"I listen with pleasure--and anticipation. Pray go on!"
"I have information," said the visitor, "of the whereabouts of M. Arthur
Benham." Ste. Marie waved his hand.
"I feared as much," said he. "I mean to say, I hoped so. Proceed,
monsieur!"
"And learning," continued, the other, "that M. Ste. Marie was conducting
a search for that young gentleman, I hastened at once to place this
information in his hands."
"At a price," suggested his host. "At a price, to be sure."
The man with the beard spread out his hands in a beautiful and eloquent
gesture which well accompanied his Marseillais accent.
"Ah, as to that!" he protested. "My circumstances--I am poor, Monsieur.
One must gain the livelihood. What would you? A trifle. The merest
trifle."
"Where is Arthur Benham?" asked Ste. Marie.
"In Marseille, monsieur, I saw him a week ago--six days. And so far as
I could learn he had no intention of leaving there immediately--though
it is, to be sure, hot."
St. Marie laughed a laugh of genuine amusement, and the man with the
pointed beard stared at him with some wonder. Ste. Marie rose and
crossed the room to a writing-desk which stood against the opposite
wall. He fumbled in a drawer of this, and returned holding in his hand
a pink and blue note of the Banque de France. He said--
"Monsieur----Pardon! I have forgotten to ask the name. You have
remarked quite truly that one must gain a livelihood. Therefore I do
not presume to criticise the way in which you gain yours. Sometimes one
cannot choose. However, I should like to make a little bargain with
you, monsieur. I know, of course, being not altogether imbecile, who
sent you here with this story and why you were sent--why also your
friend who sits upon the bench in the garden across the street follows
me about and spies upon me. I know all this and I laugh at it a little.
But, monsieur, to amuse myself further I have a desire to hear from your
own lips the name of the gentleman who is your employer. Amusement is
almost always expensive, and so I am prepared to pay for this. I have
here a note of one hundred francs. It is yours in return for the
name--the right name. Remember, I know it already."
The man with the pointed beard sprang to his feet, quivering with
righteous indignation. All southern Frenchmen like all other Latins,
are magnificent actors. He shook one clenched hand in the air, his face
was pale and his fine eyes glittered. Richard Hartley would have put
himself promptly in an attitude of defence, but Ste. Marie nodded a
smiling head in appreciation. He was half a southern Frenchman himself.
"Monsieur!" cried his visitor in a choked voice. "Monsieur, have a care!
You insult me. Have a care, monsieur! I am dangerous. My anger when
roused is terrible!"
"I am cowed!" observed Ste. Marie, lighting a cigarette. "I quail."
"Never," declaimed the gentleman from Marseille, "have I received an
insult without returning blow for blow. My blood boils."
"The hundred francs, monsieur," said Ste. Marie, "will doubtless cool
it. Besides, we stray from our sheep. Reflect, my friend! I have not
insulted you. I have asked you a simple question. To be sure I have
said that I knew your errand here was not--not altogether sincere; but I
protest, monsieur, that no blame attaches to yourself. The blame is
your employer's. You have performed your mission with the greatest of
honesty--the most delicate and faithful sense of honour. That is
understood."
The gentleman with the beard strode across to one of the windows and
leant his head upon his hand. His shoulders still heaved with emotion,
but he no longer trembled. The terrible crisis bade fair to pass. Then
abruptly, in the frank and open Latin way, he burst into tears, and wept
with copious profusion, while Ste. Marie smoked his cigarette and
waited.
When at length the Marseillais turned back into the room he was calm
once more, but there remained traces of storm and flood. He made a
gesture of indescribable and pathetic resignation.
"Monsieur," he exclaimed, "you have a heart of gold. Of gold, monsieur!
You understand. Behold us! two men of honour.
"Monsieur," he said, "I had no choice. I was poor. I saw myself face
to face with the _misere_. What would you? I fell. We are all weak
flesh. I accepted the commission of the pig who sent me here to you."
Ste. Marie smoothed the pink and blue banknote in his hands, and the
other man's eye clung to it as though he were starving and the banknote
food.
"The name?" prompted Ste. Marie.
The gentleman from Marseille tossed up his hands.
"Monsieur already knows it. Why should I hesitate? The name is
Ducrot."
