JASON
A ROMANCE
BY
JUSTUS MILES FORMAN
AUTHOR OF
"A STUMBLING BLOCK" "BUCHANAN'S WIFE"
"THE ISLAND OF ENCHANTMENT"
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
W. HATHERELL, R.I.
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
MCMIX
COPYRIGHT, 1908.
* * * * *
À PARIS
MÈRE MYSTÉRIEUSE ... SOEUR CONSOLATRICE
ENCHANTERESSE AUX YEUX VOILÉS
JÉ DÉDIE CE PETIT ROMAN
EN RECONNAISSANCE
J.M.F.
* * * * *
CONTENTS
I. STE. MARIE HEARS OF A MYSTERY AND MEETS A DARK LADY
II. THE LADDER TO THE STARS
III. STE. MARIE MAKES A VOW, BUT A PAIR OF EYES HAUNT HIM
IV. OLD DAVID STEWART
V. JASON SETS FORTH UPON THE GREAT ADVENTURE
VI. A BRAVE GENTLEMAN RECEIVES A HURT, BUT VOLUNTEERS IN A GOOD CAUSE
VII. CAPTAIN STEWART MAKES A KINDLY OFFER
VIII. JASON MEETS WITH A MISADVENTURE AND DREAMS A DREAM
IX. JASON GOES UPON A JOURNEY, AND RICHARD HARTLEY PLEADS FOR HIM
X. CAPTAIN STEWART ENTERTAINS
XI. A GOLDEN LADY ENTERS--THE EYES AGAIN
XII. THE NAME OF THE LADY WITH THE EYES--EVIDENCE HEAPS UP SWIFTLY
XIII. THE VOYAGE TO COLCHIS
XIV. THE WALLS OF AEA
XV. A CONVERSATION AT LA LIERRE
XVI. THE BLACK CAT
XVII. THOSE WHO WERE LEFT BEHIND
XVIII. A CONVERSATION OVERHEARD
XIX. THE INVALID TAKES THE AIR
XX. THE STONE BENCH AT THE ROND POINT
XXI. A MIST DIMS THE SHINING STAR
XXII. A SETTLEMENT REFUSED
XXIII. THE LAST ARROW
XXIV. THE JOINT IN THE ARMOR
XXV. MEDEA GOES OVER TO THE ENEMY
XXVI. BUT THE FLEECE ELECTS TO REMAIN
XXVII. THE NIGHT'S WORK
XXVIII. MEDEA'S LITTLE HOUR
XXIX. THE SCALES OF INJUSTICE
XXX. JASON SAILS BACK TO COLCHIS--JOURNEY'S END
* * * * *
I
STE. MARIE HEARS OF A MYSTERY AND MEETS A DARK LADY
From Ste. Marie's little flat, which overlooked the gardens, they drove
down the quiet rue du Luxembourg, and at the Place St. Sulpice turned to
the left. They crossed the Place St. Germain des Prés, where lines of
home-bound working-people stood waiting for places in the electric
trams, and groups of students from the Beaux Arts or from Julien's sat
under the awnings of the Deux Magots, and so, beyond that busy square,
they came into the long and peaceful stretch of the Boulevard St.
Germain. The warm, sweet dusk gathered round them as they went, and the
evening air was fresh and aromatic in their faces. There had been a
little gentle shower in the late afternoon, and roadway and pavement
were still damp with it. It had wet the new-grown leaves of the
chestnuts and acacias that bordered the street. The scent of that living
green blended with the scent of laid dust and the fragrance of the last
late-clinging chestnut blossoms; it caught up a fuller, richer burden
from the overflowing front of a florist's shop; it stole from open
windows a savory whiff of cooking, a salt tang of wood smoke; and the
soft little breeze--the breeze of coming summer--mixed all together and
tossed them and bore them down the long, quiet street; and it was the
breath of Paris, and it shall be in your nostrils and mine, a keen agony
of sweetness, so long as we may live and so wide as we may
wander--because we have known it and loved it--and in the end we shall
go back to breathe it when we die.
The strong white horse jogged evenly along over the wooden pavement, its
head down, the little bell at its neck jingling pleasantly as it went.
The cocher, a torpid, purplish lump of gross flesh, pyramidal, pearlike,
sat immobile in his place. The protuberant back gave him an
extraordinary effect of being buttoned into his fawn-colored coat wrong
side before. At intervals he jerked the reins like a large strange toy,
and his strident voice said:
"Hé!" to the stout white horse, which paid no attention whatever. Once
the beast stumbled and the pearlike lump of flesh insulted it, saying:
"Hé! veux tu, cochon!"
Before the War Office a little black slip of a milliner's girl dodged
under the horse's head, saving herself and the huge box slung to her arm
by a miracle of agility, and the cocher called her the most frightful
names, without turning his head and in a perfunctory tone quite free
from passion.
Young Hartley laughed and turned to look at his companion, but Ste.
Marie sat still in his place, his hat pulled a little down over his
brows and his handsome chin buried in the folds of the white silk
muffler with which for some obscure reason he had swathed his neck.
"This is the first time in many years," said the Englishman, "that I
have known you to be silent for ten whole minutes. Are you ill, or are
you making up little epigrams to say at the dinner-party?"
Ste. Marie waved a despondent glove.
