The Moonlit Way Part 11

"Oh, Garry," she gasped, laying one slim hand across his on the table-cloth, "it was one of those encounters--one of those heavenly accidents that reconcile one to living.... I think the moon had made me a perfect lunatic.... Because you don't yet know what I risked....

Garry!... It ruined me--ruined me utterly--our night together under the June moon!"

"What!" he exclaimed, incredulously.

But she only laughed her gay, undaunted little laugh:

"It was worth it! Such moments are worth anything we pay for them! I laughed; I pay. What of it?"

"But if I am partly responsible I wish to know----"

"You shall know nothing about it! As for me, I care nothing about it.

I'd do it again to-night! That is living--to go forward, laugh, and accept what comes--to have heart enough, gaiety enough, brains enough to seize the few rare dispensations that the n.i.g.g.ardly G.o.ds fling across this calvary which we call life! _Tenez_, that alone is living; the rest is making the endless stations on bleeding knees."

"Yet, if I thought--" he began, perplexed and troubled, "--if I thought that through my folly----"

"Folly! _Non pas!_ Wisdom! Oh, my blessed accomplice! And do you remember the canoe? Were we indeed quite mad to embark for Paris on the moonlit Seine, you and I?--I in evening gown, soaked with dew to the knees!--you with your sketching block and easel! _Quelle demenagement en famille!_ Oh, Garry, my friend of gayer days, was that really folly! No, no, no, it was infinite wisdom; and its memory is helping me to live through this very moment!"

She leaned there on her elbows and laughed across the cloth at him.

The mockery began to dance again and glimmer in her eyes:

"After all I've told you," she added, "you are no wiser, are you?

You don't know why I never went to the Fountain of Marie de Medicis--whether I forgot to go--whether I remembered but decided that I had had quite enough of you. You don't know, do you?"

He shook his head, smiling. The girl's face grew gradually serious:

"And you never heard anything more about me?" she demanded.

"No. Your name simply disappeared from the billboards, kiosques, and newspapers."

"And you heard no malicious gossip? None about my sister, either?"

"None."

She nodded:

"Europe is a senile creature which forgets overnight. _Tant mieux_....

You know, I shall sing and dance under my sister's name here. I told you that, didn't I?"

"Oh! That would be a great mistake----"

"Listen! Nihla Quellen disappeared--married some fat bourgeois, died, perhaps,"--she shrugged,--"anything you wish, my friend. Who cares to listen to what is said about a dancing girl in all this din of war?

Who is interested?"

It was scarcely a question, yet her eyes seemed to make it so.

"Who cares?" she repeated impatiently. "Who remembers?"

"I have remembered you," he said, meeting her intently questioning gaze.

"You? Oh, you are not like those others over there. Your country is not at war. You still have leisure to remember. But they forget. They haven't time to remember anything--anybody--over there. Don't you think so?" She turned in her chair unconsciously, and gazed eastward.

"--They have forgotten me over there--" And her lips tightened, contracted, bitten into silence.

The strange beauty of the girl left him dumb. He was recalling, now, all that he had ever heard concerning her. The gossip of Europe had informed him that, though Nihla Quellen was pa.s.sionately and devotedly French in soul and heart, her mother had been one of those unmoral and lovely Georgians, and her father an Alsatian, named Dunois--a French officer who entered the Russian service ultimately, and became a hunting cheetah for the Grand Duke Cyril, until himself hunted into another world by that old bag of bones on the pale and shaky nag. His daughter took the name of Nihla Quellen and what money was left, and made her debut in Constantinople.

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 reclames--all that he had ever read and heard about this notorious young girl, now seated there 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 G.o.d 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 don't entertain myself very successfully. I don't 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 can't understand, Nihla----"

"Don't try to. It doesn't concern you. Also, please forget me as Nihla Quellen. I told you that I've taken my sister's name, Thessalie Dunois."

"But all Europe knows you as Nihla Quellen----"

"Listen!" she interrupted sharply. "I have troubles enough. Don't 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:

"It's only this," she said; "the girl you met once in 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.

"Don't nod your head so owlishly and pretend to understand. You don't understand. Only two or three people do. And I hope they'll 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, I've told you something that n.o.body knows except two or three unpleasant devils--" She dropped her arms on the table and leaned a trifle forward:

"Oh, pouf!" she said. "Don't let's be mysterious and dramatic, you and I. I'll 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--don't be frightened! I shall not borrow----"