"I beg you too, Arthur. Go back to them!"
The boy dropped down upon a tree stump which was near, and covered his
face with his hands. The two who watched him could see that he was
trembling violently. Over him their eyes met and they questioned each
other with a mute and anxious gravity--
"What will he do?" For everything was in Arthur Benham's weak hands
now.
For a little time, which seemed hours to all who were there, the lad sat
still hiding his face, but suddenly he sprang to his feet and once more
stood staring into Ste. Marie's quiet eyes.
"How do I know you're telling the truth?" he cried, and his voice ran up
high and shrill, and wavered and broke. "How do I know that? You'd tell
just as smooth a story if--if you were lying--if you'd been sent here to
get me back to--to what old Charlie said they wanted me for."
"You have only to go back to them and make sure," said Ste. Marie.
"They can't harm you or take anything from you. If they persuaded you
to sign anything--which they will not do--it would be valueless to them
because you're a minor. You know that as well as I do. Go and make
sure!
"Or wait! wait!" He gave a little sharp laugh of excitement.
"Is Captain Stewart in the house?" he demanded. "Call him out here!
That's better still! Bring your uncle here to face me without telling
him what it's for, without giving him time to make up a story! Then we
shall see. Send for him!"
"He's not here," said the boy. "He went away an hour ago. I don't know
whether he'll be back to-night or not." Young Arthur stared at the
elder man, breathing hard.
"Good God!" he said in a whisper, "if--old Charlie is rotten, who in
this world isn't? I--don't know what to believe." Abruptly he turned
with a sort of snarl upon Coira O'Hara.
"Have you been in this game too?" he cried out. "I suppose you and your
precious father and old Charlie cooked it up together! What? You've
been having a fine low-comedy time laughing yourselves to death at me,
haven't you! O Lord, what a gang!"
Ste. Marie caught the boy by the shoulder and spun him round.
"That will do!" he said sternly. "You have been a fool; don't make it
worse by being a coward and a cad. Mlle. O'Hara knew no more of the
truth than you knew. Your uncle lied to you all." But the girl came
and touched his arm. She said--
"Don't be hard with him! He is bewildered and nervous, and he doesn't
know what he is saying. Think how sudden it has been for him. Don't be
hard with him, M. Ste. Marie."
Ste. Marie dropped his hand, and the lad backed a few steps away. His
face was crimson. After a moment he said--
"I'm sorry, Coira. I didn't mean that. I didn't mean it. I beg your
pardon. I'm about half dippy, I guess. I--don't know what to believe
or what to think or what to do." He remained staring at her a little
while in silence, and presently his eyes sharpened. He cried out--
"If I should go back there (mind you, I say, 'if'!) d'you know what
they'd do? Well, I'll tell you. They'd begin to talk at me one at a
time. They'd get me in a corner and cry over me and say I was young and
didn't know my mind, and that I owed them something for all that's
happened, and not to bring their grey hairs in sorrow to the grave. And
the long and short of it would be that they'd make me give you up." He
wheeled upon Ste. Marie.
"That's what they'd do!" he said, and his voice began to rise again
shrilly. "They're three to one, and they know they can talk me into
anything. _You_ know it too." He shook his head.
"I won't go back!" he cried wildly. "That's what will happen if I do.
I don't want granddad's money. He can give it to old Charlie or to a
gendarme if he wants to. I'm going to have enough of my own. I won't
go back, and that's all there is of it. You may be telling the truth or
you may not, but I won't go."
Ste. Marie started to speak, but the girl checked him. She moved closer
to where Arthur Benham stood, and she said--
"If your love for me, Arthur, is worth having, it is worth fighting for.
If it is so weak that your family can persuade you out of it, then--I
don't want it at all, for it would never last. Arthur, you must go back
to them. I want you to go."
"I won't!" the boy cried. "I won't go. I tell you they could talk me
out of anything. You don't know 'em. I do. I can't stand against
them. I won't go, and that settles it. Besides, I'm not so sure that
this fellow's telling the truth. I've known old Charlie a lot longer
than I have him."
Coira O'Hara turned a despairing face over her shoulder towards Ste.
Marie.
"Leave me alone with him!" she begged. "Perhaps I can win him over.
