"Was there any reason why he should have gone away? Any quarrel or that
sort of thing?"
"Well," said the other man, "I rather think there was something of the
sort. The boy's uncle--Captain Stewart, middle-aged, rather prim old
party--you'll have met him, I dare say--he intimated to me one day, that
there had been some trivial row. You see the lad isn't of age yet,
though he is to be in a few months, and so he has had to live on an
allowance doled out by his grandfather, who's the head of the house--the
boy's father is dead. There's a quaint old beggar, if you like!--the
grandfather. He was rather a swell in the diplomatic, in his day it
seems--rather an important swell. Now he's bedridden. He sits all day
in bed and plays cards with his granddaughter or with a very superior
valet, and talks politics with the men who come to see him. Oh yes,
he's a quaint old beggar. He has a great quantity of white hair and an
enormous square white beard, and the fiercest eyes I ever saw, I should
think. Everybody's frightened out of their wits of him. Well, he sits
up there and rules his family in good old patriarchal style, and it
seems he came down a bit hard on the poor boy one day over some folly or
other, and there was a row and the boy went out of the house swearing
he'd be even."
"Ah well, then," said Ste. Marie, "the matter seems simple enough. A
foolish boy's foolish pique. He is staying in hiding somewhere to
frighten his grandfather. When he thinks the time favourable he will
come back and be wept over and forgiven."
The other man walked a little way in silence.
"Ye--es," he said at last. "Yes, possibly. Possibly you are right.
That's what the grandfather thinks. It's the obvious solution.
Unfortunately there is more or less against it. The boy went away
with--so far as can be learned--almost no money, almost none at all.
And he has already been gone a month. Miss Benham--his sister--is sure
that something has happened to him, and I'm a bit inclined to think so
too. It's all very odd. I should think he might have been kidnapped
but that no demand has been made for money."
"He was not," suggested Ste. Marie--"not the sort of young man to do
anything desperate--make away with himself?"
Hartley laughed.
"O Lord, no!" said he. "Not that sort of young man at all. He was a
very normal type of rich and spoilt and somewhat foolish American boy."
"Rich?" inquired the other quickly.
"Oh yes! they're beastly rich. Young Arthur is to come into something
very good at his majority, I believe, from his father's estate, and the
old grandfather is said to be indecently rich--rolling in it! There's
another reason why the young idiot wouldn't be likely to stop away of
his own accord. He wouldn't risk anything like a serious break with the
old gentleman. It would mean a loss of millions to him, I dare say; for
the old beggar is quite capable of cutting him off, if he takes the
notion. Oh, it's a bad business, all through." And after they had gone
on a bit he said it again, shaking his head--
"It's a bad business! That poor girl you know--it's hard on her. She
was fond of the young ass for some reason or other. She's very much
broken up over it."
"Yes," said Ste. Marie, "it is hard for her--for all the family, of
course. A bad business, as you say." He spoke absently, for he was
looking ahead at something which seemed to be a motor accident. They
had, by this time, got well up the Champs Elysees and were crossing the
Rond Point. A motor-car was drawn up alongside the kerb just beyond,
and a little knot of people stood about it and seemed to look at
something on the ground.
"I think some one has been run down," said Ste. Marie. "Shall we have a
look?" They quickened their pace and came to where the group of people
stood in a circle looking upon the ground, and two gendarmes asked many
questions and wrote voluminously in their little books. It appeared
that a delivery boy mounted upon a tricycle cart had turned into the
wrong side of the avenue, and had got himself run into and overturned by
a motor-car going at a moderate rate of speed. For once the sentiment
of those mysterious birds of prey which flock instantaneously from
nowhere round an accident, was against the victim and in favour of the
frightened and gesticulating chauffeur.
Ste. Marie turned an amused face from this voluble being to the other
occupants of the patently hired car, who stood apart adding very little
to the discussion. He saw a tall and bony man with very bright blue
eyes and what is sometimes called a guardsman's moustache--the drooping
walruslike ornament which dates back a good many years now. Beyond this
gentleman he saw a young woman in a long grey silk coat and a motoring
veil. He was aware that the tall man was staring at him rather fixedly
and with a half-puzzled frown, as though he thought that they had met
before and was trying to remember when, but Ste. Marie gave the man but
a swift glance. His eyes were upon the dark face of the young woman
beyond, and it seemed to him that she called aloud to him in an actual
voice that rang in his ears. The young woman's very obvious beauty he
thought had nothing to do with the matter. It seemed to him that her
eyes called him. Just that. Something strange and very potent seemed
to take sudden and almost tangible hold upon him--a charm, a spell, a
magic--something unprecedented, new to his experience. He could not
take his eyes from hers and he stood staring.
