"I'm sorry, but you'll admit I have done my best for you. I've warned
you. I shan't do it again. We shall smash you now, without mercy."
"Take him away!" cried Captain Stewart in a sudden loud voice, and the
old Michel touched his charge upon the shoulder. So Ste. Marie went
without further words. From a little distance he looked back, and the
other man still stood by the fallen tree trunk, bent a little, his arms
hanging lax beside him, and his face, Ste. Marie thought fancifully, was
like the face of a man damned.
*CHAPTER XXIII*
*THE LAST ARROW--AND A PROMISE*
The one bird-like eye of the old Michel regarded Ste. Marie with a
glance of mingled cunning and humour. It might have been said to
twinkle.
"To the east, monsieur?" inquired the old Michel.
"Precisely!" said Ste. Marie. "To the east, _mon vieux_." It was the
morning of the fourth day after that talk with Captain Stewart beside
the rose gardens.
The two bore to the eastward, down among the trees, and presently came
to the spot where a certain trespasser had once leapt down from the top
of the high wall and had been shot for his pains. The old Michel halted
and leant upon the barrel of his carbine. With an air of complete
detachment, an air vague and aloof as of one in a reverie, he gazed away
over the tree-tops of the ragged park; but Ste. Marie went in under the
row of lilac shrubs which stood close against the wall, and a passer-by
might have thought the man looking for figs on thistles--for lilacs in
late July. He had gone there with eagerness, with flushed cheeks and
bright eyes; he emerged, after some moments, moving slowly, with
downcast head.
"There are no lilac blooms now, monsieur," observed the old Michel, and
his prisoner said in a low voice--
"No, _mon vieux_. No. There are none." He sighed and drew a long
breath. So the two stood for some time silent, Ste. Marie a little
pale, his eyes fixed upon the ground, his hands chafing together behind
him: the gardener with his one bright eye upon his charge. But in the
end Ste. Marie sighed again and began to move away, followed by the
gardener. They went across the broad park, past the double row of
larches, through that space where the chestnut trees stood in straight
close rows, and so came to the west wall which skirted the road to
Clamart. Ste. Marie felt in his pocket and withdrew the last of the
four letters--the last there could be, for he had no more stamps. The
others he had thrown over the wall, one each morning, beginning with the
day after he had made the first attempt to bribe old Michel. As he had
expected, twenty-four hours of avaricious reflection had proved too much
for that gnome-like being.
One each day he had thrown over the wall, weighted with a pebble tucked
loosely under the flap of the improvised envelope in such a manner that
it would drop out when the letter struck the ground beyond. And each
following day he had gone with high hopes to the appointed place under
the cedar-tree to pick figs of thistles, lilac blooms in late July. But
there had been nothing there.
"Turn your back, Michel!" said Ste. Marie. And the old man said from a
little distance--
"It is turned, monsieur. I see nothing. Monsieur throws little stones
at the birds to amuse himself. It does not concern me."
Ste. Marie slipped a pebble under the flap of the envelope and threw his
letter over the wall. It went like a soaring bird, whirling
horizontally, and it must have fallen far out in the middle of the road
near the tramway. For the third time that morning the prisoner drew a
sigh. He said--
"You may turn round now, my friend," and the old Michel faced him.
"We have shot our last arrow," said he. "If this also fails, I
think--well, I think the _bon Dieu_ will have to help us then.
"Michel," he inquired, "do you know how to pray?"
"Sacred thousand swine, no!" cried the ancient gnome in something
between astonishment and horror. "No, monsieur. _Pas mon metier, ca!_"
He shook his head rapidly from side to side like one of those toys in a
shop window whose heads oscillate upon a pivot. But all at once a gleam
of inspiration sparkled in his lone eye.
"There is the old Justine!" he suggested. "_Toujours sur les genoux,
cette imbecile la._"
"In that case," said Ste. Marie, "you might ask the lady to say one
little extra prayer for--the pebble I threw at the birds just now.
_Hein?_" He withdrew from his pocket the last two louis d'or, and
Michel took them in a trembling hand. There remained but the note of
fifty francs and some silver.
"The prayer shall be said, monsieur," declared the gardener. "It shall
be said. She shall pray all night or I will kill her."
