"Where's Ste. Marie? Where is he? He hasn't tried to walk into the
city?"
"He is asleep in the house," said the girl. "He was struck on the head
and stunned. I got him into the house and he is asleep now.
"Of course," she said, "we could wake him, but it would probably be
better to let him sleep as long as he will if it is possible. It will
save him a great deal of pain I think. He'll have a frightful headache
if he's wakened now. Could you come for him or send for him
to-morrow--towards noon?"
"Why--yes, I suppose so," said Richard Hartley. "Yes, of course, if you
think that's better. Could I just see him for a moment?" He stared at
the girl a bit suspiciously and Coira looked back at him with a little
tired smile, for she read his thought.
"You want to make sure," said she. "Of course! Yes, come in. He's
sleeping very soundly." She led the man into that dim room where Ste.
Marie lay, and Hartley's quick eye noted the basin of water and the
stained towels and the little bottle of aromatic salts. He bent over
his friend to see the bruise at the side of the head, and listened to
the sleeper's breathing. Then the two went out again to the moonlit
terrace.
"You must forgive me," said he when they had come there. "You must
forgive me for seeming suspicious, but--all this wretched business--and
he is my closest friend.--I've come to suspect everybody. I was unjust,
for you helped us to get away. I beg your pardon!"
The girl smiled at him again, her little white tired smile, and she
said--
"There is nothing I would not do to make amends--now that I know--the
truth."
"Yes," said Hartley. "I understand. Arthur Benham told me how Stewart
lied to you all. Was it he who struck Ste. Marie?" She nodded.
"And then tried to shoot him--but he didn't succeed in that. I wonder
where he is--Captain Stewart?"
"I have him out in the car," Hartley said. "Oh, he shall pay, you may
be sure! If he doesn't die and cheat us, that is. I nearly ran the car
over him a few minutes ago. If it hadn't been for the moonlight I would
have done for him. He was lying on his face in that lane that leads to
the Issy road. I don't know what is the matter with him. He's only half
conscious and he's quite helpless. He looks as if he'd had a stroke of
apoplexy or something. I must hurry him back to Paris, I suppose, and
get him under a doctor's care. I wonder what's wrong with him?" The
girl shook her head, for she did not know of Stewart's epileptic
seizures. She thought it quite possible that he had suffered a stroke
of apoplexy as Hartley suggested, for she remembered the half-mad state
he had been in.
Richard Hartley stood for a time in thought.
"I must get Stewart back to Paris at once," he said finally. "I must
get him under care, and in a safe place from which he can't escape. It
will want some managing. If I can get away, I'll come out here again in
the morning; but if not, I'll send the car out with orders to wait here
until Ste. Marie is ready to return to the city. Are you sure he's all
right--that he isn't badly hurt?"
"I think he will be all right," she said, "save for the pain. He was
only stunned." And Hartley nodded.
"He seems to be breathing quite naturally," said he. "That's arranged
then. The car will be here in waiting, and I shall come with it if I
can. Tell him when he wakes." He put out his hand to her, and the girl
gave him hers very listlessly but smiling. She wished he would go, and
leave her alone.
Then in a moment more he did go, and she heard his quick steps down
through the trees, and heard, a little later, the engine of the motor
car start up with a sudden loud volley of explosions. And so she was
left to her solitary watch. She noticed as she turned to go indoors
that the blackness of the night was just beginning to grey towards dawn.
*CHAPTER XXIX*
*THE SCALES OF INJUSTICE*
Ste. Marie slept soundly until mid-morning--that is to say, about ten
o'clock--and then awoke with a dull pain in his head and a sensation of
extreme giddiness, which became something like vertigo when he attempted
to rise. However, with the aid of the old Michel he got somehow
upstairs to his room, and made a rather sketchy toilet.
