XXI
A MIST DIMS THE SHINING STAR
Ste. Marie remained in his room all the rest of that day, and he did not see Mlle. O'Hara again, for Michel brought him his lunch and the old Justine his dinner. For the greater part of the time he sat in bed reading, but rose now and then and moved about the room. His wound seemed to have suffered no great inconvenience from the morning's outing. If he stood or walked too long it burned somewhat, and he had the sensation of a tight band round the leg; but this passed after he had lain down for a little while, or even sat in a chair with the leg straight out before him; so he knew that he was not to be crippled very much longer, and his thoughts began to turn more and more keenly upon the matter of escape.
He realized, of course, that now, since he was once more able to walk, he would be guarded with unremitting care every moment of the day, and quite possibly every moment of the night as well, though the simple bolting of his door on the outside would seem to answer the purpose save when he was out-of-doors. Once he went to the two east windows and hung out of them, testing as well as he could with his hands the strength and tenacity of the ivy which covered that side of the house. He thought it seemed strong enough to give hand and foot hold without being torn loose, but he was afraid it would make an atrocious amount of noise if he should try to climb down it, and, besides, he would need two very active legs for that.
At another time a fresh idea struck him, and he put it at once into action. There might be just a chance, when out one day with Michel, of getting near enough to the wall which ran along the Clamart road to throw something over it when the old man was not looking. In one of his pockets he had a card-case with a little pencil fitted into a loop at the edge, and in the case it was his custom to carry postage-stamps. He investigated and found pencil and stamps. Of course he had nothing but cards to write upon, and they were useless. He looked about the room and went through an empty chest of drawers in vain, but at last, on some shelves in the closet where his clothes had hung, he found several large sheets of coarse white paper. The shelves were covered with it loosely for the sake of cleanliness. He abstracted one of these sheets, and cut it into squares of the ordinary note-paper size, and he sat down and wrote a brief letter to Richard Hartley, stating where he was, that Arthur Benham was there, the O'Haras, and, he thought, Captain Stewart. He did not write the names out, but put instead the initial letters of each name, knowing that Hartley would understand. He gave careful directions as to how the place was to be reached, and he asked Hartley to come as soon as possible by night to that wall where he himself had made his entrance, to climb up by the cedar-tree, and to drop his answer into the thick leaves of the lilac bushes immediately beneath--an answer naming a day and hour, preferably by night, when he could return with three or four to help him, surprise the household at La Lierre, and carry off young Benham.
Ste. Marie wrote this letter four times, and each of the four copies he enclosed in an awkwardly fashioned envelope, made with infinite pains so that its flaps folded in together, for he had no gum. He addressed and stamped the four envelopes, and put them all in his pocket to await the first opportunity.
Afterward he lay down for a while, and as, one after another, the books he had in the room failed to interest him, his thoughts began to turn back to Mlle. Coira O'Hara and his hour with her upon the old stone bench in the garden. He realized all at once that he had been putting off this reflection as one puts off a reckoning that one a little dreads to face, and rather vaguely he realized why.
The spell that the girl wielded--quite without being conscious of it; he granted her that grace--was too potent. It was dangerous, and he knew it. Even imaginative and very unpractical people can be in some things surprisingly matter-of-fact, and Ste. Marie was matter-of-fact about this. The girl had made a mysterious and unprecedented appeal to him at his very first sight of her, long before, and ever since that time she had continued, intermittently at least, to haunt his dreams. Now he was in the very house with her. It was quite possible that he might see her and speak with her every day, and he knew there was peril in that.
He closed his eyes and she came to him, dark and beautiful, magnetically vital, spreading enchantment about her like a fragrance. She sat beside him on the moss-stained bench in the garden, holding out her hand cup-wise, and a sunbeam lay in the hand like a little, golden, fluttering bird. His thoughts ran back to that first morning when he had narrowly escaped death by poison. He remembered the girl's agony of fear and horror. He felt her hands once more upon his shoulders, and he was aware that his breath was coming faster and that his heart beat quickly. He got to his feet and went across to one of the windows, and he stood there for a long time frowning out into the summer day. If ever in his life, he said to himself with some deliberation, he was to need a cool and clear head, faculties unclouded and unimpaired by emotion, it was now in these next few days. Much more than his own well-being depended upon him now. The fates of a whole family, and quite possibly the lives of some of them, were in his hands. He must not fail, and he must not, in any least way, falter.
For enemies he had a band of desperate adventurers, and the very boy himself, the centre and reason for the whole plot, had been, in some incomprehensible way, so played upon that he, too, was against him.
The man standing by the window forced himself quite deliberately to look the plain facts in the face. He compelled himself to envisage this beautiful girl with her tragic eyes for just what his reason knew her to be--an adventuress, a decoy, a lure to a callow, impressionable, foolish lad, the tool of that arch-villain Stewart and of the lesser villain her father. It was like standing by and watching something lovely and pitiful vilely befouled. It turned his heart sick within him, but he held himself to the task. He brought to aid him the vision of his lady, in whose cause he was pursuing this adventure. For strength and determination he reached eye and hand to her where she sat enthroned, calm-browed, serene.
For the first time since the beginning of all things his lady failed him, and Ste. Marie turned cold with fear.
