"We won't give up hope. We'll never give up hope. Think! he might come
home to morrow. Who knows?"
"If he has stayed away of his own accord," cried out old David Stewart
in a loud voice, "I'll never forgive him--not if he comes to me
to-morrow on his knees! Not even if he comes to me on his knees!"
The girl bent over her grandfather, saying: "Hush! hush! You mustn't
excite yourself." But old David's grey face was working and his eyes
gleamed from their cavernous shadows with a savage fire.
"If the boy is staying away out of spite," he repeated, "he need never
come back to me. I won't forgive him." He beat his unemployed hand
upon the table before him, and the things which lay there jumped and
danced.
"And if he waits until I'm dead and then comes back," said he, "he'll
find he has made a mistake--a great mistake. He'll find a surprise in
store for him. I can tell you that. I won't tell you what I have done,
but it will be a disagreeable surprise for Master Arthur. You may be
sure."
The old gentleman fell to frowning and muttering in his choleric
fashion, but the fierce glitter began to go out of his eyes, and his
hands ceased to tremble and clutch at the things before him. The girl
was silent because again there seemed to her to be nothing that she
could say. She longed very much to plead her brother's cause, but she
was sure that would only excite her grandfather, and he was growing
quieter after his burst of anger. She bent down over him and kissed his
cheek.
"Try to go to sleep!" she said. "And don't torture yourself with
thinking about all this. I'm as sure that poor Arthur is not staying
away out of spite as if he were myself. He's foolish and headstrong,
but he's not spiteful, dear. Try to believe that! And now I'm really
going. Good-night!"
She kissed him again and slipped out of the room. And as she closed the
door she heard her grandfather pull the bell-cord which hung beside him
and summon the excellent Peters from the room beyond.
*CHAPTER V*
*STE. MARIE SETS FORTH UPON THE GREAT ADVENTURE*
Miss Benham stood at one of the long drawing-room windows of the house
in the Rue de l'Universite and looked out between the curtains upon the
rather grimy little garden, where a few not very prosperous cypresses
and chestnuts stood guard over the rows of lilac shrubs and the
box-bordered flower-beds and the usual moss-stained fountain. She was
thinking of the events of the past month, the month which had elapsed
since the evening of the de Saulnes' dinner party. They were not at all
startling events; in a practical sense there were no events at all, only
a quiet sequence of affairs which was about as inevitable as the night
upon the day--the day upon the night again. In a word this girl, who
had considered herself very strong and very much the mistress of her
feelings, found, for the first time in her life, that her strength was
as nothing at all against the potent charm and magnetism of a man who
had almost none of the qualities she chiefly admired in men. During the
month's time she had passed from a phase of angry self-scorn through a
period of bewilderment not unmixed with fear, and from that she had come
into an unknown world, a land very strange to her, where old standards
and judgments seemed to be valueless--a place seemingly ruled altogether
by new emotions, sweet and thrilling or full of vague terrors as her
mood veered here or there.
That sublimated form of guesswork which is called "woman's intuition"
told her that Ste. Marie would come to her on this afternoon, and that
something in the nature of a crisis would have to be faced. It can be
proved even by poor masculine mathematics that guesswork, like other
gambling ventures, is bound to succeed about half the time, and it
succeeded on this occasion. Even as Miss Benham stood at the window
looking out through the curtains Monsieur Ste. Marie was announced from
the doorway.
She turned to meet him with a little frown of determination, for in his
absence she was often very strong indeed, and sometimes she made up and
rehearsed little speeches of great dignity and decision, in which she
told him that he was attempting a quite hopeless thing, and, as a
well-wishing friend, advised him to go away and attempt it no longer.
But as Ste. Marie came quickly across the room towards her the little
frown wavered and at last fled from her face, and another look came
there. It was always so. The man's bodily presence exerted an absolute
spell over her.
"I have been sitting with your grandfather for half an hour," Ste. Marie
said, and she said--
"Oh, I'm glad! I'm very glad. You always cheer him up. He hasn't been
too cheerful, or too well of late." She unnecessarily twisted a chair
about and after a moment sat down in it. And she gave a little laugh.
