XXIV
THE JOINT IN THE ARMOR
Ste. Marie put down a book as O'Hara came into the room and rose to meet his visitor.
"I'm compelled," said the Irishman, "to put you on your honor to-day if you are to go out as usual. Michel has been sent on an errand, and I am busy with letters. I shall have to put you on your honor not to make any effort to escape. Is that agreed to? I shall trust you altogether. You could manage to scramble over the wall somehow, I suppose, and get clean away, but I think you won't try it if you give your word."
"I give my word gladly," said Ste. Marie. "And thanks very much. You've been uncommonly kind to me here. I--regret more than I can say that we--that we find ourselves on opposite sides, as it were. I wish we were fighting for the same cause."
The Irishman looked at the younger man sharply for an instant, and he made as if he would speak, but seemed to think better of it. In the end he said:
"Yes, quite so. Quite so. Of course you understand that any consideration I have used toward you has been by way of making amends for--for an unfortunate occurrence."
Ste. Marie laughed.
"The poison," said he. "Yes, I know. And of course I know who was at the bottom of that. By the way, I met Stewart in the garden the other day. Did he tell you? He was rather nervous and tried to shoot me, but he had left his revolver at the house--at least it wasn't in his pocket when he reached for it."
O'Hara's hard face twitched suddenly, as if in anger, and he gave an exclamation under his breath, so the younger man inferred that "old Charlie" had not spoken of their encounter. And after that the Irishman once more turned a sharp, frowning glance upon his prisoner as if he were puzzled about something. But, as before, he stopped short of speech and at last turned away.
"Just a moment!" said the younger man. He asked: "Is it fair to inquire how long I may expect to be confined here? I don't want to presume upon your good-nature too far, but if you could tell me I should be glad to know."
The Irishman hesitated a moment and then said:--
"I don't know why I shouldn't answer that. It can't help you, so far as I can see, to do anything that would hinder us. You'll stay until Arthur Benham comes of age, which will be in about two months from now."
"Yes," said the other. "Thanks. I thought so. Until young Arthur comes of age and receives his patrimony--or until old David Stewart dies. Of course that might happen at any hour."
The Irishman said: "I don't quite see what--Ah, yes, to be sure! Yes, I see. Well, I should count upon eight weeks if I were you. In eight weeks the boy will be independent of them all, and we shall go to England for the wedding."
"The wedding?" cried Ste. Marie. "What wedding?--Ah!"
"Arthur Benham and my daughter are to be married," said O'Hara, "so soon as he reaches his majority. I thought you knew that."
In a very vague fashion he realized that he had expected it. And still the definite words came to him with a shock which was like a physical blow, and he turned his back with a man's natural instinct to hide his feeling. Certainly that was the logical conclusion to be drawn from known premises. That was to be the O'Haras' reward for their labor. To Stewart the great fortune, to the O'Haras a good marriage for the girl and an assured future. That was reward enough surely for a few weeks of angling and decoying and luring and lying. That was what she had meant, on the day before, by saying that she could see all the to-morrows. He realized that he must have been expecting something like this, but the thought turned him sick, nevertheless. He could not forget the girl as he had come to know her during the past week. He could not face with any calmness the thought of her as the adventuress who had lured poor Arthur Benham on to destruction. It was an impossible thought. He could have laughed at it in scornful anger, and yet--What else was she?
He began to realize that his action in turning his back upon the other man in the middle of a conversation must look very odd, and he faced round again trying to drive from his expression the pain and distress which he knew must be there, plain to see. But he need not have troubled himself, for the other man was standing before the next window and looking out into the morning sunlight, and his hard, bony face had so altered that Ste. Marie stared at him with open amazement. He thought O'Hara must be ill.
"I want to see her married!" cried the Irishman, suddenly, and it was a new voice, a voice Ste. Marie did not know. It shook a little with an emotion that sat uncouthly upon this grim, stern man.
"I want to see her married and safe!" he said. "I want her to be rid of this damnable, roving, cheap existence. I want her to be rid of me and my rotten friends and my rotten life."
He chafed his hands together before him, and his tired eyes fixed themselves upon something that he seemed to see out of the window and glared at it fiercely.
"I should like," said he, "to die on the day after her wedding, and so be out of her way forever. I don't want her to have any shadows cast over her from the past. I don't want her to open closet doors and find skeletons there. I want her to be free--free to live the sort of life she was born to and has a right to."
He turned sharply upon the younger man.
"You've seen her!" he cried. "You've talked to her; you know her! Think of that girl dragged about Europe with me ever since she was a little child! Think of the people she's had to know, the things she's had to see! Do you wonder that I want to have her free of it all, married and safe and comfortable and in peace? Do you? I tell you it has driven me as nearly mad as a man can be. But I couldn't go mad, because I had to take care of her. I couldn't even die, because she'd have been left alone without any one to look out for her. She wouldn't leave me. I could have settled her somewhere in some quiet place where she'd have been quit at least of shady, rotten people, but she wouldn't have it. She's stuck to me always, through good times and bad. She's kept my heart up when I'd have been ready to cut my throat if I'd been alone. She's been the--bravest and faithfulest--Well, I--And look at her! Look at her now! Think of what she's had to see and know--the people she's had to live with--and look at her! Has any of it stuck to her? Has it cheapened her in any littlest way? No, by God! She has come through it all like a--like a Sister of Charity through a city slum--like an angel through the dark."
The Irishman broke off speaking, for his voice was beyond control, but after a moment he went on again, more calmly:
"This boy, this young Benham, is a fool, but he's not a mean fool. She'll make a man of him. And, married to him, she'll have the comforts that she ought to have and the care and--freedom. She'll have a chance to live the life that she has a right to, among the sort of people she has a right to know. I'm not afraid for her. She'll do her part and more. She'll hold up her head among duchesses, that girl. I'm not afraid for her."