"What?" cried Ste. Marie sharply. "What is that? Ducrot?"
"But naturally!" said the other man with some wonder. "Monsieur said he
knew. Certainly, Ducrot. A little withered man, bald on the top of the
head, creases down the cheeks, a moustache like this,"--he made a
descriptive gesture--"a little chin. A man like an elderly cat. M.
Ducrot."
Ste. Marie gave a sigh of relief.
"Yes, yes," said he. "Ducrot is as good a name as another. The
gentleman has more than one, it appears. Monsieur, the hundred-franc
note is yours." The gentleman from Marseille took it with a slightly
trembling hand, and began to bow himself towards the door, as if he
feared that his host would experience a change of heart, but Ste. Marie
checked him, saying--
"One moment.
"I was thinking," said he, "that you would perhaps not care to present
yourself to your--employer, M. Ducrot, immediately: not for a few days,
at least, in view of the fact that certain actions of mine will show him
your mission has--well, miscarried. It would perhaps be well for you
not to communicate with M. Ducrot. He might be displeased with you."
"Monsieur," said the gentleman with the beard, "you speak with acumen
and wisdom. I shall neglect to report myself to M. Ducrot--who, I
repeat, is a pig."
"And," pursued Ste. Marie, "the individual on the bench across the
street?"
"It is not necessary that I meet that individual either!" said the
Marseillais hastily. "Monsieur, I bid you adieu!" He bowed again, a
profound, a scraping bow, and disappeared through the door.
Ste. Marie crossed to the window and looked down upon the pavement
below. He saw his visitor emerge from the house and slip rapidly down
the street towards the Rue Vavin. He glanced across into the Gardens,
and the spy still sat there on his bench, but his head lay back and he
slept--the sleep of the unjust. One imagined that he must be snoring,
for an incredibly small urchin in a blue apron stood on the path before
him, and watched with the open mouth of astonishment.
Ste. Marie turned back into the room and began to tramp up and down, as
was his way in a perplexity or in any time of serious thought. He
wished very much that Richard Hartley were there to consult with. He
considered Hartley to have a judicial mind--a mind to establish, out of
confusion, something like logical order, and he was very well aware that
he himself had not that sort of mind at all. In action he was
sufficiently confident of himself, but to construct a course of action
he was afraid, and he knew that a misstep now, at this critical point,
might be fatal--turn success into disaster.
He fell to thinking of Captain Stewart (alias M. Ducrot), and he longed
most passionately to leap into a fiacre at the corner below, to drive at
a gallop across the city to the Rue du Faubourg St. Honore, to fall upon
that smiling hypocrite in his beautiful treasure-house, to seize him by
the withered throat and say--
"Tell me what you have done with Arthur Benham before I tear your head
from your miserable body!"
Indeed, he was far from sure that this was not what it would come to, in
the end; for he reflected that he had not only a tremendous accumulation
of evidence with which to face Captain Stewart, but also a very terrible
weapon to hold over his head--the threat of exposure to the old man who
lay slowly dying in the Rue de l'Universite! A few words in old David's
ear, a few proofs of their truth, and the great fortune for which the
son had sold his soul (if he had any left to sell) must pass for ever
out of his reach, like gold seen in a dream.
This is what it might well come to, he said to himself. Indeed, it
seemed to him at that moment far the most feasible plan, for to such
accusations, such demands as that, Captain Stewart could offer no
defence. To save himself from a more complete ruin he would have to
give up the boy, or tell what he knew of him. But Ste. Marie was
unwilling to risk everything on this throw without seeing Richard
Hartley first, and Hartley was not to be had until evening.
He told himself that, after all, there was no immediate hurry, for he
was quite sure the man would be compelled to keep to his bed for a day
or two. He did not know much about epilepsy, but he knew that its
paroxysms were followed by great exhaustion, and he felt sure that
Stewart was far too weak in body to recuperate quickly from any severe
call upon his strength. He remembered how light that burden had been in
his arms the night before, and then an uncontrollable shiver of disgust
went over him as he remembered the sight of the horribly twisted and
contorted face, felt again the shaking thumping head as it beat against
his shoulder. He wondered how much Stewart knew, how much he would be
able to remember, of the events of the evening before, and he was at a
loss there because of his unfamiliarity with epileptic seizures. Of one
thing, however, he was almost certain, and that was that the man could
scarcely have been conscious of who were beside him when the fit was
over. If he had come at all to his proper senses, before the ensuing
slumber of exhaustion, it must have been after Mlle. Nilssen and himself
had gone away.