"This friendship which has grown up between my grandfather and you,"
said she, "I don't understand it at all. Of course, he knew your father
and all that, but you two seem such very different types, I shouldn't
think you would amuse each other at all. There's Mr. Hartley, for
example, I should expect my grandfather to like him very much better
than you, but he doesn't--though I fancy he approves of him much more."
She laughed again, but a different laugh, and when he heard it Ste.
Marie's eyes gleamed a little and his hands moved beside him.
"I expect," said she, "I expect, you know, that he just likes you,
without stopping to think why--as everybody else does. I fancy it's
just that. What do you think?"
"Oh, I?" said the man. "I--how should I know? I know it's a great
privilege to be allowed to see him--such a man as that. And I know we
get on wonderfully well. He doesn't condescend as most old men do who
have led important lives. We just talk as two men in a club might talk.
And I tell him stories and make him laugh. Oh yes, we get on
wonderfully well."
"Oh!" said she. "I've often wondered what you talk about. What did you
talk about to-day?"
Ste. Marie turned abruptly away from her and went across to one of the
windows--the window where she had stood earlier looking out upon the
dingy garden. She saw him stand there, with his back turned, the head a
little bent, the hands twisting together behind him, and a sudden fit of
nervous shivering wrung her. Every woman knows when a certain thing is
going to be said to her, and usually she is prepared for it, though
usually also she says she is not. Miss Benham knew what was coming now,
and she was frightened--not of Ste. Marie, but of herself. It meant so
very much to her, more than to most women at such a time. It meant, if
she said yes to him, the surrender of almost all the things she had
cared for and hoped for. It meant the giving up of that career which
old David Stewart had dwelt upon a month ago.
Ste. Marie turned back into the room. He came a little way towards
where the girl sat and halted, and she could see that he was very pale.
A sort of critical second self noticed that he was pale, and was
surprised, because, although men's faces often turn red, they seldom
turn noticeably pale except in very great nervous crises--or in works of
fiction; while women on the contrary may turn red and white twenty times
a day, and no harm done. He raised his hands a little way from his
sides in the beginning of a gesture, but they dropped again as if there
were no strength in them.
"I--told him," said Ste. Marie in a flat voice, "I told your grandfather
that I--loved you more than anything in this world or in the next. I
told him that my love for you had made another being of me--a new being.
I told him that I wanted to come to you and to kneel at your feet and to
ask you if you could give me just a little, little hope--something to
live for--a light to climb towards. That is what we talked about, your
grandfather and I."
"Ste. Marie! Ste. Marie!" said the girl in a half whisper.
"What did my grandfather say to you?" she asked after a silence.
Ste. Marie looked away.
"I cannot tell you," he said. "He--was not quite sympathetic."
The girl gave a little cry.
"Tell me what he said!" she demanded. "I must know what he said." The
man's eyes pleaded with her, but she held him with her gaze and in the
end he gave in.
"He said I was a damned fool," said Ste. Marie. And the girl, after an
instant of staring, broke into a little fit of nervous overwrought
laughter, and covered her face with her hands.
He threw himself upon his knees before her, and her laughter died away.
An Englishman or an American cannot do that. Richard Hartley, for
example, would have looked like an idiot upon his knees and he would
have felt it. But it did not seem extravagant with Ste. Marie. It
became him.
"Listen! listen!" he cried to her, but the girl checked him before he
could go on. She dropped her hands from her face and she bent a little
forward over the man as he knelt there. She put out her hands and took
his head for a swift instant between them, looking down into his eyes.
At the touch a sudden wave of tenderness swept her--almost an engulfing
wave--almost it overwhelmed her and bore her away from the land she
knew. And so when she spoke her voice was not quite steady. She said--
"Ah, dear Ste. Marie! I cannot pretend to be cold towards you. You
have laid a spell upon me, Ste. Marie. You enchant us all somehow,
don't you? I suppose I'm not as different from the others as I thought
I was.
"And yet," she said, "he was right, you know. My grandfather was right.