"Thank you!" said Ste. Marie. "You are kindness itself. A gentle
soul."
They turned away to retrace their steps, and Michel rubbed the side of
his head with a reflective air.
"The old one is a madman," said he. The "old one" meant Captain
Stewart. "A madman. Each day he is madder, and this morning he struck
me--here on the head, because I was too slow. Eh! a little more of that,
and--who knows? Just a little more, a small little! Am I a dog, to be
beaten? _Hein_? _Je ne le crois pas_. _He_!" He called Captain
Stewart two unprintable names, and, after a moment's thought, he called
him an animal, which is not so much of an anti-climax as it may seem,
because to call anybody an animal in French is a serious matter.
The gardener was working himself up into something of a quiet passion,
and Ste. Marie said--
"Softly, my friend! Softly!" It occurred to him that the man's
resentment might be of use, later on, and he said--
"You speak the truth. The old one is an animal, and he is also a great
rascal." But Michel betrayed the makings of a philosopher. He said
with profound conviction--
"Monsieur, all men are great rascals. It is I who say it." And at that
Ste. Marie had to laugh.
He had not consciously directed his feet, but without direction they led
him round the corner of the rose gardens and towards the _rond point_.
He knew well whom he would find there. She had not failed him during
the past three days. Each morning he had found her in her place, and,
for his allotted hour--which more than once stretched itself out to
nearly two hours, if he had but known--they had sat together on the
stone bench or, tiring of that, had walked under the trees beyond.
Long afterwards Ste. Marie looked back upon these hours with, among
other emotions, a great wonder, at himself and at her. It seemed to him
then one of the strangest relationships--intimacies, for it might well
be so called--that ever existed between a man and a woman, and he was
amazed at the ease, the unconsciousness with which it had come about.
But during this time he did not allow himself to wonder or to
examine--scarcely even to think. The hours were golden hours, unrelated,
he told himself, to anything else in his life or in his interest. They
were like pleasant dreams, very sweet while they endured, but to be put
away and forgotten upon the waking. Only, in that long afterwards, he
knew that they had not been put away, that they had been with him
always, that the morning hour had remained in his thoughts all the rest
of the long day, and that he had waked upon the morrow with a keen and
exquisite sense of something sweet to come.
It was a strange fool's paradise that the man dwelt in, and in some
small vague measure he must, even at the time, have known it, for it is
certain that he deliberately held himself away from
thought--realisation; that he deliberately shut his eyes, held his ears,
lest he should hear or see.
That he was not faithless to his duty has been shown. He did his utmost
there, but he was for the time helpless save for efforts to communicate
with Richard Hartley, and those efforts could consume no more than ten
minutes out of the weary day.
So he drifted, wilfully blind to bearings, wilfully deaf to sound of
warning or peril, and he found a companionship sweeter and fuller and
more perfect than he had ever before known in all his life, though that
is not to say very much, because sympathetic companionships between men
and women are very rare indeed, and Ste. Marie had never experienced
anything which could fairly be called by that name. He had had, as has
been related, many flirtations and not a few so-called love affairs; but
neither of these two sorts of intimacies are of necessity true
intimacies at all: men often feel varying degrees of love for women
without the least true understanding or sympathy or real companionship.
He was wondering as he bore round the corner of the rose gardens, on
this day, in just what mood he would find her. It seemed to him that in
their brief acquaintance he had seen her in almost all the moods there
are, from bitter gloom to the irrepressible gaiety of a little child.
He had told her once that she was like an organ, and she had laughed at
him for being pretentious and high-flown, though she could upon occasion
be quite high-flown enough herself for all ordinary purposes.
He reached the cleared margin of the _rond point_, and a little cold
fear stirred in him when he did not hear her singing under her breath,
as she was wont to do when alone, but he went forward, and she was there
in her place upon the stone bench. She had been reading, but the book
lay forgotten beside her and she sat idle, her head laid back against
the thick stems of shrubbery which grew behind, her hands in her lap.