Upon that he fell to wondering about the spy and the gentleman from
Marseille (he was a little sorry that Hartley could not have seen the
gentleman from Marseille), but he reflected that the two were, without
doubt, acting upon old orders, and that the latter had probably been
stalking him for some days before he found him at home.
He looked at his watch and it was half-past twelve. There was nothing
to be done, he considered, but wait--get through the day somehow; and
so, presently, he went out to lunch. He went up the Rue Vavin to the
Boulevard Montparnasse, and down that broad thoroughfare to Lavenue's,
on the busy Place de Rennes, where the cooking is the best in all this
quarter, and can indeed hold up its head without shame in the face of
those other more widely famous restaurants, across the river, frequented
by the smart world and by the travelling gourmet.
He went through to the inner room, which is built like a raised loggia
round two sides of a little garden, and which is always cool and fresh
in summer. He ordered a rather elaborate lunch and thought that he sat
a very long time at it, but when he looked again at his watch only an
hour and a half had gone by. It was a quarter-past two. Ste. Marie was
depressed. There remained almost all of the afternoon to be got
through, and Heaven alone could say how much of the evening, before he
could have his consultation with Richard Hartley. He tried to think of
some way of passing the time, but although he was not usually at a loss,
he found his mind empty of ideas. None of his common occupations
recommended themselves to him. He knew that whatever he tried to do he
would interrupt it with pulling out his watch every half-hour or so and
cursing the time because it lagged so slowly. He went out to the
_terrasse_ for coffee, very low in his mind.
But half an hour later, as he sat behind his little marble-topped table,
smoking and sipping a liqueur, his eyes fell upon something across the
square which brought him to his feet with a sudden exclamation. One of
the big electric trams that ply between the Place St. Germain-des-Pres
and Clamart, by way of the Porte de Versailles and Vanves, was dragging
its unwieldy bulk round the turn from the Rue de Rennes into the
boulevard. He could see the sign-board along the _imperiale_:
"Clamart--St. Germain-des-Pres" with "Issy" and "Vanves" in brackets
between.
Ste. Marie clinked a franc upon the table, and made off across the place
at a run. Omnibuses from Batignolles and Menilmontant got in his way,
fiacres tried to run him down, and a motor-car in a hurry pulled up just
in time to save his life, but Ste. Marie ran on, and caught the tram
before it had completed the negotiation of the long curve and gathered
speed for its dash down the boulevard. He sprang upon the step, and the
conductor reluctantly unfastened the chain to admit him. So he climbed
up to the top and seated himself, panting. The dial high on the facade
of the Gare Montparnasse said ten minutes to three.
He had no definite plan of action. He had started off in this headlong
fashion upon the spur of a moment's impulse, and because he knew where
the tram was going. Now, embarked, he began to wonder if he was not a
fool. He knew every foot of the way to Clamart, for it was a favourite
half-day's excursion with him to ride there in this fashion, walk thence
through the beautiful Meudon wood across to the river, and, from
Bellevue or Bas-Meudon, take a Suresnes boat back into the city. He
knew, or thought he knew, just where lay the house, surrounded by garden
and half-wild park, of which Olga Nilssen had told him; he had often
wondered whose it was as the tram rolled along the length of its high
wall. But he knew also that he could do nothing there, single-handed
and without excuse or preparation. He could not boldly ring the bell,
demand speech with Mlle. Coira O'Hara, and ask her if she knew any thing
of the whereabouts of young Arthur Benham, whom a photographer had
suspected of being in love with her. He certainly could not do that.
And there seemed to be nothing else that---- Ste. Marie broke off this
somewhat despondent course of reasoning with a sudden little voiceless
cry. For the first time it occurred to him to connect the house on the
Clamart road and Mlle. Coira O'Hara and young Arthur Benham.-- It will
be remembered that the man had not yet had time to arrange his suddenly
acquired mass of evidence in logical order and to make deductions from
it.--For the first time he began to put two and two together. Stewart
had hidden away his nephew: this nephew was known to have been much
enamoured of the girl Coira O'Hara: Coira O'Hara was said to be living
(with her father? probably) in the house on the outskirts of Paris,
where she was visited by Captain Stewart. Was not the inference plain
enough--sufficiently reasonable? It left, without doubt, many puzzling
things to be explained?--perhaps too many; but Ste. Marie sat forward in
his seat, his eyes gleaming, his face tense with excitement.
