"I'll bring or send you something to eat--not too much. And later on
I'll give you a sleeping powder. With that head of yours you may have
trouble in getting to sleep. Understand, I'm doing this for your
father's son, and not because you've any right yourself to
consideration."
Ste. Marie raised himself with difficulty, on one elbow.
"Wait!" said he. "Wait a moment!" and the other halted just inside the
door.
"You seem to have known my father," said Ste. Marie, "and to have
respected him. For my father's sake will you listen to me for five
minutes?"
"No, I won't!" said the Irishman sharply, "so you may as well hold your
tongue. Nothing you can say to me or to any one in this house will have
the slightest effect. We know what you came spying here for. We know
all about it."
"Yes," said Ste. Marie with a little sigh, and he fell back upon the
pillows. "Yes, I suppose you do. I was rather a fool to speak. You
wouldn't all be doing what you're doing if words could affect you. I
was a fool to speak." The Irishman stared at him for another moment and
went out of the room, closing the door behind him.
So he was left once more alone to his pain and his bitter
self-reproaches, and his wild and futile plans for escape. But O'Hara
returned in an hour or thereabouts with food for him--a cup of broth and
a slice of bread; and when Ste. Marie had eaten these, the Irishman
looked once more to his wounded leg, and gave him a sleeping powder
dissolved in water.
He lay restless and wide-eyed for an hour, and then drifted away through
intermediate mists into a sleep full of horrible dreams, but it was at
least relief from bodily suffering; and when he awoke in the morning his
headache was almost gone.
He awoke to sunshine and fresh sweet odours, and the twittering of
birds. By good chance O'Hara had been the last to enter the room on the
evening before, and so no one had come to close the shutters or draw the
blinds. The windows were open wide, and the morning breeze, very soft
and aromatic, blew in and out and filled the place with sweetness. The
room was a corner room with windows that looked south and east, and the
early sun slanted in and lay in golden squares across the floor.
Ste. Marie opened his eyes with none of the dazed bewilderment that he
might have expected. The events of the preceding day came back to him
instantly and without shock. He put up an experimental hand and found
that his head was still very sore where he had struck it in falling, but
the ache was almost gone. He tried to stir his leg, and a protesting
pain shot through it. It burned dully even when it was quiet, but the
pain was not at all severe. He realised that he was to get off rather
well, considering what might have happened, and he was so grateful for
this that he almost forgot to be angry with himself over his monumental
folly.
A small bird chased by another wheeled in through the southern window
and back again into free air. Finally the two settled down upon the
parapet of the little shallow balcony, which was there, to have their
disagreement out, and they talked it over with a great deal of noise and
many threatening gestures and a complete loss of temper on both sides.
Ste. Marie, from his bed, cheered them on, but there came a commotion in
the ivy which draped the wall below, and the two birds fled in
ignominious haste, and just in the nick of time, for when the cause of
the commotion shot into view, it was a large black cat of great bodily
activity and an ardent single-heartedness of aim.
The black cat gazed for a moment resentfully after its vanished prey,
and then composed its sleek body upon the iron rail, tail and paws
tucked neatly under. Ste. Marie chirruped, and the cat turned yellow
eyes upon him in mild astonishment as one who should say--
"Who the deuce are you, and what the deuce are you doing here?" He
chirruped again, and the cat, after an ostentatious yawn and stretch,
came to him--beating up to windward, as it were, and making the bed in
three tacks. When O'Hara entered the room some time later he found his
patient in a very cheerful frame of mind, and the black cat sitting on
his chest, purring like a dynamo and kneading like an industrious baker.
"Ho!" said the Irishman, "you seem to have found a friend."
"Well, I need one friend here," argued Ste. Marie. "I'm in the enemy's
stronghold. You needn't be alarmed: the cat can't tell me anything, and
it can't help me to escape. It can only sit on me and purr. That's
harmless enough."
O'Hara began one of his gruff laughs, but he seemed to remember himself
in the middle of it, and assumed an intimidating scowl instead.
"How's the leg?" he demanded shortly. "Let me see it!" He took off the
bandages and cleansed and sprayed the wound with some antiseptic liquid
that he had brought in a bottle.
"There's a little fever," said he, "but that can't be avoided. You're
going on very well--a good deal better than you'd any right to expect."
He had to inflict not a little pain in his examination and redressing of
the wound. He knew that, and once or twice he glanced up at Ste.
Marie's face with a sort of reluctant admiration for the man who could
bear so much without any sign whatever. In the end he put together his
things and nodded with professional satisfaction.
"You'll do well enough now for the rest of the day," he said. "I'll
send up old Michel to valet you. He's the gardener who shot you
yesterday, and he may take it into his head to finish the job this
morning. If he does I shan't try to stop him."
"Nor I," said Ste. Marie. "Thanks very much for your trouble. An
excellent surgeon was lost in you."
O'Hara left the room, and presently the old caretaker, one-eyed,
gnome-like, shambling like a bear, sidled into the room and proceeded to
set things to rights. He looked, Ste. Marie said to himself, like
something in an old German drawing, or in those imitations of old
drawings that one sometimes sees nowadays in Fliegende Blatter. He
tried to make the strange creature talk, but Michel went about his task
with an air half frightened, half stolid, and refused to speak more than
an occasional "_oui_" or a "_bien, monsieur_," in answer to orders. Ste.
Marie asked if he might have some coffee and bread, and the old Michel
nodded and slipped from the room as silently as he had entered it.
Thereafter Ste. Marie trifled with the cat and got one hand well
scratched for his trouble, but in five minutes there came a knocking at
the door. He laughed a little. "Michel grows ceremonious when it's a
question of food," he said. "_Entrez, mon vieux!_" The door opened,
and Ste. Marie caught his breath.
"Michel is busy," said Coira O'Hara, "so I have brought your coffee."
[Illustration: "'Michel is busy,' said Coira O'Hara, 'so I have brought
your coffee.'"]
She came into the sunlit room, holding the steaming bowl of _cafe au
lait_ before her in her two hands. Over it her eyes went out to the man
who lay in his bed, a long and steady and very grave look. "A goddess
that lady, a queen among goddesses,"--thus the little Jew of the
Boulevard de la Madeleine. Ste. Marie gazed back at her, and his heart
was sick within him to think of the contemptible role Fate had laid upon
this girl to play: the candle to the moth, the bait to the eager
unskilled fish, the lure to charm a foolish boy.
The girl's splendid beauty seemed to fill all that bright room with, as
it were, a richer subtler light. There could be no doubt of her potency.
Older and wiser heads than young Arthur Benham's might well forget the
world for her. Ste. Marie watched, and the heartsickness within him was
like a physical pain keen and bitter. He thought of that first and only
previous meeting--the single minute in the Champs Elysees when her eyes
had held him, had seemed to beseech him out of some deep agony. He
thought of how they had haunted him afterwards both by day and by
night--calling eyes--and he gave a little groan of sheer bitterness, for
he realised that all this while she was laying her snares about the feet
of an inexperienced boy, decoying him to his ruin. There was a name for
such women, an ugly name. They were called adventuresses.
The girl set the bowl which she carried down upon a table not far from
the bed.
"You will need a tray or something," said she. "I suppose you can sit up
against your pillows? I'll bring a tray, and you can hold it on your
knees and eat from it." She spoke in a tone of very deliberate
indifference and detachment. There seemed even to be an edge of scorn
in it, but nothing could make that deep and golden voice harsh or
unlovely. As the girl's extraordinary beauty had filled all the room
with its light, so the sound of her voice seemed to fill it with a
sumptuous and hushed resonance like a temple bell muffled in velvet.
"I must bring something to eat too," she said. "Would you prefer
_croissants_ or _brioches_ or plain bread and butter? You might as well
have what you like."
"Thank you!" said Ste. Marie. "It doesn't matter. Anything. You are
most kind. You are Hebe, mademoiselle, server of feasts." The girl
turned her head for a moment, and looked at him with some surprise.
"If I am not mistaken," she said, "Hebe served to gods." Then she went
out of the room, and Ste. Marie broke into a sudden delighted laugh
behind her. She would seem to be a young woman with a tongue in her
head. She had seized the rash opening without an instant's hesitation.
The black cat, which had been cruising, after the inquisitive fashion of
its kind, in far corners of the room, strolled back and looked up to the
table where the bowl of coffee steamed and waited.
"Get out!" cried Ste. Marie. "_Va t'en, sale petit animal_! Go and eat
birds! that's my coffee. _Va_! _Sauve toi_! _He voleur que tu es_!"
He sought for something by way of missile, but there was nothing within
reach. The black cat turned its calm and yellow eyes towards him,
looked back to the aromatic feast, and leapt expertly to the top of the
table. Ste. Marie shouted and made horrible threats. He waved an
impotent pillow, not daring to hurl it for fear of smashing the table's
entire contents, but the black cat did not even glance towards him. It
smelt the coffee, sneezed over it because it was hot, and finally
proceeded to lap very daintily, pausing often to take breath or to shake
its head, for cats disapprove of hot dishes, though they will partake of
them at a pinch.
