CHAPTER XXVIITHE NIGHT'S WORKThe fourteen long hours dragged themselves by. They seemed interminable, but somehow they passed and the appointed time drew near. Ste. Marie spent the greater part of the afternoon reading, but twice he lay down upon the bed and tried to sleep, and once he actually dozed off for a brief space. The old Michel brought his meals. He had thought it possible that Coira might manage to bring the dinner-tray, as she had already done on several occasions, and so make an opportunity for informing him as to young Arthur's state of mind. But she did not come and no word came from her. So evening drew on and the dusk gathered and deepened into darkness.Ste. Marie walked his floor and prayed for the hours to pass. He had candles and matches, and there was even a lamp in the room so that he could have read if he chose, but he knew that the words would have been meaningless to him, that he was incapable of abstracting his thought from the night's stern work. He began to be anxious over not having heard from Mlle. O'Hara. She had said that she would talk with Arthur Benham during the afternoon, and then slip a note under Ste. Marie's door. Yet no word had come from her, and, to the man pacing his floor in the darkness, the fact took on proportions tremendous and fantastic. Something had happened. The boy had broken his promise, burst out upon O'Hara, or more probably upon his uncle, and the house was by the ears. Coira was watched—even locked in her room. Stewart had fled! A score of such terrible possibilities rushed through Ste. Marie's brain and tortured him. He was in a state of nervous tension that was almost unendurable, and the little noises of the night outside, a wind-stirred rustle of leaves, a bird's flutter among the branches, the sound of a cracking twig, made him start violently and catch his breath.Then at his utmost need came reassurance and something like ease of mind. He heard a sound of voices at the front of the house, and sprang to his balconied window to listen. Captain Stewart and O'Hara were walking upon the brick-paved terrace and chatting calmly over their cigars. The man above, prone upon the floor, his head pressed against the ivy-masked grille of the balcony, listened, and though he could hear their words only at intervals when they passed beneath him, he knew that they spoke of trivial matters in voices free of strain or concern.He drew back with a breath of relief, and at that moment a sound across the room arrested him: a soft scraping sound such as a mouse might make. He went where it was, and a little square of paper gleamed white through the darkness just within the door. Ste. Marie caught it up and took it to the far side of the room away from the window. He struck a match, opened the folded paper, and a single line of writing was there—"He will go with you. Wait by the door in the wall."The man nearly cried out with joy.He struck another match and looked at his watch. It was a quarter to ten. Four hours left out of the fourteen.Once more he lay down upon the bed and closed his eyes. He knew that he could not sleep, but he was tired from long tramping up and down the room and from the strain of over-tried nerves. From hour to hour he looked at his watch by match-light, but he did not leave the bed until half-past one. Then he rose and took a long breath, and the time was at hand.He stood a little while gazing out into the night. An old moon was high overhead in a cloudless sky, and that would make the night's work both easier and more difficult, but, on the whole, he was glad of it. He looked to the east towards that wall where was the little wooden door, and the way was under cover of trees and shrubbery for the whole distance save a little space beside the house. He listened and the night was very still—no sound from the house below him—no sound anywhere save the barking of a dog from far away, and, after an instant, the whistle of a distant train.Ste. Marie turned back into the room and pulled the sheets from his bed. He rolled them, corner-wise, into a sort of rope and knotted them together securely. Then he went to one of the east windows. There was no balcony there, but, as in all French upper windows, a wood and iron bar fixed into the stone casing at both ends, with a little grille below it. It crossed the window-space a third of the distance from bottom to top. He bent one end of the improvised rope to this, made it fast, and let the other end hang out. The east side of the house was in shadow, and the rolled sheet, a vague white line, disappeared into the darkness below, but Ste. Marie knew that it must reach nearly to the ground. He had made use of it because he was afraid there would be too much noise if he tried to climb down the ivy. The room directly underneath was the drawing-room, and he knew that it was closed and shuttered and unoccupied both by day and by night. The only danger, he decided, was from the sleeping-room behind his own, with its windows opening close by; but though he did not know it he was safe there also, for the room was Coira O'Hara's.He felt in his pocket for the pistol and it was ready to hand. Then he buttoned his coat round him and swung himself out of the window. He held his body away from the wall with one knee, and went down, hand under hand. It was so quietly done that it did not even rouse the birds in the near-by trees. Before he realised that he had come to the lower windows his feet touched the earth and he was free.He stood