"I 'ave," said he, "w'at you call ze blue. Papillons noirs--clouds in my
soul." It was a species of jest with Ste. Marie--and he seemed never to
tire of it--to pretend that he spoke English very brokenly. As a matter
of fact, he spoke it quite as well as any Englishman and without the
slightest trace of accent. He had discovered a long time before this--it
may have been while the two were at Eton together--that it annoyed
Hartley very much, particularly when it was done in company and before
strangers. In consequence he became on such occasions a sort of
comic-paper caricature of his race, and by dint of much practice, added
to a naturally alert mind, he became astonishingly ingenious in the
torture of that honest but unimaginative gentleman whom he considered
his best friend. He achieved the most surprising expressions by the mere
literal translation of French idiom, and he could at any time bring
Hartley to a crimson agony by calling him "my dear "'before other men,
whereas at the equivalent "mon cher" the Englishman would doubtless
never, as the phrase goes, have batted an eye.
"Ye-es," he continued, sadly, "I 'ave ze blue. I weep. Weez ze tears
full ze eyes. Yes." He descended into English. "I think something's
going to happen to me. There's calamity, or something, in the air.
Perhaps I'm going to die."
"Oh, I know what you are going to do, right enough," said the other man.
"You're going to meet the most beautiful woman--girl--in the world at
dinner, and of course you are going to fall in love with her."
"Ah, the Miss Benham!" said Ste. Marie, with a faint show of interest.
"I remember now, you said that she was to be there. I had forgotten.
Yes, I shall be glad to meet her. One hears so much. But why am I of
course going to fall in love with her?"
"Well, in the first place," said Hartley, "you always fall in love with
all pretty women as a matter of habit, and, in the second place,
everybody--well, I suppose you--no one could help falling in love with
her, I should think."
"That's high praise to come from you," said the other. And Hartley said,
with a short, not very mirthful laugh:
"Oh, I don't pretend to be immune. We all--everybody who knows her.
You'll understand presently."
Ste. Marie turned his head a little and looked curiously at his friend,
for he considered that he knew the not very expressive intonations of
that young gentleman's voice rather well, and this was something
unusual. He wondered what had been happening during his six months'
absence from Paris.
"I dare say that's what I feel in the air, then," he said, after a
little pause. "It's not calamity; it's love.
"Or maybe," he said, quaintly, "it's both. L'un n'empêche pas I'autre."
And he gave an odd little shiver, as if that something in the air had
suddenly blown chill upon him.
They were passing the corner of the Chamber of Deputies, which faces the
Pont de la Concorde. Ste. Marie pulled out his watch and looked at it.
"Eight-fifteen," said he. "What time are we asked for--eight-thirty?
That means nine: It's an English house, and nobody will be on time. It's
out of fashion to be prompt nowadays."
"I should hardly call the Marquis de Saulnes English, you know,"
objected Hartley.
"Well, his wife is," said the other, "and they're altogether English in
manner. Dinner won't be before nine. Shall we get out, and walk across
the bridge and up the Champs-Elysées? I should like to, I think. I like
to walk at this time of the evening--between the daylight and the dark."
Hartley nodded a rather reluctant assent, and Ste. Marie prodded the
pear-shaped cocher in the back with his stick. So they got down at the
approach to the bridge, Ste. Marie gave the cocher a piece of two
francs, and they turned away on foot. The pear-shaped one looked at the
coin in his fat hand as if it were something unclean and
contemptible--something to be despised. He glanced at the dial of his
taximeter, which had registered one franc twenty-five, and pulled the
flag up. He spat gloomily out into the street, and his purple lips moved
in words. He seemed to say something like "Sale diable de métier!"
which, considering the fact that he had just been overpaid, appears
unwarrantably pessimistic in tone. Thereafter he spat again, picked up
his reins and jerked them, saying:
"Hè, Jean Baptiste! Uip, uip!" The unemotional white horse turned up the
boulevard, trotting evenly at its steady pace, head down, the little
bell at its neck jingling pleasantly as it went. It occurs to me that
the white horse was probably unique. I doubt that there was another
horse in Paris rejoicing in that extraordinary name.
But the two young men walked slowly on across the Pont de la Concorde.
They went in silence, for Hartley was thinking still of Miss Helen
Benham, and Ste. Marie was thinking of Heaven knows what. His gloom was
unaccountable unless he had really meant what he said about feeling
calamity in the air. It was very unlike him to have nothing to say.
Midway of the bridge he stopped and turned to look out over the river,
and the other man halted beside him. The dusk was thickening almost
perceptibly, but it was yet far from dark. The swift river ran leaden
beneath them, and the river boats, mouches and hirondelles, darted
silently under the arches of the bridge, making their last trips for the
day. Away to the west, where their faces were turned, the sky was still
faintly washed with color, lemon and dusky orange and pale thin green. A
single long strip of cirrus cloud was touched with pink, a lifeless old
rose, such as is popular among decorators for the silk hangings of a
woman's boudoir. And black against this pallid wash of colors the tour
Eiffel stood high and slender and rather ghostly. By day it is an ugly
thing, a preposterous iron finger upthrust by man's vanity against God's
serene sky; but the haze of evening drapes it in a merciful
semi-obscurity and it is beautiful.
Ste. Marie leaned upon the parapet of the bridge, arms folded before him
and eyes afar. He began to sing, à demi-voix, a little phrase out of
_Louise_--an invocation to Paris--and the Englishman stirred uneasily
beside him. It seemed to Hartley that to stand on a bridge, in a top-hat
and evening clothes, and sing operatic airs while people passed back and
forth behind you, was one of the things that are not done. He tried to
imagine himself singing in the middle of Westminster Bridge at half-past
eight of an evening, and he felt quite hot all over at the thought. It
was not done at all, he said to himself. He looked a little nervously at
the people who were passing, and it seemed to him that they stared at
him and at the unconscious Ste. Marie, though in truth they did nothing
of the sort. He turned back and touched his friend on the arm, saying:
"I think we'd best be getting along, you know." But Ste. Marie was very
far away, and did not hear. So then he fell to watching the man's dark
and handsome face, and to thinking how little the years at Eton and the
year or two at Oxford had set any real stamp upon him. He would never be
anything but Latin, in spite of his Irish mother and his public school.