He said this last sentence over several times, standing before the window and staring out at the sun upon the tree-tops.
"I'm not afraid for her.... I'm not afraid for her."
He seemed to have forgotten that the younger man was in the room, for he did not look toward him again or pay him any attention for a long while. He only gazed out of the window into the fresh morning sunlight, and his face worked and quivered and his lean hands chafed restlessly together before him. But at last he seemed to realize where he was, for he turned with a sudden start and stared at Ste. Marie, frowning as if the younger man were some one he had never seen before. He said:
"Ah, yes, yes. You were wanting to go out into the garden. Yes, quite so. I--I was thinking of something else. I seem to be absent-minded of late. Don't let me keep you here."
He seemed a little embarrassed and ill at ease, and Ste. Marie said:
"Oh, thanks. There's no hurry. However, I'll go, I think. It's after eleven. I understand that I'm on my honor not to climb over the wall or burrow under it or batter it down. That's understood. I--"
He felt that he ought to say something in acknowledgment of O'Hara's long speech about his daughter, but he could think of nothing to say, and, besides, the Irishman seemed not to expect any comment upon his strange outburst. So, in the end, Ste. Marie nodded and went out of the room without further ceremony.
He had been astonished almost beyond words at that sudden and unlooked-for breakdown of the other man's impregnable reserve, and dimly he realized that it must have come out of some very extraordinary nervous strain, but he himself had been in no state to give the Irishman's words the attention and thought that he would have given them at another time. His mind, his whole field of mental vision, had been full of one great fact--the girl was to be married to young Arthur Benham. The thing loomed gigantic before him, and in some strange way terrifying. He could neither see nor think beyond it. O'Hara's burst of confidence had reached his ears very faintly, as if from a great distance--poignant but only half-comprehended words to be reflected upon later in their own time.
He stumbled down the ill-lighted stair with fixed, wide, unseeing eyes, and he said one sentence over and over aloud, as the Irishman standing beside the window had said another.
"She is going to be married. She is going to be married."
It would seem that he must have forgotten his previous half-suspicion of the fact. It would seem to have remained, as at the first hearing, a great and appalling shock, thunderous out of a blue sky.
Below, in the open, his feet led him mechanically straight down under the trees, through the tangle of shrubbery beyond, and so to the wall under the cedar. Arrived there, he awoke all at once to his task, and with a sort of frowning anger shook off the dream which enveloped him. His eyes sharpened and grew keen and eager. He said:
"The last arrow! God send it reached home!" and so went in under the lilac shrubs.
He was there longer than usual; unhampered now, he may have made a larger search, but when at last he emerged Ste. Marie's hands were over his face and his feet dragged slowly like an old man's feet.
Without knowing that he had stirred he found himself some distance away, standing still beside a chestnut-tree. A great wave of depression and fear and hopelessness swept him, and he shivered under it. He had an instant's wild panic, and mad, desperate thoughts surged upon him. He saw utter failure confronting him. He saw himself as helpless as a little child, his feeble efforts already spent for naught, and, like a little child, he was afraid. He would have rushed at that grim encircling wall and fought his way up and over it, but even as the impulse raced to his feet the momentary madness left him and he turned away. He could not do a dishonorable thing even for all he held dearest.
He walked on in the direction which lay before him, but he took no heed of where he went, and Mlle. Coira O'Hara spoke to him twice before he heard or saw her.
XXV
MEDEA GOES OVER TO THE ENEMY
They were near the east end of the rond point, in a space where fir-trees stood and the ground underfoot was covered with dry needles.
"I was just on my way to--our bench beyond the fountain," said she.
And Ste. Marie nodded, looking upon her sombrely. It seemed to him that he looked with new eyes, and after a little time, when he did not speak, but only gazed in that strange manner, the girl said:
"What is it? Something has happened. Please tell me what it is."
Something like the pale foreshadow of fear came over her beautiful face and shrouded her golden voice as if it had been a veil.
"Your father," said Ste. Marie, heavily, "has just been telling me--that you are to marry young Arthur Benham. He has been telling me."
She drew a quick breath, looking at him, but after a moment she said:
"Yes, it is true. You knew it before, though, didn't you? Do you mean that you didn't know it before? I don't quite understand. You must have known that. What, in Heaven's name, did you think?" she cried, as if with a sort of anger at his dulness.
The man rubbed one hand wearily across his eyes.
"I--don't quite know," said he. "Yes, I suppose I had thought of it. I don't know. It came to me with such a--shock! Yes. Oh, I don't know. I expect I didn't think at all. I--just didn't think."
Abruptly his eyes sharpened upon her, and he moved a step forward.
"Tell me the truth!" he said. "Do you love this boy?"
The girl's cheeks burned with a swift crimson and she set her lips together. She was on the verge of extreme anger just then, but after a little the flush died down again and the dark fire went out of her eyes. She made an odd gesture with her two hands. It seemed to express fatigue as much as anything--a great weariness.
"I like him," she said. "I like him--enough, I suppose. He is good--and kind--and gentle. He will be good to me. And I shall try very, very hard, to make him happy."
Quite suddenly and without warning the fire of her anger burned up again. She flamed defiance in the man's face.
"How dare you question me?" she cried. "What right have you to ask me questions about such a thing? You--what you are!"
Ste. Marie bent his head.
"No right, Mademoiselle," said he, in a low voice. "I have no right to ask you anything--not even forgiveness. I think I am a little mad to-day. It--this news came to me suddenly. Yes, I think I am a little mad."