No, let me talk, now! I must talk for a little. I must try to tell you
how it is with me--try somehow to find a way. He was right. He meant
that you and I were utterly unsuited to each other, and so, in calm
moments, I know we are. I know that well enough. When you're not with
me I feel very sure about it. I think of a thousand excellent reasons
why you and I ought to be no more to each other than friends. Do you
know, I think my grandfather is a little uncanny. I think he has
prophetic powers. They say very old people often have. He and I talked
about you when I came home from that dinner party at the de Saulnes' a
month ago--the dinner party where you and I first met. I told him that
I had met a man whom I liked very much--a man with great charm--and,
though I must have said the same sort of thing to him before about other
men, he was quite oddly disturbed, and talked for a long time about it,
about the sort of man I ought to marry and the sort I ought not to
marry. It was unusual for him. He seldom says anything of that kind.
Yes, he is right. You see, I'm ambitious in a particular way. If I
marry at all I ought to marry a man who is working hard in politics or
in something of that kind. I could help him. We could do a great deal
together."
"I could go into politics!" cried Ste. Marie, but she shook her head,
smiling down upon him.
"No, not you, my dear. Politics least of all. You could be a soldier,
if you chose. You could fight as your father and your grandfather and
the others of your house have done. You could lead a forlorn hope in
the field. You could suffer and starve and go on fighting. You could
die splendidly but--politics, no! That wants a tougher shell than you
have.
"And a soldier's wife! Of what use to him is she?"
Ste. Marie's face was very grave. He looked up to her smiling.
"Do you set ambition before love, my queen?" he asked, and she did not
answer him at once. She looked into his eyes, and she was as grave as
he.
"Is love all?" she said at last. "Is love all? Ought one to think of
nothing but love when one is settling one's life for ever?
"I wonder?
"I look about me, Ste. Marie," she said, "and in the lives of my
friends--the people who seem to me to be most worth while--the people
who are making the world's history for good or ill, and it seems to me
that in their lives love has the second place--or the third. I wonder
if one has the right to set it first.
"There is, of course," she said, "the merely domestic type of woman--the
woman who has no thought and no interest beyond her home. I am not that
type of woman. Perhaps I wish I were. Certainly they are the happiest.
But I was brought up among--well, among important people--men of my
grandfather's kind. All my training has been towards that life. Have I
the right, I wonder, to give it all up?"
The man stirred at her feet and she put out her hands to him quickly.
"Do I seem brutal?" she cried. "Oh, I don't want to be! Do I seem very
ungenerous and wrapped up in my own side of the thing? I don't mean to
be that but--I'm not sure. I expect it's that. I'm not sure, and I
think I'm a little frightened." She gave him a brief anxious smile that
was not without its tenderness.
"I'm so sure," she said, "when I'm away from you. But when you're
here--oh, I forget all I've thought of.
"You lay your spell upon me."
Ste. Marie gave a little wordless cry of joy. He caught her two hands
in his and held them against his lips. Again that great wave of
tenderness swept her--almost engulfing. But when it had ebbed she sank
back once more in her chair, and she withdrew her hands from his clasp.
"You make me forget too much," she said. "I think you make me forget
everything that I ought to remember. Oh, Ste. Marie, have I any right
to think of love and happiness while this terrible mystery is upon us?
While we don't know whether poor Arthur is alive or dead? You've seen
what it has brought my grandfather to. It is killing him. He has been
much worse in the last fortnight. And my mother is hardly a ghost of
herself in these days. Ah, it is brutal of me to think of my own
affairs--to dream of happiness at such a time." She smiled across at
him very sadly.
"You see what you have brought me to!" she said.
Ste. Marie rose to his feet. If Miss Benham, absorbed in that warfare
which raged within her, had momentarily forgotten the cloud of sorrow
under which her household lay, so much the more had he, to whom the
sorrow was less intimate, forgotten it. But he was ever swift to
sympathy, Ste. Marie, as quick as a woman and as tender. He could not
thrust his love upon the girl at such a time as this. He turned a
little away from her and so remained for a moment. When he faced about
again the flush had gone from his cheeks and the fire from his eyes.
Only tenderness was left there.
"There has been no news at all this week?" he asked, and the girl shook
her head.
"None! None! Shall we ever have news of him, I wonder? Must we go on
always and never know? It seems to me almost incredible that any one
could disappear so completely. And yet, I dare say, many people have
done it before and have been as carefully sought for. If only I could
believe that he is alive! If only I could believe that!"
