"Yes, it is true. You knew it before, though. Didn't you? Do you mean
that you didn't know it before? I don't quite understand. You must
have known that.
"What in Heaven's name _did_ you think?" she cried, as if with a sort of
anger at his dulness.
The man rubbed one hand wearily across his eyes.
"I--don't quite know," said he. "Yes, I suppose I had thought of it. I
don't know. It came to me with such a--shock! Yes. Oh, I don't know.
I expect I didn't think at all. I--just didn't think." Abruptly his
eyes sharpened upon her and he moved a step forward.
"Tell me the truth!" he said. "Do you love this boy?"
The girl's cheeks burned with a swift crimson and she set her lips
together. She was on the verge of extreme anger just then, but after a
little the flush died down again and the dark fire went out of her eyes.
She made an odd little gesture with her two hands. It seemed to express
fatigue as much as anything--a great weariness.
"I like him," she said. "I like him--enough, I suppose. He is
good--and kind--and gentle. He will be good to me. And I shall try
very, very hard to make him happy." Quite suddenly and without warning
the fire of her anger burnt up again. She flamed defiance in the man's
face.
"How dare you question me?" she cried. "What right have you to ask me
questions about such a thing? You, what you are!"
Ste. Marie bent his head.
"No right, mademoiselle," said he in a low voice. "I have no right to
ask you anything--not even forgiveness. I think I am a little mad
to-day. It--this news came to me suddenly. Yes, I think I am a little
mad." The girl stared at him and he looked back with sombre eyes. Once
more he was stabbed with intolerable pain to think what she was. Yet in
an inexplicable fashion it pleased him that she should carry out her
trickery to the end with a high head. It was a little less base done
proudly. He could not have borne it otherwise.
"Who are you," the girl cried in a bitter resentment, "that you should
understand? What do you know of the sort of life I have led--we have
led together, my father and I?--Oh, I don't mean that I'm ashamed of it!
We have nothing to feel shame for, but you simply do not know what such
a life is."
Though he writhed with pain, the man nodded over her. He was so glad
that she could carry it through proudly, with a high hand, an erect
head.
She spread out her arms before him, a splendid and tragic figure.
"What chance have I ever had?" she demanded. "No, I am not blaming him.
I am not blaming my father! I chose to follow him. I chose it! But
what chance have I had? Think of the people I have lived among! Would
you have me marry one of them--one of those men? I'd rather die! And
yet I cannot go on--forever. I am twenty now. What if my father--You
yourself said yesterday--Oh, I am afraid! I tell you I have lain awake
at night a hundred times and shivered with cold, terrible fear of what
would become of me if--if anything should happen--to my father.
"And so," she said, "when I met Arthur Benham last winter and he--began
to--he said--when he begged me to marry him.... Ah, can't you see? It
meant safety--safety--safety! And I liked him. I like him now--very,
very much. He is a sweet boy. I--shall be happy with him--in a
peaceful fashion. And my father----
"Oh, I'll be honest with you," said she. "It was my father who decided
me. He was--he is--so pathetically pleased with it! He so wants me to
be safe! It's all he lives for now. I--couldn't fight against them
both. Arthur and my father.
"So I gave in. And then when Arthur had to be hidden we came here with
him--to wait."
She became aware that the man was staring at her with something strange
and terrible in his gaze, and she broke off in wonder. The air of that
warm summer morning turned all at once keen and sharp about
them--charged with moment.
"Mademoiselle!" cried Ste. Marie. "Mademoiselle, are you telling me the
truth?"
For some obscure reason she was not angry. Again she spread out her
hands in that gesture of weariness. She said--
"Oh, why should I lie to you?" And the man began to tremble
exceedingly. He stretched out an unsteady hand.
"You--knew Arthur Benham last winter?" he said. "Long before
his--before he left his home? Before that?"
"He asked me to marry him last winter," said the girl. "For a long,
long time I--wouldn't.... But he never let me alone. He followed me
everywhere. And my father----"
Ste. Marie clapped his two hands over his face, and a groan came to her
through the straining fingers. He cried in an agony--
"Mademoiselle! mademoiselle!"
He fell upon his knees at her feet, his head bent in what seemed to be
an intolerable anguish, his hands over his hidden face. The girl heard
hard-wrung, stumbling, incoherent words, wrenched each with an effort
out of extreme pain.
"Fool! Fool!" the man cried, groaning. "Oh, fool that I have been!
worm, animal! Oh, fool not to see--not to know! Madman; imbecile;
thing without a name!"