[Illustration: "It seemed to him that her eyes called him."]
As before, on the Pont de la Concorde, Hartley touched him on the arm,
and abruptly the chains that had bound him were loosened.
"We must be going on, you know," the Englishman said, and Ste. Marie
said rather hurriedly--
"Yes! yes, to be sure. Come along!" But at a little distance he turned
once more to look back. The chauffeur had mounted to his place, the
delivery boy was upon his feet again, little the worse for his tumble,
and the knot of bystanders had begun to disperse, but it seemed to Ste.
Marie that the young woman in the long silk coat stood quite still where
she had been, and that her face was turned towards him watching.
"Did you notice that girl?" said Hartley as they walked on at a brisker
pace. "Did you see her face? She was rather a tremendous beauty, you
know, in her gipsyish fashion. Yes, by Jove, she was!"
"Did I see her?" repeated Ste. Marie. "Yes. Oh yes. She had very
strange eyes. At least I think it was the eyes. I don't know. I've
never seen any eyes quite like them. Very odd!"
He said something more in French which Hartley did not hear, and the
Englishman saw that he was frowning.
"Oh well, I shouldn't have said there was anything strange about them,"
Hartley said, "but they certainly were beautiful. There's no denying
that. The man with her looked rather Irish I thought."
They came to the Etoile and cut across it towards the Avenue Hoche.
Ste. Marie glanced back once more, but the motor-car and the delivery
boy and the gendarmes were gone.
"What did you say?" he asked idly.
"I said the man looked Irish," repeated his friend. All at once Ste.
Marie gave a loud exclamation--
"Sacred thousand devils! Fool that I am! Dolt! Why didn't I think of
it before?" Hartley stared at him and Ste. Marie stared down the Champs
Elysees like one in a trance.
"I say," said the Englishman, "we really must be getting on, you know,
we're late." And as they went along down the Avenue Hoche, he
demanded--
"Why are you a dolt and whatever else it was? What struck you so
suddenly?"
"I remembered all at once," said Ste. Marie, "where I had seen that man
before, and with whom I last saw him. I'll tell you about it later.
Probably it's of no importance, though."
"You're talking rather like a mild lunatic," said the other. "Here we
are at the house!"
*CHAPTER II*
*THE LADDER TO THE STARS*
Miss Benham was talking wearily to a strange fair youth with an
impediment in his speech, and was wondering why the youth had been asked
to this house, where in general one was sure of meeting only interesting
people, when some one spoke her name, and she turned with a little sigh
of relief. It was Baron de Vries, the Belgian First Secretary of
Legation, an old friend of her grandfather's, a man made gentle and
sweet by infinite sorrow. He bowed civilly to the fair youth and bent
over the girl's hand.
"It is very good," he said, "to see you again in the world. We have
need of you, _nous autres_. Madame your mother is well, I hope--and the
bear?" He called old Mr. Stewart "the bear" in a sort of grave jest,
and that fierce octogenarian rather liked it.
"Oh yes," the girl said, "we're all fairly well. My mother had one of
her headaches to-night and so didn't come here, but she's as well as
usual, and 'the bear'--yes, he's well enough physically, I should think,
but he has not been quite the same since--during the past month. It has
told upon him, you know. He grieves over it much more than he will
admit."
"Yes," said Baron de Vries gravely. "Yes, I know." He turned about
towards the fair young man, but that youth had drifted away and joined
himself to another group. Miss Benham looked after him and gave a
little exclamation of relief.
"That person was rather terrible," she said. "I can't think why he is
here. Marian so seldom has dull people."
"I believe," said the Belgian, "that he is some connexion of de
Saulnes'. That explains his presence." He lowered his voice.
"You have heard no--news? They have found no trace?"
"No," said she. "Nothing. Nothing at all. I'm rather in despair. It's
all so hideously mysterious. I am sure, you know, that something has
happened to him. It's--very very hard. Sometimes I think I can't bear
it. But I go on. We all go on."
Baron de Vries nodded his head strongly.