"I believe it," said Ste. Marie.
"Ah," she said, "you say that to cheer me. You have no reason to offer."
"Dead bodies very seldom disappear completely," said he. "If your
brother died anywhere there would be a record of the death. If he were
accidentally killed there would be a record of that too, and, of course,
you are having all such records constantly searched?"
"Oh yes," she said. "Yes, of course. At least, I suppose so. My uncle
has been directing the search. Of course he would take an obvious
precaution like that."
"Naturally," said Ste. Marie. "Your uncle, I should say, is an
unusually careful man." He paused a moment to smile.
"He makes his little mistakes, though. I told you about that man O'Hara
and about how sure Captain Stewart was that the name was Powers. Do you
know----" Ste. Marie had been walking up and down the room, but he
halted to face her.
"Do you know, I have a very strong feeling that if one could find this
man O'Hara one would learn something about what became of your brother?
I have no reason for thinking that, but I feel it."
"Oh," said the girl doubtfully, "I hardly think that could be so. What
motive could the man have for harming my brother?"
"None," said Ste. Marie; "but he might have an excellent motive for
hiding him away--kidnapping him. Is that the word? Yes, I know, you're
going to say that no demand has been made for money, and that is where
my argument--if I can call it an argument--is weak. But the fellow may
be biding his time. Anyhow, I should like to have five minutes alone
with him.
"I'll tell you another thing. It's a trifle and it may be of no
consequence, but I add it to my vague and--if you like--foolish feeling
and make something out of it. I happened some days ago to meet at the
Cafe de Paris a man who, I knew, used to know this O'Hara. He was not,
I think, a friend of his at all, but an acquaintance. I asked him what
had become of O'Hara, saying that I hadn't seen him for some weeks.
Well, this man said O'Hara had gone away somewhere a couple of months
ago. He didn't seem at all surprised, for it appears the Irishman--if
he is an Irishman--is decidedly a haphazard sort of person, here to-day,
gone to-morrow. No, the man wasn't surprised, but he was rather angry,
because he said O'Hara owed him some money. I said I thought he must be
mistaken about the fellow's absence, because I'd seen him in the street
within the month--on the evening of our dinner party you remember--but
this man was very sure that I had made a mistake. He said that if
O'Hara had been in town he was sure to have known it.
"Well, the point is here. Your brother disappears at a certain time.
At the same time this Irish adventurer disappears too, _and_ your
brother was known to have frequented the Irishman's company. It may be
only a coincidence, but I can't help feeling that there's something in
it."
Miss Benham was sitting up straight in her chair with a little alert
frown.
"Have you spoken of this to my uncle?" she demanded.
"Well--no," said Ste. Marie. "Not the latter part of it; that is, not
my having heard of O'Hara's disappearance. In the first place, I learnt
of that only three days ago and I have not seen Captain Stewart since--I
rather expected to find him here to-day; and in the second place I was
quite sure that he would only laugh. He has laughed at me two or three
times for suggesting that this Irishman might know something. Captain
Stewart is--not easy to convince, you know."
"I know," she said, looking away. "He's always very certain that he's
right. Well, perhaps he is right. Who knows?"
She gave a little sob.
"Oh!" she cried, "shall we ever have my brother back? Shall we ever see
him again? It is breaking my heart, Ste. Marie, and it is killing my
grandfather and, I think, my mother too! Oh, can nothing be done!"
Ste. Marie was walking up and down the floor before her, his hands
clasped behind his back. When she had finished speaking the girl saw him
halt beside one of the windows, and, after a moment, she saw his head go
up sharply and she heard him give a sudden cry. She thought he had seen
something from the window which had wrung that exclamation from him, and
she asked--
"What is it?" But abruptly the man turned back into the room and came
across to where she sat. It seemed to her that his face had a new look,
a very strange exaltation which she had never before seen there. He
said--
"Listen! I do not know if anything can be done that has not been done
already, but if there is anything I shall do it, you may be sure."
"You, Ste. Marie!" she cried in a sharp voice. "You?"
"And why not I?" he demanded.