She stood white-faced, smitten with great fear over this abasement. Not
the least and faintest glimmer reached her of what it meant. She
stretched down a hand of protest and it touched the man's head. As if
the touch were a stroke of magic he sprang upright before her.
"Now at last, mademoiselle," said he, "we two must speak plainly
together. Now at last I think I see clear, but I must know beyond doubt
or question. Oh, mademoiselle, now I think I know you for what you are,
and it seems to me that nothing in this world is of consequence beside
that. I have been blind, blind, blind! ... Tell me one thing! Why did
Arthur Benham leave his home two months ago?"
"He had to leave it!" she said, wondering. She did not understand yet,
but she was aware that her heart was beating in loud and fast throbs,
and she knew that some great mystery was to be made plain before her.
Her face was very white.
"He had to leave it!" she said again. "You know as well as I. Why do
you ask me that? He quarrelled with his grandfather. They had often
quarrelled before--over money--always over money! His grandfather is a
miser, almost a madman. He tried to make Arthur sign a paper releasing
his inheritance--the fortune he is to inherit from his father--and when
Arthur wouldn't he drove him away. Arthur went to his uncle--Captain
Stewart--and Captain Stewart helped him to hide. He didn't dare go back
because they're all against him, all his family. They'd make him give
in."
Ste. Marie gave a loud exclamation of amazement. The thing was
incredible--childish! It was beyond the maddest possibilities. But
even as he said the words to himself a face came before him--Captain
Stewart's smiling and benignant face--and he understood everything. As
clearly as if he had been present he saw the angry bewildered boy, fresh
from David Stewart's berating, mystified over some commonplace legal
matter requiring a signature. He saw him appeal for sympathy and
counsel to "old Charlie," and he heard "old Charlie's" reply. It was
easy enough to understand now. It must have been easy enough to bring
about. What absurdities could not such a man as Captain Stewart instil
into the already prejudiced mind of that foolish lad?
His thoughts turned from Arthur Benham to the girl before him, and that
part of the mystery was clear also. She would believe whatever she was
told in the absence of any reason to doubt. What did she know of old
David Stewart or of the Benham family? It seemed to Ste. Marie all at
once incredible that he could ever have believed ill of her--ever have
doubted her honesty. It seemed to him so incredible that he could have
laughed aloud in bitterness and self-disdain. But as he looked at the
girl's white face and her shadowy, wondering eyes all laughter, all
bitterness, all cruel misunderstandings were swallowed up in the golden
light of his joy at knowing her, in the end, for what she was.
"Coira! Coira!" he cried, and neither of the two knew that he called
her for the first time by her name. "Oh, child," said he, "how they
have lied to you and tricked you! I might have known, I might have seen
it, but I was a blind fool. I thought--intolerable things. I might
have known! They have lied to you most damnably, Coira."
She stared at him in a breathless silence without movement of any sort.
Only her face seemed to have turned a little whiter, and her great eyes
darker so that they looked almost black, and enormous in that still
face.
He told her, briefly, the truth, how young Arthur had had frequent
quarrels with his grandfather over his waste of money, how after one of
them, not at all unlike the others, he had disappeared, and how Captain
Stewart, in desperate need, had set afoot his plot to get the lad's
greater inheritance for himself. He described for her old David Stewart
and the man's bitter grief, and he told her about the will, about how he
had begun to suspect Captain Stewart and of how he had traced the lost
boy to La Lierre. He told her all that he knew of the whole matter and
he knew almost all there was to know, and he did not spare himself even
his misconception of the part she had played, though he softened that as
best he could.
Midway of his story Mlle. O'Hara bent her head and covered her face with
her hands. She did not cry out or protest or speak at all. She made no
more than that one movement, and after it she stood quite still, but the
sight of her, bowed and shamed, stripped of pride, as it had been of
garments, was more than the man could bear. He cried her name--
"Coira!" And when she did not look up, he called once more upon her.
He said--
"Coira, I cannot bear to see you stand so! Look at me! Ah, child, look
at me!
"Can you realise," he cried, "can you even begin to think what a great
joy it is to me to know at last that you have had no part in all this?
Can't you see what it means to me? I can think of nothing else. Coira,
look up!"
She raised her white face and there were no tears upon it, but a still
anguish too great to be told. It would seem never to have occurred to
her to doubt the truth of his words. She said--
"It is I who might have known. Knowing what you have told me now it
seems impossible that I could have believed.--And Captain Stewart--I
always hated him--loathed him--distrusted him.
"And yet," she cried, wringing her hands, "how could I know? How could
I know?"
The girl's face writhed suddenly with her grief and she stared up at
Ste. Marie with terror in her eyes. She whispered--
"My father! Oh, Ste. Marie, my father! It is not possible. I will not
believe--He cannot have done this, knowing. My father, Ste. Marie!"