Where was that splendid frenzy that had been wont to sweep him all in an instant into upper air--set his feet upon the stars? Where was it? The man gave a sudden, voiceless cry of horror. The wings that had such countless times upborne him fluttered weakly near the earth and could not mount. His lady was there; through infinite space he was aware of her, but she was cold and aloof, and her eyes gazed very serenely beyond at something he could not see.
He knew well enough that the fault lay somewhere within himself. She was as she had ever been, but he lacked the strength to rise to her. Why? Why? He searched himself with a desperate earnestness, but he could find no answer to his questioning. In himself, as in her, there had come no change. She was still to him all that she ever had been--the star of his destiny, the pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day, to guide him on his path. Where, then, the fine, pure fervor that should, at thought of her, whirl him on high and make a god of him?
He stood wrapped in bewilderment and despair, for he could find no answer.
In plain words, in commonplace black-and-white, the man's anguish has an over-fanciful, a well-nigh absurd look, but to Ste. Marie the thing was very real and terrible, as real and as terrible as, to a half-starved monk in his lonely cell, the sudden failure of the customary exaltation of spirit after a night's long prayer.
He went, after a time, back to the bed, and lay down there with one upflung arm across his eyes to shut out the light. He was filled with a profound dejection and a sense of hopelessness. Through all the long week of his imprisonment he had been cheerful, at times even gay. However evil his case might have looked, his elastic spirits had mounted above all difficulties and cares, confident in the face of apparent defeat. Now at last he lay still, bruised, as it were, and battered and weary. The flame of courage burned very low in him. From sheer exhaustion he fell after a time into a troubled sleep, but even there the enemy followed him and would not let him rest. He seemed to himself to be in a place of shadows and fears. He strained his eyes to make out above him the bright, clear star of guidance, for so long as that shone he was safe; but something had come between--cloud or mist--and his star shone dimly in fitful glimpses.
On the next morning he went out once more with the old Michel into the garden. He went with a stronger heart, for the morning had renewed his courage, as bright, fresh mornings do. From the anguish of the day before he held himself carefully aloof. He kept his mind away from all thought of it, and gave his attention to the things about him. It would return, doubtless, in the slow, idle hours; he would have to face it again and yet again; he would have to contend with it; but for the present he put it out of his thoughts, for there were things to do.
It was no more than human of him--and certainly it was very characteristic of Ste. Marie--that he should be half glad and half disappointed at not finding Coira O'Hara in her place at the rond point. It left him free to do what he wished to do--make a careful reconnaissance of the whole garden enclosure--but it left him empty of something he had, without conscious thought, looked forward to.
His wounded leg was stronger and more flexible than on the day before; it burned and prickled less, and could be bent a little at the knee with small distress; so he led the old Michel at a good pace down the length of the enclosure, past the rose-gardens, a tangle of unkempt sweetness, and so to the opposite wall. He found the gates there, very formidable-looking, made of vertical iron bars connected by cross-pieces and an ornamental scroll. They were fastened together by a heavy chain and a padlock. The lock was covered with rust, as were the gates themselves, and Ste. Marie observed that the lane outside upon which they gave was overgrown with turf and moss, and even with seedling shrubs; so he felt sure that this entrance was never used. The lane, he noted, swept away to the right toward Issy and not toward the Clamart road. He heard, as he stood there, the whir of a tram from far away at the left, a tram bound to or from Clamart, and the sound brought to his mind what he wished to do. He turned about and began to make his way round the rose-gardens, which were partly enclosed by a low brick wall some two or three feet high. Beyond them the trees and shrubbery were not set out in orderly rows as they were near the house, but grew at will without hindrance or care. It was like a bit of the Meudon wood.
He found the going more difficult here for his bad leg, but he pressed on, and in a little while saw before him that wall which skirted the Clamart road. He felt in his pocket for the four sealed and stamped letters, but just then the old Michel spoke behind him:
"Pardon, Monsieur! Ce n'est pas permis."
"What is not permitted?" demanded Ste. Marie, wheeling about.
"To approach that wall, Monsieur," said the old man, with an incredibly gnomelike and apologetic grin.
Ste. Marie gave an exclamation of disgust. "Is it believed that I could leap over it?" he asked. "A matter of five metres? Merci, non! I am not so agile. You flatter me."
The old Michel spread out his two gnarled hands.
"Pas de ma faute. I have orders, Monsieur. It will be my painful duty to shoot if Monsieur approaches that wall." He turned his strange head on one side and regarded Ste. Marie with his sharp and beadlike eye. The smile of apology still distorted his face, and he looked exactly like the Punchinello in a street show.
Ste. Marie slowly withdrew from his pocket two louis d'or and held them before him in the palm of his hand. He looked down upon them, and Michel looked, too, with a gaze so intense that his solitary eye seemed to project a very little from his withered face. He was like a hypnotized old bird.
"Mon vieux," said Ste. Marie. "I am a man of honor."
"Sûrement! Sûrement, Monsieur!" said the old Michel, politely, but his hypnotized gaze did not stir so much as a hair's-breadth. "Ça va sans le dire."
"A man of honor," repeated Ste. Marie. "When I give my word I keep it. Voilà! I keep it. And," said he, "I have here forty francs. Two louis. A large sum. It is yours, my brave Michel, for the mere trouble of turning your back just thirty seconds."
"Monsieur," whispered the old man, "it is impossible. He would kill me--by torture."