Leave us alone for a little while!" Ste. Marie hesitated, and in the
end went away and left the two together. He went farther down the park
to the _rond point_ and crossed it to the familiar stone bench at the
west side. He sat down there to wait. He was anxious and alarmed over
this new obstacle, for he had the wit to see that it was a very
important one. It was quite conceivable that the boy, but half
convinced, half yielding before, would balk altogether when he realised,
as evidently he did realise, what returning home might mean to him--the
loss of the girl he hoped to marry.
Ste. Marie was sufficiently wise in worldly matters to know that the
boy's fear was not unfounded. He could imagine the family in the Rue de
l'Universite taking exactly the view young Arthur said they would take
towards an alliance with the daughter of a notorious Irish adventurer.
Ste. Marie's cheeks burned hotly with anger when the words said
themselves in his brain, but he knew that there could be no doubt of the
Benhams' and even of old David Stewart's view of the affair. They would
oppose the marriage with all their strength.
He tried to imagine what weight such considerations would have with him
if it were he who was to marry Coira O'Hara, and he laughed aloud with
scorn of them and with great pride in her. But the lad yonder was very
young (too young: his family would be right to that extent). Would he
be able to stand against them?
Ste. Marie shook his head with a sigh and gave over unprofitable
wonderings, for he was still within the walls of La Lierre, and so was
Arthur Benham. And the walls were high and strong. He fell to thinking
of the attempt at rescue which was to be made that night, and he began
to form plans and think of necessary preparations. To be sure Coira
might persuade the boy to escape during the day, and then the night
attack would be unnecessary; but in case of her failure it must be
prepared for. He rose to his feet and began to walk back and forth
under the rows of chestnut trees, where the earth was firm and black and
mossy and there was no growth of shrubbery. He thought of that hasty
interview with Richard Hartley and he laughed a little. It had been
rather like an exchange of telegrams--reduced to the bare bones of
necessary question and answer. There had been no time for conversation.
His eyes caught a far-off glimpse of woman's garments, and he saw that
Coira O'Hara and Arthur Benham were walking towards the house. So he
went a little way after them and waited at a point where he could see
any one returning. He had not long to wait, for it seemed that the girl
went only as far as the door with her fiance and then turned back.
Ste. Marie met her with raised eyebrows, and she shook her head.
"I don't know," said she. "He is very stubborn. He is frightened and
bewildered. As he said, a while ago, he doesn't know what to think or
what to believe. You mustn't blame him. Remember how he trusted his
uncle! He's going to think it over, and I shall see him again this
afternoon. Perhaps when he has had time to reflect---- I don't know. I
truly don't know."
"He won't go to your father and make a scene?" said Ste. Marie, and the
girl shook her head.
"I made him promise not to."
"Oh, Bayard," she cried--and in his abstraction he did not notice the
name she gave him--"I am afraid, myself! I am horribly afraid about my
father."
"I am sure he did not know," said the man. "Stewart lied to him." But
Coira O'Hara shook her head, saying--
"I didn't mean that. I'm afraid of what will happen when he finds out
how he has been--how we have been played upon, tricked, deceived--what a
light we have been placed in. You don't know, you can't even imagine,
how he has set his heart on--what he wished to occur. I am afraid he
will do something terrible when he knows. I am afraid he will kill
Captain Stewart."
"Which," observed Ste. Marie, "would be an excellent solution of the
problem. But, of course, we mustn't let it happen. What can be done?"
"We mustn't let him know the truth," said the girl, "until Arthur is
gone, and until Captain Stewart is gone too. He is terrible when he's
angry. We must keep the truth from him until he can do no harm. It
will be bad enough even then, for I think it will break his heart."
Ste. Marie remembered that there was something she did not know, and he
told her about his interview with Richard Hartley, and about their
arrangement for the rescue--if it should be necessary--on that very
night.
She nodded her head over it, but for a long time after he had finished
she did not speak. Then she said--
"I am glad, I suppose. Yes, since it has to be done I suppose I am glad
that it is to come at once." She looked up at Ste. Marie with shadowy
inscrutable eyes.
"And so, monsieur," said she, "it is at an end--all this." She made a
little gesture which seemed to sweep the park and gardens.
"So we go out of each other's lives as abruptly as we entered them.
Well----" She had continued to look at him, but she saw the man's face
turn white, and she saw something come into his eyes which was like
intolerable pain. Then she looked away.
