"I fancy--from your description I fancy I know who the man was. If it
is the man I am thinking of, the name is--Powers. He is, as you have
said, a rather shady character, and I more than once warned my nephew
against him. Such people are not good companions for a boy. Yes, I
warned him."
[Illustration: "'I fancy I know who the man was.'"]
"Powers," said Ste. Marie, "doesn't sound right to me, you know. I
can't say the fellow's name myself, but I'm sure--that is, I think--it's
not Powers."
"Oh yes," said Captain Stewart with an elderly man's half-querulous
certainty. "Yes, the name is Powers. I remember it well. And I
remember---- Yes, it was odd, was it not, your meeting him like that
just as you were talking of Arthur. You--oh, you didn't speak to him,
you say? No! no, to be sure. You didn't recognise him at once. Yes, it
was odd. Of course, the man could have had nothing to do with poor
Arthur's disappearance. His only interest in the boy at any time would
have been for what money Arthur might have, and he carried none, or
almost none, away with him when he vanished. Eh, poor lad! Where can
he be to-night, I wonder? It's a sad business, M. Ste. Marie. A sad
business."
Captain Stewart fell into a sort of brooding silence, frowning down at
the table before him and twisting with his thin fingers the little
liqueur glass and the coffee cup which were there. Once or twice, Ste.
Marie thought, the frown deepened and twisted into a sort of scowl, and
the man's fingers twitched on the cloth of the table, but when at last
the group at the other end of the board rose and began to move towards
the door, Captain Stewart rose also and followed them.
At the door he seemed to think of something, and touched Ste. Marie upon
the arm.
"This, ah, Powers," he said in a low tone, "this man whom you saw
to-night. You said he was one of two occupants of a motor-car. Yes?
Did you by any chance recognise the other?"
"Oh, the other was a young woman," said Ste. Marie. "No, I never saw
her before. She was very handsome."
Captain Stewart said something under his breath and turned abruptly
away. But an instant later he faced about once more, smiling. He said,
in a man-of-the-world manner which sat rather oddly upon him--
"Ah well, we all have our little love affairs. I dare say this shady
fellow has his." And for some obscure reason Ste. Marie found the
speech peculiarly offensive.
In the drawing-room he had opportunity for no more than a word with Miss
Benham, for Hartley, enraged over his previous ill success, cut in ahead
of him and manoeuvred that young lady into a corner, where he sat before
her turning a square and determined back to the world. Ste. Marie
listlessly played bridge for a time, but his attention was not upon it,
and he was glad when the others at the table settled their accounts and
departed to look in at a dance somewhere. After that he talked for a
little with Marian de Saulnes, whom he liked and who made no secret of
adoring him. She complained loudly that he was in a vile temper, which
was not true: he was only restless and distrait and wanted to be alone;
and so, at last, he took his leave without waiting for Hartley.
Outside in the street he stood for a moment hesitating, and an expectant
fiacre drew up before the house, the cocher raising an interrogative
whip. In the end Ste. Marie shook his head and turned away on foot. It
was a still sweet night of soft airs and a moonless starlit sky, and the
man was very fond of walking in the dark. From the Etoile he walked
down the Champs Elysees, but presently turned towards the river. His
eyes were upon the mellow stars, his feet upon the ladder thereunto. He
found himself crossing the Pont des Invalides, and halted midway to rest
and look. He laid his arms upon the bridge's parapet and turned his
face outwards. Against it bore a little gentle breeze that smelt of the
purifying water below and of the night and of green things growing.
Beneath him the river ran black as flowing ink, and across its troubled
surface the coloured lights of the many bridges glittered very
beautifully--swirling arabesques of gold and crimson. The noises of the
city--beat of hoofs upon wooden pavements, horn of tram or motor-car,
jingle of bell upon cab horse--came here faintly and as if from a great
distance. Above the dark trees of the Cours la Reine the sky glowed
softly golden, reflecting the million lights of Paris.