The girl stared at him and he looked back with sombre eyes. Once more he was stabbed with intolerable pain to think what she was. Yet in an inexplicable fashion it pleased him that she should carry out her trickery to the end with a high head. It was a little less base, done proudly. He could not have borne it otherwise.
"Who are you," the girl cried, in a bitter resentment, "that you should understand? What do you know of the sort of life I have led--we have led together, my father and I? Oh, I don't mean that I'm ashamed of it! We have nothing to feel shame for, but you simply do not know what such a life is."
Though he writhed with pain, the man nodded over her. He was so glad that she could carry it through proudly, with a high hand, an erect head.
She spread out her arms before him, a splendid and tragic figure.
"What chance have I ever had?" she demanded. "No, I am not blaming him. I am not blaming my father. I chose to follow him. I chose it. But what chance have I had? Think of the people I have lived among. Would you have me marry one of them--one of those men? I'd rather die. And yet I cannot go on--forever. I am twenty now. What if my father--You yourself said yesterday--Oh, I am afraid! I tell you I have lain awake at night a hundred times and shivered with cold, terrible fear of what would become of me if--if anything should happen--to my father. And so," she said, "when I met Arthur Benham last winter, and he--began to--he said--when he begged me to marry him.... Ah, can't you see? It meant safety--safety--safety! And I liked him. I like him now--very, very much. He is a sweet boy. I--shall be happy with him--in a peaceful fashion. And my father--Oh, I'll be honest with you," said she. "It was my father who decided me. He was--he is--so pathetically pleased with it. He so wants me to be safe. It's all he lives for now. I--couldn't fight against them both, Arthur and my father, so I gave in. And then when Arthur had to be hidden we came here with him--to wait."
She became aware that the man was staring at her with something strange and terrible in his gaze, and she broke off in wonder. The air of that warm summer morning turned all at once keen and sharp about them--charged with moment.
"Mademoiselle!" cried Ste. Marie. "Mademoiselle, are you telling me the truth?"
For some obscure reason she was not angry. Again she spread out her hands in that gesture of weariness. She said, "Oh, why should I lie to you?" And the man began to tremble exceedingly. He stretched out an unsteady hand.
"You--knew Arthur Benham last winter?" he said. "Long before his--before he left his home? Before that?"
"He asked me to marry him last winter," said the girl. "For a long, long time I--wouldn't. But he never let me alone. He followed me everywhere. And my father--"
Ste. Marie clapped his two hands over his face, and a groan came to her through the straining fingers. He cried, in an agony: "Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle!"
He fell upon his knees at her feet, his head bent in what seemed to be an intolerable anguish, his hands over his hidden face. The girl heard hard-wrung, stumbling, incoherent words wrenched each with an effort out of extreme pain.
"Fool! Fool!" the man cried, groaning. "Oh, fool that I have been! Worm, animal! Oh, fool not to see--not to know! Madman, imbecile, thing without a name!"
She stood white-faced, smitten with great fear over this abasement. Not the least and faintest glimmer reached her of what it meant. She stretched down a hand of protest, and it touched the man's head. As if the touch were a stroke of magic, he sprang upright before her.
"Now at last, Mademoiselle," said he, "we two must speak plainly together. Now at last I think I see clear, but I must know beyond doubt or question. Oh, Mademoiselle, now I think I know you for what you are, and it seems to me that nothing in this world is of consequence beside that. I have been blind, blind, blind!... Tell me one thing. Why did Arthur Benham leave his home two months ago?"
"He had to leave it," she said, wondering. She did not understand yet, but she was aware that her heart was beating in loud and fast throbs, and she knew that some great mystery was to be made plain before her. Her face was very white. "He had to leave it," she said again. "You know as well as I. Why do you ask me that? He quarrelled with his grandfather. They had often quarrelled before--over money--always over money. His grandfather is a miser, almost a madman. He tried to make Arthur sign a paper releasing his inheritance--the fortune he is to inherit from his father--and when Arthur wouldn't he drove him away. Arthur went to his uncle--Captain Stewart--and Captain Stewart helped him to hide. He didn't dare go back because they're all against him, all his family. They'd make him give in."
Ste. Marie gave a loud exclamation of amazement. The thing was incredible--childish. It was beyond the maddest possibilities. But even as he said the words to himself a face came before him--Captain Stewart's smiling and benignant face--and he understood everything. As clearly as if he had been present, he saw the angry, bewildered boy, fresh from David Stewart's berating, mystified over some commonplace legal matter requiring a signature. He saw him appeal for sympathy and counsel to "old Charlie," and he heard "old Charlie's" reply. It was easy enough to understand now. It must have been easy enough to bring about. What absurdities could not such a man as Captain Stewart instil into the already prejudiced mind of that foolish lad?
His thoughts turned from Arthur Benham to the girl before him, and that part of the mystery was clear also. She would believe whatever she was told in the absence of any reason to doubt. What did she know of old David Stewart or of the Benham family? It seemed to Ste. Marie all at once incredible that he could ever have believed ill of her--ever have doubted her honesty. It seemed to him so incredible that he could have laughed aloud in bitterness and self-disdain. But as he looked at the girl's white face and her shadowy, wondering eyes, all laughter, all bitterness, all cruel misunderstandings were swallowed up in the golden light of his joy at knowing her, in the end, for what she was.
"Coira! Coira!" he cried, and neither of the two knew that he called her for the first time by her name. "Oh, child," said he, "how they have lied to you and tricked you! I might have known, I might have seen it, but I was a blind fool. I thought--intolerable things. I might have known. They have lied to you most damnably, Coira."