There came a step outside the door, and the thief leapt down with some
haste, yet not quite in time to escape observation. Mlle. O'Hara came
in breathing terrible threats.
"Has that wretched animal touched your coffee?" she cried. "I hope
not." But Ste Marie laughed weakly from his bed, and the guilty beast
stood in mid-floor, brown drops beading its black chin and hanging upon
its whiskers.
"I did what I could, mademoiselle," said Ste. Marie; "but there was
nothing to throw. I am sorry to be the cause of so much trouble."
"It is nothing," said she. "I will bring some more coffee, only it will
take ten minutes, because I shall have to make some fresh." She made as
if she would smile a little in answer to him, but her face turned grave
once more, and she went out of the room with averted eyes.
Thereafter Ste. Marie occupied himself with watching idly the movements
of the black cat, and as he watched something icy cold began to grow
within him, a sensation more terrible than he had ever known before. He
found himself shivering as if that summer day had all at once turned to
January, and he found that his face was wet with a chill perspiration.
When the girl at length returned she found him lying still, his face to
the wall. The black cat was in her path as she crossed the room, so
that she had to thrust it out of the way with her foot, and she called
it names for moving with such lethargy.
"Here is the coffee at last," she said. "I made it fresh. And I have
brought some _brioches_. Will you sit up and have the tray on your
knees?"
"Thank you!" said Ste. Marie. "I do not wish anything."
"You do not----" she repeated after him. "But I have made the coffee
especially for you!" she protested. "I thought you wanted it. I don't
understand."
With a sudden movement the man turned towards her a white and drawn
face.
"Mademoiselle!" he cried, "it would have been more merciful to let your
gardener shoot again yesterday. Much more merciful, mademoiselle." She
stared at him under her straight black brows.
"What do you mean?" she demanded. "More merciful? What do you mean by
that?" Ste. Marie stretched out a pointing finger and the girl followed
it. She gave, after a tense instant, a single sharp scream. And upon
that--
"No! no! It's not true. It's not possible." Moving stiffly she set
down the bowl she carried, and the hot liquid splashed up round her
wrists. For a moment she hung there, drooping, holding herself up by the
strength of her hands upon the table. It was as if she had been seized
with faintness. Then she sprang to where the cat crouched beside a
chair. She dropped upon her knees and tried to raise it in her arms,
but the beast bit and scratched at her feebly, and crept away to a
little distance, where it lay struggling and very unpleasant to see.
"Poison!" she said in a choked gasping whisper. "Poison!" She looked
once towards the man upon the bed, and she was white and shivering.
"It's not true!" she cried again. "I--won't believe it. It's because
the cat--was not used to coffee. Because it was hot. I won't believe
it. I won't believe it." She began to sob, holding her hands over her
white face.
Ste. Marie watched her with puzzled eyes. If this was acting, it was
very very good acting. A little glimmer of hope began to burn in
him--hope that in this last shameful thing, at least, the girl had had
no part.
"It's impossible!" she insisted piteously. "I tell you it's impossible.
I brought the coffee myself from the kitchen. I took it from the pot
there--the same pot we had all had ours from. It was never out of my
sight--or, that is--I mean----"
She halted there and Ste. Marie saw her eyes turn slowly towards the
door, and he saw a crimson flush come up over her cheeks and die away,
leaving her white again. He drew a little breath of relief and
gladness, for he was sure of her now. She had had no part in it.
"It is nothing, mademoiselle," said he cheerfully. "Think no more of it.
It is nothing."
"Nothing?" she cried in a loud voice. "Do you call poison nothing?"
She began to shiver again very violently.
"You would have drunk it!" she said, staring at him in a white agony.
"But for a miracle you would have drunk it--and died!" Abruptly she
came beside the bed and threw herself upon her knees there. In her
excitement and horror she seemed to have forgotten what they two were to
each other. She caught him by the shoulders with her two hands and the
girl's violent trembling shook them both.
"Will you believe," she cried, "that I had nothing to do with this?
Will you believe me? You must believe me!"
There was no acting in that moment. She was wrung with a frank anguish
and utter horror, and between her words there were hard and terrible
sobs.
"I believe you, mademoiselle," said the man gently. "I believe you.
Pray think no more about it!" He smiled up into the girl's beautiful
face, though within him he was still cold and ashiver, as even the
bravest men might well be at such an escape, and after a moment she
turned away again. With unsteady hands she put the new-made bowl of
coffee and the _brioches_ and other things together upon the tray, and
started to carry it across the room to the bed, but halfway she turned
back again and set the tray down. She looked about and found an empty
glass, and she poured a little of the coffee into it. Ste. Marie, who
was watching her, gave a sudden cry--
"No! no! mademoiselle, I beg you. You must not!" But the girl shook
her head at him gravely over the glass.
"There is no danger," she said, "but I must be sure." She drank what
was in the glass, and afterwards went across to one of the windows and
stood there with her back to the room for a little time.
In the end she returned and once more brought the breakfast tray to the
bed. Ste. Marie raised himself to a sitting posture, and took the thing
upon his knees, but his hands were shaking.
"If I were not as helpless as a dead man, mademoiselle," said he, "you
should not have done that. If I could have stopped you, you should not
have done it, mademoiselle." A wave of colour spread up under the brown
skin of the girl's face, but she did not speak. She stood by for a
moment to see if he was supplied with everything he needed, and when
Ste. Marie expressed his gratitude for her pains she only bowed her
head. Then presently she turned away and left the room.
Outside the door she met some one who was approaching. Ste. Marie heard
her break into rapid and excited speech, and he heard O'Hara's voice in
answer. The voice expressed astonishment and indignation and a sort of
gruff horror, but the man who listened could hear only the tones not the
words that were spoken.
The Irishman came quickly into the room. He glanced once towards the
bed where Ste. Marie sat eating his breakfast with apparent unconcern
(there may have been a little bravado in this), and then bent over the
thing which lay moving feebly beside a chair. When he rose again his
face was hard and tense, and his blue eyes glittered in a fashion that
boded trouble for somebody.
"This looks very bad for us," he said gruffly. "I should--I should like
to have you believe that neither my daughter nor I had any part in it.
When I fight I fight openly, I don't use poison. Not even with spies."
"Oh, that's all right!" said Ste. Marie, taking an ostentatious sip of
coffee. "That's understood. I know well enough who tried to poison me.
If you'll just keep your friend Stewart out of the kitchen, I shan't
worry about my food."
The Irishman's cheeks reddened with a quick flush, and he dropped his
eyes. But in an instant he raised them again, and looked full into the
eyes of the man who sat in bed.
"You seem," said he, "to be labouring under a curious misapprehension.
There is no Stewart here, and I don't know any man of that name."
Ste. Marie laughed.
"Oh, don't you?" he said. "That's my mistake then. Well, if you don't
know him, you ought to. You have interests in common."
O'Hara favoured his patient with a long and frowning stare. But at the
end he turned without a word and went out of the room.
*CHAPTER XVII*
*THOSE WHO WERE LEFT BEHIND*
That meeting with Richard Hartley of which Captain Stewart, in the small
drawing-room at La Lierre, spoke to the Irishman O'Hara, took place at
Stewart's own door in the Rue du Faubourg St. Honore, and it must have
been at just about the time when Ste. Marie, concealed among the
branches of his cedar, looked over the wall and saw Arthur Benham
walking with Mlle. Coira O'Hara. Hartley had lunched at Durand's with
his friends, whose name--though it does not at all matter here--was
Reeves-Davis, and after lunch the four of them, Major and Lady
Reeves-Davis, Reeves-Davis' sister Mrs. Carsten, and Hartley, spent an
hour at a certain picture dealer's near the Madeleine. After that Lady
Reeves-Davis wanted to go in search of an antiquary's shop which was
somewhere in the Rue du Faubourg, and she did not know just where. They
went in from the Rue Royale, and amused themselves by looking at the
attractive windows on the way.
During one of their frequent halts, while the two ladies were
passionately absorbed in a display of hats and Reeves-Davis was making
derisive comments from the rear, Hartley, who was too much bored to pay
attention, saw a figure which seemed to him familiar emerge from an
adjacent doorway, and start to cross the pavement to a large touring car
with the top up, which stood at the kerb. The man wore a dust-coat and
a cap, and he moved as if he were in a hurry, but as he went he cast a
quick look about him, and his eye fell upon Richard Hartley. Hartley
nodded, and he thought the elder man gave a violent start--but then he
looked very white and ill and might have started at anything. For an
instant Captain Stewart made as if he would go on his way without taking
notice, but the seemed to change his mind and turned back. He held out
his hand with a rather wan and nervous smile, saying--
"Ah, Hartley! It is you, then. I wasn't sure." He glanced over the
other's shoulder, and said--
"Is that our friend Ste. Marie with you?"