"He will never know," said Ste. Marie, "for I do not mean to try to escape. I give you my word of honor that I shall not try to escape. Besides, I could not climb over that wall, as you see. Two louis, Michel! Forty francs!"
The old man's hands twisted and trembled round the barrel of the carbine, and he swallowed once with some difficulty. He seemed to hesitate, but in the end he shook his head. It was as if he shook it in grief over the grave of his first-born. "It is impossible," he said again. "Impossible." He tore the beadlike eye away from those two beautiful, glowing golden things, and Ste. Marie saw that there was nothing to be done with him just now. He slipped the money back into his pocket with a little sigh and turned away toward the rose-gardens.
"Ah, well," said he. "Another time, perhaps. Another time. And there are more louis still, mon vieux. Perhaps three or four. Who knows?"
Michel emitted a groan of extreme anguish, and they moved on.
But a few moments later Ste. Marie gave a sudden low exclamation, and then a soundless laugh, for he caught sight of a very familiar figure seated in apparent dejection upon a fallen tree-trunk and staring across the tangled splendor of the roses.
XXII
A SETTLEMENT REFUSED
Captain Stewart had good reason to look depressed on that fresh and beautiful morning when Ste. Marie happened upon him beside the rose-gardens. Matters had not gone well with him of late. He was ill and he was frightened, and he was much nearer than is agreeable to a complete nervous breakdown.
It seemed to him that perils beset him upon every side, perils both seen and unseen. He felt like a man who is hunted in the dark, hard pressed until his strength is gone, and he can flee no farther. He imagined himself to be that man shivering in the gloom in a strange place, hiding eyes and ears lest he see or hear something from which he cannot escape. He imagined the morning light to come, very slow and cold and gray, and in it he saw round about him a silent ring of enemies, the men who had pursued him and run him down. He saw them standing there in the pale dawn, motionless, waiting for the day, and he knew that at last the chase was over and he near done for.
Crouching alone in the garden, with the scent of roses in his nostrils, he wondered with a great and bitter amazement at that madman--himself of only a few months ago--who had sat down deliberately, in his proper senses, to play at cards with Fate, the great winner of all games. He wondered if, after all, he had been in his proper senses, for the deed now loomed before him gigantic and hideous in its criminal folly. His mind went drearily back to the beginning of it all, to the tremendous debts which had hounded him day and night, to his fear to speak of them with his father, who had never had the least mercy upon gamblers. He remembered as if it were yesterday the afternoon upon which he learned of young Arthur's quarrel with his grandfather, old David's senile anger, and the boy's tempestuous exit from the house, vowing never to return. He remembered his talk with old David later on about the will, in which he learned that he was now to have Arthur's share under certain conditions. He remembered how that very evening, three days after his disappearance, the lad had come secretly to the rue du Faubourg St. Honoré begging his uncle to take him in for a few days, and how, in a single instant that was like a lightning flash, the Great Idea had come to him.
What gigantic and appalling madness it had all been! And yet for a time how easy of execution! For a time. Now.... He gave another quick shiver, for his mind came back to what beset him and compassed him round about--perils seen and hidden.
The peril seen was ever before his eyes. Against the light of day it loomed a gigantic and portentous shadow, and it threatened him--the figure of Ste. Marie who knew. His reason told him that if due care were used this danger need not be too formidable, and, indeed, in his heart he rather despised Ste. Marie as an individual; but the man's nerve was broken, and in these days fear swept wavelike over reason and had its way with him. Fear looked up to this looming, portentous shadow and saw there youth and health and strength, courage and hopefulness, and, best of all armors, a righteous cause. How was an ill and tired and wicked old man to fight against these? It became an obsession, the figure of this youth; it darkened the sun at noonday, and at night it stood beside Captain Stewart's bed in the darkness and watched him and waited, and the very air he breathed came chill and dark from its silent presence there.
But there were perils unseen as well as seen. He felt invisible threads drawing round him, weaving closer and closer, and he dared not even try how strong they were lest they prove to be cables of steel. He was almost certain that his niece knew something or at the least suspected. As has already been pointed out, the two saw very little of each other, but on the occasions of their last few meetings it had seemed to him that the girl watched him with a strange stare, and tried always to be in her grandfather's chamber when he called to make his inquiries. Once, stirred by a moment's bravado, he asked her if M. Ste. Marie had returned from his mysterious absence, and the girl said:
"No. He has not come back yet, but I expect him soon now--with news of Arthur. We shall all be very glad to see him, grandfather and Richard Hartley and I."
It was not a very consequential speech, and, to tell the truth, it was what in the girl's own country would be termed pure "bluff," but to Captain Stewart it rang harsh and loud with evil significance, and he went out of that room cold at heart. What plans were they perfecting among them? What invisible nets for his feet?
And there was another thing still. Within the past two or three days he had become convinced that his movements were being watched--and that would be Richard Hartley at work, he said to himself. Faces vaguely familiar began to confront him in the street, in restaurants and cafés. Once he thought his rooms had been ransacked during his absence at La Lierre, though his servant stoutly maintained that they had never been left unoccupied save for a half-hour's marketing. Finally, on the day before this morning by the rose-gardens, he was sure that as he came out from the city in his car he was followed at a long distance by another motor. He saw it behind him after he had left the city gate, the Porte de Versailles, and he saw it again after he had left the main route at Issy and entered the little rue Barbés which led to La Lierre. Of course, he promptly did the only possible thing under the circumstances. He dashed on past the long stretch of wall, swung into the main avenue beyond, and continued through Clamart to the Meudon wood, as if he were going to St. Cloud. In the labyrinth of roads and lanes there he came to a halt, and after a half-hour's wait ran slowly back to La Lierre.
