jade jewelry. Please put her into it."

So Dulcie Soane went away with her cat in her arms, beside the neat and frosty-eyed Selinda; and Barres opened a portfolio of engravings, where were gathered the lovely aristocrats of Van Dyck and Rubens and Gainsborough and his contemporaries--a charmingly mixed company, separated by centuries and frontiers, yet all characterised by a common _something_--some inexplicable similarity which Barres recognised without defining.

"It's rather amusing," he murmured, "but that kid, Dulcie, seems to remind me of these people--somehow or other.... One scarcely looks for qualities in the child of an Irish janitor.... I wonder who her mother was...."

When he looked up again Dulcie was standing there on the thick rug. On her naked feet were jade bracelets, jade-set rings on her little toes; a cascade of jade and gold falling over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to the straight, narrow breadth of peac.o.c.k hue which fell to her ankles. And on her childish head, clasping the ruddy bobbed hair, glittered the jade-incrusted diadem of a fairy princess of Cathay.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "YOU LITTLE MIRACLE!"]

The Prophet, gathered close to her breast, stared back at Barres with eyes that dimmed the splendid jade about him.

"That settles it," he said, the tint of excitement rising in his cheeks. "I _have_ discovered a model and a wonder! And right here is where I paint my winter Academy--right here and right now!... And I call it 'The Prophets.' Climb up on that model stand and squat there cross-legged, and stare at me--straight at me--the way your cat stares!... There you are. That's right! Don't move. Stay put or I'll come over and bow-string you!--you little miracle!"

"Do--you mean me?" faltered Dulcie.

"You bet, Sweetness! Do you know how beautiful you are? Well, never mind----" He had begun already to draw with a wet brush, and now he relapsed into absorbed silence.