The Moonlit Way Part 65

"Dad is one of those rarest of modern beings, a genuine angler of the old school. After all the myriad trout and salmon he has caught in a career devoted to fishing, the next fish he catches gives him just as fine a thrill as did the very first one he ever hooked! It's quite wonderful, isn't it, mother?"

"It's probably what keeps him so youthful," remarked Westmore. "The thing to do is to have something to do. That's the elixir of youth.

Look at your mother, Garry. She's had a busy handful bringing you up!"

Garret looked at his slender, attractive mother and laughed again:

"Is that what keeps you so young and pretty, mother?--looking after me?"

"Alas, Garry, I'm over forty, and I look it!"

"Do you?--you sweet little thing!" he interrupted, picking her up suddenly from the floor and marching proudly around the room with her.

"Gaze upon my mother, Jim! Isn't she cunning? Isn't she the smartest little thing in America? Behave yourself, mother! Your grateful son is showing you off to the appreciative young gentleman from New York----"

"You're ridiculous! Jim! Make him put me down!"

But her tall son swung her to his shoulder and placed her high on the mantel shelf over the huge fireplace; where she sat beside the clock, charming, resentful, but helpless, her spurred boots dangling down.

"Come on, Lee!" cried her brother, "I'm going to put you up beside her. That mantel needs ornamental bric-a-brac and objets d'art----"

Lee turned to escape, but her brother cornered and caught her, and swung her high, seating her beside his indignant mother.

"Just as though we were two Angora kittens," remarked Lee, sidling along the stone shelf toward her mother. Then she glanced out through the open front door. "Lift us down, quick, Garry. You'd better! The horses are in the flower beds and there'll be no more bouquets for the table in another minute!"

So he lifted them off the mantel and they hastily departed, each administering correction with her riding crop as she dodged past him and escaped.

"If your guests want horses you know where to find them!" called back his sister from the porch. And presently she and his mother, securely mounted, went cantering away across country, where gra.s.s and fern and leaf and blossom were glistening in the rising breeze, weighted down with diamond drops of rain.

Westmore walked leisurely toward his quarters, to freshen up and don knickers. Garret followed him into the west wing, whistling contentedly under his breath, inspecting each remembered object with great content as he pa.s.sed, nodding smilingly to the servants he encountered, lingering on the landing to acknowledge the civilities of the ancient family cat, who recognised him with effusion but coyly fled the advances of Westmore, ignoring all former and repeated introductions.

Their rooms adjoined and they conversed through the doorway while engaged in ablutions.

Presently, from behind his sheer sash-curtains, Westmore caught sight of Thessalie on the west terrace below. She wore a sh.e.l.l-pink frock and a most distractingly pretty hat; and he hurried his dressing as much as he could without awaking Garret's suspicions.

A few minutes later, radiant in white flannels, he appeared on the terrace, breathing rather fast but wreathed in persuasive smiles.

"I know this place; I'll take you for a walk where you won't get your shoes wet. Shall I?" he suggested, with all his guile and cunning quite plain to Thessalie, and his purpose perfectly transparent to her smiling eyes.

But she consented prettily, and went with him without demurring, picking her way over the stepping-stone walk with downcast gaze and the trace of a smile on her lips--a smile as delicately indefinable as the fancy which moved her to accept this young man's headlong advances--which had recognized them and accepted them from the first.

But why, she did not even yet understand.

"Agreeable weather, isn't it?" said Westmore, fatuously revealing his present paucity of ideas apart from those which concerned the wooing of her. And he was an intelligent young man at that, and a sculptor of attainment, too. But now, in his infatuated head, there remained room only for one thought, the thought of this girl who walked so demurely and daintily beside him over the flat, gra.s.s-set stepping stones toward the three white pines on the little hill.

For it had been something or other at first sight with Westmore--love, perhaps--anyway that is what he called the mental chaos which now disorganised him. And it was certain that something happened to him the first time he laid eyes on Thessalie Dunois. He knew it, and she could not avoid seeing it, so entirely nave his behaviour, so utterly guileless his manoeuvres, so direct, unfeigned and childish his methods of approach.