There was no further sign of the other car, the pursuer, if so it had been, but he passed two or three men on bicycles and others walking, and what one of these might not be a spy paid to track him down?
It had frightened him badly, that hour of suspense and flight, and he determined to remain at La Lierre for at least a few days, and wrote to his servant in the rue du Faubourg to forward his letters there under the false name by which he had hired the place.
He was thinking very wearily of all these things as he sat on the fallen tree-trunk in the garden and stared unseeing across tangled ranks of roses. And after a while his thoughts, as they were wont to do, returned to Ste. Marie--that looming shadow which darkened the sunlight, that incubus of fear which clung to him night and day. He was so absorbed that he did not hear sounds which might otherwise have roused him. He heard nothing, saw nothing, save that which his fevered mind projected, until a voice spoke his name.
He looked over his shoulder thinking that O'Hara had sought him out. He turned a little on the tree-trunk to see more easily, and the image of his dread stood there a living and very literal shadow against the daylight.
Captain Stewart's overstrained nerves were in no state to bear a sudden shock. He gave a voiceless, whispering cry and he began to tremble very violently, so that his teeth chattered. All at once he got to his feet and began to stumble away backward, but a projecting limb of the fallen tree caught him and held him fast. It must be that the man was in a sort of frenzy. He must have seen through a red mist just then, for when he found that he could not escape his hand went swiftly to his coat-pocket, and in his white and contorted face there was murder plain and unmistakable.
Ste. Marie was too lame to spring aside or to dash upon the man across intervening obstacles and defend himself. He stood still in his place and waited. And it was characteristic of him that at that moment he felt no fear, only a fine sense of exhilaration. Open danger had no terrors for him. It was secret peril that unnerved him, as in the matter of the poison a week before.
Captain Stewart's hand fell away empty, and Ste. Marie laughed.
"Left it at the house?" said he. "You seem to have no luck, Stewart. First the cat drinks the poison, and then you leave your pistol at home. Dear, dear, I'm afraid you're careless."
HIS HAND WENT SWIFTLY TO HIS
COAT-POCKET
Captain Stewart stared at the younger man under his brows. His face was gray and he was still shivering, but the sudden agony of fear, which had been, after all, only a jangle of nerves, was gone away. He looked upon Ste. Marie's gay and untroubled face with a dull wonder, and he began to feel a grudging admiration for the man who could face death without even turning pale. He pulled out his watch and looked at it.
"I did not know," he said, "that this was your hour out-of-doors."
As a matter of fact, he had quite forgotten that the arrangement existed. When he had first heard of it he had protested vigorously, but had been overborne by O'Hara with the plea that they owed their prisoner something for having come near to poisoning him, and Stewart did not care to have any further attention called to that matter; it had already put a severe strain upon the relations at La Lierre.
"Well," observed Ste. Marie, "I told you you were careless. That proves it. Come! Can't we sit down for a little chat? I haven't seen you since I was your guest at the other address--the town address. It seems to have become a habit of mine--doesn't it?--being your guest." He laughed cheerfully, but Captain Stewart continued to regard him without smiling.
"If you imagine," said the elder man, "that this place belongs to me you are mistaken. I came here to-day to make a visit."
But Ste. Marie sat down at one end of the tree-trunk and shook his head.
"Oh, come, come!" said he. "Why keep up the pretence? You must know that I know all about the whole affair. Why, bless you, I know it all--even to the provisions of the will. Did you think I stumbled in here by accident? Well, I didn't, though I don't mind admitting to you that I remained by accident."
He glanced over his shoulder toward the one-eyed Michel, who stood near-by, regarding the two with some alarm.
Captain Stewart looked up sharply at the mention of the will, and he wetted his dry lips with his tongue. But after a moment's hesitation he sat down upon the tree-trunk, and he seemed to shrink a little together, when his limbs and shoulders had relaxed, so that he looked small and feeble, like a very tired old man. He remained silent for a few moments, but at last he spoke without raising his eyes. He said:
"And now that you--imagine yourself to know so very much, what do you expect to do about it?"
Ste. Marie laughed again.
"Ah, that would be telling!" he cried. "You see, in one way I have the advantage, though outwardly all the advantage seems to be with your side--I know all about your game. I may call it a game? Yes? But you don't know mine. You don't know what I--what we may do at any moment. That's where we have the better of you."
"It would seem to me," said Captain Stewart, wearily, "that since you are a prisoner here and very unlikely to escape, we know with great accuracy what you will do--and what you will not."
"Yes," admitted Ste. Marie, "it would seem so. It certainly would seem so. But you never can tell, can you?"
And at that the elder man frowned and looked away. Thereafter another brief silence fell between the two, but at its end Ste. Marie spoke in a new tone, a very serious tone. He said:
"Stewart, listen a moment!"
And the other turned a sharp gaze upon him.