Ste. Marie closed his eyes and, against darkness, he saw the beautiful
head of Helen Benham, the clear-cut exquisite modelling of feature and
contour, the perfection of form and colour. Her eyes met his eyes, and
they were very serene and calm and confident. She smiled at him, and
the new contours into which her face fell with the smile were more
perfect than before. He watched the turn of her head, and the grace of
the movement was the uttermost effortless grace one dreams that a queen
should have. The heart of Ste. Marie quickened in him and he would have
gone down upon his knees.
He was well aware that with the coming of this girl something
unprecedented, wholly new to his experience had befallen him--an
awakening to a new life. He had been in love a very great many times.
He was usually in love. And each time his heart had gone through the
same sweet and bitter anguish, the same sleepless nights had come and
gone upon him, the eternal and ever-new miracle had wakened spring in
his soul, had passed its summer solstice, had faded through autumnal
regrets to winter's death; but through it all something within him had
waited asleep.
He found himself wondering dully what it was, wherein lay the great
difference, and he could not answer the question he asked. He knew only
that whereas before he had loved, he now went down upon prayerful knees
to worship. In a sudden poignant thrill the knightly fervour of his
forefathers came upon him, and he saw a sweet and golden lady set far
above him upon a throne. Her clear eyes gazed afar, serene and
untroubled. She sat wrapped in a sort of virginal austerity, unaware of
the base passions of men. The other women whom Ste. Marie had, as he
was pleased to term it, loved, had certainly come at least halfway to
meet him, and some of them had come a good deal farther than that. He
could not, by the wildest flight of imagination, conceive this girl
doing anything of that sort. She was to be won by trial and high
endeavour, by prayer and self-purification, not captured by a warm eye
glance, a whispered word, a laughing kiss. In fancy he looked from the
crowding cohorts of these others to that still sweet figure set on high,
wrapt in virginal pride, calm in her serene perfection, and his soul
abased itself before her. He knelt in an awed and worshipful adoration.
So, before quest or tournament or battle, must those elder Ste.
Maries--Ste. Maries of Mont-les-Roses--have knelt, each knight at the
feet of his lady, each knightly soul aglow with the chaste ardour of
chivalry.
The man's hands tightened upon the parapet of the bridge, he lifted his
face again to the shining stars whereamong, as his fancy had it, she sat
enthroned. Exultingly he felt under his feet the rungs of the ladder,
and in the darkness he swore a great oath to have done for ever with
blindness and grovelling, to climb and climb, forever to climb, until at
last he should stand where she was--cleansed and made worthy by long
endeavour--at last meet her eyes and touch her hand.
It was a fine and chivalric frenzy, and Ste. Marie was passionately in
earnest about it, but his guardian angel, indeed Fate herself, must have
laughed a little in the dark, knowing what manner of man he was in less
exalted hours.
It was an odd freak of memory that at last recalled him to earth. Every
man knows that when a strong and, for the moment, unavailing effort has
been made to recall something lost to mind, the memory, in some
mysterious fashion, goes on working long after the attention has been
elsewhere diverted, and sometimes hours afterwards, or even days,
produces quite suddenly and inappropriately the lost article. Ste.
Marie had turned with a little sigh to take up once more his walk across
the Pont des Invalides, when seemingly from nowhere, and certainly by no
conscious effort, a name flashed into his mind. He said it aloud----
"O'Hara! O'Hara. That tall thin chap's name was O'Hara, by Jove! It
wasn't Powers at all." He laughed a little as he remembered how very
positive Captain Stewart had been. And then he frowned, thinking that
the mistake was an odd one since Stewart had evidently known a good deal
about this adventurer. Captain Stewart though, Ste. Marie reflected,
was exactly the sort to be very sure he was right about things. He had
just the neat and precise and semi-scholarly personality of the man who
always knows. So Ste. Marie dismissed the matter with another brief
laugh, but a cognate matter was less easy to dismiss. The name brought
with it a face, a dark and splendid face with tragic eyes that called.