Ste. Marie said her name twice, under his breath, in a sort of soundless
cry, but he said no more, and after a moment she went on--
"Even so, I am glad that at last we know each other--for what we are....
I should have been sorry to go on thinking you ... what I thought
before.... And I could not have borne it, I'm afraid, to have you think
... what you thought of me ... when I came to know.... I'm glad we
understand at last."
Ste. Marie tried to speak, but no words would come to him. He was like
a man defeated and crushed, not one on the highroad to victory. But it
may have been that the look of him was more eloquent than anything he
could have said. And it may have been that the girl saw and understood.
So the two remained there for a little while longer in silence, but at
last Coira O'Hara said--
"I must go back to the house now. There is nothing more to be done, I
suppose--nothing left now but to wait for night to come. I shall see
Arthur this afternoon and make one last appeal to him. If that fails you
must carry him off. Do you know where he sleeps? It is the room
corresponding to yours on the other side of the house--just across that
wide landing at the top of the stairs. I will manage that the front
door below shall be left unlocked. The rest you and your friends must
do. If I can make any impression upon Arthur, I'll slip a note under
your door this afternoon or this evening. Perhaps even if he decides to
go it would be best for him to wait until night and go with the rest of
you. In any case I'll let you know."
She spoke rapidly, as if she were in great haste to be gone, and with
averted eyes. And at the end she turned away without any word of
farewell, but Ste. Marie started after her. He cried--
"Coira! Coira!" And, when she stopped, he said--
"Coira, I can't let you go like this! Are we to--simply to go our
different ways, like this, as if we'd never met at all?"
"What else?" said the girl. And there was no answer to that. Their
separate ways were determined for them--marked plain to see.
"But afterwards!" he cried. "Afterwards--after we have got the boy back
to his home! What then?"
"Perhaps," she said, "he will return to me." She spoke without any show
of feeling. "Perhaps he will return. If not--well, I don't know. I
expect my father and I will just go on as we've always gone. We're used
to it, you know."
After that she nodded to him and once more turned away. Her face may
have been a very little pale, but, as before, it betrayed no feeling of
any sort. So she went up under the trees to the house, and Ste. Marie
watched her with strained and burning eyes.
When, half an hour later, he followed, he came unexpectedly upon the old
Michel, who had entered the park through the little wooden door in the
wall, and was on his way round to the kitchen with sundry parcels of
supplies. He spoke a civil "_bon jour_, monsieur," and Ste. Marie
stopped him. They were out of sight from the windows. Ste. Marie
withdrew from his pocket one of the hundred-franc notes, and the single
bead-like eye of the ancient gnome fixed upon it and seemed to shiver
with a fascinated delight.
"A hundred francs!" said Ste. Marie unnecessarily, and the old man
licked his withered lips. The tempter said--
"My good Michel, would you care to receive this trifling sum? a hundred
francs?"
The gnome made a choked croaking sound in his throat. "It is yours,"
said Ste. Marie, "for a small service--for doing nothing at all." The
bead-like eye rose to his and sharpened intelligently.
"I desire only," said he, "that you should sleep well to-night, very
well--without waking."
"Monsieur," said the old man, "I do not sleep at all. I watch. I watch
monsieur's windows. Monsieur O'ara watches until midnight, and I watch
from then until day."
"Oh, I know that," said the other. "I've seen you more than once in the
moonlight, but to-night, _mon vieux_, slumber will overcome you.
Exhaustion will have its way and you will sleep. You will sleep like
the dead."
"I dare not!" cried the gardener. "Monsieur, I dare not! The old one
would kill me. You do not know him. He would cut me into pieces and
burn the pieces. Monsieur, it is impossible."
Ste. Marie withdrew the other hundred franc note and held the two
together in his hand. Once more the gnome made his strange croaking
sound, and the withered face twisted with anguish.
"Monsieur! monsieur!" he groaned.
"I have an idea," said the tempter. "A little earth rubbed upon one
side of the head--perhaps a trifling scratch to show a few drops of
blood. You have been assaulted, beaten down despite a heroic resistance
and left for dead. An hour afterwards you stagger into the house a
frightful object. _Hein?_"
The withered face of the old man expanded slowly into a senile grin.