She stared at him in a breathless silence without movement of any sort. Only her face seemed to have turned a little whiter and her great eyes darker, so that they looked almost black and enormous in that still face.
He told her, briefly, the truth: how young Arthur had had frequent quarrels with his grandfather over his waste of money, how after one of them, not at all unlike the others, he had disappeared, and how Captain Stewart, in desperate need, had set afoot his plot to get the lad's greater inheritance for himself. He described for her old David Stewart and the man's bitter grief, and he told her about the will, about how he had begun to suspect Captain Stewart, and of how he had traced the lost boy to La Lierre. He told her all that he knew of the whole matter, and he knew almost all there was to know, and he did not spare himself even his misconception of the part she had played, though he softened that as best he could.
Midway of his story Mlle. O'Hara bent her head and covered her face with her hands. She did not cry out or protest or speak at all. She made no more than that one movement, and after it she stood quite still, but the sight of her, bowed and shamed, stripped of pride, as it had been of garments, was more than the man could bear.
He cried her name, "Coira!" And when she did not look up, he called once more upon her. He said: "Coira, I cannot bear to see you stand so. Look at me. Ah, child, look at me! Can you realize," he cried--"can you even begin to think what a great joy it is to me to know at last that you have had no part in all this? Can't you see what it means to me? I can think of nothing else. Coira, look up!"
She raised her white face, and there were no tears upon it, but a still anguish too great to be told. It would seem never to have occurred to her to doubt the truth of his words. She said: "It is I who might have known. Knowing what you have told me now, it seems impossible that I could have believed. And Captain Stewart--I always hated him--loathed him--distrusted him. And yet," she cried, wringing her hands, "how could I know? How could I know?"
The girl's face writhed suddenly with her grief, and she stared up at Ste. Marie with terror in her eyes. She whispered: "My father! Oh, Ste. Marie, my father! It is not possible. I will not believe--he cannot have done this, knowing. My father, Ste. Marie!"
The man turned his eyes away, and she gave a sobbing cry.
"Has he," she said, slowly, "done even this for me? Has he given--his honor, also--when everything else was--gone? Has he given me his honor, too? Oh," she said, "why could I not have died when I was a little child? Why could I not have done that? To think that I should have lived to--bring my father to this! I wish I had died. Ste. Marie," she said, pleading with him. "Ste. Marie, do you think--my father--knew?"
"Let me think," said he. "Let me think! Is it possible that Stewart has lied to you all--to one as to another? Let me think!" His mind ran back over the matter, and he began to remember instances which had seemed to him odd, but to which he had attached no importance. He remembered O'Hara's puzzled and uncomprehending face when he, Ste. Marie, had spoken of Stewart's villany. He remembered the man's indignation over the affair of the poison, and his fairness in trying to make amends. He remembered other things, and his face grew lighter and he drew a great breath of relief. He said: "Coira, I do not believe he knew. Stewart has lied equally to you all--tricked each one of you." And at that the girl gave a cry of gladness and began to weep.
As long as men and women continue to stand upon opposite sides of a great gulf--and that will be as long as they exist together in this world--just so long will men continue to be unhappy and ill at ease in the face of women's tears, even though they know vaguely that tears may mean just anything at all, and by no means always grief.
Ste. Marie stood first upon one foot and then upon the other. He looked anxiously about him for succor. He said, "There! there!" or words to that effect, and once he touched the shoulder of the girl who stood weeping before him, and he was very miserable indeed.
But quite suddenly, in the midst of his discomfort, she looked up to him, and she was smiling and flushed, so that Ste. Marie stared at her in utter amazement.
"So now at last," said she, "I have back my Bayard. And I think the rest--doesn't matter very much."
"Bayard?" said he, wondering. "I don't understand," he said.
"Then," said she, "you must just go without understanding. For I shall never, never explain." The bright flush went from her face and she turned grave once more. "What is to be done?" she asked. "What must we do now, Ste. Marie--I mean about Arthur Benham? I suppose he must be told."
"Either he must be told," said the man, "or he must be taken back to his home by force." He told her about the four letters which in four days he had thrown over the wall into the Clamart road. "It was on the chance," he said, "that some one would pick one of them up and post it, thinking it had been dropped there by accident. What has become of them I don't know. I know only that they never reached Hartley."
The girl nodded thoughtfully. "Yes," said she, "that was the best thing you could have done. It ought to have succeeded. Of course--" She paused a moment and then nodded again. "Of course," said she, "I can manage to get a letter in the post now. We'll send it to-day if you like. But I was wondering--would it be better or not to tell Arthur the truth? It all depends upon how he may take it--whether or not he will believe you. He's very stubborn, and he's frightened about this break with his family, and he is quite sure that he has been badly treated. Will he believe you? Of course, if he does believe he could escape from here quite easily at any time, and there'd be no necessity for a rescue. What do you think?"
"I think he ought to be told," said Ste. Marie. "If we try to carry him away by force there'll be a fight, of course, and--who knows what might happen? That we must leave for a last resort--a last desperate resort. First we must tell the boy." Abruptly he gave a cry of dismay, and the girl looked up to him, staring. "But--but you, Coira!" said he, stammering. "But you! I hadn't realized--I hadn't thought--it never occurred to me what this means to you." The full enormity of the thing came upon him slowly. He was asking this girl to help him in robbing her of her lover.