Hartley thought what a pity that was. As Englishmen go, he was not
illiberal, but, no more than he could have altered the color of his
eyes, could he have believed that anything foreign would not be improved
by becoming English. That was born in him, as it is born in most
Englishmen, and it was a perfectly simple and honest belief. He felt a
deeper affection for this handsome and volatile young man whom all women
loved, and who bade fair to spend his life at their successive feet--for
he certainly had never shown the slightest desire to take up any sterner
employment--he felt a deeper affection for Ste. Marie than for any other
man he knew, but he had always wished that Ste. Marie were an
Englishman, and he had always felt a slight sense of shame over his
friend's un-English ways.
After a moment he touched him again on the arm, saying:
"Come along! We shall be late, you know. You can finish your little
concert another time."
"Eh!" cried Ste. Marie. "Quoi, donc?" He turned with a start.
"Oh yes!" said he. "Yes, come along! I was mooning. Allons! Allons, my
old!" He took Hartley's arm and began to shove him along at a rapid
walk. "I will moon no more," he said. "Instead, you shall tell me about
the wonderful Miss Benham whom everybody is talking about. Isn't there
something odd connected with the family? I vaguely recall something
unusual--some mystery or misfortune or something. But first a moment!
One small moment, my old. Regard me that!" They had come to the end of
the bridge, and the great Place de la Concorde lay before them.
"In all the world," said Ste. Marie--and he spoke the truth--"there is
not another such square. Regard it, mon brave! Bow yourself before it!
It is a miracle."
The great bronze lamps were alight, and they cast reflections upon the
still damp pavement about them. To either side, the trees of the
Tuileries gardens and of the Cours la Reine and the Champs-Elysées lay
in a solid black mass; in the middle, the obelisk rose slender and
straight, its pointed top black against the sky; and beneath, the water
of the Nèreid fountains splashed and gurgled. Far beyond, the gay lights
of the rue Royale shone in a yellow cluster; and beyond these still, the
tall columns of the Madeleine ended the long vista. Pedestrians and cabs
crept across that vast space and seemed curiously little, like black
insects, and round about it all the eight cities of France sat atop
their stone pedestals and looked on. Ste. Marie gave a little sigh of
pleasure, and the two moved forward, bearing to the left, toward the
Champs-Elysées.
"And now," said he, "about these Benhams. What is the thing I cannot
quite recall? What has happened to them?"
"I suppose," said the other man, "you mean the disappearance of Miss
Benham's young brother a month ago--before you returned to Paris. Yes,
that was certainly very odd--that is, it was either very odd or very
commonplace. And in either case the family is terribly cut up about it.
The boy's name was Arthur Benham, and he was rather a young fool, but
not downright vicious, I should think. I never knew him at all well, but
I know he spent his time chiefly at the Café de Paris and at the Olympia
and at Longchamps and at Henry's Bar. Well, he just disappeared, that is
all. He dropped completely out of sight between two days, and though the
family has had a small army of detectives on his trail they've not
discovered the smallest clew. It's deuced odd altogether. You might
think it easy to disappear like that, but it's not."
"No--no," said Ste. Marie, thoughtfully. "No, I should fancy not.
"This boy," he said, after a pause--"I think I had seen him--had him
pointed out to me--before I went away. I think it was at Henry's Bar,
where all the young Americans go to drink strange beverages. I am quite
sure I remember his face. A weak face, but not quite bad."
And after another little pause he asked:
"Was there any reason why he should have gone away--any quarrel or that
sort of thing?"
"Well," said the other man, "I rather think there was something of the
sort. The boy's uncle--Captain Stewart--middle-aged, rather prim old
party--you'll have met him, I dare say--he intimated to me one day that
there had been some trivial row. You see, the lad isn't of age yet,
though he is to be in a few months, and so he has had to live on an
allowance doled out by his grandfather, who's the head of the house. The
boy's father is dead. There's a quaint old beggar, if you like--the
grandfather. He was rather a swell in the diplomatic, in his day, it
seems--rather an important swell. Now he's bedridden. He sits all day in
bed and plays cards with his granddaughter or with a very superior
valet, and talks politics with the men who come to see him. Oh yes, he's
a quaint old beggar. He has a great quantity of white hair and an
enormous square white beard and the fiercest eyes I ever saw, I should
think. Everybody's frightened out of their wits of him. Well, he sits up
there and rules his family in good old patriarchal style, and it seems
he came down a bit hard on the poor boy one day over some folly or
other, and there was a row and the boy went out of the house swearing
he'd be even."
"Ah, well, then," said Ste. Marie, "the matter seems simple enough. A
foolish boy's foolish pique. He is staying in hiding somewhere to
frighten his grandfather. When he thinks the time favorable he will come
back and be wept over and forgiven."
The other man walked a little way in silence.
"Ye-es," he said, at last. "Yes, possibly. Possibly you are right.
That's what the grandfather thinks. It's the obvious solution.