"Monsieur," said he with admiration in his tone, "it is magnificent. It
shall be done. I sleep like the good dead--under the trees, not too
near the lilacs, eh? _Bien_, monsieur, it is done!" Into his trembling
claw he took the notes, he made an odd bow, and shambled away about his
business. Ste. Marie laughed and went on into the house.
He counted and there were fourteen hours to wait. Fourteen hours, and
at the end of them--what? His blood began to warm to the night's work.
*CHAPTER XXVII*
*THE NIGHT'S WORK*
The fourteen long hours dragged themselves by. They seemed
interminable, but somehow they passed and the appointed time drew near.
Ste. Marie spent the greater part of the afternoon reading, but twice he
lay down upon the bed and tried to sleep, and once he actually dozed off
for a brief space. The old Michel brought his meals. He had thought it
possible that Coira might manage to bring the dinner-tray, as she had
already done on several occasions, and so make an opportunity for
informing him as to young Arthur's state of mind. But she did not come
and no word came from her. So evening drew on and the dusk gathered and
deepened into darkness.
Ste. Marie walked his floor and prayed for the hours to pass. He had
candles and matches, and there was even a lamp in the room so that he
could have read if he chose, but he knew that the words would have been
meaningless to him, that he was incapable of abstracting his thought
from the night's stern work. He began to be anxious over not having
heard from Mlle. O'Hara. She had said that she would talk with Arthur
Benham during the afternoon, and then slip a note under Ste. Marie's
door. Yet no word had come from her, and, to the man pacing his floor
in the darkness, the fact took on proportions tremendous and fantastic.
Something had happened. The boy had broken his promise, burst out upon
O'Hara, or more probably upon his uncle, and the house was by the ears.
Coira was watched--even locked in her room. Stewart had fled! A score
of such terrible possibilities rushed through Ste. Marie's brain and
tortured him. He was in a state of nervous tension that was almost
unendurable, and the little noises of the night outside, a wind-stirred
rustle of leaves, a bird's flutter among the branches, the sound of a
cracking twig, made him start violently and catch his breath.
Then at his utmost need came reassurance and something like ease of
mind. He heard a sound of voices at the front of the house, and sprang
to his balconied window to listen. Captain Stewart and O'Hara were
walking upon the brick-paved terrace and chatting calmly over their
cigars. The man above, prone upon the floor, his head pressed against
the ivy-masked grille of the balcony, listened, and though he could hear
their words only at intervals when they passed beneath him, he knew that
they spoke of trivial matters in voices free of strain or concern.
He drew back with a breath of relief, and at that moment a sound across
the room arrested him: a soft scraping sound such as a mouse might make.
He went where it was, and a little square of paper gleamed white through
the darkness just within the door. Ste. Marie caught it up and took it
to the far side of the room away from the window. He struck a match,
opened the folded paper, and a single line of writing was there--
"He will go with you. Wait by the door in the wall."
The man nearly cried out with joy.
He struck another match and looked at his watch. It was a quarter to
ten. Four hours left out of the fourteen.
Once more he lay down upon the bed and closed his eyes. He knew that he
could not sleep, but he was tired from long tramping up and down the
room and from the strain of over-tried nerves. From hour to hour he
looked at his watch by match-light, but he did not leave the bed until
half-past one. Then he rose and took a long breath, and the time was at
hand.
He stood a little while gazing out into the night. An old moon was high
overhead in a cloudless sky, and that would make the night's work both
easier and more difficult, but, on the whole, he was glad of it. He
looked to the east towards that wall where was the little wooden door,
and the way was under cover of trees and shrubbery for the whole
distance save a little space beside the house. He listened and the
night was very still--no sound from the house below him--no sound
anywhere save the barking of a dog from far away, and, after an instant,
the whistle of a distant train.
Ste. Marie turned back into the room and pulled the sheets from his bed.
He rolled them, corner-wise, into a sort of rope and knotted them
together securely. Then he went to one of the east windows. There was
no balcony there, but, as in all French upper windows, a wood and iron
bar fixed into the stone casing at both ends, with a little grille below
it. It crossed the window-space a third of the distance from bottom to
top. He bent one end of the improvised rope to this, made it fast, and
let the other end hang out. The east side of the house was in shadow,
and the rolled sheet, a vague white line, disappeared into the darkness
below, but Ste. Marie knew that it must reach nearly to the ground. He
had made use of it because he was afraid there would be too much noise
if he tried to climb down the ivy. The room directly underneath was the
drawing-room, and he knew that it was closed and shuttered and
unoccupied both by day and by night. The only danger, he decided, was
from the sleeping-room behind his own, with its windows opening close
by; but though he did not know it he was safe there also, for the room
was Coira O'Hara's.
