"I mean Helen, of course. What else?"
Ste. Marie was not quite himself. At another time he might have got out
of the room with an evasive answer, but he spoke without thinking. He
said--
"Oh--yes! I suppose--I suppose I ought to tell you that Miss
Benham--well, she has changed her mind. That is to say----"
"What!" shouted old David Stewart, in his great voice. "What is that?"
"Why, it seems," said Ste. Marie, "it seems that I only blundered. It
seems that Hartley rescued your grandson, not I. And I suppose he did,
you know. When you come to think of it, I suppose he did."
David Stewart's great white beard seemed to bristle like the ruff of an
angry dog, and his eyes flashed fiercely under their shaggy brows.
"Do you mean to tell me that after all you've done and--and gone
through, Helen has thrown you over? Do you mean to tell me that?"
"Well," argued Ste. Marie uncomfortably, "well, you see, she seems to be
right. I did bungle it, didn't I? It was Hartley who came and pulled
us out of the hole."
"Hartley be damned!" cried the old man in a towering rage. And he began
to pour out the most extraordinary flood of furious invective upon his
granddaughter and upon Richard Hartley, whom he quite unjustly termed a
snake-in-the-grass, and finally upon all women, past, contemporary or
still to be born.
Ste. Marie, in fear of old David's health, tried to calm him, and the
faithful valet came running from the room beyond with prayers and
protestations, but nothing would check that astonishing flow of fury
until it had run its full course. Then the man fell back upon his
pillows, crimson, panting and exhausted; but the fierce eyes glittered
still, and they boded no good for Miss Helen Benham.
"You're well rid of her!" said the old gentleman, when at last he was
once more able to speak. "You're well rid of her. I congratulate you!
I am ashamed and humiliated, and a great burden of obligation is shifted
to me--though I assume it with pleasure--but I congratulate you. You
might have found out too late what sort of a woman she is."
Ste. Marie began to protest and to explain, and say that Miss Benham had
been quite right in what she said, but the old gentleman only waved an
impatient arm to him; and presently, when he saw the valet making signs
across the bed, and saw that his host was really in a state of complete
exhaustion after the outburst, he made his adieux and got away.
Young Arthur Benham, who had been sitting almost silent during the
interview, followed him out of the room, and closed the door behind
them. For the first time Ste. Marie noted that the boy's face was white
and strained. Young Arthur pulled a crumpled square of folded paper
from his pocket and shook it at the other man.
"Do you know what this is?" he cried. "Do you know what's in this?"
Ste. Marie shook his head, but a sudden recollection came to him.
"Ah!" said he, "that must be the note Mlle. O'Hara spoke of. She asked
me to tell you that she meant it--whatever it may be--quite seriously;
that it was final. She didn't explain. She just said that; that you
were to take it as final."
The lad gave a sudden, very bitter sob.
"She has thrown me over!" he said. "She says I'm not to come back to
her."
Ste. Marie gave a wordless cry, and he began to tremble.
"You can read it if you want to," the boy said. "Perhaps you can explain
it. I can't. Do you want to read it?" The elder man stood staring at
him whitely, and the boy repeated his words. He said--
"You can read it if you want to," and at last Ste. Marie took the paper
between stiff hands and held it to the light. Coira O'Hara said briefly
that too much was against their marriage. She mentioned his age, the
certain hostility of his family, their different tastes, a number of
other things. But in the end she said she had begun to realise that she
did not love him as she ought to do if they were to marry. And so, the
note said finally, she gave him up to his family, she released him
altogether, and she begged him not to come back to her or to urge her to
change her mind. Also she made the trite but very sensible observation
that he would be glad of his freedom before the year was out.
Ste. Marie's unsteady fingers opened, and the crumpled paper slipped
through them to the floor. Over it the man and the boy looked at each
other in silence. Young Arthur Benham's face was white, and it was
strained and contorted with its first grief. But first griefs do not
last very long. Coira O'Hara had told the truth; before the year was out
the lad would be glad of his freedom. But the man's face was white also,
white and still, and his eyes held a strange expression which the boy
could not understand, and at which he wondered. The man was trembling a
little from head to foot. The boy wondered about that too, but abruptly
he cried out--
"What's up? Where are you going?" for Ste. Marie had turned all at once
and was running down the stairs as fast as he could run.
*CHAPTER XXX*
*JOURNEY'S END*
In the hall below Ste. Marie came violently into contact with and nearly
overturned Richard Hartley, who was just giving his hat and stick to the
man who had admitted him. Hartley seized upon him with an exclamation
of pleasure, and wheeled him round to face the light. He said--
"I've been pursuing you all day. You're almost as difficult of access
here in Paris as you were at La Lierre. How's the head?"