for a moment where he was, and then slipped rapidly across the open moonlit space into the inky gloom of the trees. He made a half-circle round before the house and looked up at it. It lay grey and black and still in the night. Where the moonlight was upon it it was grey, where there was shadow black as black velvet, and the windows were like open dead eyes. He looked towards Arthur Benham's room, and there was no light, but he knew that the boy was awake and waiting there, shivering probably in the dark. He wondered where Coira O'Hara was, and he pictured her lying in her bed fronting the gloom with sleepless open eyes looking into those to-morrows which she had said she saw so well. He wondered bitterly what the to-morrows were to bring her, but he caught himself up with a stern determination and put her out of his mind. He did not dare think of her in that hour.He turned and began to make his way silently under the trees towards the appointed meeting place. Once he thought of the old Michel, and wondered where that gnarled and withered watch-dog had betaken himself. Somewhere, within or without the house, he was asleep, or pretended to sleep, and Ste. Marie knew that he could be trusted. The man's cupidity and his hatred of Captain Stewart together would make him faithful—or faithless, as one chose to look upon it.He came to that place where a row of lilac shrubs stood against the wall and a half-dead cedar stretched gnarled branches above. He was a little before his time, and he settled himself to listen and wait, his sharp ears keenly on the alert, his eyes turned towards the dark and quiet house.The little noises of the night broke upon him with exaggerated clamour. A crackling twig was a thunderous crash, a bird's sleepy stir was the sound of pursuit and disaster. A hundred times he heard the cautious approach of Richard Hartley's motor-car without the wall, and he fell into a panic of fear lest that machine prove unruly, break down, puncture a tyre, or burst into a series of ear-splitting explosions. But at last—it seemed to him that he had waited untold hours and that the dawn must be nigh—there came an unmistakable rustling from overhead and the sound of hard-drawn breath. The top of the wall, just at that point, was in moonlight, and a man's head appeared over it, then an arm and then a leg. Hartley called down to him in a whisper, and Ste. Marie, from the gloom beneath, whispered a reply. He said—"The boy has promised to come with us. We shan't have to fight for it." Richard Hartley said—"Thank God!" He spoke to some one outside and then, turning about, let himself down to arm's length and dropped to the ground."Thank God!" he said again. "The two men who were to have come with me didn't show up. I waited as long as I dared, and then came on with only the chauffeur. He's waiting outside by the car ready to crank up when I give the word. The car's just a few yards away headed out for the road. How are we to get back over the wall?"Ste. Marie explained that Arthur Benham was to come out to join them at the wooden door, and doubtless would bring a key. If not, the three of them could scale fifteen feet easily enough in the way soldiers and firemen are trained to do it. He told his friend all that was necessary for the time, and they went together along the wall to the more open space beside the little door.They waited there in silence for five minutes, and once Hartley, with his back towards the house, struck a match under his sheltering coat, looked to see what time it was, and it was three minutes past two."He ought to be here!" the man growled. "I don't like waiting. Good Lord, you don't think he's funked it, do you? Eh?" Ste. Marie did not answer, but he was breathing very fast and he could not keep his hands still.The dog which he had heard from his window began barking again very far away in the night, and kept it up incessantly. Perhaps he was barking at the moon."I'm going a little way towards the house," said Ste. Marie at last. "We can't see the terrace from here." But before he had started they heard the sound of hurrying feet, and Richard Hartley began to curse under his breath. He said—"Does the young idiot want to rouse the whole place? Why can't he come quietly?"Ste. Marie began to run forward, slipping the pistol out of his pocket and holding it ready in his hand, for his quick ears told him that there was more than one pair of feet coming through the night. He went to where he could command the approach from the house and halted there, but all at once he gave a low cry and started forward again, for he saw that Arthur Benham and Coira O'Hara were running together, and that they were in desperate haste. He called out to them and the girl cried—"Go to the door in the wall! The door in the wall! Oh, be quick!" He fell into step beside her, and, as they ran, he said—"You're going with him? You're coming with us?" The girl answered him—"No! no!" and she sprang to the little low door and began to fit the iron key into the lock. The three men stood about her, and young Arthur Benham drew his breath in great shivering gasps that were like sobs."They heard us!" he cried in a whisper. "They're after us. They heard us on the stairs. I—stumbled and fell. For God's sake, Coira, be quick!"The girl fumbled desperately with the clumsy key, and dropped upon her knees to see the better. Once she said in a whisper: "I can't turn it. It won't turn," and at that Richard Hartley pushed her out of the way and lent his greater strength to the task.