Unfortunately there is more or less against it. The boy went away
with--so far as can be learned--almost no money, almost none at all. And
he has already been gone a month. Miss Benham, his sister, is sure that
something has happened to him, and I'm a bit inclined to think so, too.
It's all very odd. I should think he might have been kidnapped but that
no demand has been made for money."
"He was not," suggested Ste. Marie--"not the sort of young man to do
anything desperate--make away with himself?" Hartley laughed.
"Oh, Lord, no!" said he. "Not that sort of young man at all. He was a
very normal type of rich and spoiled and somewhat foolish American boy."
"Rich?" inquired the other, quickly.
"Oh yes; they're beastly rich. Young Arthur is to come into something
very good at his majority, I believe, from his father's estate, and the
old grandfather is said to be indecently rich--rolling in it! There's
another reason why the young idiot wouldn't be likely to stop away of
his own accord. He wouldn't risk anything like a serious break with the
old gentleman. It would mean a loss of millions to him, I dare say, for
the old beggar is quite capable of cutting him off if he takes the
notion. Oh, it's a bad business all through."
And after they had gone on a bit he said it again, shaking his head:
"It's a bad business! That poor girl, you know. It's hard on her. She
was fond of the young ass for some reason or other. She's very much
broken up over it."
"Yes," said Ste. Marie, "it is hard for her--for all the family, of
course. A bad business, as you say." He spoke absently, for he was
looking ahead at something which seemed to be a motor accident. They had
by this time got well up the Champs-Elysées and were crossing the Rond
Point. A motor-car was drawn up alongside the curb just beyond, and a
little knot of people stood about it and seemed to look at something on
the ground.
"I think some one has been run down," said Ste. Marie. "Shall we have a
look?" They quickened their pace and came to where the group of people
stood in a circle looking upon the ground, and two gendarmes asked many
questions and wrote voluminously in their little books. It appeared that
a delivery boy mounted upon a tricycle cart had turned into the wrong
side of the avenue and had got himself run into and overturned by a
motor-car going at a moderate rate of speed. For once the sentiment of
those mysterious birds of prey which flock instantaneously from nowhere
round an accident, was against the victim and in favor of the frightened
and gesticulating chauffeur.
Ste. Marie turned an amused face from this voluble being to the other
occupants of the patently hired car, who stood apart, adding very little
to the discussion. He saw a tall and bony man with very bright blue eyes
and what is sometimes called a guardsman's mustache--the drooping,
walruslike ornament which dates back a good many years now. Beyond this
gentleman he saw a young woman in a long, gray silk coat and a motoring
veil. He was aware that the tall man was staring at him rather fixedly
and with a half-puzzled frown, as though he thought that they had met
before and was trying to remember when, but Ste. Marie gave the man but
a swift glance. His eyes were upon the dark face of the young woman
beyond, and it seemed to him that she called aloud to him in an actual
voice that rang in his ears. The young woman's very obvious beauty, he
thought, had nothing to do with the matter. It seemed to him that her
eyes called him. Just that. Something strange and very potent seemed to
take sudden and almost tangible hold upon him--a charm, a spell, a
magic--something unprecedented, new to his experience. He could not take
his eyes from hers, and he stood staring.
As before, on the Pont de la Concorde, Hartley touched him on the arm,
and abruptly the chains that had bound him were loosened.
"We must be going on, you know," the Englishman said, and Ste. Marie
said, rather hurriedly:
"Yes, yes, to be sure! Come along!" But at a little distance he turned
once more to look back. The chauffeur had mounted to his place, the
delivery boy was upon his feet again, little the worse for his tumble,
and the knot of bystanders had begun to disperse, but it seemed to Ste.
Marie that the young woman in the long silk coat stood quite still where
she had been, and that her face was turned toward him, watching.
"Did you notice that girl?" said Hartley, as they walked on at a brisker
pace. "Did you see her face? She was rather a tremendous beauty, you
know, in her gypsyish fashion. Yes, by Jove, she was!"
"Did I see her?" repeated Ste. Marie. "Yes. Oh yes. She had very strange
eyes. At least, I think it was the eyes. I don't know. I've never seen
any eyes quite like them. Very odd!"
He said something more in French which Hartley did not hear, and the
Englishman saw that he was frowning.
"Oh, well, I shouldn't have said there was anything strange about them,"
Hartley said; "but they certainly were beautiful. There's no denying
that. The man with her looked rather Irish, I thought."
They came to the Etoile, and cut across it toward the Avenue Hoche. Ste.
Marie glanced back once more, but the motor-car and the delivery boy and
the gendarmes were gone.
"What did you say?" he asked, idly.
"I said the man looked Irish," repeated his friend. All at once Ste.
Marie gave a loud exclamation.
"Sacred thousand devils! Fool that I am! Dolt! Why didn't I think of it
before?"
Hartley stared at him, and Ste. Marie stared down the Champs-Elysées
like one in a trance.
"I say," said the Englishman, "we really must be getting on, you know;
we're late." And as they went along down the Avenue Hoche, he demanded:
"Why are you a dolt and whatever else it was? What struck you so
suddenly?"
"I remembered all at once," said Ste. Marie, "where I had seen that man
before and with whom I last saw him. I'll tell you about it later.
Probably it's of no importance, though."
"You're talking rather like a mild lunatic," said the other. "Here we
are at the house!"
* * * * *
II
THE LADDER TO THE STARS
Miss Benham was talking wearily to a strange, fair youth with an
impediment in his speech, and was wondering why the youth had been asked
to this house, where in general one was sure of meeting only interesting
people, when some one spoke her name, and she turned with a little sigh
of relief. It was Baron de Vries, the Belgian First Secretary of
Legation, an old friend of her grandfather's, a man made gentle and
sweet by infinite sorrow. He bowed civilly to the fair youth and bent
over the girl's hand.