Was young Arthur Benham in the house on the Clamart road?
He said the words almost aloud, and he became aware that the fat woman
with a live fowl at her feet, and the butcher's boy on his other side,
were looking at him curiously. He realised that he was behaving in an
excited manner, and so sat back and lowered his eyes. But over and over
within him the words said themselves, over and over, until they made a
sort of mad foolish refrain--
"Is Arthur Benham in the house on the Clamart road? Is Arthur Benham in
the house on the Clamart road?" He was afraid that he would say it
aloud once more, and he tried to keep a firm hold upon himself.
The tram swung into the Rue de Sevres, and rolled smoothly out the long
uninteresting stretch of the Rue Lecourbe, far out to where the houses
became scattered, where mounds and pyramids of red tiles stood alongside
the factory where they had been made, where an acre of little glass
hemispheres in long straight rows winked and glistened in the afternoon
sun--the forcing beds of some market gardener; out to the Porte de
Versailles at the city wall, where a group of customs officers sprawled
at ease before their little sentry-box, or loafed over to inspect ah
incoming tram.
A bugle sounded and a drum beat from the great fosse under the wall, and
a company of _piou-pious_, red capped, red trousered, shambled through
their evolutions in a manner to break the heart of a British or a German
drill-sergeant. Then out past level fields to little Vanves, with its
steep streets and its old grey church, and past the splendid grounds of
the Lycee beyond. The fat woman got down, her live fowl shrieking
protest to the movement, and the butcher's boy got down too, so that
Ste. Marie was left alone upon the _imperiale_ save for a snuffy old
gentleman in a pot-hat, who sat in a corner buried behind the day's
_Droits de l'Homme_.
Ste. Marie moved forward once more, and laid his arms upon the iron rail
before him. They were coming near. They ran past plum and apple
orchards, and past humble little detached villas, each with a bit of
garden in front and an acacia or two at the gate posts. But presently,
on the right, the way began to be bordered by a high stone wall, very
long, behind which showed the trees of a park, and among them, far back
from the wall, beyond a little rise of ground, the gables and chimneys
of a house could be made out. The wall went on for perhaps a quarter of
a mile in a straight sweep, but halfway the road swung apart from it to
the left, dipped under a stone rail way bridge, and so presently ended
at the village of Clamart.
As the tram approached the beginning of that long stone wall it began to
slacken speed, and there was a grating noise from underneath, and
presently it came to an abrupt halt. Ste. Marie looked over the
guard-rail and saw that the driver had left his place and was kneeling
in the dust beside the car, peering at its underworks. The conductor
strolled round to him after a moment and stood indifferently by,
remarking upon the strange vicissitudes to which electrical propulsion
was subject. The driver, without looking up, called his colleague a
number of the most surprising and, it is to be hoped, unwarranted names,
and suddenly began to burrow under the tram, wriggling his way after the
manner of the serpent, until nothing could be seen of him but two
unrestful feet. His voice though muffled was still tolerably distinct.
It cursed in an unceasing staccato, and with admirable ingenuity, the
tram, the conductor, the sacred dog of an impediment which had got
itself wedged into one of the trucks, and the world in general.
Ste. Marie, sitting aloft, laughed for a moment, and then turned his
eager eyes upon what lay across the road. The halt had taken place
almost exactly at the beginning of that long stretch of the park wall
which ran beside the road and the tramway. From where he sat he could
see the other wing, which led inward from the road at something like a
right angle, but was presently lost to sight because of a sparse and
unkempt patch of young trees and shrubs, well-nigh choked with
undergrowth, which extended for some distance from the park wall
backward along the roadside towards Vanves. Whoever owned that stretch
of land had seemingly not thought it worth while to cultivate it, or to
build upon it, or even to clear it off.
