The Moonlit Way Part 78

"I _don't_ quite understand what you say, Garry!"

"Don't you, Sweetness? Don't you understand why you've always been exactly what you appear like at this moment?"

She looked at him with her lovely, uncertain smile:

"I've always been myself, I suppose. You are teasing me dreadfully!"

He laughed in a nervous, excited way, not like himself:

"You bet you have always been yourself, Sweetness!--in spite of everything you've always been _yourself_. I am very slow in discovering it. But I think I realise it now."

"Please," she remonstrated, "you are laughing at me and I don't know why. I think you've been talking nonsense and expecting me to pretend to understand.... If you don't stop laughing at me I shall retire to my room and--and----"

"What, Sweetness?" he demanded, still laughing.

"Change to a cooler gown," she said, humorously vexed at her own inability to threaten or punish him for his gaiety at her expense.

"All right; I'll change too, and we'll meet in the music-room!"

She considered him askance:

"Will you be more respectful to me, Garry?"

"Respectful? I don't know."

"Very well, then, I'm not coming back."

But when he entered the music-room half an hour later, Dulcie was seated demurely before the piano, and when he came and stood behind her she dropped her head straight back and looked up at him.

"I had a wonderful icy bath," she said, "and I'm ready for anything.

Are you?"

"Almost," he said, looking down at her.

She straightened up, gazed silently at the piano for a few moments; sounded a few chords. Then her fingers wandered uncertainly, as though groping for something that eluded them--something that they delicately sought to interpret. But apparently she did not discover it; and her search among the keys ended in a soft chord like a sigh. Only her lips could have spoken more plainly.

At that moment Westmore and Thessalie came in breezily and remained to gossip a few minutes before bathing and changing.

"Play something jolly!" said Westmore. "One of those gay Irish things, you know, like 'The Honourable Michael Dunn,' or 'Finnigan's Wake,'

or----"

"I don't know any," said Dulcie, smiling. "There's a song called 'Asth.o.r.e.' My mother wrote it----"

"Can you sing it?"

The girl ran her fingers over the keys musingly:

"I'll remember it presently. I know one or two old songs like 'Irishmen All.' Do you know that song?"

And she sang it in her gay, unembarra.s.sed way:

"Warm is our love for the island that bore us, Ready are we as our fathers before us, Genial and gallant men, Fearless and valiant men, Faithful to Erin we answer her call.

Ulster men, Munster men, Connaught men, Leinster men, Irishmen all we answer her call!"

"Fine!" cried Westmore. "Try it again, Dulcie!"

"Maybe you'll like this better," she said:

"Our Irish girls are beautiful, As all the world will own; An Irish smile in Irish eyes Would melt a heart of stone; But all their smiles and all their wiles Will quickly turn to sneers If you fail to fight for Erin In the Irish Volunteers!"

"Hurrah!" cried Westmore, beating time and picking up the chorus of the "Irish Volunteers," which Dulcie played to a thunderous finish amid frantic applause.

She sang for them "The West's Awake!", "The Risin' of the Moon,"

"Clare's Dragoons," and "Paddy Get Up!" And after Westmore had exercised his lungs sufficiently in every chorus, he and Thessalie went off to their respective quarters, leaving Barres leaning on the piano beside Dulcie.

"Your people are a splendid lot--given half a chance," he said.

"My people?"

"Certainly. After all, Sweetness, you're Irish, you know."

"Oh."

"Aren't you?"

"I don't know what I am," she murmured half to herself.

"Whoever you are it's the same to me, Dulcie." ... He took a few short, nervous turns across the room; walked slowly back to her: "Has it come back to you yet--that song of your mother's you were trying to remember?"

Even while he was speaking the song came back to her memory--her mother's song called "Asth.o.r.e"--startling her with its poignant significance to herself.

"Do you recollect it?" he asked again.

"Y-yes ... I can't sing it."

"Why?"

"I don't wish to sing 'Asth.o.r.e'----" She bent her head and gazed at the keyboard, the painful colour dyeing her neck and cheeks.

When at length she looked up at him out of lovely, distressed eyes, something in his face--something--some new expression which she dared not interpret--set her heart flying. And, scarcely knowing what she was saying in her swift and exquisite confusion:

"The words of my mother's song would mean nothing to you, Garry," she faltered. "You could not understand them----"

"Why not?"

"B-because you could not be in sympathy with them."

"How do you know? Try!"