"It is very good," he said, "to see you again in the world. We have need
of you, nous autres. Madame your mother is well, I hope--and the bear?"
He called old Mr. Stewart "the bear" in a sort of grave jest, and that
fierce octogenarian rather liked it.
"Oh yes," the girl said, "we're all fairly well. My mother had one of
her headaches to-night and so didn't come here, but she's as well as
usual, and 'the bear'--yes, he's well enough physically, I should think,
but he has not been quite the same since--during the past month. It has
told upon him, you know. He grieves over it much more than he will
admit."
"Yes," said Baron de Vries, gravely. "Yes, I know." He turned about
toward the fair young man, but that youth had drifted away and joined
himself to another group. Miss Benham looked after him and gave a little
exclamation of relief.
"That person was rather terrible," she said. "I can't think why he is
here. Marian so seldom has dull people."
"I believe," said the Belgian, "that he is some connection of De
Saulnes'. That explains his presence." He lowered his voice. "You have
heard no--news? They have found no trace?"
"No," said she. "Nothing. Nothing at all. I'm rather in despair. It's
all so hideously mysterious. I am sure, you know, that something has
happened to him. It's--very, very hard. Sometimes I think I can't bear
it. But I go on. We all go on."
Baron de Vries nodded his head strongly.
"That, my dear child, is just what you must do," said he. "You must go
on. That is what needs the real courage, and you have courage. I am not
afraid for you. And sooner or later you will hear of him--from him. It
is impossible nowadays to disappear for very long. You will hear from
him." He smiled at her, his slow, grave smile that was not of mirth but
of kindness and sympathy and cheer.
"And if I may say so," he said, "you are doing very wisely to come out
once more among your friends. You can accomplish no good by brooding at
home. It is better to live one's normal life--even when it is not easy
to do it. I say so who know."
The girl touched Baron de Vries' arm for an instant with her hand--a
little gesture that seemed to express thankfulness and trust and
affection.
"If all my friends were like you!" she said to him. And after that she
drew a quick breath as if to have done with these sad matters, and she
turned her eyes once more toward the broad room where the other guests
stood in little groups, all talking at once, very rapidly and in loud
voices.
"What extraordinarily cosmopolitan affairs these dinner-parties in new
Paris are!" she said. "They're like diplomatic parties, only we have a
better time and the men don't wear their orders. How many nationalities
should you say there are in this room now?"
"Without stopping to consider," said Baron de Vries, "I say ten." They
counted, and out of fourteen people there were represented nine races.
"I don't see Richard Hartley," Miss Benham said. "I had an idea he was
to be here. Ah!" she broke off, looking toward the doorway. "Here he
comes now!" she said. "He's rather late. Who is the Spanish-looking man
with him, I wonder? He's rather handsome, isn't he?"
Baron de Vries moved a little forward to look, and exclaimed in his
turn. He said:
"Ah, I did not know he was returned to Paris. That is Ste. Marie." Miss
Benham's eyes followed the Spanish-looking young man as he made his way
through the joyous greetings of friends toward his hostess.
"So that is Ste. Marie!" she said, still watching him. "The famous Ste.
Marie!" She gave a little laugh.
"Well, I don't wonder at the reputation he bears for--gallantry and that
sort of thing. He looks the part, doesn't he?"
"Ye-es," admitted her friend. "Yes, he is sufficiently beau garçon.
But--yes--well, that is not all, by any means. You must not get the idea
that Ste. Marie is nothing but a genial and romantic young
squire-of-dames. He is much more than that. He has very fine qualities.
To be sure, he appears to possess no ambition in particular, but I
should be glad if he were my son. He comes of a very old house, and
there is no blot upon the history of that house--nothing but
faithfulness and gallantry and honor. And there is, I think, no blot
upon Ste. Marie himself. He is fine gold."
The girl turned and stared at Baron de Vries with some astonishment.
"You speak very strongly," said she. "I have never heard you speak so
strongly of any one, I think."
The Belgian made a little deprecatory gesture with his two hands, and he
laughed.
"Oh, well, I like the boy. And I should hate to have you meet him for
the first time under a misconception. Listen, my child! When a young man
is loved equally by both men and women, by both old and young, that
young man is worthy of friendship and trust. Everybody likes Ste. Marie.
In a sense, that is his misfortune. The way is made too easy for him.
His friends stand so thick about him that they shut off his view of the
heights. To waken ambition in his soul he has need of solitude or
misfortune or grief. Or," said the elderly Belgian, laughing gently--"or
perhaps the other thing might do it best--the more obvious thing?"
The girl's raised eyebrows questioned him, and when he did not answer,
she said:
"What thing, then?"
"Why, love," said Baron de Vries. "Love, to be sure. Love is said to
work miracles, and I believe that to be a perfectly true saying. Ah, he
is coming here!"
The Marquise de Saulnes, who was a very pretty little Englishwoman with
a deceptively doll-like look, approached, dragging Ste. Marie in her
wake. She said:
"My dearest dear, I give you of my best. Thank me and cherish him! I
believe he is to lead you to the place where food is, isn't he?" She
beamed over her shoulder and departed, and Miss Benham found herself
confronted by the Spanish-looking man. Her first thought was that he was
not as handsome as he had seemed at a distance, but something much
better. For a young man she thought his face was rather oddly
weather-beaten, as if he might have been very much at sea, and it was
too dark to be entirely pleasing. But she liked his eyes, which were not
brown or black, as she had expected, but a very unusual dark gray--a
sort of slate color. And she liked his mouth, too, while disapproving of
the fierce little upturned mustache which seemed to her a bit operatic.