[image]"The girl fumbled desperately with the clumsy key."A sudden loud cry came from the house, a hoarse screeching cry in a voice which might have been either man's or woman's, but was as mad and as desperate and as horrible in that still night as the screech of a tortured animal—or of a maniac. It came again and again and it was nearer."Oh, hurry! hurry!" said the girl. "Can't you be quick? They're coming." And, as she spoke, the little group about the wall heard the engine of the motor-car outside start up with a staccato roar, and knew that the faithful chauffeur was ready for them."I'm getting it, I think!" said Richard Hartley between his teeth. "I'm getting it. Turn, you beast! Turn!"There was a sound of hurrying feet, and Ste. Marie spun about. He cried—"Don't wait for me! Jump into the car and go! Don't wait anywhere. Come back after you've left Benham at home!" He began to run forward toward those running feet, and he did not know that the girl followed after him. A short distance away there was a little open space of moonlight, and in its midst, at full career, he met the Irishman O'Hara, a gaunt and grotesque figure in his sleeping suit, barefooted, with empty hands. Beyond him still, some one else ran stumbling, and sobbed and uttered mad cries.Ste. Marie dropped his pistol to the ground and sprang upon the Irishman. He caught him about the body and arms, and the two swayed and staggered under the tremendous impact. At just that moment, from behind, came the crash of the opened door and triumphant shouts. Ste. Marie gave a little gasp of triumph too, and clung the harder to the man with whom he fought. He drove his head into the Irishman's shoulder, and set his muscles with a grip which was like iron. He knew that it could not endure long, for the Irishman was stronger than he; but the grip of a nervous man who is keyed up to a high tension is incredibly powerful for a little while. Trained strength is nothing beside it.It seemed to Ste. Marie in this desperate moment—it cannot have been more than a minute or two at the most—that a strange and uncanny miracle befel him. It was as if he became two. Soul and body, spirit and straining flesh, seemed to him to separate, to stand apart each from the other. There was a thing of iron flesh and thews which had locked itself about an enemy, and clung there madly with but one purpose, one single thought—to grip and grip and never loosen until flesh should be torn from bones. But apart, the spirit looked on with a complete detachment. It looked beyond—he must have raised his head to glance over O'Hara's shoulder—saw a mad figure staggering forward in the moonlight, and knew the figure for Captain Stewart. It saw an upraised arm and was not afraid, for the work was almost done now. It listened and was glad, hearing the motor-car without the walls leap forward into the night, and its puffing grow fainter and fainter with distance. It knew that the thing of strained sinews received a crashing blow upon back-flung head, and that the iron muscles were slipping away from their grip, but it was still glad, for the work was done.Only at the last, before red and whirling lights had obscured the view, before consciousness was dissolved in unconsciousness, came horror and agony, for the eyes saw Captain Stewart back away and raise the thing he had struck with, a large revolver, saw Coira O'Hara, a swift and flashing figure in the moonlight, throw herself upon him, before he could fire, heard together a woman's scream and the roar of the pistol's explosion, and so knew no more.CHAPTER XXVIIICOIRA'S LITTLE HOURWhen Coira O'Hara came to herself from the moment's swoon into which she had fallen she rose to her knees and stared wildly about her. She seemed to be alone in the place, and her first thought was to wonder how long she had lain there. Captain Stewart had disappeared. She remembered her struggle with him to prevent him from firing at Ste. Marie, and she remembered her desperate agony when she realised that she could not hold him much longer. She remembered the accidental discharge of the revolver into the air, she remembered being thrown violently to the ground—and that was all.Where was her father and where was Ste. Marie? The first question answered itself, for, as she turned her eyes towards the west, she saw O'Hara's tall ungainly figure disappearing in the direction of the house. She called his name twice, but it may be that the man did not hear for he went on without pausing and was lost to sight.The girl became aware of something which lay on the ground near her, half in and half out of the patch of silver moonlight. For some moments she stared at it uncomprehending. Then she gave a sharp scream and struggled to her feet. She ran to the thing which lay there motionless and fell upon her knees beside it. It was Ste. Marie, his face upturned to the sky, one side of his head black and damp. Stewart had not shot him, but that crashing blow with the clubbed revolver had struck him full and fair and he was very still.For an instant the girl's strength went out of her and she dropped lax across the body, her face upon Ste. Marie's breast. But after that she tore open coat and waistcoat and felt for a heartbeat. It seemed to her that she found life, and she began to believe that the man had only been stunned.Once more she rose to her feet and looked about her. There was no one to lend her aid. She bent over the unconscious man and slipped her arms about