It was a warm still morning with the promise of a hot afternoon, and the
girl was dressed in something very thin and transparent and
cool-looking, open in a little square at the throat and with sleeves
which came only to her elbows. The material was pale and dull yellow
with very vaguely defined green leaves in it, and against it the girl's
dark and clear skin glowed rich and warm and living, as pearls glow and
seem to throb against the dead tints of the fabric upon which they are
laid.
She did not move when he came before her, but looked up to him gravely
without stirring her head.
[Illustration: "She did not move when he came before her."]
"I didn't hear you come," said she. "You don't drag your left leg any
more. You walk almost as well as if you had never been wounded."
"I'm almost all right again," he answered. "I suppose I couldn't run or
jump, but I certainly can walk very much like a human being. May I sit
down?"
Mlle. O'Hara put out one hand and drew the book closer to make a place
for him on the stone bench, and he settled himself comfortably there,
turned a little so that he was facing towards her.
It was indicative of the state of intimacy into which the two had grown
that they did not make polite conversation with each other, but indeed
were silent for some little time after Ste. Marie had seated himself.
It was he who spoke first. He said--
"You look vaguely classical to-day. I have been trying to guess why and
I cannot. Perhaps it's because your--what does one say: frock, dress,
gown? because it is cut out square at the throat."
"If you mean by classical, Greek," said she, "it wouldn't be square at
the neck at all. It would be pointed--V-shaped. And it would be very
different in other ways too. You are not an observing person after
all."
"For all that," insisted Ste. Marie, "you look classical. You look like
some lady one reads about in Greek poems--Helen or Iphigenia or Medea or
somebody."
"Helen had yellow hair, hadn't she?" objected Mlle. O'Hara. "I should
think I probably look more like Medea: Medea in Colchis before
Jason----" She seemed suddenly to realise that she had hit upon an
unfortunate example, for she stopped short in the middle of her
sentence, and a wave of colour swept up over her throat and face. For a
moment Ste. Marie did not understand, then he gave a low exclamation,
for Medea certainly had been an unhappy name. He remembered something
that Richard Hartley had said about that lady a long time before.
He made another mistake, for to lessen the moment's embarrassment he
gave speech to the first thought which entered his mind. He said--
"Some one once remarked that you looked like the young Juno--before
marriage. I expect it's true too."
She turned upon him swiftly.
"Who said that?" she demanded. "Who has ever talked to you about me?"
"I beg your pardon!" he said. "I seem to be singularly stupid this
morning. A mild lunacy. You must forgive me, if you can. To tell you
what you ask would be to enter upon forbidden ground, and I mustn't do
that."
"Still, I should like to know," said the girl watching him with sombre
eyes.
"Well then," said he, "it was a little Jewish photographer in the
Boulevard de la Madeleine." And she said--
"Oh!" in a rather disappointed tone and looked away.
"We seem to be making conversation chiefly about my personal
appearance," she said presently. "There must be other topics, if one
should try hard to find them. Tell me stories! You told me stories
yesterday; tell me more! You seem to be in a classical mood. You shall
be Odysseus, and I will be Nausicaa, the interesting laundress. Tell me
about wanderings and things! Have you any more islands for me?"
"Yes!" said Ste. Marie, nodding at her slowly. "Yes, Nausicaa, I have
more islands for you. The seas are full of islands. What kind do you
want?"
"A warm one," said the girl. "Even on a hot day like this I choose a
warm one, because I hate the cold." She settled herself more
comfortably, with a little sigh of content that was exactly like a
child's happy sigh when stories are going to be told before the fire.
"I know an island," said Ste. Marie, "that I think you would like
because it is warm and beautiful and very far away from troubles of all
kinds. As well as I could make out when I went there nobody on the
island had ever even heard of trouble. Oh yes, you'd like it. The
people there are brown, and they're as beautiful as their own island.
They wear hibiscus flowers stuck in their hair and they very seldom do
any work."
"I want to go there!" cried Mlle. Coira O'Hara. "I want to go there now,
this afternoon, at once! Where is it?"
"It's in the South Pacific," said he, "not so very far from Samoa and
Fiji and other groups that you will have heard about, and its name is
Vavau. It's one of the Tongans. It's a high, volcanic island, not a
flat, coral one like the southern Tongans. I came to it one evening,
sailing north from Nukualofa and Haapai, and it looked to me like a
single big mountain jutting up out of the sea, black-green against the
sunset. It was very impressive. But it isn't a single mountain, it's a
lot of high broken hills covered with a tangle of vegetation and set
round a narrow bay, a sort of fjord, three or four miles long, and at
the inner end of this are the village and the stores of the few white
traders.