At moments she felt nervous and annoyed by his behaviour; at other times apprehensive and helpless, as though she were responsible for something that did not know how to take care of itself--something immature, irrational, and entirely at her mercy. And it may have been the feminine response to this increasing sense of obligation--the confused instinct to guide, admonish and protect--that began being the matter with her.

Anyway, from the beginning the man had a certain fascination for her, unwillingly divined on her part, yet specifically agreeable even to the point of exhilaration. Also, somehow or other, the girl realised he had a brain.

And yet he was a pitiably hopeless case; for even now he was saying such things as:

"Are you quite sure that your feet are dry? I should never forgive myself, Thessa, if you took cold.... Are you tired?... How wonderful it is to be here alone with you, and strive to interpret the mystery of your mind and heart! Sit here under the pines. I'll spread my coat for you.... Nature is wonderful, isn't it, Thessa?"

And when she gravely consented to seat herself he dropped recklessly onto the wet pine needles at her feet, and spoke with imbecile delight again of nature--of how wonderful were its protean manifestations, and how its beauties were not meant to be enjoyed alone but in mystic communion with another who understood.

It was curious, too, but this stuff seemed to appeal to her, some commonplace chord within her evidently responding. She sighed and looked at the mountains. They really were miracles of colour--ma.s.ses of purest cobalt, now, along the horizon.

But perhaps the trite things they uttered did not really matter; probably it made no difference to them what they said. And even if he had murmured: "There are milestones along the road to Dover," she might have responded: "There was an old woman who lived in a shoe"; and neither of them would have heard anything at all except the rapid, confused, and voiceless conversation of two youthful human hearts beating out endless questions and answers that never moved their smiling lips. There was the mystery, if any--the constant wireless current under the haphazard flow of words.

There was no wind in the pines; meadow and pasture, woodland and swale stretched away at their feet to the distant, dark-blue hills. And all around them hung the rain-washed fragrance of midsummer under a still, cloudless sky.

"It seems impossible that there can be war anywhere in the world," she said.

"You know," he began, "it's getting on my nerves the way those swine from the Rhine are turning this decent green world into a b.l.o.o.d.y wallow! Unless we do something about it pretty soon, I think I'll go over."

She looked up:

"Where?"

"To France."

She remained silent for a while, merely lifting her dark eyes to him at intervals; then she grew preoccupied with other thoughts that left her brows bent slightly inward and her mouth very grave.

He gazed reflectively out over the fields and woods:

"Yes, I can't stand it much longer," he mused aloud.

"What would you do there?" she inquired.

"Anything. I could drive a car. But if they'll take me in some Canadian unit--or one of the Foreign Legions--it would suit me.... You know a man can't go on just living in the world while this beastly business continues--can't go on eating and sleeping and shaving and dressing as though half of civilisation were not rolling in agony and blood, stabbed through and through----"

His voice caught--he checked himself and slowly pa.s.sed his hand over his smoothly shaven face.

"Those splendid poilus," he said; "where they stand we Americans ought to be standing, too.... G.o.d knows why we hesitate.... I can't tell you what we think.... Some of us--don't agree--with the Administration."

His jaws snapped on the word; he stared out through the sunshine at the swallows, now skimming the uncut hay fields in their gusty evening flight.

"Are you really going?" she asked, at length.

"Yes. I'll wait a little while longer to see what my country is going to do. If it doesn't stir during the next month or two, I shall go. I think Garry will go, too."

She nodded.

"Of course," he remarked, "we'd prefer our own flag, Garry and I. But if it is to remain furled----" He shrugged, picked a spear of gra.s.s, and sat brooding and breaking it into tiny pieces.

"The only thing that troubles me," he went on presently, keeping his gaze riveted on his busy fingers, "the only thing that worries me is you!"

"Me?" she exclaimed softly. And an inexplicable little thrill shot through her.

"You," he repeated. "You worry me to death."