He felt in his pocket for the pistol and it was ready to hand. Then he
buttoned his coat round him and swung himself out of the window. He
held his body away from the wall with one knee, and went down, hand
under hand. It was so quietly done that it did not even rouse the birds
in the near-by trees. Before he realised that he had come to the lower
windows his feet touched the earth and he was free.
He stood for a moment where he was, and then slipped rapidly across the
open moonlit space into the inky gloom of the trees. He made a
half-circle round before the house and looked up at it. It lay grey and
black and still in the night. Where the moonlight was upon it it was
grey, where there was shadow black as black velvet, and the windows were
like open dead eyes. He looked towards Arthur Benham's room, and there
was no light, but he knew that the boy was awake and waiting there,
shivering probably in the dark. He wondered where Coira O'Hara was, and
he pictured her lying in her bed fronting the gloom with sleepless open
eyes looking into those to-morrows which she had said she saw so well.
He wondered bitterly what the to-morrows were to bring her, but he
caught himself up with a stern determination and put her out of his
mind. He did not dare think of her in that hour.
He turned and began to make his way silently under the trees towards the
appointed meeting place. Once he thought of the old Michel, and
wondered where that gnarled and withered watch-dog had betaken himself.
Somewhere, within or without the house, he was asleep, or pretended to
sleep, and Ste. Marie knew that he could be trusted. The man's cupidity
and his hatred of Captain Stewart together would make him faithful--or
faithless, as one chose to look upon it.
He came to that place where a row of lilac shrubs stood against the wall
and a half-dead cedar stretched gnarled branches above. He was a little
before his time, and he settled himself to listen and wait, his sharp
ears keenly on the alert, his eyes turned towards the dark and quiet
house.
The little noises of the night broke upon him with exaggerated clamour.
A crackling twig was a thunderous crash, a bird's sleepy stir was the
sound of pursuit and disaster. A hundred times he heard the cautious
approach of Richard Hartley's motor-car without the wall, and he fell
into a panic of fear lest that machine prove unruly, break down,
puncture a tyre, or burst into a series of ear-splitting explosions.
But at last--it seemed to him that he had waited untold hours and that
the dawn must be nigh--there came an unmistakable rustling from overhead
and the sound of hard-drawn breath. The top of the wall, just at that
point, was in moonlight, and a man's head appeared over it, then an arm
and then a leg. Hartley called down to him in a whisper, and Ste.
Marie, from the gloom beneath, whispered a reply. He said--
"The boy has promised to come with us. We shan't have to fight for it."
Richard Hartley said--
"Thank God!" He spoke to some one outside and then, turning about, let
himself down to arm's length and dropped to the ground.
"Thank God!" he said again. "The two men who were to have come with me
didn't show up. I waited as long as I dared, and then came on with only
the chauffeur. He's waiting outside by the car ready to crank up when I
give the word. The car's just a few yards away headed out for the road.
How are we to get back over the wall?"
Ste. Marie explained that Arthur Benham was to come out to join them at
the wooden door, and doubtless would bring a key. If not, the three of
them could scale fifteen feet easily enough in the way soldiers and
firemen are trained to do it. He told his friend all that was necessary
for the time, and they went together along the wall to the more open
space beside the little door.
They waited there in silence for five minutes, and once Hartley, with
his back towards the house, struck a match under his sheltering coat,
looked to see what time it was, and it was three minutes past two.
"He ought to be here!" the man growled. "I don't like waiting. Good
Lord, you don't think he's funked it, do you? Eh?" Ste. Marie did not
answer, but he was breathing very fast and he could not keep his hands
still.
The dog which he had heard from his window began barking again very far
away in the night, and kept it up incessantly. Perhaps he was barking
at the moon.
"I'm going a little way towards the house," said Ste. Marie at last.
"We can't see the terrace from here." But before he had started they
heard the sound of hurrying feet, and Richard Hartley began to curse
under his breath. He said--
"Does the young idiot want to rouse the whole place? Why can't he come
quietly?"