"Oh, my friend," said she, "you could do nothing. You wouldn't know
where to turn, how to set to work. Remember that a score of men who are
skilled in this kind of thing have been searching for two months. What
could you do that they haven't done?"
"I do not know, my queen," said Ste. Marie; "but I shall do what I can.
Who knows? Sometimes the fool who rushes in where angels have feared to
tread succeeds where they have failed.
"Oh, let me do this!" he cried out. "Let me do it, for both our sakes,
for yours and for mine. It is for your sake most. I swear that! It is
to set you at peace again, bring back the happiness you have lost. But
it is for my sake too, a little. It will be a test of me, a trial. If I
can succeed here where so many have failed, if I can bring back your
brother to you--or at least, discover what has become of him--I shall be
able to come to you with less shame for my--unworthiness."
He looked down upon her with eager burning eyes, and, after a little,
the girl rose to face him. She was very white and she stared at him
silently.
"When I came to you to-day," he went on, "I knew that I had nothing to
offer you but my faithful love and my life, which has been a life
without value. In exchange for that I asked too much. I knew it and you
knew it too. I know well enough what sort of man you ought to marry,
and what a brilliant career you could make for yourself in the proper
place--what great influence you could wield. But I asked you to give
that all up and I hadn't anything to offer in its place--nothing but
love.
"My queen, give me a chance now to offer you more! If I can bring back
your brother or news of him, I can come to you without shame and ask you
to marry me, because if I can succeed in that you will know that I can
succeed in other things. You will be able to trust me. You'll know that
I can climb. It shall be a sort of symbol. Let me go!"
The girl broke into a sort of sobbing laughter.
"Oh, divine madman!" she cried. "Are you all mad, you Ste. Maries, that
you must be forever leading forlorn hopes? Oh, how you are, after all,
a Ste. Marie! Now at last I know why one cannot but love you. You're
the knight of old. You're chivalry come down to us. You're a ghost out
of the past when men rode in armour with pure hearts seeking the Great
Adventure.
"Oh, my friend," she said, "be wise! Give this up in time. It is a
beautiful thought and I love you for it, but it is madness--yes, yes, a
sweet madness, but mad nevertheless! What possible chance would you
have of success? And think! Think how failure would hurt you--and me!
You must not do it, Ste. Marie."
"Failure will never hurt me, my queen," said he; "because there are no
hurts in the grave, and I shall never give over searching until I
succeed or until I am dead." His face was uplifted, and there was a
sort of splendid fervour upon it. It was as if it shone. The girl
stared at him dumbly. She began to realise that the knightly spirit of
those gallant long-dead gentlemen was indeed descended upon the last of
their house, that he burnt with the same pure fire which had long ago
lighted them through quest and adventure, and she was a little afraid
with an almost superstitious fear.
She put out her hands upon the man's shoulders and she moved a little
closer to him, holding him.
"Oh, madness! madness!" she said, watching his face.
"Let me do it!" said Ste. Marie.
And after a silence that seemed to endure for a long time she sighed,
shaking her head, and said she--
"Oh, my friend, there is no strength in me to stop you. I think we are
both a little mad, and I know that you are very mad, but I cannot say
no. You seem to have come out of another century to take up this quest.
How can I prevent you? But listen to one thing. If I accept this
sacrifice, if I let you give your time and your strength to this almost
hopeless attempt, it must be understood that it is to be within certain
limits. I will not accept any indefinite thing. You may give your
efforts to trying to find trace of my brother for a month if you like,
or for three months or six, or even a year, but not for more than that.
If he is not found in a year's time we shall know that--we shall know
that he is dead, and that--further search is useless. I cannot say how
I---- Oh, Ste. Marie, Ste. Marie, this is a proof of you indeed! And I
have called you idle! I have said hard things of you. It is very
bitter to me to think that I have said those things."
"They were true, my queen," said he, smiling. "They were quite true. It
is for me to prove now that they shall be true no longer." He took the
girl's hand in his rather ceremoniously, and bent his head and kissed
it. As he did so he was aware that she stirred, all at once, uneasily,
and when he had raised his head he looked at her in question.