Ste. Marie put up an experimental hand. He had forgotten his injury.
"Oh, that's all right," said he. "At least I think so. Anderson fixed
me up this afternoon. But I haven't time to talk to you. I'm in a
hurry. To-morrow we'll have a long chin. Oh, how about Stewart?" He
lowered his voice, and Hartley answered him in the same tone.
"The man is in a delirium. Heaven knows how it'll end. He may die, and
he may pull through. I hope he pulls through--except for the sake of the
family--because then we can make him pay for what he's done. I don't
want him to go scot free by dying."
"Nor I!" said Ste. Marie fiercely. "Nor I! I want him to pay too--long
and slowly and hard, and, if he lives, I shall see that he does it,
family or no family. Now I must be off." Ste. Marie's face was shining
and uplifted. The other man looked at it with a little envious sigh.
"I see everything is all right," said he. "And I congratulate you. You
deserve it if ever any one did."
Ste. Marie stared for an instant uncomprehending. Then he saw.
"Yes," he said gently. "Everything is all right." It was plain that
the Englishman did not know of Miss Benham's decision. He was incapable
of deceit. Ste. Marie threw an arm over his friend's shoulder, and went
with him a little way towards the drawing-room.
"Go in there," he said. "You'll find some one glad to see you, I think.
And remember that I said everything is all right." He came back after
he had turned away, and met Hartley's puzzled frown with a smile.
"If you've that motor here, may I use it?" he asked. "I want to go
somewhere in a hurry."
"Of course!" the other man said. "Of course! I'll go home in a cab."
So they parted, and Ste. Marie went out to the waiting car.
On the left bank the streets are nearly empty of traffic at night, and
one can make excellent time over them. Ste. Marie reached the Porte de
Versailles, at the city's limits, in twenty minutes, and dashed through
Issy five minutes later. In less than half an hour from the time he had
left the Rue de l'Universite he was under the walls of La Lierre. He
looked at his watch, and it was not quite half-past eleven.
He tried the little door in the wall, and it was unlocked, so he passed
in and closed the door behind him. Inside he found that he was running,
and he gave a little laugh, but of eagerness and excitement, not of
mirth. There were dim lights in one or two of the upper windows, but
none below, and there was no one about. He pulled at the door bell,
and, after a few impatient moments, pulled again and still again. Then
he noticed that the heavy door was ajar, and since no one answered his
ringing he pushed the door open and went in.
The lower hall was quite dark, but a very faint light came down from
above through the well of the staircase. He heard dragging feet in the
upper hall and then upon one of the upper flights, for the stairs, broad
below, divided at a half way landing and continued upward, in an
opposite direction, in two narrower flights. A voice, very faint and
weary, called--
"Who is there? Who is ringing, please?" And Coira O'Hara, holding a
candle in her hand, came upon the stair landing, and stood gazing down
into the darkness. She wore a sort of dressing gown, a heavy white
garment which hung in straight long folds to her feet, and fell away
from the arm that held the candle on high. The yellow beams of light
struck down across her head and face, and, even at the distance, the man
could see how white she was, and hollow-eyed and worn--a pale wraith of
the splendid beauty that had walked in the garden at La Lierre.
"Who is there, please?" she asked again. "I can't see. What is it?"
"It is I, Coira!" said Ste. Marie, and she gave a sharp cry. The arm
which was holding the candle overhead shook and fell beside her, as if
the strength had gone out of it. The candle dropped to the floor,
spluttered there for an instant, and went out, but there was still a
little light from the hall above.
Ste. Marie sprang up the stairs to where the girl stood, and caught her
in his arms, for she was on the verge of faintness. Her head fell back
away from him, and he saw her eyes through half-closed lids, her white
teeth through parted lips. She was trembling, but, for that matter, so
was he, at the touch of her, the heavy and sweet burden in his arms.
She tried to speak, and he heard a whisper--
"Why? Why? Why?"
"Because it is my place, Coira!" said he. "Because I cannot live away
from you. Because we belong together."
The girl struggled weakly and pushed against him. Once more he heard
whispering words, and made out that she tried to say--
"Go back to her! Go back to her! You belong there." But at that he
laughed aloud.
"I thought so too," said he. "But she thinks otherwise. She'll have
none of me, Coira. It's Richard Hartley now. Coira, can you love a
jilted man? I've been jilted--thrown over--dismissed."