"No," said Richard Hartley, "some English friends of mine. I haven't
seen Ste. Marie to-day. I'm to meet him this evening. You've seen him
since I have, as a matter of fact. He came to your party last night,
didn't he? Sorry I couldn't come. They must have tired you out, I
should think. You look ill."
"Yes," said the other man absently. "Yes. I had an attack of--an old
malady, last night. I am rather stale to-day. You say you haven't seen
Ste. Marie? No, to be sure. If you see him later on you might say that
I mean to drop in on him to-morrow to make my apologies. He'll
understand. Good day!" So he turned away to the motor, which was
waiting for him, and Hartley went back to his friends, wondering a
little what it was that Stewart had to apologise for.
As for Captain Stewart he must have gone at once out to La Lierre. What
he found there has already been set forth.
It was about ten that evening when Hartley, who had left his people,
after dinner was over, at the _Marigny_, reached the Rue d'Assas. The
street door was already closed for the night, and so he had to ring for
the _cordon_. When the door clicked open and he had closed it behind
him, he called out his name before crossing the court to Ste. Marie's
stair, but as he went on his way the voice of the concierge reached him
from the little _loge_.
"_M. Ste. Marie n'est pas la._"
Now the Parisian concierge, as every one knows who has lived under his
iron sway, is a being set apart from the rest of mankind. He has, in
general no human attributes, and certainly no human sympathy. His hand
is against all the world and the hand of all the world is against him.
Still, here and there amongst this peculiar race are to be found a very
few beings who are of softer substance--men and women instead of spies
and harpies. The concierge who had charge of the house wherein Ste.
Marie dwelt was an old woman, undeniably severe upon occasion, but for
the most part a kindly and even jovial soul. She must have become a
concierge through some unfortunate mistake.
She snapped open her little square window, and stuck out into the
moonlit court a dishevelled grey head.
"_Il n'est pas la_," she said again, beaming upon Richard Hartley, whom
she liked, and when he protested that he had a definite and important
appointment with her lodger, went on to explain that Ste. Marie had gone
out, doubtless to lunch, before one o'clock and had never returned.
"He may have left word for me upstairs," Hartley said. "I'll go up and
wait, if I may." So the woman got him her extra key, and he went up,
let himself into the flat and made lights there.
Naturally he found no word, but his own note of that morning lay spread
out upon a table where Ste. Marie had left it, and so he knew that his
friend was in possession of the two facts he had learnt about Stewart.
He made himself comfortable with a book and some cigarettes, and settled
down to wait. Ste. Marie out at La Lierre, with a bullet hole in his
leg, was deep in a drugged sleep just then, but Hartley waited for him,
looking up now and then from his book with a scowl of impatience, until
the little clock on the mantle said that it was one o'clock. Then he
went home in a very bad temper, after writing another note, and leaving
it on the table, to say that he would return early in the morning.
But in the morning he began to be alarmed. He questioned the concierge
very closely as to Ste. Marie's movements on the day previous, but she
could tell him little (save to mention the brief visit of a man with an
accent of Toulouse or Marseille), and there seemed to be no one else to
whom he could go. He spent the entire morning in the flat and returned
there after a hasty lunch. But at mid-afternoon he took a fiacre at the
corner of the Gardens and drove to the Rue du Faubourg St. Honore.
Captain Stewart was at home. He was in a dressing-gown and still looked
fagged and unwell. He certainly betrayed some surprise at sight of his
visitor, but he made Hartley welcome at once, and insisted upon having
cigars and things to drink brought out for him. On the whole he
presented an astonishingly normal exterior, for within him he must have
been cold with fear, and in his ears a question must have rung and
shouted and rung again unceasingly.--
"What does this fellow know? What does he know?"
Hartley's very presence there had a perilous look.
The younger man shook his head at the servant who asked him what he
wished to drink.
"Thanks, you're very good," he said to Captain Stewart, and that
gentleman eyed him silently. "I can't stay but a moment. I just dropped
in to ask if you'd any idea what can have become of Ste. Marie."
"Ste. Marie?" said Captain Stewart. "What do you mean--'become of
him'?" He moistened his lips to speak, but he said the words without a
tremor.
"Well, what I meant, was," said Hartley, "that you'd seen him last. He
was here Thursday evening. Did he say anything to you about going
anywhere in particular the next day--yesterday? He left his rooms about
noon and hasn't turned up since."
Captain Stewart drew a short breath and sat down abruptly in a near-by
chair, for all at once his knees had begun to tremble under him. He was
conscious of a great and blissful wave of relief and well-being, and he
wanted to laugh. He wanted so much to laugh that it became a torture to
keep his face in repose.
So Ste Marie had left no word behind him, and the danger was past!
With a great effort he looked up from where he sat to Richard Hartley,
who stood anxious and frowning before him.
"Forgive me for sitting down!" he said, "and sit down yourself, I beg!
I'm still very shaky from my attack of illness. Ste. Marie? Ste. Marie
has disappeared? How very extraordinary! It's like poor Arthur.
Still--a single day! He might be anywhere for a single day, might he
not? For all that, though, it's very odd. Why no! No, I don't think
he said anything about going away! At least I remember nothing about
it." The relief and triumph within him burst out in a sudden little
chuckle of malicious fun.
[Illustration: "'Ste. Marie has disappeared? How very extraordinary!'"]
"I can think of only one thing," said he, "that might be of use to you.
Ste. Marie seemed to take a very great fancy to one of the ladies here
the other evening. And, I must confess, the lady seemed to return it.
It had all the look of a desperate flirtation--a most desperate
flirtation. They spent the evening in a corner together.
"You don't suppose," he said, still chuckling gently, "that Ste. Marie
is taking a little holiday, do you? You don't suppose that lady could
account for him?"
"No," said Richard Hartley, "I don't. And if you knew Ste. Marie a
little better you wouldn't suppose it either." But after a pause he
said--
"Could you give me the--lady's name, by any chance? Of course I don't
want to leave any stone unturned." And once more the other man emitted
his pleased little chuckle that was so like a cat's mew.
"I can give you her name," said he. "The name is
Mademoiselle----Bertrand. Elise Bertrand. But I regret to say I haven't
the address by me. She came with some friends. I will try to get it and
send it you. Will that be all right?"
"Yes, thanks!" said Richard Hartley. "You're very good. And now I must
be going on. I'm rather in a hurry."
Captain Stewart protested against this great haste, and pressed the
younger man to sit down and tell him more about his friend's
disappearance, but Hartley excused himself, repeating that he was in a
great hurry, and went off.
When he had gone Captain Stewart lay back in his chair and laughed until
he was weak and ached from it, the furious helpless laughter which comes
after the sudden release from a terrible strain. He was not, as a rule,
a demonstrative man, but he became aware that he would like to dance and
sing, and probably he would have done both if it had not been for the
servant in the next room.
So there was no danger to be feared, and his terrors of the night
past--he shivered a little to think of them--had been after all useless
terrors! As for the prisoner out at La Lierre nothing was to be feared
from him so long as a careful watch was kept. Later on he might have to
be disposed of, since both bullet and poison had failed (he scowled over
that, remembering a bad quarter of an hour with O'Hara early this
morning), but that matter could wait. Some way would present itself.
He thought of the wholly gratuitous lie he had told Hartley, a thing
born of a moment's malice, and he laughed again. It struck him that it
would be very humorous if Hartley should come to suspect his friend of
turning aside from his great endeavours to enter upon an affair with a
lady. He dimly remembered that Ste. Marie's name had, from time to
time, been a good deal involved in romantic histories, and he said to
himself that his lie had been very well chosen indeed, and might be
expected to cause Richard Hartley much anguish of spirit.
After that he lighted a very large cigarette, half as big as a cigar,
and he lay back in his low comfortable chair, and began to think of the
outcome of all this plotting and planning. As is very apt to be the
case when a great danger has been escaped, he was in a mood of extreme
hopefulness and confidence. Vaguely he felt as if the recent happenings
had set him ahead a pace towards his goal, though, of course, they had
done nothing of the kind. The danger that would exist so long as Ste.
Marie, who knew everything, was alive, seemed in some miraculous fashion
to have dwindled to insignificance; in this rebound from fear and
despair, difficulties were swept away and the path was clear. The man's
mind leapt to his goal, and a little shiver of prospective joy ran over
him. Once that goal gained he could defy the world. Let eyes look
askance, let tongues wag, he would be safe then--safe for all the rest
of his life, and rich, rich, rich!
For he was playing against a feeble old man's life. Day by day he
watched the low flame sink lower, as the flame of an exhausted lamp
sinks and flickers. It was slow, for the old man had still a little
strength left, but the will to live--which was the oil in the lamp--was
almost gone and the waiting could not be long now. One day, quite
suddenly, the flame would sink down to almost nothing, as at last it
does in the spent lamp. It would flicker up and down rapidly for a few
moments, and all at once there would be no flame there. Old David would
be dead, and a servant would be sent across the river in haste to the
Rue du Faubourg St. Honore. Stewart lay back in his chair and tried to
imagine that it was true, that it had already happened, as happen it
must before long, and once more the little shiver which was like a
shiver of voluptuous delight ran up and down his limbs, and his breath
began to come fast and hard.