Coira came to him there and, while he lay still across the bed, told him
about the happenings of the night after he had received his injury. She
told him also that the motor was waiting for him, outside the wall, and
that Richard Hartley had sent a message by the chauffeur, to say that he
was very busy in Paris making arrangements about Stewart, who had come
out of his strange state of half insensibility only to rave in a
delirium.
"So," she said, "you can go now whenever you are ready. Arthur is with
his family, Captain Stewart is under guard, and your work is done. You
ought to be glad--even though you are suffering pain."
Ste. Marie looked up at her.
"Do I seem glad, Coira?" said he. And she said--
"You will be glad to-morrow--and always, I hope and pray. Always,
always!"
The man held one hand over his aching eyes.
"I have," he said, "queer half-memories. I wish I could remember
distinctly."
He looked up at her again.
"I dropped down by the gate in the wall. When I awoke I was in a room
in the house. How did that happen?"
"Oh," she said, turning her face away, "we got you up to the house
almost at once." But Ste. Marie frowned thoughtfully.
"'We'? Who do you mean by 'we'?"
"Well then, I," the girl said. "It was not difficult."
"Coira!" cried the man, "do you mean that you carried me bodily all that
long distance? You?"
"Carried or dragged," she said. "As much one as the other. It was not
very difficult. I'm strong, for a woman."
"Oh, child, child!" he cried. And he said--
"I remember more. It was you who held Stewart, and kept him from
shooting me. I heard the shot and I heard you scream. The last thought
I had was that you had been killed in saving me. That's what I went out
into the blank, thinking."
He covered his eyes again as if the memory were intolerable. But after
a while he said--
"You saved my life, you know." And the girl answered him--
"I had nearly taken it once before. It was I who called Michel that day
you came over the wall, the day you were shot. I nearly murdered you
once. I owed you something. Perhaps we're even now." She saw that he
did not at all remember that hour in the little room--her hour of
bitterness, and she was glad. She had felt sure that it would be so.
For the present she did not greatly suffer; she had come to a state
beyond active suffering--a chill state of dulled sensibilities.
The old Justine knocked at the door to ask if monsieur was going into
the city soon, or if she should give the chauffeur his _dejeuner_ and
tell him to wait.
"Are you fit to go?" Coira asked. And he said--
"I suppose as fit as I shall be." He got to his feet, and the things
about him swam dangerously, but he could walk by using great care. The
girl stood white and still, and she avoided his eyes.
"It is not good-bye," said he. "I shall see you soon again--and I hope,
often--often, Coira." The words had a flat and foolish sound, but he
could find no others. It was not easy to speak.
"I suppose I must not ask to see your father?" said he, and she told him
that her father had locked himself in his own room and would see no one,
would not even open his door to take in food.
Ste. Marie went to the stairs, leaning upon the shoulder of the stout
old Justine, but, before he had gone, Coira checked him for an instant.
She said--
"Tell Arthur, if he speaks to you about me, that what I said in the note
I gave him last night, I meant quite seriously. I gave him a note to
read after he reached home. Tell him for me that it was final. Will
you do that?"
"Yes, of course," said Ste. Marie. He looked at her with some wonder
because her words had been very emphatic.
"Yes," he said, "I will tell him. Is that all?"
"All but good-bye," said she. "Good-bye, Bayard!"
She stood at the head of the stairs while he went down them. And she
came after him to the landing halfway where the stairs turned in the
opposite direction for their lower flight. When he went out of the
front door he looked back, and she was standing there above him--a
straight, still figure, dark against the light of the windows behind
her.
He went straight to the Rue d'Assas. He found that while he sat still
in the comfortable tonneau of the motor his head was fairly normal, and
the world did not swing and whirl about in that sickening fashion. But
when the car lurched or bumped over an obstruction it made him giddy,
and he would have fallen had he been standing.
The familiar streets of the Montparnasse and Luxembourg quarters had for
his eyes all the charm and delight of home things to the returned
traveller. He felt as if he had been away for months, and he caught
himself looking for changes, and it made him laugh. He was much
relieved when he found that his concierge was not on watch, and that he
could slip unobserved up the stairs and into his rooms. The rooms were
fresh and clean, for they had been aired and tended daily.