She shook her head with a little wry smile. "Do you think," said she, "that knowing what I know now I would go on with that until he has made his peace with his family? Before, it was different. I thought him alone and ill-treated and hunted down. I could help him then, comfort him. Now I should be--all you ever thought me if I did not send him to his grandfather." She smiled again a little mirthlessly. "If his love for me is worth anything," she said, "he will come back--but openly this time, not in hiding. Then I shall know that he is--what I would have him be. Otherwise--"
"But you must remember, Coira," said he, "that the lad is very young and that his family--they may try--it may be hard for him. They may say that he is too young to know--Ah, child, I should have thought of this!"
"Ste. Marie," said the girl, and after a moment he turned to face her. "What shall you say to Arthur's family, Ste. Marie," she demanded, very soberly, "when they ask you if I--if Arthur should be allowed to--come back to me?"
A wave of color flooded the man's face and his eyes shone. He cried:
"I shall tell them, Coira, that if that wretched, half-baked lad should search this wide world round, from Paris on to Paris again, and if he should spend a lifetime searching, he would never find the beauty and the sweetness and the tenderness and the true faith that he left behind at La Lierre--nor the hundredth part of them. I should say that you are so much above him that he ought to creep to you on his knees from the rue de l'Université to this garden, thanking God that you were here at the journey's end, and kissing the ground that he dragged himself over for sheer joy and gratitude. I should tell them--Oh, I have no words! I could tell them so pitifully little of you! I think I should only say, 'Go to her and see!' I think I should just say that."
The girl turned her head away with a little sob. But afterward she faced him once more, and she looked up to him with sweet, half-shut eyes for a long time. At last she said:
"For love of whom, Ste. Marie, did you undertake this quest--this search for Arthur Benham? It was not in idleness or by way of a whim. It was for love. For love of whom?"
For some strange and inexplicable reason the words struck him like a blow and he stared whitely.
"I came," he said, at last, and his voice was oddly flat, "for his sister's sake. For love of her."
Coira O'Hara dropped her eyes. But presently she looked up again with a smile. She said, "God make you happy, my friend."
And she turned and moved away from him up among the trees. At a little distance she turned, saying:
"Wait where you are. I will fetch Arthur or send him to you. He must be told at once."
Then she went on and was lost to sight.
Ste. Marie followed a few steps after her and halted. His face was turned by chance toward the east wall, and suddenly he gave a great cry and smothered it with his hands over his mouth. His knees bent under him, and he was weak and trembling. Then he began to run. He ran with awkward steps, for his leg was not yet entirely recovered, but he ran fast, and his heart beat within him until he thought it must burst.
He was making for that spot which was overhung by the half-dead cedar-tree.
XXVI
BUT THE FLEECE ELECTS TO REMAIN
Ste. Marie came under the wall breathless and shaking. What he had seen there from a distance was no longer visible, but he pressed in close among the lilac shrubs and called out in an unsteady voice. He said: "Who is there? Who is it?" And after a moment he called again.
A hand appeared at the top of the high wall. The drooping screen of foliage was thrust aside, and he saw Richard Hartley's face looking down. Ste. Marie held himself by the strong stems of the lilacs, for once more his knees had weakened under him.
"There's no one in sight," Hartley said. "I can see for a long way. No one can see us or hear us." And he said: "I got your letter this morning--an hour ago. When shall we come to get you out--you and the boy? To-night?"
"To-night at two," said Ste. Marie. He spoke in a loud whisper. "I'm to talk with Arthur here in a few minutes. We must be quick. He may come at any time. I shall try to persuade him to go home willingly, but if he refuses we must take him by force. Bring a couple of good men with you to-night, and see that they're armed. Come in a motor and leave it just outside the wall by that small door that you passed. Have you any money in your pockets? I may want to bribe the gardener."
Hartley searched in his pockets, and while he did so the man beneath asked:
"Is old David Stewart alive?"
"Just about," Hartley said. "He's very low, and he suffers a great deal, but he's quite conscious all the time. If we can fetch the boy to him it may give him a turn for the better. Where is Captain Stewart? I had spies on his trail for some time, but he has disappeared within the past three or four days. Once I followed him in his motor-car out past here, but I lost him beyond Clamart."
"He's here, I think," said Ste. Marie. "I saw him a few days ago."
The man on the wall had found two notes of a hundred francs each, and he dropped them down to Ste. Marie's hands. Also he gave him a small revolver which he had in his pocket, one of the little automatic weapons such as Olga Nilssen had brought to the rue du Faubourg St. Honoré. Afterward he glanced up and said:
"Two people are coming out of the house. I shall have to go. At two to-night, then--and at this spot. We shall be on time."
He drew back out of sight, and the other man heard the cedar-tree shake slightly as he went down it to the ground. Then Ste. Marie turned and walked quickly back to the place where Mlle. O'Hara had left him. His heart was leaping with joy and exultation, for now at last he thought that the end was in sight--the end he had so long labored and hoped for. He knew that his face must be flushed and his eyes bright, and he made a strong effort to crush down these tokens of his triumph--to make his bearing seem natural and easy. He might have spared himself the pains.
Young Arthur Benham and Coira O'Hara came together down under the trees from the house. They walked swiftly, and the boy was a step in advance, his face white with excitement and anger. He began to speak while he was still some distance away. He cried out, in his strident young voice:
"What the devil is all this silly nonsense about old Charlie and lies and misunderstandings and--and all that guff?" he demanded. "What the devil is it? D'you think I'm a fool? D'you think I'm a kid? Well, I'm not!"
He came close to Ste. Marie, staring at him with an angry scowl, but his scowl twitched and wavered and his hands shook a little beside him and his breath came irregularly. He was frightened.
"There is no nonsense," said Ste. Marie. "There is no nonsense in all this whole sorry business. But there has been a great deal of misunderstanding and a great many lies and not a little cruelty. It's time you knew the truth at last." He turned his eyes to where Coira O'Hara stood near-by. "How much have you told him?" he asked.