But Richard Hartley drove at once back to the Rue d'Assas. He was not
very much disappointed in having learnt nothing from Stewart, though he
was thoroughly angry at that gentleman's hint about Ste. Marie and the
unknown lady. He had gone to the Rue du Faubourg because, as he had
said, he wished to leave no stone unturned, and, after all, he had
thought it quite possible that Stewart could give him some information
which would be of value. Hartley firmly believed the elder man to be a
rascal, but, of course, he knew nothing definite save the two facts
which he had accidentally learnt from Helen Benham, and it had occurred
to him that Captain Stewart might have sent Ste. Marie off upon another
wild-goose chase such as the expedition to Dinard had been. He would
have been sure that the elder man had had something do to with Ste.
Marie's disappearance if the latter had not been seen since Stewart's
party, but instead of that Ste. Marie had come home, slept, gone out the
next morning, returned again, received a visitor, and gone out to lunch.
It was all very puzzling and mysterious.
His mind went back to the brief interview with Stewart and dwelt upon
it. Little things which had at the time made no impression upon him
began to recur and to take on significance. He remembered the elder
man's odd and strained manner at the beginning, his sudden and causeless
change to ease and a something that was almost like a triumphant
excitement, and then his absurd story about Ste. Marie's flirtation with
a lady. Hartley thought of these things, he thought also of the fact
that Ste. Marie had disappeared immediately after hearing grave
accusations against Stewart. Could he have lost his head, rushed across
the city at once to confront the middle-aged villain, and
then--disappeared from human ken? It would have been very like him to
do something rashly impulsive upon reading that note.
Hartley broke into a sudden laugh of sheer amusement when he realised to
what a wild and improbable flight his fancy was soaring. He could not
quite rid himself of a feeling that Stewart was, in some mysterious
fashion, responsible for his friend's vanishing. But he was unlike Ste.
Marie; he did not trust his feelings, either good or bad, unless they
were backed by excellent evidence, and he had to admit that there was
not a single scrap of evidence, in this instance, against Miss Benham's
uncle.
The girl's name recalled him to another duty. He must tell her about
Ste. Marie. He was by this time halfway up the Boulevard St. Germain,
but he gave a new order and the fiacre turned back to the Rue de
l'Universite. The footman at the door said that mademoiselle was not in
the drawing-room, as it was only four o'clock, but that he thought she
was in the house. So Hartley sent up his name and went in to wait.
Miss Benham came down looking a little pale and anxious.
"I've been with grandfather," she explained. "He had some sort of
sinking spell last night, and we were very much frightened. He's much
better, but--well he couldn't have many such spells and live. I'm
afraid he grows a good deal weaker, day by day, now. He sees hardly any
one outside the family, except Baron de Vries." She sat down with a
little sigh of fatigue and smiled up at her visitor.
"I'm glad you've come," said she. "You'll cheer me up and I rather need
it. What are you looking so solemn about, though? You won't cheer me
up if you look like that."
"Well, you see," said Hartley, "I came at this impossible hour to bring
you some bad news. I'm sorry.
"Perhaps," he conditioned, "bad news is putting it with too much
seriousness. Strange news is better. To be brief, Ste. Marie has
disappeared--vanished into thin air. I thought you ought to know."
"Ste. Marie!" cried the girl. "How? What do you mean--vanished? When
did he vanish?" She gave a sudden exclamation of relief.
"Oh, he has come upon some clue or other and has rushed off to follow
it. That's all--How dare you frighten me so?"
"He went without luggage," said the man, shaking his head, "and he left
no word of any kind behind him. He went out to lunch yesterday about
noon, and, as I said, simply vanished, leaving no trace whatever behind
him. I've just been to see your uncle, thinking that he might know
something, but he doesn't."
The girl looked up quickly.
"My uncle?" she said. "Why my uncle?"
"Well," said Hartley, "you see Ste. Marie went to a little party at your
uncle's flat on the night before he disappeared, and I thought your
uncle might have heard him say something that would throw light on his
movements the next day." Hartley remembered the unfortunate incident of
the galloping pigs, and hurried on--
"He went to the party more for the purpose of having a talk with your
uncle than for any other reason, I think. I was to have gone myself,
but gave it up at the eleventh hour for the Cain's dinner at
Armenonville.
"Well, the next morning after Captain Stewart's party he went out early.
I called at his rooms to see him about something important that I
thought he ought to know. I missed him, and so left a note for him,
which he got on his return and read. I found it open on his table later
on. At noon he went out again, and that's all. Frankly, I'm worried
about him."
Miss Benham watched the man with thoughtful eyes and, when he had
finished, she asked--
"Could you tell me what was in this note that you left for Ste. Marie?"
Hartley was by nature a very open and frank young man, and in
consequence an unusually bad liar. He hesitated and looked away and he
began to turn red.
"Well--no," he said after a moment, "no, I'm afraid I can't. It was
something you wouldn't understand--wouldn't know about." And the girl
said, "Oh!" and remained for a little while silent.
But at the end she looked up and met his eyes, and the man saw that she
was very grave. She said--
"Richard, there is something that you and I have been avoiding and
pretending not to see. It has gone too far now, and we're got to face
it with perfect frankness. I know what was in your note to Ste. Marie.
It was what you found out the other evening about--my uncle, the matter
of the will and the other matter. He knew about the will, but he told
you and Ste. Marie that he didn't. He said to you also that I had told
him about my engagement and Ste. Marie's determination to search for
Arthur, and that was--a lie. I didn't tell him, and grandfather didn't
tell him. He listened in the door yonder and heard it himself. I have
a good reason for knowing that.
"And then," she said, "he tried very hard to persuade you and Ste. Marie
to take up your search under his direction, and he partly succeeded. He
sent Ste. Marie upon a foolish expedition to Dinard, and he gave him and
gave you other clues just as foolish as that one.
"Richard, do you believe that my uncle has hidden poor Arthur away
somewhere, or--worse than that? Do you? Tell me the truth!"
"There is not," said Hartley, "one particle of real evidence against him
that I'm aware of. There's plenty of motive, if you like, but motive is
not evidence."
"I asked you a question," the girl said. "Do you believe my uncle has
been responsible for Arthur's disappearance?"
"Yes," said Richard Hartley, "I'm afraid I do."
"Then," she said, "he has been responsible for Ste. Marie's
disappearance also. Ste. Marie became dangerous to him and so vanished.
What can we do, Richard? What can we do?"
[Illustration: "'What can we do, Richard? What can we do?'"]
*CHAPTER XVIII*
*A CONVERSATION OVERHEARD*
In the upper chamber at La Lierre the days dragged very slowly by, and
the man who lay in bed there counted interminable hours, and prayed for
the coming of night with its merciful oblivion of sleep. His inaction
was made bitterer by the fact that the days were days of green and gold,
of breeze-stirred tree-tops without his windows, of vagrant sweet airs
that stole in upon his solitude, bringing him all the warm fragrance of
summer and of green things growing.
He suffered little pain. There was, for the first three or four days, a
dull and feverish ache in his wounded leg, but presently even that
passed and the leg hurt him only when he moved it. He thought sometimes
that he would be grateful for a bit of physical anguish to make the
hours pass more quickly.
The other inmates of the house held aloof from him. Once a day O'Hara
came in to see to the wound, but he maintained a well-nigh complete
silence over his work and answered questions only with a brief yes or
no. Sometimes he did not answer them at all. The old Michel came twice
daily, but this strange being had quite plainly been frightened into
dumbness, and there was nothing to be got out of him. He shambled
hastily about the place, his one scared eye upon the man in bed, and as
soon as possible fled away, closing the door behind him. Sometimes
Michel brought in the meals, sometimes his wife, a creature so like him
that the two might well have passed for twin survivors of some unknown
race; sometimes--thrice altogether in that first week--Coira O'Hara
brought the tray, and she was as silent as the others.
So Ste. Marie was left alone to get through the interminable days as
best he might, and ever afterwards the week remained in his memory as a
sort of nightmare. Lying idle in his bed he evolved many surprising and
fantastic schemes for escape--for getting word to the outside world of
his presence here, and one by one he gave them up in disgust as their
impossibility forced itself upon him. Plans and schemes were useless
while he lay bed-ridden, unfamiliar even with the house wherein he
dwelt, with the garden and park that surrounded it.
As for aid from any of the inmates of the place, that was to be laughed
at. They were engaged together in a scheme so desperate that failure
must mean utter ruin to them all. He sometimes wondered if the two
servants could be bribed. Avarice unmistakable gleamed from their little
glittering rat-like eyes, but he was sure that they would sell out for
no small sum and, in so far as he could remember, there had been in his
pockets when he came here not more than five or six louis. Doubtless the
old Michel had managed to abstract those in his daily offices about the
room, for Ste. Marie knew that the clothes hung in a closet across from
his bed. He had seen them there once when the closet door was open.