It was her habit--and it is not an unreliable habit--to judge people by
their eyes and mouths. Ste. Marie's mouth pleased her because the lips
were neither thin nor thick, they were not drawn into an unpleasant line
by unpleasant habits, they did not pout as so many Latin lips do, and
they had at one corner a humorous expression which she found curiously
agreeable.
"You are to cherish me," Ste. Marie said. "Orders from headquarters. How
does one cherish people?" The corner of his very expressive mouth
twitched, and he grinned at her.
Miss Benham did not approve of young men who began an acquaintance in
this very familiar manner. She thought that there was a certain
preliminary and more formal stage which ought to be got through with
first, but Ste, Marie's grin was irresistible. In spite of herself, she
found that she was laughing.
"I don't quite know," she said. "It sounds rather appalling, doesn't it?
Marian has such an extraordinary fashion of hurling people at each
other's heads! She takes my breath away at times."
"Ah, well," said Ste. Marie, "perhaps we can settle upon something when
I've led you to the place where food is. And, by-the-way, what are we
waiting for? Are we not all here? There's an even number." He broke off
with a sudden exclamation of pleasure; and when Miss Benham turned to
look, she found that Baron de Vries, who had been talking to some
friends, had once more come up to where she stood.
She watched the greeting between the two men, and its quiet affection
impressed her very much. She knew Baron de Vries well, and she knew that
it was not his habit to show or to feel a strong liking for young and
idle men. This young man must be very worth while to have won the regard
of that wise old Belgian. Just then Hartley, who had been barricaded
behind a cordon of friends, came up to her in an abominable temper over
his ill luck, and a few moments later the dinner procession was formed
and they went in.
At table Miss Benham found herself between Ste. Marie and the same
strange, fair youth who had afflicted her in the drawing-room. She
looked upon him now with a sort of dismayed terror, but it developed
that there was nothing to fear from the fair youth. He had no attention
to waste upon social amenities. He fell upon his food with a wolfish
passion extraordinary to see and also--alas!--to hear. Miss Benham
turned from him to meet Ste. Marie's delighted eye.
"Tell him for me," begged that gentleman, "that soup should be seen--not
heard."
But Miss Benham gave a little shiver of disgust. "I shall tell him
nothing whatever," she said. "He's quite too dreadful, really! People
shouldn't be exposed to that sort of thing. It's not only the noises.
Plenty of very charming and estimable Germans, for example, make strange
noises at table. But he behaves like a famished dog over a bone. I
refuse to have anything to do with him. You must make up the loss to me,
M. Ste. Marie. You must be as amusing as two people." She smiled across
at him in her gravely questioning fashion. "I'm wondering," she said,
"if I dare ask you a very personal question. I hesitate because I don't
like people who presume too much upon a short acquaintance--and our
acquaintance has been very, very short, hasn't it? even though we may
have heard a great deal about each other beforehand. I wonder--"
"Oh, I should ask it if I were you!" said Ste. Marie, at once. "I'm an
extremely good-natured person. And, besides, I quite naturally feel
flattered at your taking interest enough to ask anything about me."
"Well," said she, "it's this: Why does everybody call you just 'Ste.
Marie'? Most people are spoken of as Monsieur this or that--if there
isn't a more august title; but they all call you Ste. Marie without any
Monsieur. It seems rather odd."
Ste. Marie looked puzzled. "Why," he said, "I don't believe I know,
just. I'd never thought of that. It's quite true, of course. They never
do use a Monsieur or anything, do they? How cheeky of them! I wonder why
it is? I'll ask Hartley."
He did ask Hartley later on, and Hartley didn't know, either. Miss
Benham asked some other people, who were vague about it, and in the end
she became convinced that it was an odd and quite inexplicable form of
something like endearment. But nobody seemed to have formulated it to
himself.
"The name is really 'De Ste. Marie,'" he went on, "and there's a title
that I don't use, and a string of Christian names that one never
employs. My people were Béarnais, and there's a heap of ruins on top of
a hill in the Pyrenees where they lived. It used to be Ste. Marie de
Mont-les-Roses, but afterward, after the Revolution, they called it Ste.
Marie de Mont Perdu. My great-grandfather was killed there, but some old
servants smuggled his little son away and saved him."
He seemed to Miss Benham to say that in exactly the right manner, not in
the cheap and scoffing fashion which some young men affect in speaking
of ancestral fortunes or misfortunes, nor with too much solemnity. And
when she allowed a little silence to occur at the end, he did not go on
with his family history, but turned at once to another subject. It
pleased her curiously.
The fair youth at her other side continued to crouch over his food,
making fierce and animal-like noises. He never spoke or seemed to wish
to be spoken to, and Miss Benham found it easy to ignore him altogether.
It occurred to her once or twice that Ste. Marie's other neighbor might
desire an occasional word from him, but, after all, she said to herself
that was his affair and beyond her control. So these two talked together
through the entire dinner period, and the girl was aware that she was
being much more deeply affected by the simple, magnetic charm of a man
than ever before in her life. It made her a little angry, because she
was unfamiliar with this sort of thing and distrusted it. She was rather
a perfect type of that phenomenon before which the British and
Continental world stands in mingled delight and exasperation--the
American unmarried young woman, the creature of extraordinary beauty and
still more extraordinary poise, the virgin with the bearing and
savoir-faire of a woman of the world, the fresh-cheeked girl with the
calm mind of a savante and the cool judgment, in regard to men and
things, of an ambassador. The European world says she is cold, and that
may be true; but it is well enough known that she can love very deeply.