He walked a long way thinking about them, and wondering. The eyes
haunted him. It will have been reasonably evident that Ste. Marie was a
fanciful and imaginative soul. He needed but a chance word, the sight
of a face in a crowd, the glance of an eye, to begin story building, and
he would go on for hours about it and work himself up to quite a passion
with his imaginings. He should have been a writer of fiction.
He began forthwith to construct romances about this lady of the
motor-car. He wondered why she should have been with the shady
Irishman--if Irishman he was--O'Hara, and with some anxiety he wondered
what the two were to each other. Captain Stewart's little cynical jest
came to his mind, and he was conscious of a sudden desire to kick Miss
Benham's middle-aged uncle.
The eyes haunted him. What was it they suffered? Out of what misery
did they call?--and for what? He walked all the long way home to his
little flat overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens, haunted by those eyes.
As he climbed his stair it suddenly occurred to him that they had quite
driven out of his mind the image of his beautiful lady who sat amongst
the stars, and the realisation came to him with a shock.
*CHAPTER IV*
*OLD DAVID STEWART*
It was Miss Benham's custom upon returning home at night from dinner
parties or other entertainments to look in for a few minutes on her
grandfather before going to bed. The old gentleman, like most elderly
people, slept lightly, and often sat up in bed very late into the night
reading or playing piquet with his valet. He suffered hideously at
times from the malady which was killing him by degrees, but when he was
free from pain the enormous recuperative power, which he had preserved
to his eighty-six years, left him almost as vigorous and clear-minded as
if he had never been ill at all. Hartley's description of him had not
been altogether a bad one--"a quaint old beggar ... a great quantity of
white hair and an enormous square white beard and the fiercest eyes I
ever saw----" He was a rather "quaint old beggar" indeed! He had let
his thick white hair grow long, and it hung down over his brows in
unparted locks as the ancient Greeks wore their hair. He had very
shaggy eyebrows, and the deep-set eyes under them gleamed from the
shadow with a fierceness which was rather deceptive but none the less
intimidating. He had a great beak of a nose, but the mouth below could
not be seen. It was hidden by the moustache and the enormous square
beard. His face was colourless, almost as white as hair and beard:
there seemed to be no shadow or tint anywhere except the cavernous
recesses from which the man's eyes gleamed and sparkled. Altogether he
was certainly "a quaint old beggar."
He had, during the day and evening, a good many visitors, for the old
gentleman's mind was as alert as it ever had been, and important men
thought him worth consulting. The names which the admirable valet,
Peters, announced from time to time were names which meant a great deal
in the official and diplomatic world of the day. But if old David felt
flattered over the unusual fashion in which the great of the earth
continued to come to him he never betrayed it. Indeed it is quite
probable that this view of the situation never once occurred to him. He
had been thrown with the great of the earth for more than half a
century, and he had learnt to take it as a matter of course.
On her return from the Marquise de Saulnes' dinner party Miss Benham
went at once to her grandfather's wing of the house, which had its own
street entrance, and knocked lightly at his door. She asked the
admirable Peters, who opened to her--
"Is he awake?" And being assured that he was, went into the vast
chamber, dropping her cloak on a chair as she entered. David Stewart
was sitting up in his monumental bed behind a sort of invalid's table
which stretched across his knees without touching them. He wore over
his night-clothes a Chinese Mandarin's jacket of old red satin, wadded
with down, and very gorgeously embroidered with the cloud and bat
designs and with large round panels of the Imperial five-clawed dragon
in gold. He had a number of these jackets, they seemed to be his one
vanity in things external, and they were so made that they could be
slipped about him without disturbing him in his bed, since they hung
down only to the waist or thereabouts. They kept the upper part of his
body, which was not covered by the bedclothes, warm, and they certainly
made him a very impressive figure.