Any help that might come to him must come from outside--and what help
was to be expected there? Over and over again he reminded himself of
how little Richard Hartley knew. He might suspect Stewart of complicity
in this new disappearance, but how was he to find out anything definite?
How was any one to do so?
It was at such times as this, when brain and nerves were strained and
worn almost to breaking point that Ste. Marie had occasion to be
grateful for the southern blood that was in him, the strong tinge of
fatalism which is common alike to Latin and to Oriental. It rescued him
more than once from something like nervous breakdown, calmed him
suddenly, lifted his burdens from outwearied shoulders, and left him in
peace to wait until some action should be possible. Then, in such
hours, he would fall to thinking of the girl for whose sake, in whose
cause, he lay bedridden, beset with dangers. As long before, she came to
him in a sort of waking vision--a being but half earthly, enthroned high
above him, calm-browed, very pure, with passionless eyes that gazed into
far distance and were unaware of the base things below. What would she
think of him, who had sworn to be true knight to her, if she could know
how he had bungled and failed? He was glad that she did not know, that
if he had blundered into peril the knowledge of it could not reach her
to hurt her pride.
And sometimes also, with a great sadness and pity, he thought of poor
Coira O'Hara and of the pathetic wreck her life had fallen into. The
girl was so patently fit for better things! Her splendid beauty was not
a cheap beauty. She was no coarse-blown gorgeous flower, imperfect at
telltale points. It was good blood that had modelled her dark
perfection, good blood that had shaped her long and slim and tapering
hands.
"A queen among goddesses!" The words remained with him and he knew that
they were true. She might have held up her head among the greatest, this
adventurer's girl; but what chance had she had? What merest ghost of a
chance?
He watched her on the rare occasions when she came into the room. He
watched the poise of her head, her walk, the movements she made, and he
said to himself that there was no woman of his acquaintance whose grace
was more perfect--certainly none whose grace was so native.
Once he complained to her of the desperate idleness of his days and
asked her to lend him a book of some kind, a review, even a daily
newspaper, though it be a week old.
"I should read the very advertisements with joy," he said.
She went out of the room and returned presently with an armful of books,
which she laid upon the bed without comment.
"In my prayers, mademoiselle," cried Ste. Marie, "you shall be foremost
forever!" He glanced at the row of titles and looked up in sheer
astonishment.
"May I ask whose books these are?" he said.
"They are mine," said the girl. "I caught up the ones that lay first at
hand. If you don't care for any of them I will choose others." The
books were: _Diana of the Crossways_, _Richard Feverel_, Henri Lavedan's
_Le Duel_, Maeterlinck's _Pelleas et Melisande_, _Don Quixote de la
Mancha_, in Spanish, a volume of Virgil's _Eclogues_, and the _Life of
the Chevalier Bayard_ by the "Loyal Servitor." Ste. Marie stared at
her.
"Do you read Spanish?" he demanded, "and Latin, as well as French and
English?"
"My mother was Spanish," said she. "And as for Latin, I began to read
it with my father when I was a child. Shall I leave the books here?"
Ste. Marie took up the _Bayard_ and held it between his hands.
"It is worn from much reading, mademoiselle," he said.
"It is the best of all," said she. "The very best of all. I didn't
know I had brought you that." She made a step towards him as if she
would take the book away, and over it the eyes of them met and were
held. In that moment it may have come to them both who she was, who so
loved the knight without fear and without reproach--the daughter of an
Irish adventurer of ill repute; for their faces began suddenly to flush
with red and after an instant the girl turned away.
"It is of no consequence," said she. "You may keep the book if you care
to." And Ste. Marie said very gently--
"Thank you, mademoiselle! I will keep it for a little while." So she
went out of the room and left him alone.
This was at noon on the sixth day, and after he had swallowed hastily
the lunch which had been set before him Ste. Marie fell upon the books
like a child upon a new box of sweets. Like the child again it was
difficult for him to choose among them. He opened one and then another,
gloating over them all, but in the end he chose the _Bayard_ and for
hours lost himself among the high deeds of the Preux Chevalier and his
faithful friends (among whom, by the way, there was a Ste. Marie who
died nobly for France). It was late afternoon when at last he laid the
book down with a sigh and settled himself more comfortably among the
pillows.
The sun was not in the room at that hour but, from where he lay, he
could see it on the tree-tops, gold upon green. Outside his south
window the leaves of a chestnut which stood there quivered and rustled
gently under a soft breeze. Delectable odours floated in to Ste.
Marie's nostrils, and he thought how very pleasant it would be if he
were lying on the turf under the trees, instead of bed-ridden in this
upper chamber, which he had come to hate with a bitter hatred.
He began to wonder if it would be possible to drag himself across the
floor to that south window, and so to lie down for a while with his head
in the tiny balcony beyond--his eyes turned to the blue sky. Astir with
the new thought he sat up in bed and carefully swung his feet out till
they hung to the floor. The wound in the left leg smarted and burnt,
but not too severely, and with slow pains Ste. Marie stood up. He
almost cried out when he discovered that it could be done quite easily.
He essayed to walk and he was a little weak, but by no means helpless.
He found that it gave him pain to raise his left leg in the ordinary
action of walking, or to bend that knee, but he could get about well
enough by dragging the injured member beside him, for when it was
straight it supported him without protest.
He took his pillows across to the window and disposed them there, for it
was a French window opening to the floor, and the level of the little
balcony outside was but a few inches above the level of the room. Then
the desire seized him to make a tour of his prison walls. He went first
to the closet where he had seen his clothes hanging, and they were still
there. He felt in the pockets and withdrew his little English pig-skin
sovereign purse. It had not been tampered with, and he gave an
exclamation of relief over that, for he might later on have use for
money. There were eight louis in it, each in its little separate
compartment, and in another pocket he found a fifty-franc note and some
silver. He went to the two east windows and looked out. The trees
stood thick together on that side of the house, but between two of them
he could see the park wall fifty yards away. He glanced down, and the
side of the house was covered thick with the ivy which had given the
place its name, but there was no water pipe near nor any other thing
which seemed to offer foot or hand hold--unless perhaps the ivy might
prove strong enough to bear a man's weight. Ste. Marie made a mental
note to look into that when he was a little stronger, and turned back to
the south window, where he had disposed his pillows.
The unaccustomed activity was making his wound smart and prickle, and he
lay down at once, with head and shoulders in the open air; and, out of
the warm and golden sunshine and the emerald shade, the breath of summer
came to him and wrapped him round with sweetness and pillowed him upon
its fragrant breast.
He became aware, after a long time, of voices below, and turned upon his
elbows to look. The ivy had clambered upon and partly covered the iron
grille of the little balcony and he could observe without being seen.
Young Arthur Benham and Coira O'Hara had come out of the door of the
house, and they stood upon the raised and paved terrace which ran the
width of the facade, and seemed to hesitate as to the direction they
should take. Ste. Marie heard the girl say--
"It's cooler here in the shade of the house," and, after a moment, the
two came along the shady terrace, whose outer margin was set at
intervals with stained and discoloured marble nymphs upon pedestals,
and, between the nymphs, with moss-grown stone benches. They halted
before a bench upon which, earlier in the day, a rug had been spread out
to dry in the sun and had been forgotten, and, after a moment's further
hesitation, they sat down upon it. Their faces were turned towards the
house and every word that they spoke mounted in that still air clear and
distinct to the ears of the man above.
Ste. Marie wriggled back into the room and sat up to consider. The
thought of deliberately listening to a conversation not meant for him
sent a hot flush to his cheeks. He told himself that it could not be
done, and that there was an end to the matter. Whatever might hang upon
it it could not be asked of him that he should stoop to dishonour. But
at that the heavy and grave responsibility which really did hang upon
him and upon his actions came before his mind's eyes and loomed there
mountainous. The fate of this foolish boy, who was set round with
thieves and adventurers--even though his eyes were open and he knew
where he stood--that came to Ste. Marie and confronted him: and the
picture of a bitter old man who was dying of grief came to him: and a
mother's face: and _hers_. There could be no dishonour in the face of
all this, only a duty very clear and plain. He crept back to his place,
his arms folded beneath him as he lay, his eyes at the thin screen of
ivy which cloaked the balcony grille.
Young Arthur Benham appeared to be giving tongue to a rather sharp
attack of homesickness. It may be that long confinement within the walls
of La Lierre was beginning to try him somewhat.
"Mind you," he declared, as Ste. Marie's ears came once more within
range, "mind you, I'm not saying that Paris hasn't got its points. It
has. Oh yes! And so has London, and so has Ostend, and so has Monte
Carlo--Verree much so!--I like Paris. I like the theatres and the
vaudeville shows in the Champs Elysees, and I like Longchamps. I like
the boys who hang around Henry's bar. They're good sports, all right,
all right! But, by Golly, I want to go home! Put me off at the corner
of Forty-second Street and Broadway and I'll ask no more. Set me down
at seven p.m. right there on the corner outside the _Knickerbocker_, for
that's where I would live and die." There came into the lad's somewhat
strident voice a softness that was almost pathetic.
