His voice was musical, his words unconscious poetry. Without effort, without pains, alas!--without logic--he held every ear enthralled there in the soft candlelight and subdued glimmer of crystal and of silver.
His was the magic of shadow and half-lights, of vague nuances and lost outlines, and the valued degrees of impinging shade. No sharp contours, no stark, uncompromising shapes, no brutality of raw daylight, and--alas!--no threat of uncompromising logic invaded his realm of dreamy demi-lights and faded fantasies.
He reigned there, amid an enchanted twilight of his own creation, the embodiment of Irish romance, tender, gay, sweet-minded, persuasive, gallant--and tragic, when, at some unexpected moment, the frail veil of melancholy made his dark eyes less brilliant.
All yielded to his charm--even the stuffed Teutons, gorging gravy; all felt his sway over mind and heart, nor cared to analyse it, there in the soft light of candles and the scent of old-fashioned flowers.
There arose some question concerning Sir Roger Casement.
Murtagh Skeel spoke of him with the pure enthusiasm of passionate belief in a master by a humble disciple. And the Teutons grunted assent.
The subject of the war had been politely avoided, yet, somehow, it came out that Murtagh Skeel had served in Britain's army overseas, as an enlisted man in some Irish regiment--a romantic impulse of the moment, involving a young man's crazy plan to foment rebellion in India. Which little gem of a memoire presently made the fact of his exile self-explanatory. Yet, he contrived that the ugly revelation should end in laughter--an outbreak of spontaneous mirth through which his glittering wit passed like lightning, cauterising the running sore of treason....
Coffee served, the diners drifted whither it suited them, together or singly.
Like an errant spirit, Dulcie moved about at hazard amid the softened lights, engaged here, approached there, pausing, wandering on, nowhere in particular, yet ever listlessly in motion.
Encountering her near the porch, Barres senior had paused to whisper that there was no hope for any fishing that evening; and she had lingered to smile after him, as, unreconciled, he took his stiff-shirted way toward the pallid, bejewelled, unanimated mass of Mrs. Gerhardt, settled in the widest armchair and absorbing cordial.