Arrived there he wrote a little note to a friend of his who was a doctor
and lived in the Rue Notre Dame des Champs, asking this man to call as
soon as it might be convenient. He sent the note by the chauffeur, and
then lay down, dressed as he was, to wait, for he could not stand or
move about without a painful dizziness. The doctor came within a
half-hour, examined Ste. Marie's bruised head and bound it up. He gave
him a dose of something with a vile taste, which he said would take away
the worst of the pain in a few hours, and he also gave him a sleeping
potion, and made him go to bed.
"You'll be fairly fit by evening," he said. "But don't stir until then.
I'll leave word below that you're not to be disturbed."
So it happened that when Richard Hartley came dashing up an hour or two
later he was not allowed to see his friend, and Ste. Marie slept a
dreamless sleep until dark.
He awoke then, refreshed but ravenous with hunger, and found that there
was only a dull ache in his battered head. The dizziness and the
vertigo were almost completely gone. He made lights and dressed with
care. He felt like a little girl making ready for a party; it was so
long--or seemed so long--since he had put on evening clothes. Then he
went out, leaving at the loge of the concierge a note for Hartley to say
where he might be found. He went to Lavenue's and dined in solitary
pomp, for it was after nine o'clock. Again it seemed to him that it was
months since he had done the like--sat down to a real table for a real
dinner. At ten he got into a fiacre and drove to the Rue de
l'Universite.
The man who admitted him said that mademoiselle was alone in the
drawing-room, and he went there at once. He was dully conscious that
something was very wrong, but he had suffered too much within the past
few hours to be analytical, and he did not know what it was that was
wrong. He should have entered that room with a swift and eager step,
with shining eyes, with a high-beating heart. He went into it slowly,
wrapped in a mantle of strange apathy.
Helen Benham came forward to meet him and took both his hands in hers.
Ste. Marie was amazed to see that she seemed not to have altered at
all--in spite of this enormous lapse of time, in spite of all that had
happened in it. And yet, unaltered, she seemed to him a stranger, a
charming and gracious stranger with an icily beautiful face, He wondered
at her and at himself, and he was a little alarmed, because he thought
that he must be ill. That blow upon the head must, after all, have done
something terrible to him.
"Ah, Ste. Marie!" she said in her well-remembered voice--and again he
wondered that the voice should be so high-pitched, and so without colour
or feeling. "How glad I am," she said, "that you are safely out of it
all! How you have suffered for us, Ste. Marie! You look white and ill.
Sit down, please! Don't stand!" She drew him to a comfortable chair,
and he sat down in it obediently. He could not think of anything to
say, though he was not, as a rule, tongue-tied, but the girl did not
seem to expect any answer, for she went on at once with a rather odd air
of haste--
"Arthur is here with us, safe and sound. Richard Hartley brought him
back from that dreadful place, and he has talked everything over with my
grandfather, and it's all right. They both understand now, and there'll
be no more trouble. We have had to be careful, very careful, and we have
had to--well, to rearrange the facts a little so as to leave--my
uncle--to leave Captain Stewart's name out of it. It would not do to
shock my grandfather by telling him the truth. Perhaps, later; I don't
know. That will have to be thought of. For the present we have left my
uncle out of it--and put the blame entirely upon this other man. I
forget his name."
"The blame cannot rest there," said Ste. Marie sharply. "It is not
deserved, and I shall not allow it to be left so. Captain Stewart lied
to O'Hara throughout. You cannot leave the blame with an innocent man."
"Still--" she said, "such a man!"
Ste. Marie looked at her, frowning, and the girl turned her eyes away.
She may have had the grace to be a little ashamed.
"Think of the difficulty we were in!" she urged. "Captain Stewart is my
grandfather's own son. We cannot tell him now, in his weak state, that
his own son is--what he is."