"You don't know Broadway, Coira, do you? Nix! of course not. Little
girl, it's the one, one street of all this large world. It's the
equator that runs north and south instead of east and west. It's a long
bright gay live wire, that's what Broadway is. And I give you my word of
honour like a little man that it--is--not--slow. No indeed! When I was
there last it was being called the _Gay White Way_. It is not called
the _Gay White Way_ now. It has had forty other new good names since
then, and I don't know what they are, but I do know that it is forever
gay, and that the electric signs are still blazing all along the street,
and the street cars are still killing people in the good old fashion,
and the newsboys are still dodging under the automobiles to sell you a
_Woild_ or a _Choinal_ or, if it's after twelve at night, a _Morning
Telegraph_. Coira, my girl, standing on that corner after dark you can
see the electric signs of fifteen theatres, no one of them more than
five minutes' walk away, and just round the corner there are more.
"I want to go home! I want to take one large unparalleled leap from
here and come down at the corner I told you about. D'you know what I'd
do? We'll say it's seven p.m. and beginning to get dark. I'd dive into
the _Knickerbocker_ (that's the hotel that the bright and happy people
go to for dinner or supper), and I'd engage a table up on the terrace.
Then I'd telephone to a little friend of mine, whose name is Doe--John
Doe--and in about ten minutes he'd have left the crowd he was standing
in line with and he'd come galloping up that glad to see me you'd cry to
watch him. We'd go up on the terrace, where the potted palms grow, for
our dinner, and the tables all around us would be full of people that
would know Johnnie Doe and me, and they'd all make us drink drinks and
tell us how glad they were to see us aboard again.
"And after dinner," said young Arthur Benham, with wide and smiling
eyes, "after dinner we'd go to see one of the Roof Garden shows. Let me
tell you they've got the _Marigny_, or the Ambassadeurs, or the Jardin
de Paris beaten to a pulp--to--a--pulp! And after the show we'd slip
round to the stage door--you bet we would!--and capture the two most
beautiful ladies in the world and take 'em off to supper." He wrinkled
his young brow in great perplexity.
"Now I wonder," said he anxiously. "I wonder where we'd go for supper.
"You see," he apologised, "it's two years since I left the Real Street,
and Gee, what a lot can happen on Broadway in two years! There's
probably half a dozen new supper places that I don't know anything
about, and one of them's the place where the crowd goes. Well, anyhow,
we'd go to that place, and there'd be a band playing, and the electric
fans would go round, and round, and Johnnie Doe and I and the two most
beautiful ladies would put it all over the other pikers there."
Young Benham gave a little sigh of pleasure and excitement.
"That's what I'd like to do to-night," said he, "and that's what I'll
do, you can bet your sh--boots, when all this silly mess is over and I'm
a free man. I'll hike back to good old Broadway, and if ever you see any
one trying to pry me loose from it again, you can laugh yourself to
death, because he'll never, never succeed.
"Nine more weeks shut in here by stonewalls!" said the boy, staring
about him with a sort of bitterness. "Nine weeks more!"
"Is it so hard as that?" asked the girl. There was no foolish coquetry
in her tone. She spoke as if the words involved no personal question at
all, but there was a little smile at her lips, and Arthur Benham turned
towards her quickly and caught at her hands.
"No, no!" he cried. "I didn't mean that. You know I didn't mean that.
You're worth nine years' waiting. You're the best, d'you hear? the best
there is. There's nobody anywhere that can touch you. Only--well, this
place is getting on my nerves. It's got me worn to a frazzle. I feel
like a criminal doing time."
"You came very near having to do time somewhere else," said the girl.
"If this M. Ste. Marie hadn't blundered we should have had them all
round our ears, and you'd have had to run for it."
"Yes," the boy said, nodding gravely. "Yes, that was great luck." He
raised his head and looked up along the windows above him.
"Which is his room?" he asked, and Mlle. O'Hara said--
"The one just overhead, but he's in bed far back from the window. He
couldn't possibly hear us talking." She paused for a moment in frowning
hesitation, and, in the end, said--
"Tell me about him, this Ste. Marie! Do you know anything about him?"
[Illustration: "'Tell me about him, this Ste. Marie! Do you know
anything about him?'"]
"No," said Arthur Benham, "I don't--not personally, that is. Of course
I've heard of him. Lots of people have spoken of him to me. And the odd
part of it is that they all had a good word to say. Everybody seemed to
like him. I got the idea that he was the best ever. I wanted to know
him. I never thought he'd take on a piece of dirty work like this."
"Nor I!" said the girl, in a low voice. "Nor I!" The boy looked up.
"Oh, you've heard of him too, then?" said he. And she said, still in her
low voice--
"I--saw him once."
"Well," declared young Benham, "it's beyond me. I give it up. You
never can tell about people, can you? I guess they'll all go wrong when
there's enough in it to make it worth while. That's what old Charlie
always says. He says most people are straight enough when there's
nothing in it, but make the pot big enough and they'll all go crooked."
The young man's face turned suddenly hard and old and bitter.
"Gee! I ought to know that well enough, oughtn't I?" he said. "I guess
nobody knows that better than I do after what happened to me... Come
along and take a walk in the garden, Maud! I'm sick of sitting still."
Mlle. Coira O'Hara looked up with a start, as if she had not been
listening, but she rose, when the boy held out his hand to her, and the
two went down from the terrace and moved off towards the west.
Ste. Marie watched them until they had disappeared among the trees, and
then turned on his back, staring up into the softly stirring canopy of
green above him, and the little rifts of bright blue sky. He did not
understand at all. Something mysterious had crept in where all had
seemed so plain to the eye. Certain words that young Arthur Benham had
spoken repeated themselves in his mind and he could not at once make
them out. Assuredly there was something mysterious here.
In the first place what did the boy mean by "dirty work"? To be sure
spying in its usual sense is not held to be one of the noblest of
occupations, but--in such a cause as this! It was absurd, ridiculous,
to call it "dirty work." And what did he mean by the words which he had
used afterwards? Ste. Marie did not quite follow the idiom about the
"big enough pot," but he assumed that it referred to money. Did the
young fool think he was being paid for his efforts? That was ridiculous
too.
The boy's face came before him as it had looked with that sudden hard
and bitter expression. What did he mean by saying that no one knew the
crookedness of humanity under money temptation better than he knew it
after something that had happened to him? In a sense his words were
doubtless very true. Captain Stewart (and he must have been "old
Charlie"--Ste. Marie remembered that the name was Charles), O'Hara and
O'Hara's daughter stood excellent samples of that bit of cynicism, but
obviously the boy had not spoken in that sense--certainly not before
Mlle. O'Hara! He meant something else, then. But what? What?
Ste. Marie rose with some difficulty to his feet, and carried the
pillows back to the bed whence he had taken them. He sat down upon the
edge of the bed, staring in great perplexity across the room at the open
window, but all at once he uttered an exclamation, and he smote his
hands together.
"That boy doesn't know!" he cried. "They're tricking him, these
others!"
The lad's face came once more before him, and it was a foolish and
stubborn face perhaps, but it was neither vicious nor mean. It was the
face of an honest headstrong boy, who would be incapable of the cold
cruelty to which all circumstances seemed to point.
"They're tricking him somehow!" cried Ste. Marie again. "They're lying
to him and making him think----"
What was it they were making him think, these three conspirators? What
possible thing could they make him think other than the plain truth?
Ste. Marie shook a weary head and lay down among his pillows. He wished
that he had "old Charlie" in a corner of that room with his fingers
round "old Charlie's" wicked throat. He would soon get at the truth
then: or O'Hara either, that grim and saturnine _chevalier d'industrie_,
though O'Hara would be a bad handful to manage: or--Ste. Marie's head
dropped back with a little groan when the face of young Arthur's
enchantress came between him and the opposite wall of the room, and her
great and tragic eyes looked into his.
It seemed incredible that that queen among goddesses should be what she
was!
*CHAPTER XIX*
*THE INVALID TAKES THE AIR*
When O'Hara, the next morning, went through the formality of looking in
upon his patient, and after a taciturn nod was about to go away again,
Ste. Marie called him back. He said--
"Would you mind waiting a moment?" and the Irishman halted inside the
door.
"I made an experiment yesterday," said Ste. Marie, "and I find that,
after a poor fashion, I can walk--that is to say, I can drag myself
about a little, without any great pain, if I don't bend the left leg."
O'Hara returned to the bed and made a silent examination of the bullet
wound which, it was plain to see, was doing very well indeed.
"You'll be all right in a few days," said he, "but you'll be lame for a
week yet--maybe two. As a matter of fact, I've known men to march half a
day with a hole in the leg worse than yours, though it probably was not
quite pleasant."
"I'm afraid I couldn't march very far," said Ste. Marie, "but I can
hobble a bit. The point is, I'm going mad from confinement in this
room. Do you think I might be allowed to stagger about the garden for
an hour, or sit there under one of the trees? I don't like to ask
favours, but--so far as I can see it could do no harm. I couldn't
possibly escape, you see. I couldn't climb a fifteen foot wall even if
I had two good legs: as it is, with a leg and a half, I couldn't climb
anything."