"You mustn't forget," said Ste. Marie, speaking slowly as if to choose his words with care--"you mustn't forget that I am not alone in this matter. You mustn't forget that there's Richard Hartley--and that there are others, too. I'm a prisoner, yes. I'm helpless here for the present--perhaps, perhaps--but they are not, and they know, Stewart. They know."
Captain Stewart's face remained gray and still, but his hands twisted and shook upon his knees until he hid them.
"I know well enough what you're waiting for," continued Ste. Marie. "You're waiting--you've got to wait--for Arthur Benham to come of age, or, better yet, for your father to die." He paused and shook his head. "It's no good. You can't hold out as long as that--not by half. We shall have won the game long before. Listen to me! Do you know what would occur if your father should take a serious turn for the worse to-night--or at any time? Do you? Well, I'll tell you. A piece of information would be given him that would make another change in that will just as quickly as a pen could write the words. That's what would happen."
"That is a lie!" said Captain Stewart, in a dry whisper. "A lie!"
And Ste. Marie contented himself with a slight smile by way of answer. He was by no means sure that what he had said was true, but he argued that since Hartley suspected, or perhaps by this time knew so much, he would certainly not allow old David to die without doing what he could do in an effort to save young Arthur's fortune from a rascal. In any event, true or false, the words had had the desired effect. Captain Stewart was plainly frightened by them.
"May I make a suggestion?" asked the younger man.
The other did not answer him, and he made it.
"Give it up!" said he. "You're riding for a tremendous fall, you know. We shall smash you completely in the end. It'll mean worse than ruin--much worse. Give it up, now, before you're too late. Help me to send for Hartley and we'll take the boy back to his home. Some story can be managed that will leave you out of the thing altogether, and those who know will hold their tongues. It's your last chance, Stewart. I advise you to take it."
Captain Stewart turned his gray face slowly and looked at the other man with a sort of dull and apathetic wonder.
"Are you mad?" he asked, in a voice which was altogether without feeling of any kind. "Are you quite mad?"
"On the contrary," said Ste. Marie, "I am quite sane, and I'm offering you a chance to save yourself before it's too late. Don't misunderstand me!" he continued. "I am not urging this out of any sympathy for you. I urge it because it will bring about what I wish a little more quickly, also because it will save your family from the disgrace of your smash-up. That's why I'm making my suggestion."
Captain Stewart was silent for a little while, but after that he got heavily to his feet. "I think you must be quite mad," said he, as before, in a voice altogether devoid of expression. "I cannot talk with madmen." He beckoned to the old Michel, who stood near-by, leaning upon his carbine, and when the gardener had approached he said, "Take this--prisoner back to his room!"
Ste. Marie rose with a little sigh. He said: "I'm sorry, but you'll admit I have done my best for you. I've warned you. I sha'n't do it again. We shall smash you now, without mercy."
"Take him away!" cried Captain Stewart, in a sudden loud voice, and the old Michel touched his charge upon the shoulder. So Ste. Marie went without further words. From a little distance he looked back, and the other man still stood by the fallen tree-trunk, bent a little, his arms hanging lax beside him, and his face, Ste. Marie thought, fancifully, was like the face of a man damned.
XXIII
THE LAST ARROW
The one birdlike eye of the old Michel regarded Ste. Marie with a glance of mingled cunning and humor. It might have been said to twinkle.
"To the east, Monsieur?" inquired the old Michel.
"Precisely!" said Ste. Marie. "To the east, mon vieux." It was the morning of the fourth day after that talk with Captain Stewart beside the rose-gardens.
The two bore to the eastward, down among the trees, and presently came to the spot where a certain trespasser had once leaped down from the top of the high wall and had been shot for his pains. The old Michel halted and leaned upon the barrel of his carbine. With an air of complete detachment, an air vague and aloof as of one in a revery, he gazed away over the tree-tops of the ragged park; but Ste. Marie went in under the row of lilac shrubs which stood close against the wall, and a passer-by might have thought the man looking for figs on thistles, for lilacs in late July. He had gone there with eagerness, with flushed cheeks and bright eyes; he emerged after some moments, moving slowly, with downcast head.
"There are no lilac blooms now, Monsieur," observed the old Michel, and his prisoner said, in a low voice:
"No, mon vieux. No. There are none." He sighed and drew a long breath. So the two stood for some time silent, Ste. Marie a little pale, his eyes fixed upon the ground, his hands chafing together behind him, the gardener with his one bright eye upon his charge. But in the end Ste. Marie sighed again and began to move away, followed by the gardener. They went across the broad park, past the double row of larches, through that space where the chestnut-trees stood in straight, close rows, and so came to the west wall which skirted the road to Clamart. Ste. Marie felt in his pocket and withdrew the last of the four letters--the last there could be, for he had no more stamps. The others he had thrown over the wall, one each morning, beginning with the day after he had made the first attempt to bribe old Michel. As he had expected, twenty-four hours of avaricious reflection had proved too much for that gnomelike being.
One each day he had thrown over the wall, weighted with a pebble tucked loosely under the flap of the improvised envelope, in such a manner that it would drop but when the letter struck the ground beyond. And each following day he had gone with high hopes to the appointed place under the cedar-tree to pick figs of thistles, lilac blooms in late July. But there had been nothing there.
"Turn your back, Michel!" said Ste. Marie.
And the old man said, from a little distance: "It is turned, Monsieur. I see nothing. Monsieur throws little stories at the birds to amuse himself. It does not concern me."