Ste. Marie's first thought as his eye scanned the two long stretches of
wall, and looked over their tops to the trees of the park and the
far-off gables and chimneys of the house, was to wonder where the
entrance to the place could be, and he decided that it must be on the
side opposite to the Clamart tram-line. He did not know the smaller
roads hereabouts, but he guessed that there must be one somewhere
beyond, between the Route de Clamart and the Fort d'Issy; and he was
right. There is a little road between the two: it sweeps round in a
long curve, and ends near the tiny public garden in Issy, and it is
called the rue Barbes.
His second thought was that this unkempt patch of trees and brush
offered excellent cover for any one who might wish to pass an observant
hour alongside that high stone wall--for any one who might desire to
cast a glance over the lie of the land, to see at closer range that
house of which so little could be seen from the Route de Clamart, to
look over the wall's coping into park and garden.
The thought brought him to his feet with a leaping heart, and before he
realised that he had moved he found himself in the road beside the
halted tram. The conductor brushed past him, mounting to his place, and
from the platform he beckoned, crying out--
"_En voiture_, monsieur! _En voiture!_" Again something within Ste.
Marie that was not his conscious direction acted for him, and he shook
his head. The conductor gave two little blasts upon his horn, the tram
wheezed and moved forward. In a moment it was on its way, swinging
along at full speed towards the curve in the line that bore to the left
and dipped under the railway bridge. Ste. Marie stood in the middle of
that empty road, staring after it until it had disappeared from view.
*CHAPTER XIV*
*IN THE GARDEN*
Ste. Marie had acted upon an impulse of which he was scarcely conscious
at all, and when he found himself standing alone in the road and
watching the Clamart tram disappear under the railway bridge, he called
himself hard names and wondered what he was to do next. He looked
before and behind him, and there was no living soul in sight. He bent
his eyes again upon that unkempt patch of young trees and undergrowth,
and once more the thought forced itself to his brain that it would make
excellent cover for one who wished to observe a little--to reconnoitre.
He knew that it was the part of wisdom to turn his back upon this place,
to walk on to Clamart or return to Vanves, and mount upon a
homeward-bound tram. He knew that it was the part of folly, of madness
even, to expose himself to possible discovery by some one within the
walled enclosure. What though no one there were able to recognise him,
still the sight of a man prowling about the walls, seeking to spy over
them, might excite an alarm that would lead to all sorts of undesirable
complications. Dimly Ste. Marie realised all this, and he tried to turn
his back and walk away, but the patch of little trees and shrubbery drew
him with an irresistible fascination. Just a little look along that
unknown wall! he said to himself; just the briefest of all brief
reconnaissances, the merest glance beyond the masking screen of wood
growth, so that in case of sudden future need he might have the lie of
the place clear in his mind; for without any sound reason for it he was
somehow confident that this walled house and garden were to play an
important part in the rescue of Arthur Benham. It was once more a matter
of feeling. The rather woman-like intuition which had warned him that
O'Hara was concerned in young Benham's disappearance, and that the two
were not far from Paris, was again at work in him, and he trusted it as
he had done before.
He gave a little nod of determination, as one who, for good or ill,
casts a die, and he crossed the road. There was a deep ditch, and he had
to climb down into it and up its farther side, for it was too broad to
be jumped. So he came into the shelter of the young poplars and elms
and oaks. The underbrush caught at his clothes, and the dead leaves of
past seasons crackled underfoot, but after a little space he came to
somewhat clearer ground, though the saplings still stood thick about him
and hid him securely.
He made his way inward along the wall, keeping a short distance back
from it, and he saw that after twenty or thirty yards it turned again at
a very obtuse angle away from him, and once more ran on in a long
straight line. Just beyond this angle he came upon a little wooden door
thickly studded with nails. It was made to open inward, and on the
outside there was no knob or handle of any kind, only a large keyhole of
the simple old-fashioned sort. Slipping up near to look, Ste. Marie
observed that the edges of the keyhole were rusty, but scratched a
little through the rust with recent marks, so the door, it seemed, was
sometimes used. He observed another thing. The ground near by was less
encumbered with trees than at any other point, and the turf was
depressed with many wheel marks--broad marks such as are made only by
the wheels of a motor-car. He followed these tracks for a little
distance and they wound in and out among the trees and, beyond the thin
fringe of wood, swept away in a curve towards Issy, doubtless to join
the road which he had already imagined to lie somewhere beyond the
enclosure.