Her head came up in a flash, and she stared at him, suddenly rigid and
tense in his arms.
"Is that true?" she demanded.
"Yes, my love!" said he, and she began to weep, with long, comfortable
sobs, her face hidden in the hollow of his shoulder. On one other
occasion she had wept before him, and he had been horribly embarrassed,
but he bore this present tempest without, as it were, winking. He
gloried in it. He tried to say so. He tried to whisper to her, his lips
pressed close to the ear that was nearest them, but he found that he had
no speech. Words would not come to his tongue; it trembled and
faltered, and was still for sheer inadequacy.
Rather oddly, in that his thoughts were chaos, swallowed up in the surge
of feeling, a memory struck through to him of that other exaltation
which had swept him to the stars. He looked upon it and was amazed
because now he saw it, in clear light, for the thing it had been. He
saw it for a fantasy, a self-evoked wraith of the imagination, a dizzy
flight of the spirit through spirit space. He saw that it had not been
love at all, and he realised how little a part Helen Benham had ever
really played in it. A cold and still-eyed figure for him to wrap the
veil of his imagination round, that was what she had been. There were
times when the sweep of his upward flight had stirred her a little,
wakened in her some vague response, but for the most part she had stood
aside and looked on, wondering.
The mist was rent away from that rainbow-painted cobweb, and at last the
man saw and understood. He gave an exclamation of wonder, and the girl
who loved him raised her head once more, and the two looked each into
the other's eyes for a long time. They fell into hushed and broken
speech.
"I have loved you so long, so long!" she said, "and so hopelessly. I
never thought--I never believed.--To think that in the end you have come
to me! I cannot believe it!"
"Wait and see!" cried the man. "Wait and see!" She shivered a little.
"If it is not true I should like to die before I find out. I should
like to die now, Bayard, with your arms holding me up, and your eyes
close, close."
Ste. Marie's arms tightened round her with a sudden fierceness. He hurt
her, and she smiled up at him. Their two hearts beat one against the
other, and they beat very fast.
"Don't you understand," he cried, "that life's only just
beginning--day's just dawning, Coira? We've been lost in the dark.
Day's coming now. This is only the sunrise."
"I can believe it at last," she said, "because you hold me close, and
you hurt me a little, and I'm glad to be hurt. And I can feel your
heart beating. Ah, never let me go, Bayard! I should be lost in the
dark again, if you let me go." A sudden thought came to her, and she
bent back her head to see the better.
"Did you speak with Arthur?" And he said--
"Yes. He asked me to read your note, so I read it. That poor lad! I
came straight to you then. Straight and fast!"
"You knew why I did it?" she said, and Ste. Marie said--
"Now I know."
"I could not have married him," said she. "I could not. I never
thought I should see you again, but I loved you and I could not have
married him.--Ah, impossible! And he'll be glad, later on. You know
that. It will save him any more trouble with his family, and
besides--he's so very young! Already, I think, he was beginning to chafe
a little. I thought so more than once.
"Oh, I'm trying to justify myself!" she cried. "I'm trying to find
reasons, but you know the true reason. You know it."
"I thank God for it!" he said.
So they stood clinging together in that dim place, and broken whispering
speech passed between them or long silences when speech was done. But
at last they went down the stairs and out upon the open terrace where
the moonlight lay.
"It was in the open sweet air," the girl said, "that we came to know
each other. Let us walk in it now. The house smothers me." She looked
up when they had passed the west corner of the facade, and drew a little
sigh.
"I am worried about my father," said she. "He will not answer me when I
call to him, and he has eaten nothing all day long. Bayard, I think his
heart is broken. Ah! but to-morrow we shall mend it again. In the
morning I shall make him let me in, and I shall tell him--what I have to
tell."
They turned down under the trees, where the moonlight made silver
splashes about their feet, and the sweet night air bore soft against
their faces. Coira went a half step in advance, her head laid back upon
the shoulder of the man she loved, and his arm held her up from falling.
So at last we leave them, walking there in the tender moonlight, with
the breath of roses about them, and their eyes turned to the coming day.
It is still night, and there is yet one cloud of sorrow to shadow them
somewhat, for upstairs in his locked room a man lies dead across the
floor with an empty pistol beside him--heart-broken, as the girl had
feared. But where a great love is shadows cannot last very long, not
even such shadows as this. The morning must dawn--and joy cometh of a
morning.
[Illustration: "Walking there in the tender moonlight."]
So we leave them walking together in the moonlight, their faces turned
towards the coming day.
Butler & Tanner. The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.
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