Ste. Marie slipped a pebble under the flap of the envelope and threw his letter over the wall. It went like a soaring bird, whirling horizontally, and it must have fallen far out in the middle of the road near the tramway. For the third time that morning the prisoner drew a sigh. He said, "You may turn round now, my friend," and the old Michel faced him. "We have shot our last arrow," said he. "If this also fails, I think--well, I think the bon Dieu will have to help us then.--Michel," he inquired, "do you know how to pray?"
"Sacred thousand swine, no!" cried the ancient gnome, in something between astonishment and horror. "No, Monsieur. 'Pas mon métier, ça!" He shook his head rapidly from side to side like one of those toys in a shop-window whose heads oscillate upon a pivot. But all at once a gleam of inspiration sparkled in his lone eye. "There is the old Justine!" he suggested. "Toujours sur les genoux, cette imbécile là."
"In that case," said Ste. Marie, "you might ask the lady to say one little extra prayer for--the pebble I threw at the birds just now. Hein?" He withdrew from his pocket the last two louis d'or, and Michel took them in a trembling hand. There remained but the note of fifty francs and some silver.
"The prayer shall be said, Monsieur," declared the gardener. "It shall be said. She shall pray all night or I will kill her."
"Thank you," said Ste. Marie. "You are kindness itself. A gentle soul."
They turned away to retrace their steps, and Michel rubbed the side of his head with a reflective air.
"The old one is a madman," said he. (The "old one" meant Captain Stewart.) "A madman. Each day he is madder, and this morning he struck me--here on the head, because I was too slow. Eh! a little more of that, and--who knows? Just a little more, a small little! Am I a dog, to be beaten? Hein? Je ne le crois pas. Hé!" He called Captain Stewart two unprintable names, and after a moment's thought he called him an animal, which is not so much of an anti-climax as it may seem, because to call anybody an animal in French is a serious matter.
The gardener was working himself up into something of a quiet passion, and Ste. Marie said:
"Softly, my friend! Softly!" It occurred to him that the man's resentment might be of use later on, and he said: "You speak the truth. The old one is an animal, and he is also a great rascal."
But Michel betrayed the makings of a philosopher. He said, with profound conviction: "Monsieur, all men are great rascals. It is I who say it."
And at that Ste. Marie had to laugh.
He had not consciously directed his feet, but without direction they led him round the corner of the rose-gardens and toward the rond point. He knew well whom he would find there. She had not failed him during the past three days. Each morning he had found her in her place, and for his allotted hour--which more than once stretched itself out to nearly two hours, if he had but known--they had sat together on the stone bench, or, tiring of that, had walked under the trees beyond.
Long afterward Ste. Marie looked back upon these hours with, among other emotions, a great wonder--at himself and at her. It seemed to him then one of the strangest relationships--intimacies, for it might well be so called--that ever existed between a man and a woman, and he was amazed at the ease, the unconsciousness, with which it had come about.
But during this time he did not allow himself to wonder or to examine, scarcely even to think. The hours were golden hours, unrelated, he told himself, to anything else in his life or in his interests. They were like pleasant dreams, very sweet while they endured, but to be put away and forgotten upon the waking. Only in that long afterward he knew that they had not been put away, that they had been with him always, that the morning hour had remained in his thoughts all the rest of the long day, and that he had waked upon the morrow with a keen and exquisite sense of something sweet to come.
It was a strange fool's paradise that the man dwelt in, and in some small, vague measure he must, even at the time, have known it, for it is certain that he deliberately held himself away from thought--realization; that he deliberately shut his eyes, held his ears lest he should hear or see.
That he was not faithless to his duty has been shown. He did his utmost there, but he was for the time helpless save for efforts to communicate with Richard Hartley, and those efforts could consume no more than ten minutes out of the weary day.
So he drifted, wilfully blind to bearings, wilfully deaf to Sound of warning or peril, and he found a companionship sweeter and fuller and more perfect than he had ever before known in all his life, though that is not to say very much, because sympathetic companionships between men and women are very rare indeed, and Ste. Marie had never experienced anything which could fairly be called by that name. He had had, as has been related, many flirtations, and not a few so-called love-affairs, but neither of these two sorts of intimacies are of necessity true intimacies at all; men often feel varying degrees of love for women without the least true understanding or sympathy or real companionship.
He was wondering, as he bore round the corner of the rose-gardens on this day, in just what mood he would find her. It seemed to him that in their brief acquaintance he had seen her in almost all the moods there are, from bitter gloom to the irrepressible gayety of a little child. He had told her once that she was like an organ, and she had laughed at him for being pretentious and high-flown, though she could upon occasion be quite high-flown enough herself for all ordinary purposes.
He reached the cleared margin of the rond point, and a little cold fear stirred in him when he did not hear her singing under her breath, as she was wont to do when alone, but he went forward and she was there in her place upon the stone bench. She had been reading, but the book lay forgotten beside her and she sat idle, her head laid back against the thick stems of shrubbery which grew behind, her hands in her lap. It was a warm, still morning, with the promise of a hot afternoon, and the girl was dressed in something very thin and transparent and cool-looking, open in a little square at the throat and with sleeves which came only to her elbows. The material was pale and dull yellow, with very vaguely defined green leaves in it, and against it the girl's dark and clear skin glowed rich and warm and living, as pearls glow and seem to throb against the dead tints of the fabric upon which they are laid.