Beyond the more open space about this little door the young trees stood
thick together again, and Ste. Marie pressed cautiously on. He stopped
now and then to listen, and once he thought that he heard from within
the sound of a woman's laugh, but he could not be sure. The slight
change of direction had confused him a little, and he was uncertain as
to where the house lay. The wall was twelve or fifteen feet high, and
from the level of the ground he could of course see nothing over it but
tree-tops. He went on for what may have been a hundred yards, but it
seemed to him very much more than that, and he came to a tall gnarled
cedar-tree which stood almost against the high wall. It was half dead
but its twisted limbs were thick and strong, and by force of the tree's
cramped position they had grown in strange and grotesque forms. One of
them stretched across the very top of the stone wall, and, with the
wind's action, it had scraped away the coping of tiles and bottle-glass,
and had made a little depression there to rest in.
Ste. Marie looked up along this natural ladder, and temptation smote him
sorely. It was so easy and so safe! There was enough foliage left upon
the half-dead tree to screen him well, but whether or no it is probable
that he would have yielded to the proffered lure. There seems to have
been more than chance in Ste. Marie's movements upon this day. There
seems to have been something like the hand of Fate in them, as doubtless
there is in most things, if one but knew.
He left his hat and stick behind him under a shrub, and he began to make
his way up the half-bare branches of the gnarled cedar. They bore him
well, without crack or rustle, and the way was very easy. No ladder
made by man could have offered a much simpler ascent. So mounting
slowly and with care, his head came level with the top of the wall. He
climbed to the next branch, a foot higher, and rested there. The
drooping foliage from the upper part of the cedar-tree, which was still
alive, hung down over him and cloaked him from view, but through its
aromatic screen he could see as freely as through the window curtain in
the Rue d'Assas.
The house lay before him, a little to the left, and perhaps a hundred
yards away. It was a disappointing house to find in that great
enclosure, for though it was certainly neither small nor trivial, it was
as certainly far from possessing anything like grandeur. It had been in
its day a respectable unpretentious square structure of three stories,
entirely without architectural beauty, but also entirely without the
ornate hideousness of the modern villas along the Route de Clamart.
Now, however, the stucco was gone in great patches from its stone walls,
giving them an unpleasantly diseased look, and long neglect of all
decent care had lent the place the air almost of desertion. Anciently
the grounds before the house had been laid out in the formal fashion,
with a terrace and geometrical lawns, and a pool and a fountain, and a
rather fine long vista between clipped larches; but the same neglect
which had made shabby the stuccoed house had allowed grass and weeds to
grow over the gravel paths, underbrush to spring up and to encroach upon
the geometrical turf plots, the long double row of clipped larches to
flourish at will or to die, or to fall prostrate and lie where they had
fallen.
So all the broad enclosure was a scene of heedless neglect, a riot of
unrestrained and wanton growth, where should have been decorous and
orderly beauty. It was a sight to bring tears to a gardener's eyes, but
it had a certain untamed charm of its own, for all that. The very riot
of it, the wanton prodigality of untouched natural growth, produced an
effect that was by no means all disagreeable.
An odd and whimsical thought came into Ste. Marie's mind, that thus must
have looked the garden and park round the castle of the Sleeping Beauty
when the Prince came to wake her.
But sleeping beauties and unkempt grounds went from him in a flash when
he became aware of a sound which was like the sound of voices.
Instinctively he drew farther back into the shelter of his aromatic
screen. His eyes swept the space below him, from right to left, and
could see no one. So he sat very still, save for the thunderous beat of
a heart which seemed to him like drum beats when soldiers are marching,
and he listened--"all ears" as the phrase goes.
The sound was in truth a sound of voices. He was presently assured of
that, but for some time he could not make out from which direction it
came. And so he was the more startled when quite suddenly there appeared
from behind a row of tall shrubs two young people, moving slowly
together up the untrimmed turf in the direction of the house.
[Illustration: "There appeared two young people."]