And the girl said: "I told him everything, or almost. But I had to say it very quickly, and--he wouldn't believe me. I think you'd best tell him again."
The boy gave a short, contemptuous laugh.
"Well, I don't want to hear it," said he.
He was looking toward the girl. He said:
"This fellow may be able to hypnotize you, all right, but not Willie. Little Willie's wise to guys like him."
And swinging about to Ste. Marie, he cried:
"Forget it! For-get it! I don't want to listen to your little song to-day. Ah, you make me sick! You'd try to make me turn on old Charlie, would you? Why, old Charlie's the only real friend I've got in the world. Old Charlie has always stood up for me against the whole bunch of them. Forget it, George! I'm wise to your graft."
Ste. Marie frowned, for his temper was never of the most patient, and the youth's sneering tone annoyed him. Truth to tell, the tone was about all he understood, for the strange words were incomprehensible.
"Look here, Benham," he said, sharply, "you and I have never met, I believe, but we have a good many friends in common, and I think we know something about each other. Have you ever heard anything about me which would give you the right to suspect me of any dishonesty of any sort? Have you?"
"Oh, slush!" said the boy. "Anybody'll be dishonest if it's worth his while."
"That happens to be untrue," Ste. Marie remarked, "and as you grow older you will know it. Leaving my honesty out of the question if you like, I have the honor to tell you that I am, perhaps not quite formally, engaged to your sister, and it is on her account, for her sake, that I am here. You will hardly presume, I take it, to question your sister's motive in wanting you to return home? Incidentally, your grandfather is so overcome by grief over your absence that he is expected to die at any time. Come," said he, "I have said enough to convince you that you must listen to me. Believe what you please, but listen to me for five minutes. After that I have small doubt of what you will do."
The boy looked nervously from Ste. Marie to Mlle. O'Hara and back again. He thrust his unsteady hands into his pockets, but withdrew them after a moment and clasped them together behind him.
"I tell you," he burst out, at last--"I tell you, it's no good your trying to knock old Charlie to me. I won't stand for it. Old Charlie's my best friend, and I'd believe him before I'd believe anybody in the world. You've got a knife out for old Charlie, that's what's the matter with you."
"And your sister?" suggested Ste. Marie. "Your mother? You'd hardly know your mother if you could see her to-day. It has pretty nearly killed her."
"Ah, they're all--they're all against me!" the lad cried. "They've always stood together against me. Helen, too!"
"You wouldn't think they were against you if you could just see them once now," said Ste. Marie.
And Arthur Benham gave a sort of shamefaced sob, saying:
"Ah, cut it out! Cut it out! Go on, then, and talk, if you want to, I don't care. I don't have to listen. Talk, if you're pining for it."
And Ste. Marie, as briefly as he could, told him the truth of the whole affair from the beginning, as he had told it to Coira O'Hara. Only he laid special stress upon Charles Stewart's present expectations from the new will, and he assured the boy that no document his grandfather might have asked him to sign could have given away his rights in his father's fortune, since he was a minor and had no legal right to sign away anything at all even if he wished to.
"If you will look back as calmly and carefully as you can," he said, "you will find that you didn't begin to suspect your grandfather of anything wrong until you had talked with Captain Stewart. It was your uncle's explanation of the thing that made you do that. Well, remember what he had at stake--I suppose it is a matter of several millions of francs. And he needs them. His affairs are in a bad way."
He told also about the pretended search which Captain Stewart had so long maintained, and of how he had tried to mislead the other searchers whose motives were honest.
"It has been a gigantic gamble, my friend," he said, at the last. "A gigantic and desperate gamble to get the money that should be yours. You can end it by the mere trouble of climbing over that wall yonder and taking the Clamart tram back to Paris. As easily as that you can end it--and, if I am not mistaken, you can at the same time save an old man's life--prolong it at the very least." He took a step forward. "I beg you to go!" he said, very earnestly. "You know the whole truth now. You must see what danger you have been and are in. You must know that I am telling you the truth. I beg you to go back to Paris."
And from where she stood, a little aside, Coira O'Hara said: "I beg you, too, Arthur. Go back to them."
The boy dropped down upon a tree-stump which was near and covered his face with his hands. The two who watched him could see that he was trembling violently. Over him their eyes met and they questioned each other with a mute and anxious gravity:
"What will he do?" For everything was in Arthur Benham's weak hands now.
For a little time, which seemed hours to all who were there, the lad sat still, hiding his face, but suddenly he sprang to his feet, and once more stood staring into Ste. Marie's quiet eyes. "How do I know you're telling the truth?" he cried, and his voice ran up high and shrill and wavered and broke. "How do I know that? You'd tell just as smooth a story if--if you were lying--if you'd been sent here to get me back to--to what old Charlie said they wanted me for."
"You have only to go back to them and make sure," said Ste. Marie. "They can't harm you or take anything from you. If they persuaded you to sign anything--which they will not do--it would be valueless to them, because you're a minor. You know that as well as I do. Go and make sure. Or wait! Wait!" He gave a little sharp laugh of excitement. "Is Captain Stewart in the house?" he demanded. "Call him out here. That's better still. Bring your uncle here to face me without telling him what it's for, without giving him time to make up a story. Then we shall see. Send for him."