She did not move when he came before her, but looked up to him gravely without stirring her head.
"I didn't hear you come," said she. "You don't drag your left leg any more. You walk almost as well as if you had never been wounded."
"I'm almost all right again," he answered. "I suppose I couldn't run or jump, but I certainly can walk very much like a human being. May I sit down?"
Mlle. O'Hara put out one hand and drew the book closer to make a place for him on the stone bench, and he settled himself comfortably there, turned a little so that he was facing toward her.
It was indicative of the state of intimacy into which the two had grown that they did not make polite conversation with each other, but indeed were silent for some little time after Ste. Marie had seated himself. It was he who spoke first. He said:
"You look vaguely classical to-day. I have been trying to guess why, and I cannot. Perhaps it's because your--what does one say: frock, dress, gown?--because it is cut out square at the throat."
"If you mean by classical, Greek," said she, "it wouldn't be square at the neck at all; it would be pointed--V-shaped. And it would be very different in other ways, too. You are not an observing person, after all."
"For all that," insisted Ste. Marie, "you look classical. You look like some lady one reads about in Greek poems--Helen or Iphigenia or Medea or somebody."
"Helen had yellow hair, hadn't she?" objected Mlle. O'Hara. "I should think I probably look more like Medea--Medea in Colchis before Jason--"
She seemed suddenly to realize that she had hit upon an unfortunate example, for she stopped in the middle of her sentence and a wave of color swept up over her throat and face.
For a moment Ste. Marie did not understand, then he gave a low exclamation, for Medea certainly had been an unhappy name. He remembered something that Richard Hartley had said about that lady a long time before. He made another mistake, for to lessen the moment's embarrassment he gave speech to the first thought which entered his mind. He said:
"Some one once remarked that you look like the young Juno--before marriage. I expect it's true, too."
She turned upon him swiftly.
"Who said that?" she demanded. "Who has ever talked to you about me?"
"I beg your pardon," he said. "I seem to be singularly stupid this morning. A mild lunacy. You must forgive me, if you can. To tell you what you ask would be to enter upon forbidden ground, and I mustn't do that."
"Still, I should like to know," said the girl, watching him with sombre eyes.
"Well, then," said he, "it was a little Jewish photographer in the Boulevard de la Madeleine."
And she said, "Oh!" in a rather disappointed tone and looked away.
"We seem to be making conversation chiefly about my personal appearance," she said, presently. "There must be other topics if one should try hard to find them. Tell me stories. You told me stories yesterday; tell me more. You seem to be in a classical mood. You shall be Odysseus, and I will be Nausicaa, the interesting laundress. Tell me about wanderings and things. Have you any more islands for me?"
"Yes," said Ste. Marie, nodding at her slowly. "Yes, Nausicaa, I have more islands for you. The seas are full of islands. What kind do you want?"
"A warm one," said the girl. "Even on a hot day like this I choose a warm one, because I hate the cold."
She settled herself more comfortably, with a little sigh of content that was exactly like a child's happy sigh when stories are going to be told before the fire.
"I know an island," said Ste. Marie, "that I think you would like because it is warm and beautiful and very far away from troubles of all kinds. As well as I could make out, when I went there, nobody on the island had ever even heard of trouble. Oh yes, you'd like it. The people there are brown, and they're as beautiful as their own island. They wear hibiscus flowers stuck in their hair, and they very seldom do any work."
"I want to go there!" cried Mlle. Coira O'Hara. "I want to go there now, this afternoon, at once! Where is it?"
"It's in the South Pacific," said he, "not so very far from Samoa and Fiji and other groups that you will have heard about, and its name is Vavau. It's one of the Tongans. It's a high, volcanic island, not a flat, coral one like the southern Tongans. I came to it, one evening, sailing north from Nukualofa and Haapai, and it looked to me like a single big mountain jutting up out of the sea, black-green against the sunset. It was very impressive. But it isn't a single mountain, it's a lot of high, broken hills covered with a tangle of vegetation and set round a narrow bay, a sort of fjord, three or four miles long, and at the inner end of this are the village and the stores of the few white traders. I'm afraid," said Ste. Marie, shaking his head--"I'm afraid I can't tell you about it, after all. I can't seem to find the words. You can't put into language--at least, I can't--those slow, hot, island days that are never too hot because the trades blow fresh and strong, or the island nights that are more like black velvet with pearls sewed on it than anything else. You can't describe the smell of orange groves and the look of palm-trees against the sky. You can't tell about the sweet, simple, natural hospitality of the natives. They're like little, unsuspicious children. In short," said he, "I shall have to give it up, after all, just because it's too big for me. I can only say that it's beautiful and unspeakably remote from the world, and that I think I should like to go back to Vavau and stay a long time, and let the rest of the world go hang."
Mlle. O'Hara stared across the park of La Lierre with wide and shadowy eyes, and her lips trembled a little.
"Oh, I want to go there!" she cried again. "I want to go there--and rest--and forget everything!" She turned upon him with a sudden bitter resentment. "Why do you tell me things like that?" she cried. "Oh yes, I know. I asked you, but--can't you see? To hide one's self away in a place like that!" she said. "To let the sun warm you and the trade-winds blow away--all that had ever tortured you! Just to rest and be at peace!" She turned her eyes to him once more. "You needn't be afraid that you have failed to make me see your island! I see it. I feel it. It doesn't need many words. I can shut my eyes and I am there. But it was a little cruel. Oh, I know, I asked for it. It's like the garden of the Hesperides, isn't it?"