"I'm afraid," said Ste. Marie, shaking his head--"I'm afraid I can't
tell you about it, after all. I can't seem to find the words. You
can't put into language--at least I can't--those slow hot island days
that are never too hot because the trades blow fresh and strong, or the
island nights that are more like black velvet with pearls sewed on it
than anything else. You can't describe the smell of orange-groves and
the look of palm-trees against the sky. You can't tell about the sweet
simple natural hospitality of the natives. They're like little
unsuspicious children.
"In short," said he, "I shall have to give it up, after all, just
because it's too big for me. I can only say that it's beautiful and
unspeakably remote from the world, and that I think I should like to go
back to Vavau and stay a long time, and let the rest of the world go
hang."
Mlle. O'Hara stared across the park of La Lierre with wide and shadowy
eyes, and her lips trembled a little.
"Oh, I want to go there!" she cried again. "I want to go there--and
rest--and forget everything!"
She turned upon him with a sudden bitter resentment.
"Why do you tell me things like that?" she cried. "Oh yes, I know. I
asked you, but---- Can't you see?
"To hide oneself away in a place like that!" she said. "To let the sun
warm you and the trade winds blow away--all that had ever tortured you!
Just to rest and be at peace!"
She turned her eyes to him once more.
"You needn't be afraid that you have failed to make me see your island!
I see it. I feel it. It doesn't need many words. I can shut my eyes,
and I am there. But it was a little cruel. Oh, I know, I asked for it.
"It's like the garden of the Hesperides, isn't it?"
"Very like it," said Ste. Marie, "because there are oranges--groves of
them. (And they were the golden apples, I take it.) Also it is very
far away from the world, and the people live in complete and careless
ignorance of how the world goes on. Emperors and kings die, wars come
and go; but they hear only a little faint echo of it all, long
afterwards, and even that doesn't interest them."
"I know," she said. "I understand. Didn't you know I'd understand?"
"Yes," said he, nodding. "I suppose I did. We--feel things rather
alike, I suppose. We don't have to say them all out."
"I wonder," she said in a low voice, "if I'm glad or sorry." She stared
under her brows at the man beside her.
"For it is very probable that when we have left La Lierre you and I
shall never meet again. I wonder if I'm----" For some obscure reason
she broke off there and turned her eyes away, and she remained without
speaking for a long time. Her mind, as she sat there, seemed to go back
to that southern island and to its peace and loveliness, for Ste. Marie,
who watched her, saw a little smile come to her lips, and he saw her
eyes half close and grow soft and tender, as if what they saw were very
sweet to her. He watched many different expressions come upon the
girl's face and go again, but at last he seemed to see the old
bitterness return there and struggle with something wistful and eager.
"I envy you your wide wanderings," she said presently. "Oh, I envy you
more than I can find any words for. Your will is the wind's will. You
go where your fancy leads you, and you're free--free.
"We have wandered, you know," said she, "my father and I. I can't
remember when we ever had a home to live in. But that is--that is
different--a different kind of wandering."
"Yes," said Ste. Marie. "Yes, perhaps." And within himself he said,
with sorrow and pity: "Different indeed!"
As if at some sudden thought the girl looked up at him quickly.
"Did that sound regretful?" she asked. "Did what I say sound--disloyal
to my father? I didn't mean it to. I don't want you to think that I
regret it. I don't. It has meant being with my father. Wherever he
has gone I have gone with him, and if anything ever has
been--unpleasant, I was willing, oh, I was glad, glad to put up with it
for his sake and because I could be with him. If I have made his life a
little happier by sharing it, I am glad of everything. I don't regret."
"And yet," said Ste. Marie gently, "it must have been hard sometimes."
He pictured to himself that roving existence lived among such people as
O'Hara must have known, and it sent a hot wave of anger and distress
over him from head to foot. But the girl said--
"I had my father. The rest of it didn't matter in the face of that."