"He's not here," said the boy "He went away an hour ago. I don't know whether he'll be back to-night or not." Young Arthur stared at the elder man, breathing hard. "Good God!" he said, in a whisper, "if--old Charlie is rotten, who in this world isn't? I--don't know what to believe." Abruptly he turned with a sort of snarl upon Coira O'Hara. "Have you been in this game, too?" he cried out. "I suppose you and your precious father and old Charlie cooked it up together. What? You've been having a fine, low-comedy time laughing yourselves to death at me, haven't you? Oh, Lord, what a gang!"
Ste. Marie caught the boy by the shoulder and spun him round. "That will do!" he said, sternly. "You have been a fool; don't make it worse by being a coward and a cad. Mlle. O'Hara knew no more of the truth than you knew. Your uncle lied to you all." But the girl came and touched his arm.
She said: "Don't be hard with him. He is bewildered and nervous, and he doesn't know what he is saying. Think how sudden it has been for him. Don't be hard with him, M. Ste. Marie."
Ste. Marie dropped his hand, and the lad backed a few steps away. His face was crimson. After a moment he said: "I'm sorry, Coira. I didn't mean that. I didn't mean it. I beg your pardon. I'm about half dippy, I guess. I--don't know what to believe or what to think or what to do." He remained staring at her a little while in silence, and presently his eyes sharpened. He cried out: "If I should go back there--mind you, I say 'if'--d'you know what they'd do? Well, I'll tell you. They'd begin to talk at me one at a time. They'd get me in a corner and cry over me, and say I was young and didn't know my mind, and that I owed them something for all that's happened, and not to bring their gray hairs in sorrow to the grave--and the long and short of it would be that they'd make me give you up." He wheeled upon Ste. Marie. "That's what they'd do!" he said, and his voice began to rise again shrilly. "They're three to one, and they know they can talk me into anything. You know it, too!" He shook his head. "I won't go back!" he cried, wildly. "That's what will happen if I do. I don't want granddad's money. He can give it to old Charlie or to a gendarme if he wants to. I'm going to have enough of my own. I won't go back, and that's all there is of it. You may be telling the truth or you may not, but I won't go."
Ste. Marie started to speak, but the girl checked him. She moved closer to where Arthur Benham stood, and she said: "If your love for me, Arthur, is worth having, it is worth fighting for. If it is so weak that your family can persuade you out of it, then--I don't want it at all, for it would never last. Arthur, you must go back to them. I want you to go."
"I won't!" the boy cried. "I won't go! I tell you they could talk me out of anything. You don't know 'em. I do. I can't stand against them. I won't go, and that settles it. Besides, I'm not so sure that this fellow's telling the truth. I've known old Charlie a lot longer than I have him."
Coira O'Hara turned a despairing face over her shoulder toward Ste. Marie. "Leave me alone with him," she begged. "Perhaps I can win him over. Leave us alone for a little while."
Ste. Marie hesitated, and in the end went away and left the two together. He went farther down the park to the rond point, and crossed it to the familiar stone bench at the west side. He sat down there to wait. He was anxious and alarmed over this new obstacle, for he had the wit to see that it was a very important one. It was quite conceivable that the boy, but half-convinced, half-yielding before, would balk altogether when he realized, as evidently he did realize, what returning home might mean to him--the loss of the girl he hoped to marry.
Ste. Marie was sufficiently wise in worldly matters to know that the boy's fear was not unfounded. He could imagine the family in the rue de l'Université taking exactly the view young Arthur said they would take toward an alliance with the daughter of a notorious Irish adventurer. Ste. Marie's cheeks burned hotly with anger when the words said themselves in his brain, but he knew that there could be no doubt of the Benhams' and even of old David Stewart's view of the affair. They would oppose the marriage with all their strength.
He tried to imagine what weight such considerations would have with him if it were he who was to marry Coira O'Hara, and he laughed aloud with scorn of them and with great pride in her. But the lad yonder was very young--too young; his family would be right to that extent. Would he be able to stand against them?
Ste. Marie shook his head with a sigh and gave over unprofitable wonderings, for he was still within the walls of La Lierre, and so was Arthur Benham. And the walls were high and strong. He fell to thinking of the attempt at rescue which was to be made that night, and he began to form plans and think of necessary preparations. To be sure, Coira might persuade the boy to escape during the day, and then the night attack would be unnecessary, but in case of her failure it must be prepared for. He rose to his feet and began to walk back and forth under the rows of chestnut-trees, where the earth was firm and black and mossy and there was no growth of shrubbery. He thought of that hasty interview with Richard Hartley and he laughed a little. It had been rather like an exchange of telegrams--reduced to the bare bones of necessary question and answer. There had been no time for conversation.
His eyes caught a far-off glimpse of woman's garments, and he saw that Coira O'Hara and Arthur Benham were walking toward the house. So he went a little way after them, and waited at a point where he could see any one returning. He had not long to wait, for it seemed that the girl went only as far as the door with her fiancé and then turned back.
Ste. Marie met her with raised eyebrows, and she shook her head. "I don't know," said she. "He is very stubborn. He is frightened and bewildered. As he said awhile ago, he doesn't know what to think or what to believe. You mustn't blame him. Remember how he trusted his uncle! He's going to think it over, and I shall see him again this afternoon. Perhaps, when he has had time to reflect--I don't know. I truly don't know."
"He won't go to your father and make a scene?" said Ste. Marie, and the girl shook her head.
"I made him promise not to. Oh, Bayard," she cried--and in his abstraction he did not notice the name she gave him--"I am afraid myself! I am horribly afraid about my father."
"I am sure he did not know," said the man. "Stewart lied to him."
But Coira O'Hara shook her head, saying: "I didn't mean that. I'm afraid of what will happen when he finds out how he has been--how we have been played upon, tricked, deceived--what a light we have been placed in. You don't know, you can't even imagine, how he has set his heart on--what he wished to occur. I am afraid he will do something terrible when he knows. I am afraid he will kill Captain Stewart."
