"Ah, Helen! Come in! Come in! Sit down on the bed there and tell me
what you have been doing!" He pushed aside the pack of cards which was
spread out on the invalid's table before him, and with great care
counted a sum of money in francs and half-francs and nickel twenty-five
centime pieces.
"I've won seven francs fifty from Peters to-night," he said, chuckling
gently. "That is a very good evening indeed. Very good. Where have
you been, and who were there?"
"A dinner party at the de Saulnes'," said Miss Benham, making herself
comfortable on the side of the great bed. "It's a very pleasant place.
Marian is, of course, a dear, and they're quite English and
unceremonious. You can talk to your neighbour at dinner instead of
addressing the house from a platform, as it were. French dinner parties
make me nervous."
Old David gave a little growling laugh.
"French dinner parties at least keep people up to the mark in the art of
conversation," said he. "But that is a lost art anyhow, nowadays, so I
suppose one might as well be quite informal and have done with it. Who
were there?"
"Oh, well--" she considered, "no one, I should think, who would interest
you. Rather an indifferent set. Pleasant people but not inspiring.
The Marquis had some young relative or connexion who was quite odious
and made the most surprising noises over his food. I met a new man whom
I think I am going to like very much indeed. He wouldn't interest you
because he doesn't mean anything in particular--and, of course, he
oughtn't to interest me for the same reason. He's just an idle pleasant
young man, but--he has great charm. Very great charm. His name is Ste.
Marie. Baron de Vries seems very fond of him, which surprised me
rather."
"Ste. Marie!" exclaimed the old gentleman in obvious astonishment.
"Ste. Marie de Mont Perdu?"
"Yes," she said. "Yes, that is the name, I believe. You know him then?
I wonder he didn't mention it."
"I knew his father," said old David. "And his grandfather, for that
matter. They're Gascon, I think, or Bearnais, but this boy's mother
will have been Irish, unless his father married again.
"So you've been meeting a Ste. Marie, have you? And finding that he has
great charm?" The old gentleman broke into one of his growling laughs,
and reached for a long black cigar which he lighted, eyeing his
granddaughter the while over the flaring match.
"Well," he said, when the cigar was drawing, "they all have had charm.
I should think there has never been a Ste. Marie without it. They're a
sort of embodiment of romance, that family. This boy's great-grandfather
lost his life defending a castle against a horde of peasants in 1799.
His grandfather was killed in the French campaign in Mexico in '39--at
Vera Cruz, it was, I think; and his father died in a filibustering
expedition ten years ago. I wonder what will become of the last Ste.
Marie?" Old David's eyes suddenly sharpened.
"You're not going to fall in love with Ste. Marie and marry him, are
you?" he demanded.
Miss Benham gave a little angry laugh, but her grandfather saw the
colour rise in her cheeks for all that.
"Certainly not!" she said with great decision. "What an absurd idea!
Because I meet a man at a dinner party and say I like him, must I marry
him to-morrow? I meet a great many men at dinners and things, and a few
of them I like. Heavens!"
"'Methinks the lady doth protest too much,'" muttered old David into his
huge beard.
"I beg your pardon?" asked Miss Benham politely. But he shook his head,
still growling inarticulately, and began to draw enormous clouds of
smoke from the long black cigar. After a time he took the cigar once
more from his lips and looked thoughtfully at his granddaughter where
she sat on the edge of the vast bed, upright and beautiful, perfect in
the most meticulous detail. Most women when they return from a long
evening out, look more or less the worse for it. Deadened eyes, pale
cheeks, loosened coiffure tell their inevitable tale. Miss Benham
looked as if she had just come from the hands of a very excellent maid.
She looked as freshly _soignee_ as she might have looked at eight that
evening instead of at one. Not a wave of her perfectly undulated hair
was loosened or displaced, not a fold of the lace at her breast had
departed from its perfect arrangement.
"It is odd," said old David Stewart, "you taking a fancy to young Ste.
Marie. Of course it's natural too in a way, because you are complete
opposites, I should think--that is, if this lad is like the rest of his
race. What I mean is, that merely attractive young men don't as a rule
attract you."
"Well, no," she admitted, "they don't usually. Men with brains attract
me most, I think--men who are making civilisation, men who are ruling
the world or at least doing important things for it. That's your fault,
you know. You taught me that."
The old gentleman laughed.
"Possibly," said he. "Possibly. Anyhow that is the sort of men you
like and they like you. You're by no means a fool, Helen. In fact,
you're a woman with brains. You could wield great influence married to
the proper sort of man."
"But not to M. Ste. Marie," she suggested, smiling across at him.
"Well, no," he said. "No, not to Ste. Marie. It would be a mistake to
marry Ste. Marie--if he is what the rest of his house have been. The
Ste. Maries live a life compounded of romance and imagination and
emotion. You're not emotional."
"No," said Miss Benham slowly and thoughtfully. It was as if the idea
were new to her. "No, I'm not, I suppose. No. Certainly not."
"As a matter of fact," said old David, "you're by nature rather cold.
I'm not sure it isn't a good thing. Emotional people, I observe, are
usually in hot water of some sort. When you marry you're very likely to
choose with a great deal of care and some wisdom. And you're also
likely to have what is called a career. I repeat that you could wield
great influence in the proper environment."
The girl frowned across at her grandfather reflectively.