Ste. Marie began to run forward, slipping the pistol out of his pocket
and holding it ready in his hand, for his quick ears told him that there
was more than one pair of feet coming through the night. He went to
where he could command the approach from the house and halted there, but
all at once he gave a low cry and started forward again, for he saw that
Arthur Benham and Coira O'Hara were running together, and that they were
in desperate haste. He called out to them and the girl cried--
"Go to the door in the wall! The door in the wall! Oh, be quick!" He
fell into step beside her, and, as they ran, he said--
"You're going with him? You're coming with us?" The girl answered
him--
"No! no!" and she sprang to the little low door and began to fit the
iron key into the lock. The three men stood about her, and young Arthur
Benham drew his breath in great shivering gasps that were like sobs.
"They heard us!" he cried in a whisper. "They're after us. They heard
us on the stairs. I--stumbled and fell. For God's sake, Coira, be
quick!"
The girl fumbled desperately with the clumsy key, and dropped upon her
knees to see the better. Once she said in a whisper: "I can't turn it.
It won't turn," and at that Richard Hartley pushed her out of the way
and lent his greater strength to the task.
[Illustration: "The girl fumbled desperately with the clumsy key."]
A sudden loud cry came from the house, a hoarse screeching cry in a
voice which might have been either man's or woman's, but was as mad and
as desperate and as horrible in that still night as the screech of a
tortured animal--or of a maniac. It came again and again and it was
nearer.
"Oh, hurry! hurry!" said the girl. "Can't you be quick? They're
coming." And, as she spoke, the little group about the wall heard the
engine of the motor-car outside start up with a staccato roar, and knew
that the faithful chauffeur was ready for them.
"I'm getting it, I think!" said Richard Hartley between his teeth. "I'm
getting it. Turn, you beast! Turn!"
There was a sound of hurrying feet, and Ste. Marie spun about. He
cried--
"Don't wait for me! Jump into the car and go! Don't wait anywhere.
Come back after you've left Benham at home!" He began to run forward
toward those running feet, and he did not know that the girl followed
after him. A short distance away there was a little open space of
moonlight, and in its midst, at full career, he met the Irishman O'Hara,
a gaunt and grotesque figure in his sleeping suit, barefooted, with
empty hands. Beyond him still, some one else ran stumbling, and sobbed
and uttered mad cries.
Ste. Marie dropped his pistol to the ground and sprang upon the
Irishman. He caught him about the body and arms, and the two swayed and
staggered under the tremendous impact. At just that moment, from
behind, came the crash of the opened door and triumphant shouts. Ste.
Marie gave a little gasp of triumph too, and clung the harder to the man
with whom he fought. He drove his head into the Irishman's shoulder,
and set his muscles with a grip which was like iron. He knew that it
could not endure long, for the Irishman was stronger than he; but the
grip of a nervous man who is keyed up to a high tension is incredibly
powerful for a little while. Trained strength is nothing beside it.
It seemed to Ste. Marie in this desperate moment--it cannot have been
more than a minute or two at the most--that a strange and uncanny
miracle befel him. It was as if he became two. Soul and body, spirit
and straining flesh, seemed to him to separate, to stand apart each from
the other. There was a thing of iron flesh and thews which had locked
itself about an enemy, and clung there madly with but one purpose, one
single thought--to grip and grip and never loosen until flesh should be
torn from bones. But apart, the spirit looked on with a complete
detachment. It looked beyond--he must have raised his head to glance
over O'Hara's shoulder--saw a mad figure staggering forward in the
moonlight, and knew the figure for Captain Stewart. It saw an upraised
arm and was not afraid, for the work was almost done now. It listened
and was glad, hearing the motor-car without the walls leap forward into
the night, and its puffing grow fainter and fainter with distance. It
knew that the thing of strained sinews received a crashing blow upon
back-flung head, and that the iron muscles were slipping away from their
grip, but it was still glad, for the work was done.
Only at the last, before red and whirling lights had obscured the view,
before consciousness was dissolved in unconsciousness, came horror and
agony, for the eyes saw Captain Stewart back away and raise the thing he
had struck with, a large revolver, saw Coira O'Hara, a swift and
flashing figure in the moonlight, throw herself upon him, before he
could fire, heard together a woman's scream and the roar of the pistol's
explosion, and so knew no more.