"That, my dear child, is just what you must do," said he. "You must go
on. That is what needs the real courage and you have courage. I am not
afraid for you. And sooner or later you will hear of him--from him. It
is impossible nowadays to disappear for very long. You will hear from
him." He smiled at her, his slow grave smile that was not of mirth but
of kindness and sympathy and cheer.
"And if I may say so," he said, "you are doing very wisely to come out
once more among your friends. You can accomplish no good by brooding at
home. It is better to live one's normal life--even when it is not easy
to do it. I say so who know."
The girl touched Baron de Vries' arm for an instant with her hand--a
little gesture that seemed to express thankfulness and trust and
affection.
"If all my friends were like you!" she said to him. And after that she
drew a quick breath as if to have done with these sad matters, and she
turned her eyes once more towards the broad room where the other guests
stood in little groups, all talking at once very rapidly and in loud
voices.
"What extraordinarily cosmopolitan affairs these dinner parties in new
Paris are!" she said. "They're like diplomatic parties, only we have a
better time and the men don't wear their orders. How many nationalities
should you say there are in this room now?"
"Without stopping to consider," said Baron de Vries, "I say ten." They
counted, and out of fourteen people there were represented nine races.
"I don't see Richard Hartley," Miss Benham said. "I had an idea he was
to be here. Ah!" she broke off, looking towards the doorway.
"Here he comes now!" she said. "He's rather late. Who is the
Spanish-looking man with him, I wonder? He's rather handsome, isn't
he?"
Baron de Vries moved a little forward to look, and exclaimed in his
turn. He said--
"Ah, I did not know he was returned to Paris. That is Ste. Marie." Miss
Benham's eyes followed the Spanish-looking young man as he made his way
through the joyous greetings of friends towards his hostess.
"So that is Ste. Marie!" she said, still watching him. "The famous Ste.
Marie!" She gave a little laugh.
"Well, I don't wonder at the reputation he bears for--gallantry and that
sort of thing. He looks the part, doesn't he?"
"Ye--es," admitted her friend. "Yes, he is sufficiently _beau garcon_.
But--yes, well, that is not all, by any means. You must not get the
idea that Ste. Marie is nothing but a genial and romantic young
squire-of-dames. He is much more than that. He has very fine
qualities. To be sure he appears to possess no ambition in particular,
but I should be glad if he were my son. He comes of a very old house,
and there is no blot upon the history of that house--nothing but
faithfulness and gallantry and honour. And there is, I think, no blot
upon Ste. Marie himself. He is fine gold."
The girl turned and stared at Baron de Vries with some astonishment.
"You speak very strongly," said she. "I have never heard you speak so
strongly of any one, I think."
The Belgian made a little deprecatory gesture with his two hands, and he
laughed.
"Oh well, I like the boy. And I should hate to have you meet him for
the first time under a misconception. Listen, my child! When a young
man is loved equally by both men and women, by both old and young, that
young man is worthy of friendship and trust. Everybody likes Ste.
Marie. In a sense that is his misfortune. The way is made too easy for
him. His friends stand so thick about him that they shut off his view
of the heights. To waken ambition in his soul he has need of solitude
or misfortune or grief.
"Or," said the elderly Belgian, laughing gently, "or perhaps the other
thing might do it best--the more obvious thing?"
The girl's raised eyebrows questioned him and, when he did not answer,
she said--
"What thing then?"
"Why, love," said Baron de Vries. "Love, to be sure. Love is said to
work miracles, and I believe that to be a perfectly true saying. Ah! he
is coming here."
The Marquise de Saulnes, who was a very pretty little Englishwoman with
a deceptively doll-like look, approached, dragging Ste. Marie in her
wake. She said--
"My dearest dear, I give you of my best. Thank me, and cherish him! I
believe he is to lead you to the place where food is, isn't he?" She
beamed over her shoulder, and departed, and Miss Benham found herself
confronted by the Spanish-looking man.
Her first thought was that he was not as handsome as he had seemed at a
distance but something much better. For a young man she thought his
face was rather oddly weather-beaten, as if he might have been very much
at sea, and it was too dark to be entirely pleasing. But she liked his
eyes, which were not brown or black, as she had expected, but a very
unusual dark grey--a sort of slate colour.
And she liked his mouth too. It was her habit--and it is not an
unreliable habit--to judge people by their eyes and mouth. Ste. Marie's
mouth pleased her because the lips were neither thin nor thick, they
were not drawn into an unpleasant line by unpleasant habits, they did
not pout as so many Latin lips do, and they had at one corner a humorous
expression which she found curiously agreeable.