"Do you mean by that," she asked after a little silence, "do you mean
that you think I am likely to be moved by sheer ambition and nothing
else in arranging my life? I've never thought of myself as a very
ambitious person."
"Let us substitute for ambition, common sense," said old David. "I
think you have a great deal of common sense for a woman--and so young a
woman. How old are you, by the way? Twenty-two? Yes, to be sure. I
think you have great common sense and appreciation of values. And I
think you're singularly free of the emotionalism that so often plays hob
with them all. People with common sense fall in love in the right
places."
"I don't quite like the sound of it," said Miss Benham. "Perhaps I am
rather ambitious--I don't know. Yes, perhaps. I should like to play
some part in the world. I don't deny that. But--am I as cold as you
say? I doubt it very much. I doubt that."
"You're twenty-two," said her grandfather. "And you have seen a good
deal of society in several capitals. Have you ever fallen in love?"
[Illustration: "'You're twenty-two. Have you ever fallen in love?'"]
Oddly, the face of Ste. Marie came before Miss Benham's eyes as if she
had summoned it there. But she frowned a little and shook her head,
saying--
"No, I can't say that I have. But that means nothing. There's plenty
of time for that.
"And you know," she said after a pause, "you know I'm rather sure I
could fall in love--pretty hard. I'm sure of that. Perhaps I have been
waiting. Who knows?"
"Ay, who knows?" said David. He seemed all at once to lose interest in
the subject, as old people often do without apparent reason, for he
remained silent for a long time, puffing at the long black cigar or
rolling it absently between his fingers. After awhile he laid it down in
a metal dish which stood at his elbow and folded his lean hands before
him over the invalid's table. He was still so long that at last his
granddaughter thought he had fallen asleep, and she began to rise from
her seat, taking care to make no noise, but at that the old man stirred,
and put out his hand once more for the cigar.
"Was young Richard Hartley at your dinner party?" he asked. And she
said--
"Yes. Oh, yes, he was there. He and M. Ste. Marie came together, I
believe. They are very close friends."
"Another idler," growled old David. "The fellow's a man of parts--and a
man of family. What's he idling about here for? Why isn't he in
Parliament where he belongs?"
"Well," said the girl, "I should think it is because he is too much a
man of family--as you put it. You see, he'll succeed his cousin, Lord
Risdale, before very long, and then all his work would have been for
nothing, because he'll have to take his seat in the Lords. Lord Risdale
is unmarried, you know, and a hopeless invalid. He may die any day. I
think I sympathise with poor Mr. Hartley. It would be a pity to build up
a career for one's self in the lower House and then suddenly in the
midst of it have to give it all up. The situation is rather paralysing
to endeavour, isn't it?"
"Yes, I dare say," said old David absently. He looked up sharply.
"Young Hartley doesn't come here as much as he used to do."
"No," said Miss Benham, "he doesn't." She gave a little laugh.
"To avoid cross-examination," she said, "I may as well admit that he
asked me to marry him and I had to refuse. I'm sorry, because I like
him very much indeed."
Old David made an inarticulate sound which may have been meant to
express surprise--or almost anything else. He had not a great range of
expression.
"I don't want," said he, "to seem to have gone daft on the subject of
marriage, and I see no reason why you should be in any haste about
it--certainly, I should hate to lose you, my child, but--Hartley, as the
next Lord Risdale, is undoubtedly a good match. And you say you like
him." The girl looked up with a sort of defiance, and her face was a
little flushed.
"I don't love him," she said. "I like him immensely but I don't love
him, and after all--well, you say I'm cold and I admit I'm more or less
ambitious, but, after all--well, I just don't quite love him. I want to
love the man I marry."
Old David Stewart held up his black cigar and gazed thoughtfully at the
smoke which streamed thin and blue and veil-like from its lighted end.
"Love!" he said in a reflective tone. "Love." He repeated the word two
or three times slowly, and he stirred a little in his bed.
"I have forgotten what it is," said he. "I expect I must be very old.
I have forgotten what love--that sort of love--is like. It seems very
far away to me and rather unimportant. But I remember that I thought it
important enough once, a century or two ago. Do you know, it strikes me
as rather odd that I have forgotten what love is like. It strikes me as
rather pathetic." He gave a sort of uncouth grimace and stuck the black
cigar once more into his mouth.
"Egad!" said he, mumbling indistinctly over the cigar, "how foolish love
seems when you look back at it across fifty or sixty years!"
Miss Benham rose to her feet smiling, and she came and stood near where
the old man lay propped up against his pillows. She touched his cheek
with her cool hand, and old David put up one of his own hands and patted
it.
"I'm going to bed now," said she. "I've sat here talking too long. You
ought to be asleep and so ought I."
"Perhaps! Perhaps!" the old man said. "I don't feel sleepy, though. I
dare say I shall read a little." He held her hand in his and looked up
at her.
"I've been talking a great deal of nonsense about marriage," said he.
"Put it out of your head! It's all nonsense. I don't want you to marry
for a long time. I don't want to lose you." His face twisted a little
quite suddenly.
"You're precious near all I have left, now," he said.
The girl did not answer at once, for it seemed to her that there was
nothing to say. She knew that her grandfather was thinking of the lost
boy, and she knew what a bitter blow the thing had been to him. She
often thought that it would kill him before his old malady could run its
course.