*CHAPTER XXVIII*
*COIRA'S LITTLE HOUR*
When Coira O'Hara came to herself from the moment's swoon into which she
had fallen she rose to her knees and stared wildly about her. She
seemed to be alone in the place, and her first thought was to wonder how
long she had lain there. Captain Stewart had disappeared. She
remembered her struggle with him to prevent him from firing at Ste.
Marie, and she remembered her desperate agony when she realised that she
could not hold him much longer. She remembered the accidental discharge
of the revolver into the air, she remembered being thrown violently to
the ground--and that was all.
Where was her father and where was Ste. Marie? The first question
answered itself, for, as she turned her eyes towards the west, she saw
O'Hara's tall ungainly figure disappearing in the direction of the
house. She called his name twice, but it may be that the man did not
hear for he went on without pausing and was lost to sight.
The girl became aware of something which lay on the ground near her,
half in and half out of the patch of silver moonlight. For some moments
she stared at it uncomprehending. Then she gave a sharp scream and
struggled to her feet. She ran to the thing which lay there motionless
and fell upon her knees beside it. It was Ste. Marie, his face upturned
to the sky, one side of his head black and damp. Stewart had not shot
him, but that crashing blow with the clubbed revolver had struck him
full and fair and he was very still.
For an instant the girl's strength went out of her and she dropped lax
across the body, her face upon Ste. Marie's breast. But after that she
tore open coat and waistcoat and felt for a heartbeat. It seemed to her
that she found life, and she began to believe that the man had only been
stunned.
Once more she rose to her feet and looked about her. There was no one
to lend her aid. She bent over the unconscious man and slipped her arms
about him. Though Ste. Marie was tall he was slightly built, by no
means heavy, and the girl was very strong. She found that she could
carry him a little way, dragging his feet after her. When she could go
no farther she laid him down, and crouched over him, waiting until her
strength should return. And this she did for a score of times; but each
time the distance she went was shorter, and her breathing came with
deeper gasps, and the trembling in her limbs grew more terrible. At the
last she moved in a sort of fever, an evil dream of tortured body and
reeling brain. But she had got Ste. Marie up through the park to the
terrace and into the house, and, with a last desperate effort, she had
laid him upon a couch in a certain little room which opened from the
lower hall. Then she fell down before him and lay still for a long
time.
When she came to herself again the man was stirring feebly and muttering
to himself under his breath. With slow and painful steps she got across
the room, and pulled the bell cord. She remained there ringing until
the old Justine, blinking and half dressed, appeared with a candle in
the doorway. Coira told the woman to make lights and then to bring water
and a certain little bottle of aromatic salts which was in her room
upstairs. The old Justine exclaimed and cried out, but the girl flew at
her in a white fury, and she tottered away as fast as old legs could
move, once she had set alight the row of candles on the mantel shelf.
Then Coira O'Hara went back to the man who lay outstretched on the low
couch, and knelt beside him looking into his face. The man stirred and
moved his head slowly. Half articulate words came from his lips and she
made out that he was saying her name in a dull monotone--only her name,
over and over again. She gave a little cry of grief and gladness, and
hid her face against him as she had done once before, out in the night.
The old woman returned with a jug of water, towels and the bottle of
aromatic salts. The two of them washed that red stain from Ste. Marie's
head and found that he had received a severe bruise, and that the flesh
had been cut before and above the ear.
"Thank God!" the girl said, "it is only a flesh wound. If it were a
fracture he would be breathing in that horrible loud way they always do.
He's breathing naturally. He has only been stunned.
"You may go now!" she said. "Only, bring a glass and some drinking
water--cold."
So the old woman went away to do her errand, returned and went away
again, and the two were left together. Coira held the salts bottle to
Ste. Marie's nostrils, and he gasped and sneezed and tried to turn his
head away from it, but it brought him to his senses--and doubtless to a
good deal of pain. Once when he could not escape the thing he broke
into a fit of weak cursing, and the girl laughed over him tenderly and
let him be.
Very slowly Ste. Marie opened his eyes and, in the soft half light, the
girl's face was bent above him, dark and sweet and beautiful--near, so
near that her breath was warm upon his lips. He said her name again in
an incredulous whisper--
"Coira! Coira!" And she said--
"I am here." But the man was in a strange borderland of half
consciousness, and his ears were deaf.