"You are to cherish me," Ste. Marie said. "Orders from headquarters.
How does one cherish people?" The corner of his very expressive mouth
twitched and he grinned at her. Miss Benham did not approve of young
men who began an acquaintance in this very familiar manner. She thought
that there was a certain preliminary and more formal stage which ought
to be got through with first, but Ste. Marie's grin was irresistible.
In spite of herself she found that she was laughing.
"I don't quite know," she said. "It sounds rather appalling, doesn't
it? Marian has such an extraordinary fashion of hurling people at each
other's heads. She takes my breath away at times."
"Ah well," said Ste. Marie, "perhaps we can settle upon something when
I've led you to the place where food is. And, by the way, what are we
waiting for? Are we not all here? There's an even number." He broke
off with a sudden exclamation of pleasure, and, when Miss Benham turned
to look, she found Baron de Vries, who had been talking to some friends,
had once more come up to where she stood. She watched the greeting
between the two men, and its quiet affection impressed her very much.
She knew Baron de Vries well, and she knew that it was not his habit to
show or to feel a strong liking for young and idle men. This young man
must be very worth while to have won the regard of that wise old
Belgian.
Just then Hartley, who had been barricaded behind a cordon of friends,
came up to her in an abominable temper over his ill luck, and, a few
moments later, the dinner procession was formed and they went in.
At table Miss Benham found herself between Ste. Marie and the same
strange fair youth who had afflicted her in the drawing-room. She
looked upon him now with a sort of dismayed terror, but it developed
that there was nothing to fear from the fair youth. He had no attention
to waste upon social amenities. He fell upon his food with a wolfish
passion extraordinary to see and also, alas! to hear. Miss Benham
turned from him to meet Ste. Marie's delighted eye.
"Tell him for me," begged that gentleman, "that soup should be seen--not
heard." But Miss Benham gave a little shiver of disgust.
"I shall tell him nothing whatever," she said. "He's quite too dreadful
really. People shouldn't be exposed to that sort of thing. It's not
only the noises. Plenty of very charming and estimable Germans, for
example, make strange noises at table. But he behaves like a famished
dog over a bone. I refuse to have anything to do with him. You must
make up the loss to me, M. Ste. Marie. You must be as amusing as two
people." She smiled across at him in her gravely questioning fashion.
"I'm wondering," she said, "if I dare ask you a very personal question.
I hesitate because I don't like people who presume too much upon a short
acquaintance--and our acquaintance has been very very short, hasn't it?
even though we may have heard a great deal about each other beforehand.
I wonder."
"Oh, I should ask it, if I were you!" said Ste. Marie at once. "I'm an
extremely good-natured person. And besides I quite naturally feel
flattered at your taking interest enough to ask anything about me."
"Well," said she, "it's this. Why does everybody call you just 'Ste.
Marie'? Most people are spoken of as Monsieur this or that--if there
isn't a more august title--but they all call you Ste. Marie without any
Monsieur. It seems rather odd."
Ste. Marie looked puzzled.
"Why," he said, "I don't believe I know, just. I'd never thought of
that. It's quite true, of course. They never do use a Monsieur or
anything, do they? How cheeky of them! I wonder why it is. I'll ask
Hartley."
He did ask Hartley later on and Hartley didn't know either. Miss Benham
asked some other people, who were vague about it, and in the end she
became convinced that it was an odd and quite inexplicable form of
something like endearment. But nobody seemed to have formulated it to
himself.
"The name is really 'de Ste. Marie'," he went on, "and there's a title
that I don't use, and a string of Christian names that one employs. My
people were Bearnais, and there's a heap of ruins on top of a hill in
the Pyrenees where they lived. It used to be Ste. Marie de
Mont-les-Roses, but afterwards, after the Revolution, they called it
Ste. Marie de Mont Perdu. My great-grandfather was killed there, but
some old servants smuggled his little son away and saved him."
He seemed to Miss Benham to say that in exactly the right manner, not in
the cheap and scoffing fashion which some young men affect in speaking
of ancestral fortunes or misfortunes, nor with too much solemnity. And
when she allowed a little silence to occur at the end he did not go on
with his family history, but turned at once to another subject. It
pleased her curiously.
The fair youth at her other side continued to crouch over his food,
making fierce and animal-like noises. He never spoke or seemed to wish
to be spoken to, and Miss Benham found it easy to ignore him altogether.