"Which," observed Ste. Marie, "would be an excellent solution of the problem. But of course we mustn't let it happen. What can be done?"
"We mustn't let him know the truth," said the girl, "until Arthur is gone and until Captain Stewart is gone, too. He is terrible when he's angry. We must keep the truth from him until he can do no harm. It will be bad enough even then, for I think it will break his heart."
Ste. Marie remembered that there was something she did not know, and he told her about his interview with Richard Hartley and about their arrangement for the rescue--if it should be necessary--on that very night.
She nodded her head over it, but for a long time after he had finished she did not speak. Then she said: "I am glad, I suppose. Yes, since it has to be done, I suppose I am glad that it is to come at once." She looked up at Ste. Marie with shadowy, inscrutable eyes. "And so, Monsieur," said she, "it is at an end--all this." She made a little gesture which seemed to sweep the park and gardens. "So we go out of each other's lives as abruptly as we entered them. Well--" She had continued to look at him, but she saw the man's face turn white, and she saw something come into his eyes which was like intolerable pain; then she looked away.
Ste. Marie said her name twice, under his breath, in a sort of soundless cry, but he said no more, and after a moment she went on:
"Even so, I am glad that at last we know each other--for what we are.... I should have been sorry to go on thinking you ... what I thought before.... And I could not have borne it, I'm afraid, to have you think ... what you thought of me ... when I came to know.... I'm glad we understand at last."
Ste. Marie tried to speak, but no words would come to him. He was like a man defeated and crushed, not one on the high-road to victory. But it may have been that the look of him was more eloquent than anything he could have said. And it may have been that the girl saw and understood.
So the two remained there for a little while longer in silence, but at last Coira O'Hara said:
"I must go back to the house now. There is nothing more to be done, I suppose--nothing left now but to wait for night to come. I shall see Arthur this afternoon and make one last appeal to him. If that fails you must carry him off. Do you know where he sleeps? It is the room corresponding to yours on the other side of the house--just across that wide landing at the top of the stairs. I will manage that the front door below shall be left unlocked. The rest you and your friends must do. If I can make any impression upon Arthur I'll slip a note under your door this afternoon or this evening. Perhaps, even if he decides to go, it would be best for him to wait until night and go with the rest of you. In any case, I'll let you know."
She spoke rapidly, as if she were in great haste to be gone, and with averted eyes. And at the end she turned away without any word of farewell, but Ste. Marie started after her. He cried:
"Coira! Coira!" And when she stopped, he said: "Coira, I can't let you go like this! Are we to--simply to go our different ways like this, as if we'd never met at all?"
"What else?" said the girl.
And there was no answer to that. Their separate ways were determined for them--marked plain to see.
"But afterward!" he cried. "Afterward--after we have got the boy back to his home! What then?"
"Perhaps," she said, "he will return to me." She spoke without any show of feeling. "Perhaps he will return. If not--well, I don't know. I expect my father and I will just go on as we've always gone. We're used to it, you know."
After that she nodded to him and once more turned away. Her face may have been a very little pale, but, as before, it betrayed no feeling of any sort. So she went up under the trees to the house, and Ste. Marie watched her with strained and burning eyes.
When, half an hour later, he followed, he came unexpectedly upon the old Michel, who had entered the park through the little wooden door in the wall, and was on his way round to the kitchen with sundry parcels of supplies. He spoke a civil "Bon jour, Monsieur," and Ste. Marie stopped him. They were out of sight from the windows. Ste. Marie withdrew from his pocket one of the hundred-franc notes, and the single, beadlike eye of the ancient gnome fixed upon it and seemed to shiver with a fascinated delight.
"A hundred francs!" said Ste. Marie, unnecessarily, and the old man licked his withered lips. The tempter said: "My good Michel, would you care to receive this trifling sum--a hundred francs?"
The gnome made a choked, croaking sound in his throat.
"It is yours," said Ste. Marie, "for a small service--for doing nothing at all."
The beadlike eye rose to his and sharpened intelligently.
"I desire only," said he, "that you should sleep well to-night, very well--without waking."
"Monsieur," said the old man, "I do not sleep at all. I watch. I watch Monsieur's windows. Monsieur O'Hara watches until midnight, and I watch from then until day."
"Oh, I know that," said the other. "I've seen you more than once in the moonlight, but to-night, mon vieux, slumber will overcome you. Exhaustion will have its way and you will sleep. You will sleep like the dead."
"I dare not!" cried the gardener. "Monsieur, I dare not! The old one would kill me. You do not know him. He would cut me into pieces and burn the pieces. Monsieur, it is impossible."
Ste. Marie withdrew the other hundred-franc note and held the two together in his hand. Once more the gnome made his strange, croaking sound and the withered face twisted with anguish.
"Monsieur! Monsieur!" he groaned.
"I have an idea," said the tempter. "A little earth rubbed upon one side of the head--perhaps a trifling scratch to show a few drops of blood. You have been assaulted, beaten down, despite a heroic resistance, and left for dead. An hour afterward you stagger into the house a frightful object. Hein?"
The withered face of the old man expanded slowly into a senile grin.
"Monsieur," said he, with admiration in his tone, "it is magnificent. It shall be done. I sleep like the good dead--under the trees, not too near the lilacs, eh? Bien, Monsieur, it is done!"
Into his trembling claw he took the notes; he made an odd bow and shambled away about his business.
Ste. Marie laughed and went on into the house. He counted, and there were fourteen hours to wait. Fourteen hours, and at the end of them--what? His blood began to warm to the night's work.