"I thought some one was coming into the room," she explained, looking
beyond him. "I thought some one started to come in between the
portieres yonder. It must have been a servant."
"Then it is understood," said Ste. Marie. "To bring you back your
happiness and to prove myself in some way worthy of your love, I am to
devote myself with all my effort and all my strength to finding your
brother or some trace of him, and until I succeed I will not see your
face again, my queen."
"Oh, that!" she cried, "that too?"
"I will not see you," said he, "until I bring you news of him, or until
my year is passed and I have failed utterly. I know what risk I run.
If I fail, I lose you. That is understood too. But if I succeed----"
"Then?" she said, breathing quickly. "Then?"
"Then," said he, "I shall come to you and I shall feel no shame in
asking you to marry me, because then you will know that there is in me
some little worthiness, and that in our lives together you need not be
buried in obscurity--lost to the world."
"I cannot find any words to say," said she. "I am feeling just now very
humble and very ashamed. It seems that I haven't known you at all. Oh
yes, I am ashamed." The girl's face, habitually so cool and composed,
was flushed with a beautiful flush, and it had softened and it seemed to
quiver between a smile and a tear. With a swift movement she leant
close to him holding by his shoulder, and for an instant her cheek was
against his. She whispered to him--
"Oh, find him quickly, my dear! Find him quickly, and come back to me!"
Ste. Marie began to tremble, and she stood away from him. Once he
looked up, but the flush was gone from Miss Benham's cheeks, and she was
pale again. She stood with her hands tight clasped over her breast.
So he bowed to her very low, and turned and went out of the room and out
of the house.
[Illustration: "He turned and went out of the room."]
So quickly did he move at this last that a man who had been for some
moments standing just outside the portieres of the doorway had barely
time to step aside into the shadows of the dim hall. As it was, Ste.
Marie in a more normal moment must have seen that the man was there, but
his eyes were blind and he saw nothing. He groped for his hat and stick
as if the place were a place of gloom, and, because the footman who
should have been at the door was in regions unknown, he let himself out
and so went away.
Then the man who stood apart in the shadows crossed the hall to a small
room which was furnished as a library but not often used. He closed the
door behind him and went to one of the windows which gave upon the
street. And he stood there for a long time drawing absurd invisible
pictures upon the glass with one finger, and staring thoughtfully out
into the late June afternoon.
*CHAPTER VI*
*A BRAVE GENTLEMAN RECEIVES A HURT BUT
VOLUNTEERS IN A GOOD CAUSE*
When Ste. Marie had gone Miss Benham sat alone in the drawing-room for
almost an hour. She had been stirred that afternoon more deeply than
she thought she had ever been stirred before, and she needed time to
regain that cool poise, that mental equilibrium which was normal to her
and necessary for coherent thought.
She was still in a sort of fever of bewilderment and exaltation, still
all aglow with the man's own high fervour; but the second self, which so
often sat apart from her and looked on with critical mocking eyes,
whispered that to-morrow, the fervour past, the fever cooled, she must
see the thing in its truer light--a glorious lunacy born of a moment of
enthusiasm. It was finely romantic of him, this mocking second self
whispered to her: picturesque beyond criticism; but, setting aside the
practical folly of it, could even the mood last?
The girl rose to her feet with an angry exclamation. She found herself
intolerable at such times as this.
"If there's a heaven," she cried out, "and by chance I ever go there, I
suppose I shall walk sneering through the streets, and saying to myself:
'Oh yes, it's pretty enough, but how absurd and unpractical!'"
She passed before one of the small narrow mirrors which were let into
the walls of the room in gilt Louis Seize frames with candles beside
them, and she turned and stared at her very beautiful reflection with a
resentful wonder.
"Shall I always drag along so far behind him?" she said. "Shall I never
rise to him, save in the moods of an hour?"
She began suddenly to realise what the man's going away meant--that she
might not see him again for weeks, months, even a year. For was it at
all likely that he could succeed in what he had undertaken?
"Why did I let him go?" she cried. "Oh, fool, fool, to let him go!"
But even as she said it she knew that she could not have held him back.