The two young people were Mlle. Coira O'Hara and Arthur Benham, and upon
the brow of this latter youth there was no sign of dungeon pallor, upon
his free moving limbs no ball and chain. There was no apparent reason
why he should not hasten back to the eager arms in the Rue de
l'Universite if he chose to--unless indeed his undissembling attitude
towards Mlle. Coira O'Hara might serve as a reason. The young man
followed at her heel with much the manner and somewhat the appearance of
a small dog, humbly conscious of unworthiness, but hopeful nevertheless
of an occasional kind word or pat on the head.
The world wheeled multi-coloured and kaleidoscopic before Ste. Marie's
eyes, and in his ears there was a rushing of great winds, but he set his
teeth and clung with all the strength he had to the tree which sheltered
him. His first feeling, after that initial giddiness, was anger, sheer
anger, a bewildered and astonished fury. He had thought to find this
poor youth in captivity, pining through prison bars for the home and the
loved ones and the familiar life from which he had been ruthlessly torn.
Yet here he was strolling in a suburban garden with a lady--free, free
as air (or so he seemed). Ste. Marie thought of the grim and sorrowful
old man in Paris who was sinking untimely into his grave because his
grandson did not return to him: he thought of that timid soul--more
shadow than woman--the boy's mother: he thought of Helen Benham's tragic
eyes, and he could have beaten young Arthur half to death, in that
moment, in the righteous rage that stormed within him.
But he turned his eyes from this wretched youth to the girl who walked
beside, a little in advance, and the rage died in him swiftly.
After all was she not one to make any boy--or any man--forget duty,
home, friends, everything!
Rather oddly his mind flashed back to the morning, and to the words of
the little photographer, Bernstein. Perhaps the Jew had put it as well
as any man man could--
"She was a goddess, that lady, a queen of goddesses ... the young Juno
before marriage...."
Ste. Marie nodded his head. Yes, she was just that. The little Jew had
spoken well. It could not be more fairly put, though without doubt it
could have been expressed at much greater length and with a great deal
more eloquence. The photographer's other words came also to his mind,
the more detailed description; and again he nodded his head, for this
too was true.
"She was all colour--brown skin with a dull red stain under the cheeks,
and a great mass of hair that was not black but very nearly
black--except in the sun, and then there were red lights in it."
It occurred to Ste. Marie, whimsically, that the two young people might
have stepped out of the door of Bernstein's studio straight into this
garden, judging from their bearing, each to the other.
"Ah, a thing to touch the heart! Such devotion as that! Alas, that the
lady should seem so cold to it! ... Still, a goddess. What would you? A
queen among goddesses.... One would not have them laugh and make little
jokes.... Make eyes at love-sick boys. No indeed!"
Certainly Mlle. Coira O'Hara was not making eyes at the love-sick boy
who followed at her heels this afternoon. Perhaps it would be going too
far to say that she was cold to him, but it was very plain to see that
she was bored and weary, and that she wished she might be almost
anywhere else than where she was, She turned her beautiful face a little
towards the wall where Ste Marie lay perdu, and he could see that her
eyes had the same dark fire, the same tragic look of appeal, that he had
seen in them before--once in the Champs Elysees and again in his dreams.
Abruptly he became aware that while he gazed, like a man in a trance,
the two young people walked on their way and were on the point of
passing beyond reach of eye or ear. He made a sudden involuntary
movement as if he would call them back, and, for the first time, his
faithful hiding-place, strained beyond silent endurance, betrayed him
with a loud rustle of shaken branches. Ste. Marie shrank back, his
heart in his throat. It was too late to retreat now down the tree. The
damage was already done. He saw the two young people halt and turn to
look, and, after a moment, he saw the boy slowly come forward, staring.
He heard him say--
"What's up in that tree? There's something in the tree." And he heard
the girl answer: "It's only birds fighting. Don't bother!" But young
Arthur Benham came on, staring up curiously until he was almost under
the high wall.
Then Ste. Marie's strange madness, or the hand of Fate, or whatever
power it was which governed him on that day, thrust him on to the
ultimate pitch of recklessness. He bent forward from his insecure perch
over the wall until his head and shoulders were in plain sight, and he
called down to the lad below in a loud whisper--
"Benham! Benham!"
The boy gave a sharp cry of alarm and began to back away. And after a
moment Ste. Marie heard the cry echoed from Coira O'Hara. He heard her
say--
"Be careful! Be careful, Arthur! Come away. Oh, come away quickly!"