The man turned his eyes away, and she gave a sobbing cry.
"Has he," she said slowly, "done even this for me? Has he given--his
honour also--when everything else was--gone? Has he given me his honour
too?
"Oh!" she said, "why could I not have died when I was a little child?
Why could I not have done that? To think that I should have lived
to--bring my father to this! I wish I had died.
"Ste. Marie!" she said, pleading with him. "Ste. Marie, do you think--my
father--knew?"
"Let me think!" said he. "Let me think! Is it possible that Stewart has
lied to you all--to one as to another? Let me think!" His mind ran
back over the matter and he began to remember instances which had seemed
to him odd but to which he had attached no importance. He remembered
O'Hara's puzzled and uncomprehending face when he, Ste. Marie, had
spoken of Stewart's villainy. He remembered the man's indignation over
the affair of the poison, and his fairness in trying to make amends. He
remembered other things, and his face grew lighter and he drew a great
breath of relief. He said--
"Coira, I do not believe he knew. Stewart has lied equally to you
all--tricked each one of you!" And at that the girl gave a cry of
gladness, and began to weep.
As long as men and women continue to stand upon opposite sides of a
great gulf--and that will be as long as they exist together in this
world--just so long will men continue to be unhappy and ill at ease in
the face of women's tears, even though they know vaguely that tears may
mean just anything at all, and by no means always grief.
Ste. Marie stood first upon one foot and then upon the other. He looked
anxiously about him for succour. He said: "There! there!" or words to
that effect, and once he touched the shoulder of the girl who stood
weeping before him, and he was very miserable indeed.
But quite suddenly, in the midst of his discomfort, she looked up to
him, and she was smiling and flushed, so that Ste. Marie stared at her
in utter amazement.
"So now at last," said she, "I have back my Bayard. And I think the
rest--doesn't matter very much."
"Bayard?" said he, wondering. "I don't understand," he said.
"Then," said she, "you must just go without understanding. For I shall
never, never explain."
The bright flush went from her face and she turned grave once more.
"What is to be done?" she asked. "What must we do now, Ste. Marie?--I
mean about Arthur Benham. I suppose he must be told."
"Either he must be told," said the man, "or he must be taken back to his
home by force." He told her about the four letters which in four days
he had thrown over the wall into the Clamart road.
"It was on the chance," he said, "that some one would pick one of them
up and post it, thinking it had been dropped there by accident. What
has become of them I don't know. I know only that they never reached
Hartley."
The girl nodded thoughtfully.
"Yes," said she, "that was the best thing you could have done. It ought
to have succeeded. Of course----" She paused a moment and then nodded
again. "Of course," said she, "I can manage to get a letter in the post
now. We'll send it to-day if you like. But I was wondering--Would it
be better or not to tell Arthur the truth? It all depends upon how he
may take it--whether or not he will believe you. He's very stubborn,
and he's frightened about this break with his family, and he is quite
sure that he has been badly treated. Will he believe you? Of course if
he does believe he could escape from here quite easily at any time and
there'd be no necessity for a rescue. What do you think?"
"I think he ought to be told," said Ste. Marie. "If we try to carry him
away by force there'll be a fight, of course, and--who knows what might
happen? That we must leave for a last resort--a last desperate resort.
First we must tell the boy."
Abruptly he gave a cry of dismay, and the girl looked up to him,
staring.
"But--but _you_, Coira!" said he, stammering. "But _you_! I hadn't
realised--I hadn't thought--it never occurred to me what this means to
you." The full enormity of the thing came upon him slowly. He was
asking this girl to help him in robbing her of her lover.
She shook her head with a little wry smile.
"Do you think," said she, "that knowing what I know now I would go on
with that until after he has made his peace with his family? Before, it
was different. I thought him alone and ill-treated and hunted down. I
could help him then, comfort him. Now I should be--all you ever thought
me, if I did not send him to his grandfather." She smiled again, a
little mirthlessly.
"If his love for me is worth anything," she said, "he will come
back--but openly, this time, not in hiding. Then I shall know that he
is--what I would have him be. Otherwise----"
Ste. Marie looked away.
"But you must remember, Coira," said he, "that the lad is very young,
and that his family--They may try--It may be hard for him. They may say
that he is too young to know--Ah, child, I should have thought of this!"
"Ste. Marie!" said the girl, and after a moment he turned to face her.
"What will you say to Arthur's family, Ste. Marie," she demanded very
soberly, "when they ask you if I--if Arthur should be allowed to--come
back to me?"