She began to be afraid, not for him, but of herself. He had taught her
what it might be to love. For the first time love's premonitory
thrill--promise of unspeakable uncomprehended mysteries--had wrung her,
and the echo of that thrill stirred in her yet; but what might not
happen in his long absence? She was afraid of that critical and
analysing power of mind which she had so long trained to attack all that
came to her. What might it not work with the new thing that had come?
To what pitiful shreds might it not be rent while he, who only could
renew it, was away? She looked ahead at the weeks and months to come,
and she was terribly afraid.
She went out of the room and up to her grandfather's chamber and knocked
there. The admirable Peters who opened to her said that his master had
not been very well and was just then asleep, but as they spoke together
in low tones the old gentleman cried testily from within--
"Well? Well? Who's there? Who wants to see me? Who is it?"
Miss Benham went into the dim shaded room, and when old David saw who it
was he sank back upon his pillows with a pacified growl. He certainly
looked ill, and he had grown thinner and whiter within the past month,
and the lines in his waxlike face seemed to be deeper scored.
The girl went up beside the bed and stood there a moment, after she had
bent over and kissed her grandfather's cheek, stroking with her hand the
absurdly gorgeous mandarin's jacket--an imperial yellow one this time.
"Isn't this new?" she asked. "I seem never to have seen this one
before. It's quite wonderful."
The old gentleman looked down at it with the pride of a little girl over
her first party frock. He came as near simpering as a fierce person of
eighty-six, with a square white beard, can come.
"Rather good, that! What?" said he. "Yes, it's new. De Vries sent it
me. It is my best one. Imperial yellow. Did you notice the little
_Show_ medallions with the _swastika_? Young Ste. Marie was here this
afternoon." He introduced the name with no pause or change of
expression, as if Ste. Marie were a part of the decoration of the
mandarin's jacket.
"I told him he was a damned fool."
"Yes," said Miss Benham, "I know. He said you did."
"I suppose," she said, "that in a sort of very informal fashion I am
engaged to him. Well no, perhaps not quite that, but he seems to
consider himself engaged to me, and when he has finished something very
important that he has undertaken to do he is coming to ask me definitely
to marry him. No, I suppose we aren't engaged yet: at least I'm not.
But it's almost the same, because I suppose I shall accept him whether
he fails or succeeds in what he is doing."
"If he fails in it, whatever it may be," said old David, "he won't give
you a chance to accept him. He won't come back. I know him well enough
for that. He's a romantic fool, but he's a thorough-going fool. He
plays the game." The old man looked up to his granddaughter, scowling a
little.
"You two are absurdly unsuited to each other," said he, "and I told Ste.
Marie so. I suppose you think you're in love with him."
"Yes," said the girl, "I suppose I do."
"Idleness and all? You were rather severe on idleness at one time."
"He isn't idle any more," said she. "He has undertaken--of his own
accord--to find Arthur. He has some theory about it. And he is not
going to see me again until he has succeeded--or until a year is past.
If he fails, I fancy he won't come back."
Old David gave a sudden hoarse exclamation, and his withered hands shook
and stirred before him. Afterwards he fell to half-inarticulate
muttering.
"The young romantic fool!--Don Quixote--like all the rest of them--those
Ste. Maries. The fool and the angels. The angels and the fool." The
girl distinguished words from time to time. For the most part he mumbled
under his breath. But when he had been silent a long time he said
suddenly--
"It would be ridiculously like him to succeed."
The girl gave a little sigh.
"I wish I dared hope for it," said she. "I wish I dared hope for it."
She had left a book that she wanted in the drawing-room, and when
presently her grandfather fell asleep in his fitful manner, she went
down after it. In crossing the hall she came upon Captain Stewart, who
was dressed for the street and had his hat and stick in his hands. He
did not live in his father's house, for he had a little flat in the Rue
du Faubourg St. Honore, but he was in and out a good deal. He paused
when he saw his niece and smiled upon her a benignant smile, which she
rather disliked, because she disliked benignant people. The two really
saw very little of each other, though Captain Stewart often sat for
hours together with his sister up in a little boudoir which she had
furnished in the execrable taste which to her meant comfort, while that
timid and colourless lady embroidered strange tea-cloths with stranger
flora, and prattled about the heathen, in whom she had an academic
interest.