It occurred to her once or twice that Ste. Marie's other neighbour might
desire an occasional word from him, but after all, she said to herself,
that was his affair and beyond her control. So these two talked together
through the entire dinner period, and the girl was aware that she was
being much more deeply affected by the simple magnetic charm of a man
than ever before in her life. It made her a little angry, because she
was unfamiliar with this sort of thing and distrusted it. She was a
rather perfect type of that phenomenon before which the British and
Continental world stands in mingled delight and exasperation--the
American unmarried young woman, the creature of extraordinary beauty and
still more extraordinary poise, the virgin with the bearing and _savoir
faire_ of a woman of the world, the fresh-cheeked girl with the calm
mind of a _savant_ and the cool judgment, in regard to men and things,
of an ambassador. The European world says she is cold, and that may be
true; but it is well enough known that she can love very deeply. It
says that, like most queens, and for precisely the same set of reasons,
she later on makes a bad mother; but it is easy to point to queens who
are the best of mothers. In short, she remains an enigma, and like all
other enigmas forever fascinating.
Miss Benham reflected that she knew almost nothing about Ste. Marie,
save for his reputation as a carpet knight, and Baron de Vries' good
opinion, which could not be despised. And that made her the more
displeased when she realised how promptly she was surrendering to his
charm. In a moment of silence she gave a sudden little laugh which
seemed to express a half-angry astonishment.
"What was that for?" Ste. Marie demanded. The girl looked at him for an
instant and shook her head.
"I can't tell you," said she. "That's rude, isn't it, and I'm sorry.
Perhaps I will tell you one day when we know each other better."
But inwardly she was saying: "Why, I suppose this is how they all begin:
all these regiments of women who make fools of themselves about him! I
suppose this is exactly what he does to them all!"
It made her angry and she tried quite unfairly to shift the anger, as it
were, to Ste. Marie--to put him somehow in the wrong. But she was by
nature very just and she could not quite do that, particularly as it was
evident that the man was using no cheap tricks. He did not try to flirt
with her and he did not attempt to pay her veiled compliments--though
she was often aware that when her attention was diverted for a few
moments his eyes were always upon her, and that is a compliment that few
women can find it in their hearts to resent.
"You say," said Ste. Marie, "'when we know each other better.' May one
twist that into a permission to come and see you--I mean, really see
you, not just leave a card at your door to-morrow by way of observing
the formalities?"
"Yes," she said. "Oh yes, one may twist it into something like that
without straining it unduly, I think. My mother and I shall be very
glad to see you. I'm sorry she is not here to-night to say it herself."
Then the hostess began to gather together her flock, and so the two had
no more speech. But when the women had gone and the men were left about
the dismantled table, Hartley moved up beside Ste. Marie and shook a sad
head at him. He said--
"You're a very lucky being. I was quietly hoping, on the way here, that
I should be the fortunate man, but you always have all the luck. I hope
you're decently grateful."
"_Mon vieux_," said Ste. Marie, "my feet are upon the stars."
"No!" He shook his head as if the figure displeased him. "No, my feet
are upon the ladder to the stars. Grateful? What does a foolish word
like grateful mean? Don't talk to me. You are not worthy to trample
among my magnificent thoughts. I am a god upon Olympus."
"You said just now," objected the other man practically, "that your feet
were on a ladder. There are no ladders from Olympus to the stars."
"Ho!" said Ste. Marie. "Ho! aren't there, though? There shall be
ladders all over Olympus if I like. What do you know about gods and
stars? I shall be a god climbing to the heavens, and I shall be an
angel of light, and I shall be a miserable worm grovelling in the night
here below, and I shall be a poet, and I shall be anything else I happen
to think of, all of them at once, if I choose. And you, you shall be the
tongue-tied son of perfidious Albion that you are, gaping at my
splendours from a fog bank--a November fog bank in May. Who is the
dessicated gentleman bearing down upon us?"
*CHAPTER III*
*STE. MARIE MAKES A VOW, BUT A PAIR OF EYES HAUNT HIM*
Hartley looked over his shoulder and gave a little exclamation of
distaste.
"It's Captain Stewart, Miss Benham's uncle," he said, lowering his
voice. "I'm off. I shall abandon you to him. He's a good old soul but
he bores me." Hartley nodded to the man who was approaching, and then
made his way to the end of the table where their host sat discussing
Aero-Club matters with a group of the other men.