"Very like it," said Ste. Marie, "because there are oranges--groves of them. (And they were the golden apples, I take it.) Also, it is very far away from the world, and the people live in complete and careless ignorance of how the world goes on. Emperors and kings die, wars come and go, but they hear only a little faint echo of it all, long afterward, and even that doesn't interest them."
"I know," she said. "I understand. Didn't you know I'd understand?"
"Yes," said he, nodding. "I suppose I did. We--feel things rather alike, I suppose. We don't have to say them all out."
"I wonder," she said, in a low voice, "if I'm glad or sorry." She stared under her brows at the man beside her. "For it is very probable that when we have left La Lierre you and I will never meet again. I wonder if I'm--"
For some obscure reason she broke off there and turned her eyes away, and she remained without speaking for a long time. Her mind, as she sat there, seemed to go back to that southern island, and to its peace and loveliness, for Ste. Marie, who watched her, saw a little smile come to her lips, and he saw her eyes half close and grow soft and tender as if what they saw were very sweet to her. He watched many different expressions come upon the girl's face and go again, but at last he seemed to see the old bitterness return there and struggle with something wistful and eager.
"I envy you your wide wanderings," she said, presently. "Oh, I envy you more than I can find any words for. Your will is the wind's will. You go where your fancy leads you, and you're free--free. We have wandered, you know," said she, "my father and I. I can't remember when we ever had a home to live in. But that is--that is different--a different kind of wandering."
"Yes," said Ste. Marie. "Yes, perhaps." And within himself he said, with sorrow and pity, "Different, indeed!"
As if at some sudden thought the girl looked up at him quickly. "Did that sound regretful?" she asked. "Did what I say sound--disloyal to my father? I didn't mean it to. I don't want you to think that I regret it. I don't. It has meant being with my father. Wherever he has gone I have gone with him, and if anything ever has been--unpleasant, I was willing, oh, I was glad, glad to put up with it for his sake and because I could be with him. If I have made his life a little happier by sharing it, I am glad of everything. I don't regret."
"And yet," said Ste. Marie, gently, "it must have been hard sometimes." He pictured to himself that roving existence lived among such people as O'Hara must have known, and it sent a hot wave of anger and distress over him from head to foot.
But the girl said: "I had my father. The rest of it didn't matter in the face of that." After a little silence she said, "M. Ste. Marie!"
And the man said, "What is it, Mademoiselle?"
"You spoke the other day," she said, hesitating over her words, "about my aunt, Lady Margaret Craith. I suppose I ought not to ask you more about her, for my father quarrelled with his people very long ago and he broke with them altogether. But--surely, it can do no harm--just for a moment--just a very little! Could you tell me a little about her, M. Ste. Marie--what she is like and--and how she lives--and things like that?"
So Ste. Marie told her all that he could of the old Irishwoman who lived alone in her great house, and ruled with a slack Irish hand, a sweet Irish heart, over tenants and dependants. And when he had come to an end the girl drew a little sigh and said:
"Thank you. I am so glad to hear of her. I--wish everything were different, so that--I think I should love her very much if I might."
"Mademoiselle," said Ste. Marie, "will you promise me something?"
She looked at him with her sombre eyes, and after a little she said: "I am afraid you must tell me first what it is. I cannot promise blindly."
He said: "I want you to promise me that if anything ever should happen--any difficulty--trouble--anything to put you in the position of needing care or help or sympathy--"
But she broke in upon him with a swift alarm, crying: "What do you mean? You're trying to hint at something that I don't know. What difficulty or trouble could happen to me? Please tell me just what you mean."
"I'm not hinting at any mystery," said Ste. Marie. "I don't know of anything that is going to happen to you, but--will you forgive me for saying it?--your father is, I take it, often exposed to--danger of various sorts. I'm afraid I can't quite express myself, only, if any trouble should come to you, Mademoiselle, will you promise me to go to Lady Margaret, your aunt, and tell her who you are and let her care for you?"
"There was an absolute break," she said. "Complete."
But the man shook his head, saying:
"Lady Margaret won't think of that. She'll think only of you--that she can mother you, perhaps save you grief--and of herself, that in her old age she has a daughter. It would make a lonely old woman very happy, Mademoiselle."
The girl bent her head away from him, and Ste. Marie saw, for the first time since he had known her, tears in her eyes. After a long time she said:
"I promise, then. But," she said, "it is very unlikely that it should ever come about--for more than one reason. Very unlikely."
"Still, Mademoiselle," said he, "I am glad you have promised. This is an uncertain world. One never can tell what will come with the to-morrows."
"I can," the girl said, with a little tired smile that Ste. Marie did not understand. "I can tell. I can see all the to-morrows--a long, long row of them. I know just what they're going to be like--to the very end."
But the man rose to his feet and looked down upon her as she sat before him. And he shook his head.
"You are mistaken," he said. "Pardon me, but you are mistaken. No one can see to-morrow--or the end of anything. The end may surprise you very much."
"I wish it would!" cried Mlle. O'Hara. "Oh, I wish it would!"