It says that, like most queens, and for precisely the same set of
reasons, she later on makes a bad mother; but it is easy to point to
queens who are the best of mothers. In short, she remains an enigma,
and, like all other enigmas, forever fascinating.
Miss Benham reflected that she knew almost nothing about Ste. Marie save
for his reputation as a carpet knight, and Baron de Vries' good opinion,
which could not be despised. And that made her the more displeased when
she realized how promptly she was surrendering to his charm. In a moment
of silence she gave a sudden little laugh which seemed to express a
half-angry astonishment.
"What was that for?" Ste. Marie demanded.
The girl looked at him for an instant and shook her head.
"I can't tell you," said she. "That's rude, isn't it? I'm sorry. Perhaps
I will tell you one day, when we know each other better."
But inwardly she was saying: "Why, I suppose this is how they all
begin--all these regiments of women who make fools of themselves about
him! I suppose this is exactly what he does to them all!"
It made her angry, and she tried quite unfairly to shift the anger, as
it were, to Ste. Marie--to put him somehow in the wrong. But she was by
nature very just, and she could not quite do that, particularly as it
was evident that the man was using no cheap tricks. He did not try to
flirt with her, and he did not attempt to pay her veiled compliments,
though she was often aware that when her attention was diverted for a
few moments his eyes were always upon her, and that is a compliment that
few women can find it in their hearts to resent.
"You say," said Ste. Marie, "'when we know each other better.' May one
twist that into a permission to come and see you--I mean, really see
you--not just leave a card at your door to-morrow by way of observing
the formalities?"
"Yes," she said. "Oh yes, one may twist it into something like that
without straining it unduly, I think. My mother and I shall be very glad
to see you. I'm sorry she is not here to-night to say it herself."
Then the hostess began to gather together her flock, and so the two had
no more speech. But when the women had gone and the men were left about
the dismantled table, Hartley moved up beside Ste. Marie and shook a sad
head at him. He said:
"You're a very lucky being. I was quietly hoping, on the way here, that
I should be the fortunate man, but you always have all the luck. I hope
you're decently grateful."
"Mon vieux," said Ste. Marie, "my feet are upon the stars. No!" He shook
his head as if the figure displeased him. "No, my feet are upon the
ladder to the stars. Grateful? What does a foolish word like grateful
mean? Don't talk to me. You are not worthy to trample among my
magnificent thoughts. I am a god upon Olympus."
"You said just now," objected the other man, practically, "that your
feet were on a ladder. There are no ladders from Olympus to the stars."
"Ho!" said Ste. Marie. "Ho! Aren't there, though? There shall be ladders
all over Olympus, if I like. What do you know about gods and stars? I
shall be a god climbing to the heavens, and I shall be an angel of
light, and I shall be a miserable worm grovelling in the night here
below, and I shall be a poet, and I shall be anything else I happen to
think of--all of them at once, if I choose. And you shall be the
tongue-tied son of perfidious Albion that you are, gaping at my
splendors from a fog-bank--a November fog-bank in May. Who is the
desiccated gentleman bearing down upon us?"
* * * * *
III
STE. MARIE MAKES A VOW, BUT A PAIR OF EYES HAUNT HIM
Hartley looked over his shoulder and gave a little exclamation of
distaste.
"It's Captain Stewart, Miss Benham's uncle," he said, lowering his
voice. "I'm off. I shall abandon you to him. He's a good old soul, but
he bores me." Hartley nodded to the man who was approaching, and then
made his way to the end of the table, where their host sat discussing
aero-club matters with a group of the other men.
Captain Stewart dropped into the vacant chair, saying: "May I recall
myself to you, M. Ste. Marie? We met, I believe, once or twice, a couple
of years ago. My name's Stewart."
Captain Stewart--the title was vaguely believed to have been borne some
years before in the American service, but no one appeared to know much
about it--was not an old man. He could not have been, at this time, much
more than fifty, but English-speaking acquaintances often called him
"old Stewart," and others "ce vieux Stewart." Indeed, at a first glance
he might have passed for anything up to sixty, for his face was a good
deal more lined and wrinkled than it should have been at his age. Ste.
Marie's adjective had been rather apt. The man had a desiccated
appearance. Upon examination, however, one saw that the blood was still
red in his cheeks and lips, and, although his neck was thin and withered
like an old man's, his brown eyes still held their fire. The hair was
almost gone from the top of his large, round head, but it remained at
the sides--stiff, colorless hair, with a hint of red in it. And there
were red streaks in his gray mustache, which was trained outward in two
loose tufts, like shaving-brushes. The mustache and the shallow chin
under it gave him an odd, catlike appearance. Hartley, who rather
disliked the man, used to insist that he had heard him mew.
Ste. Marie said something politely non-committal, though he did not at
all remember the alleged meeting two years before, and he looked at
Captain Stewart with a real curiosity and interest in his character as
Miss Benham's uncle. He thought it very civil of the elder man to make
these friendly advances when it was in no way incumbent upon him to do
so.