The Irishman looked at him sharply, and was silent for a time as if
considering. But at last he said--
"Of course there is no reason whatever for granting you any favours
here. You're on the footing of a spy--a captured spy, and you're very
lucky not to have got what you deserved instead of a trumpery flesh
wound." The man's face twisted into a heavy scowl.
"Unfortunately," said he, "an--accident has put me--put us in as
unpleasant a position towards you as you had put yourself towards us.
We seem to stand in the position of having tried to poison you,
and--well, we owe you something for that. Still, I'd meant to keep you
locked up in this room so long as it was necessary to have you at La
Lierre." He scowled once more in an intimidating fashion at Ste. Marie,
and it was evident that he found himself embarrassed.
"And," he said awkwardly, "I suppose I owe something to your father's
son.... Look here! if you're to be allowed in the garden you must
understand that it's at fixed hours and not alone. Somebody will always
be with you, and old Michel will be on hand to shoot you down if you try
to run for it, or if you try to communicate with Arthur Benham. Is that
understood?"
"Quite!" said Ste. Marie gaily.
"Quite understood and agreed to. And many thanks for your courtesy. I
shan't forget it. We differ rather widely on some rather important
subjects, you and I, but I must confess that you're very generous, and I
thank you. The old Michel has my full permission to shoot at me if he
sees me trying to fly over a fifteen foot wall."
"He'll shoot without asking your permission," said the Irishman grimly,
"if you try that on, but I don't think you'll be apt to try it for the
present--not with a crippled leg." He pulled out his watch and looked
at it.
"Nine o'clock," said he. "If you care to begin to-day you can go out at
eleven for an hour. I'll see that old Michel is ready at that time."
"Eleven will suit me perfectly," said Ste. Marie. "You're very good.
Thanks once more!" The Irishman did not seem to hear. He replaced the
watch in his pocket and turned away in silence. But before he left the
room he stood a moment beside one of the windows, staring out into the
morning sunshine, and the other man could see that his face had once
more settled into the still and melancholic gloom which was
characteristic of it. Ste. Marie watched and, for the first time, the
man began to interest him as a human being. He had thought of O'Hara
before merely as a rather shady adventurer of a not very rare type, but
he looked at the adventurer's face now, and he saw that it was the face
of a man of unspeakable sorrows. When O'Hara looked at one, one saw
only a pair of singularly keen and hard blue eyes set under a bony brow.
When those eyes were turned away, the man's attention relaxed, the face
became a battleground furrowed and scarred with wrecked pride and with
bitterness and with shame and with agony. Most soldiers of fortune have
faces like that, for the world has used them very ill, and they have
lost one precious thing after another until all are gone; and they have
tasted everything that there is in life, and the flavour which remains
is a very bitter flavour--dry like ashes.
It came to Ste. Marie, as he lay watching this man, that the story of
the man's life, if he could be made to tell it would doubtless be one of
the most interesting stories in the world, as must be the tale of the
adventurous career of any one who has slipped down the ladder of
respectability rung by rung into that shadowy no-man's-land, where the
furtive birds of prey foregather and hatch their plots. It was plain
enough that O'Hara had, as the phrase goes, seen better days. Without
question he was a villain, but after all a generous villain. He had been
very decent about making amends for that poisoning affair. A cheaper
rascal would have behaved otherwise. Ste. Marie suddenly remembered
what a friend of his had once said of this mysterious Irishman. The two
had been sitting on the terrace of a cafe, and, as O'Hara passed by,
Ste. Marie's friend pointed after him and said: "There goes some of the
best blood that ever came out of Ireland. See what it has fallen to!"
Seemingly it had fallen pretty low. He would have liked very much to
know about the downward stages, but he knew that he would never hear
anything of them from the man himself, for O'Hara was clad, as it were,
in an armour of taciturnity. He was incredibly silent. He wore mail
that nothing could pierce.
The Irishman turned abruptly away and left the room, and Ste. Marie,
with all the gay excitement of a little girl preparing for her first
nursery party, began to get himself ready to go out. The old Michel had
already been there to help him bathe and shave, so that he had only to
dress himself and attend to his one conspicuous vanity--the painstaking
arrangement of his hair, which he wore, according to the fashion of the
day, parted a little at one side and brushed almost straight back, so
that it looked rather like a close-fitting and incredibly glossy
skull-cap. Richard Hartley, who was inclined to joke at his friend's
grave interest in the matter, said that it reminded him of patent
leather.
When he was dressed--and he found that putting on his left boot was no
mean feat--Ste. Marie sat down in a chair by the window and lighted a
cigarette. He had half an hour to wait, and so he picked up the volume
of Bayard, which Coira O'Hara had not yet taken away from him, and began
to read in it at random. He became so absorbed that the old Michel,
come to summon him, took him by surprise. But it was a pleasant
surprise and very welcome. He followed the old man out of the room with
a heart that beat fast with eagerness.
The descent of the stairs offered difficulties, for the wounded leg
protested sharply against being bent more than a very little at the
knee. But, by aid of Michel's shoulder, he made the passage in safety,
and so came to the lower story. At the foot of the stairs some one
opened a door almost in their faces, but closed it again with great
haste, and Ste. Marie gave a chuckle of laughter, for, though it was
almost dark there, he thought he had recognised Captain Stewart.
"So old Charlie's with us to-day, is he?" he said aloud, and Michel
queried: "_Comment, monsieur?_" because Ste. Marie had spoken in
English.
They came out upon the terrace before the house, and the fresh sweet air
bore against their faces, and little flecks of live gold danced and
shivered about their feet upon the moss-stained tiles. The gardener
stepped back for an instant into the doorway and reappeared, bearing
across his arms the short carbine with which Ste. Marie had already made
acquaintance. The victim looked at this weapon with a laugh, and the
old Michel's gnome-like countenance distorted itself suddenly and a
weird cackle came from it.
"It is my old friend?" demanded Ste. Marie, and the gardener cackled
once more, stroking the barrel of the weapon as if it were a faithful
dog.
"The same, monsieur," said he. "But she apologises for not doing
better."
"Beg her for me," said the young man, "to cheer up. She may get another
chance." Old Michel's face froze into an expression of anxious and
rather frightened solicitude, but he waved his arm for the prisoner to
precede him, and Ste. Marie began to limp down across the littered and
unkempt sweep of turf. Behind him at the distance of a dozen paces he
heard the shambling footfalls of his guard, but he had expected that,
and it could not rob him of his swelling and exultant joy at treading
once more upon green grass and looking up into blue sky. He was like a
man newly released from a dungeon, rather than from a sunny and by no
means uncomfortable upper chamber. He would have liked to dance and
sing, to run at full speed like a child until he was breathless and red
in the face. Instead of that he had to drag himself with slow pains and
some discomfort, but his spirit ran ahead, dancing and singing, and he
thought that it even halted now and then to roll on the grass.
As he had observed, a week before from the top of his wall, a double row
of larches led straight down away from the front of the house, making a
wide and long vista interrupted, halfway to its end, by a _rond point_,
in the centre of which was a pool and a fountain. The double row of
trees was sadly broken now, and the trees were untrimmed and uncared
for. One of them had fallen, probably in a wind storm, and lay dead
across the way. Ste. Marie turned aside towards the west and found
himself presently among chestnuts, planted in close rows, whose tops
grew in so thick a canopy above that but little sunshine came through,
and there was no turf under foot, only black earth hard trodden, mossy
here and there.
From beyond, in the direction he had chanced to take and a little
towards the west, a soft morning breeze bore to him the scent of roses,
so constant and so sweet despite its delicacy that to breathe it was
like an intoxication. He felt it begin to take hold upon and to sway
his senses like an exquisite, an insidious wine.
"The flower gardens, Michel?" he asked over his shoulder. "They are
before us?"
"Ahead and to the left, monsieur," said the old man, and he took up once
more his slow and difficult progress. But again, before he had gone
many steps, he was halted. There began to reach his ears a rich but
slender strain of sound, a golden thread of melody. At first he thought
that it was a cello or the lower notes of a violin, but presently he
became aware that it was a woman singing in a half-voice without thought
of what she sang--as women croon to a child, or over their work, or when
they are idle and their thoughts are far wandering.
The mistake was not as absurd as it may seem, for it is a fact that the
voice which is called a contralto, if it is a good and clear and fairly
resonant voice, sounds at a distance very much indeed like a cello or
the lower register of a violin. And that is especially true when the
voice is hushed to a half-articulate murmur. Indeed, this is but one of
the many strange peculiarities of that most beautiful of all human
organs. The contralto can rarely express the lighter things, and it is
quite impossible for it to express merriment or gaiety, but it can
thrill the heart as can no other sound emitted by a human throat, and it
can shake the soul to its very innermost hidden deeps. It is the soft
yellow gold of singing--the wine of sound: it is mystery: it is shadowy
unknown beautiful places: it is enchantment.