There was reason if not justice in that, and Ste. Marie was forced to
admit it. He said--
"Ah well! for the present, then. That can be arranged later. The main
point is that I've found your brother for you. I've brought him back."
Miss Benham looked up at him and away again, and she drew a quick
breath. He saw her hands move restlessly in her lap, and he was aware
that for some odd reason she was very ill at ease. At last she said--
"Ah, but--but have you, dear Ste. Marie? Have you?"
After a brief silence she stole another swift glance at the man, and he
was staring in open and frank bewilderment. She rushed into rapid
speech.
"Ah," she cried, "don't misunderstand me! Don't think that I'm brutal or
ungrateful for all you've--you've suffered in trying to help us. Don't
think that! I can--we can never be grateful enough, never! But stop
and think! Yes, I know this all sounds hideous, but it's so terribly
important. I shouldn't dream of saying a word of it if it weren't so
important, if so much didn't depend upon it. But stop and think! Was
it, dear Ste. Marie, was it, after all, you? Was it you who brought
Arthur to us?"
The man fairly blinked at her, owl-like. He was beyond speech.
"Wasn't it Richard?" she hurried on. "Wasn't it Richard Hartley? Ah,
if I could only say it without seeming so contemptibly heartless! If
only I needn't say it at all! But it must be said because of what
depends upon it.
"Think! Go back to the beginning! Wasn't it Richard who first began to
suspect my uncle? Didn't he tell you or write to you what he had
discovered, and so set you upon the right track? And after you
had--well, just fallen into their hands, with no hope of ever escaping,
yourself--to say nothing of bringing Arthur back--wasn't it Richard who
came to your rescue and brought it all to victory? Oh, Ste. Marie, I
must be just to him as well as to you! Don't you see that? However
grateful I may be to you for what you have done--suffered--I cannot, in
justice, give you what I was to have given you, since it is, after all,
Richard who has saved my brother. I cannot, can I? Surely you must see
it. And you must see how it hurts me to have to say it. I had hoped
that--you would understand--without my speaking."
Still the man sat in his trance of astonishment, speechless. For the
first time in his life he was brought face to face with the amazing, the
appalling injustice of which a woman is capable when her heart is
concerned. This girl wished to believe that to Richard Hartley belonged
the credit for rescuing her brother, and, lo! she believed it. A score
of juries might have decided against her, a hundred proofs controverted
her decision, but she would have been deaf and blind. It is only women
who accomplish miracles of reasoning like that.
Ste. Marie took a long breath and he started to speak, but in the end
shook his head and remained silent. Through the whirl and din of
falling skies he was yet able to see the utter futility of words. He
could have adduced a hundred arguments to prove her absurdity. He could
have shown her that before he ever read Hartley's note he had decided
upon Stewart's guilt--and for much better reasons than Hartley had. He
could have pointed out to her that it was he, not Hartley, who
discovered young Benham's whereabouts; that it was he who summoned
Hartley there; and that, as a matter of fact, Hartley need not have come
at all, since the boy had been persuaded to go home in any case.
He thought of all these things and more, and, in a moment of sheer anger
at her injustice, he was on the point of stating them, but he shook his
head and remained silent. After all, of what use was speech? He knew
that it could make no impression upon her, and he knew why. For some
reason, in some way, she had turned, during his absence, to Richard
Hartley, and there was nothing more to be said. There was no treachery
on Hartley's part. He knew that, and it never even occurred to him to
blame his friend. Hartley was as faithful as any one who ever lived.
It seemed to be nobody's fault. It had just happened.
He looked at the girl before him with a new expression, an expression of
sheer curiosity. It seemed to him wellnigh incredible that any human
being could be so unjust and so blind. Yet he knew her to be, in other
matters, one of the fairest of all women, just and tender and thoughtful
and true. He knew that she prided herself upon her cool impartiality of
judgment. He shook his head with a little sigh, and ceased to wonder
any more. It was beyond him.