"I noticed," said Captain Stewart, "that you were placed next my niece,
Helen Benham, at dinner. This must be the first time you two have met,
is it not? I remember speaking of you to her some months ago, and I am
quite sure she said that she had not met you. Ah, yes, of course, you
have been away from Paris a great deal since she and her mother--her
mother is my sister: that is to say, my half-sister--have come here to
live with my father." He gave a little gentle laugh. "I take an elderly
uncle's privilege," he said, "of being rather proud of Helen. She is
called very pretty, and she certainly has great poise."
Ste. Marie drew a quick breath, and his eyes began to flash as they had
done a few moments before when he told Hartley that his feet were upon
the ladder to the stars.
"Miss Benham!" he cried. "Miss Benham is--" He hung poised so for a
moment, searching, as it were, for words of sufficient splendor, but in
the end he shook his head and the gleam faded from his eyes. He sank
back in his chair, sighing. "Miss Benham," said he, "is extremely
beautiful."
And again her uncle emitted his little gentle laugh, which may have
deceived Hartley into believing that he had heard the man mew. The sound
was as much like mewing as it was like anything else.
"I am very glad," Captain Stewart said, "to see her come out once more
into the world. She needs distraction. We--You may possibly have heard
that the family is in great distress of mind over the disappearance of
my young nephew. Helen has suffered particularly, because she is
convinced that the boy has met with foul play. I myself think it very
unlikely--very unlikely indeed. The lack of motive, for one thing, and
for another--Ah, well, a score of reasons! But Helen refuses to be
comforted. It seems to me much more like a boy's prank--his idea of
revenge for what he considered unjust treatment at his grandfather's
hands. He was always a headstrong youngster, and he has been a bit
spoiled. Still, of course, the uncertainty is very trying for us
all--very wearing."
"Of course," said Ste. Marie, gravely. "It is most unfortunate. Ah,
by-the-way!" He looked up with a sudden interest. "A rather odd thing
happened," he said, "as Hartley and I were coming here this evening. We
walked up the Champs-Elysées from the Concorde, and on the way Hartley
had been telling me of your nephew's disappearance. Near the Rond Point
we came upon a motor-car which was drawn up at the side of the
street--there had been an accident of no consequence, a boy tumbled over
but not hurt. Well, one of the two occupants of the motor-car was a man
whom I used to see about Maxim's and the Café de Paris and the
Montmartre places, too, some time ago--a rather shady character whose
name I've forgotten. The odd part of it all was that on the last
occasion or two on which I saw your nephew he was with this man. I think
it was in Henry's Bar. Of course, it means nothing at all. Your nephew
doubtless knew scores of people, and this man is no more likely to have
information about his present whereabouts than any of the others. Still,
I should have liked to ask him. I didn't remember who he was till he had
gone."
Captain Stewart shook his head sadly, frowning down upon the cigarette
from which he had knocked the ash.
"I am afraid poor Arthur did not always choose his friends with the best
of judgment," said he. "I am not squeamish, and I would not have boys
kept in a glass case, but--yes, I'm afraid Arthur was not always too
careful." He replaced the cigarette neatly between his lips. "This man,
now--this man whom you saw to-night--what sort of looking man will he
have been?"
"Oh, a tall, lean man," said Ste. Marie. "A tall man with blue eyes and
a heavy, old-fashioned mustache. I just can't remember the name."
The smoke stood still for an instant over Captain Stewart's cigarette,
and it seemed to Ste. Marie that a little contortion of anger fled
across the man's face and was gone again. He stirred slightly in his
chair. After a moment he said:
"I fancy, from your description--I fancy I know who the man was. If it
is the man I am thinking of, the name is--Powers. He is, as you have
said, a rather shady character, and I more than once warned my nephew
against him. Such people are not good companions for a boy. Yes, I
warned him."
"Powers," said Ste. Marie, "doesn't sound right to me, you know. I can't
say the fellow's name myself, but I'm sure--that is, I think--it's not
Powers."
"Oh yes," said Captain Stewart, with an elderly man's half-querulous
certainty. "Yes, the name is Powers. I remember it well. And I
remember--Yes, it was odd, was it not, your meeting him like that, just
as you were talking of Arthur? You--oh, you didn't speak to him, you
say? No, no, to be sure! You didn't recognize him at once. Yes, it was
odd. Of course, the man could have had nothing to do with poor Arthur's
disappearance. His only interest in the boy at any time would have been
for what money Arthur might have, and he carried none, or almost none,
away with him when he vanished. Eh, poor lad! Where can he be to-night,
I wonder? It's a sad business, M. Ste. Marie--a sad business."
Captain Stewart fell into a sort of brooding silence, frowning down at
the table before him, and twisting with his thin ringers the little
liqueur glass and the coffee-cup which were there. Once or twice, Ste.
Marie thought, the frown deepened and twisted into a sort of scowl, and
the man's fingers twitched on the cloth of the table; but when at last
the group at the other end of the board rose and began to move towards
the door, Captain Stewart rose also and followed them. At the door he
seemed to think of something, and touched Ste. Marie upon the arm.
"This--ah, Powers," he said, in a low tone--"this man whom you saw
to-night! You said he was one of two occupants of a motor-car. Yes? Did
you by any chance recognize the other?"
"Oh, the other was a young woman," said Ste. Marie. "No, I never saw her
before. She was very handsome."
Captain Stewart said something under his breath and turned abruptly
away. But an instant later he faced about once more, smiling. He said,
in a man-of-the-world manner, which sat rather oddly upon him:
"Ah, well, we all have our little love-affairs. I dare say this shady
fellow has his." And for some obscure reason Ste. Marie found the speech
peculiarly offensive.