Ste. Marie stood still and listened. The sound of low singing came from
the right. Without realising that he had moved he began to make his way
in that direction, and the old Michel, carbine upon arm, followed behind
him. He had no doubt of the singer. He knew well who it was, for the
girl's speaking voice had thrilled him long before this. He came to the
eastern margin of the grove of chestnuts, and found that he was beside
the open _rond point_ where the pool lay within its stone circumference,
unclean and choked with lily pads, and the fountain, a naked lady
holding aloft a shell, stood above. The _rond point_ was not in reality
round, it was an oval with its greater axis at right angles to the long
straight avenue of larches. At the two ends of the oval there were
stone benches with backs, and behind these tall shrubs grew close and
overhung so that even at noonday the spots were shaded.
*CHAPTER XX*
*THE STONE BENCH AT THE ROND POINT*
Mlle. Coira O'Hara sat alone upon the stone bench at the hither end of
the _rond point_. With a leisurely hand she put fine stitches into a
mysterious garment of white, with lace on it, and, over her not too
arduous toil, she sang _a demi voix_, a little German song all about the
tender passions.
[Illustration: "Mlle. Coira O'Hara sat alone upon the stone bench."]
Ste. Marie halted his dragging steps a little way off, but the girl
heard him and turned to look. After that she rose hurriedly and stood
as if poised for flight, but Ste. Marie took his hat in his hands and
came forward.
"If you go away, mademoiselle," said he; "if you let me drive you from
your place, I shall limp across to that pool and fall in and drown
myself, or I shall try to climb the wall yonder and Michel will have to
shoot me." He came forward another step.
"If it is impossible," he said, "that you and I should stay here
together for a few little moments, and talk about what a beautiful day
it is--if that is impossible, why then I must apologise for intruding
upon you and go on my way, inexorably pursued by the would-be murderer
who now stands six paces to the rear.
"Is it impossible, mademoiselle?" said Ste. Marie.
The girl's face was flushed with that deep and splendid understain. She
looked down upon the white garment in her hand and away across the broad
_rond point_, and, in the end, she looked up very gravely into the face
of the man who stood leaning upon his stick before her.
"I don't know," she said in her deep voice, "what my father would wish.
I did not know that you were coming into the garden this morning or----"
"Or else," said Ste. Marie with a little touch of bitterness in his
tone, "or else you would not have been here. You would have remained in
the house."
He made a bow.
"To-morrow, mademoiselle," said he, "and for the remainder of the days
that I may be at La Lierre, I shall stay in my room. You need have no
fear of me." All the man's life he had been spoilt. The girl's bearing
hurt him absurdly, and a little of the hurt may have betrayed itself in
his face as he turned away, for she came towards him with a swift
movement, saying--
"No! no! Wait!
"I have hurt you," she said with a sort of wondering distress. "You
have let me hurt you.... And yet surely you must see ... you must
realise on what terms ... Do you forget that you are not among your
friends ... outside? ... This is so very different!"
"I had forgotten," said he. "Incredible as it sounds, I had for a
moment forgotten. Will you grant me your pardon for that?
"And yet," he persisted after a moment's pause, "yet, mademoiselle,
consider a little! It is likely that--circumstances have so fallen that
it seems I shall be here within your walls for a time, perhaps a long
time. I am able to walk a little now. Day by day I shall be stronger,
better able to get about. Is there not some way--are there not some
terms under which we could meet without embarrassment? Must we for ever
glare at each other and pass by warily, just because we--well, hold
different views about--something?" It was not a premeditated speech at
all. It had never until this moment occurred to him to suggest any such
arrangement with any member of the household at La Lierre. At another
time he would doubtless have considered it undignified if not downright
unwise to hold intercourse of any friendly sort with this band of
contemptible adventurers. The sudden impulse may have been born of his
long week of almost intolerable loneliness, or it may have come of the
warm exhilaration of this first breath of sweet outdoor air, or perhaps
it needed neither of these things, for the girl was very
beautiful--enchantment breathed from her, and though he knew what she
was, in what despicable plot she was engaged, he was too much Ste. Marie
to be quite indifferent to her. Though he looked upon her sorrowfully
and with pain and vicarious shame, he could not have denied the spell
she wielded. After all he was Ste. Marie.
Once more the girl looked up very gravely under her brows and her eyes
met the man's eyes.
"I don't know," she said. "Truly I don't know. I think I should have to
ask my father about it.
"I wish," she said, "that we might do that. I should like it. I should
like to be able to talk to some one--about the things I like--and care
for. I used to talk with my father about things. But not lately. There
is no one now." Her eyes searched him.
"Would it be possible, I wonder," said she. "Could we two put everything
else aside--forget altogether who we are and why we are here. Is that
possible?"
"We could only try, mademoiselle," said Ste. Marie. "If we found it a
failure we could give it up." He broke into a little laugh.
"And besides," he said, "I can't help thinking that two people ought to
be with me all the time I am in the garden here--for safety's sake. I
might catch the old Michel napping one day, you know, throttle him, take
his rifle away and escape. If there were two I couldn't do that."
For an instant she met his laugh with an answering smile, and the smile
came upon her sombre beauty like a moment of golden light upon darkness.
But afterwards she was grave again and thoughtful.
"Is it not rather foolish," she asked, "to warn us--to warn me of
possibilities like that? You might quite easily do what you have said.
You are putting us on our guard against you."
"I meant to, mademoiselle," said Ste. Marie. "I meant to. Consider my
reasons. Consider what I was pleading for!" And he gave a little laugh
when the colour began again to rise in the girl's cheeks.
She turned away from him, shaking her head, and he thought that he had
said too much and that she was offended, but after a moment the girl
looked up and, when she met his eyes, she laughed outright.
"I cannot for ever be scowling and snarling at you," said she. "It is
quite too absurd. Will you sit down for a little while? I don't know
whether or not my father would approve, but we have met here by
accident, and there can be no harm surely in our exchanging a few civil
words. If you try to bring up forbidden topics I can simply go
away--and besides Michel stands ready to murder you if it should become
necessary. I think his failure of a week ago is very heavy on his
conscience."
Ste. Marie sat down in one corner of the long stone bench, and he was
very glad to do it, for his leg was beginning to cause him some
discomfort. It felt hot, and as if there were a very tight band round
it above the knee. The relief must have been apparent in his face, for
Mlle. O'Hara looked at him in silence for a moment, and she gave a
little troubled anxious frown. Men can be quite indifferent to
suffering in each other if the suffering is not extreme, and women can
be too; but men are quite miserable in the presence of a woman who is in
pain, and women, before a suffering man, while they are not miserable
are always full of a desire to do something that will help. And that
might be a small additional proof (if any more proof were necessary)
that they are much the more practical of the two sexes.
The girl's sharp glance seemed to assure her that Ste. Marie was
comfortable, now that he was sitting down, for the frown went from her
brows, and she began to arrange the mysterious white garment in her lap
in preparation to go on with her work.
Ste. Marie watched her for awhile in a contented silence. The leaves
overhead stirred under a puff of air, and a single yellow beam of
sunlight came down and shivered upon the girl's dark head and played
about the bundle of white over which her hands were busy. She moved
aside to avoid it, but it followed her, and when she moved back it
followed again and danced in her lap, as if it were a live thing with a
malicious sense of humour. It might have been Tinker Bell out of _Peter
Pan_, only it did not jingle. Mlle. O'Hara uttered an exclamation of
annoyance, and Ste. Marie laughed at her, but in a moment the leaves
overhead were still again, and the sunbeam with a sense of humour was
gone to torment some one else.
Still, neither of the two spoke, and Ste. Marie continued to watch the
girl bent above her sewing. He was thinking of what she had said to him
when he asked her if she read Spanish--that her mother had been Spanish.
That would account then for her dark eyes. It would account for the
darkness of her skin too, but not for its extraordinary clearness and
delicacy, for Spanish women are apt to have dull skins of an opaque
texture. This was, he said to himself, an Irish skin with a darker
stain, and he was quite sure that he had never before seen anything at
all like it.
Apart from colouring she was all Irish, of the type which has become
famous the world over, and which in the opinion of men who have seen
women in all countries, and have studied them, is the most beautiful
type that exists in our time.
Ste. Marie was dark himself and, in the ordinary nature of things, he
should have preferred a fair type in women. In theory, for that matter,
he did prefer it; but it was impossible for him to sit near Coira
O'Hara, and watch her bent head and busy hovering hands and remain
unstirred by her splendid beauty. He found himself wondering why one
kind of loveliness more than another should exert a potent and
mysterious spell by virtue of mere proximity, and when the woman who
bore it was entirely passive. If this girl had been looking at him the
matter would have been easy to understand, for an eye-glance is often
downright hypnotic, but she was looking at the work in her hands and, so
far as could be judged, she had altogether forgotten his presence; yet
the mysterious spell, the potent enchantment, breathed from her like a
vapour, and he could not be insensible to it. It was like sorcery.