him. Though Ste. Marie was tall he was slightly built, by no means heavy, and the girl was very strong. She found that she could carry him a little way, dragging his feet after her. When she could go no farther she laid him down, and crouched over him, waiting until her strength should return. And this she did for a score of times; but each time the distance she went was shorter, and her breathing came with deeper gasps, and the trembling in her limbs grew more terrible. At the last she moved in a sort of fever, an evil dream of tortured body and reeling brain. But she had got Ste. Marie up through the park to the terrace and into the house, and, with a last desperate effort, she had laid him upon a couch in a certain little room which opened from the lower hall. Then she fell down before him and lay still for a long time.When she came to herself again the man was stirring feebly and muttering to himself under his breath. With slow and painful steps she got across the room, and pulled the bell cord. She remained there ringing until the old Justine, blinking and half dressed, appeared with a candle in the doorway. Coira told the woman to make lights and then to bring water and a certain little bottle of aromatic salts which was in her room upstairs. The old Justine exclaimed and cried out, but the girl flew at her in a white fury, and she tottered away as fast as old legs could move, once she had set alight the row of candles on the mantel shelf. Then Coira O'Hara went back to the man who lay outstretched on the low couch, and knelt beside him looking into his face. The man stirred and moved his head slowly. Half articulate words came from his lips and she made out that he was saying her name in a dull monotone—only her name, over and over again. She gave a little cry of grief and gladness, and hid her face against him as she had done once before, out in the night.The old woman returned with a jug of water, towels and the bottle of aromatic salts. The two of them washed that red stain from Ste. Marie's head and found that he had received a severe bruise, and that the flesh had been cut before and above the ear."Thank God!" the girl said, "it is only a flesh wound. If it were a fracture he would be breathing in that horrible loud way they always do. He's breathing naturally. He has only been stunned."You may go now!" she said. "Only, bring a glass and some drinking water—cold."So the old woman went away to do her errand, returned and went away again, and the two were left together. Coira held the salts bottle to Ste. Marie's nostrils, and he gasped and sneezed and tried to turn his head away from it, but it brought him to his senses—and doubtless to a good deal of pain. Once when he could not escape the thing he broke into a fit of weak cursing, and the girl laughed over him tenderly and let him be.Very slowly Ste. Marie opened his eyes and, in the soft half light, the girl's face was bent above him, dark and sweet and beautiful—near, so near that her breath was warm upon his lips. He said her name again in an incredulous whisper—"Coira! Coira!" And she said—"I am here." But the man was in a strange borderland of half consciousness, and his ears were deaf.He said, gazing up at her—"Is it—another dream?" And he tried to raise one hand from where it lay beside him, but the hand wavered and fell aslant across his body. It had not the strength yet to obey him.He said, still in his weak whisper—"Oh, beautiful—and sweet—and true!"The girl gave a little sob and hid her face."A goddess!" he whispered. "'A queen among goddesses!' That's—what the little Jew said. 'A queen among goddesses.—The young Juno, before——'" He stirred restlessly where he lay, and he complained—"My head hurts! What's the matter with my head? It hurts."She dipped one of the towels in the basin of cold water and held it to the man's brow. The chill of it must have been grateful for his eyes closed and he breathed a little satisfied. "Ah!"It mustn't hurt to-night," said he. "To-night at two—by the little door in the garden wall. And he's coming with us. The young fool is coming with us.... So she and I go out of each other's lives...."Coira!" he cried with a sudden sharpness. "Coira, I won't have it! Am I going to lose you ... like this? Am I going to lose you after all ... now that we know?" He put up his hand once more—a weak and uncertain hand. It touched the girl's warm cheek and a sudden violent shiver wrung the man on the couch. His eyes sharpened and stared with something like fear."Real!" he cried, whispering. "Real? ... Not a dream?""Oh, very real, my Bayard!" said she. A thought came to her and she drew away from the couch, and sat back upon her heels, looking at the man with grave and sombre eyes. In that moment she fought within herself a battle of right and wrong."He doesn't remember," she said. "He doesn't know. He is like a little child. He knows nothing but that we two—are here together. Nothing else. Nothing!"His state was plain to see. He dwelt still in that vague borderland between worlds. He had brought with him no memories, and no memories followed him save those her face had wakened. Within the girl a great and tender passion of love fought for possession of this little hour."It will be all I shall ever have!" she cried piteously. "And it cannot harm him. He won't remember it when he comes to his senses. He'll sleep again and—forget. He'll go back to her and never know. And I shall never even see him again. Why can't I have my little sweet hour?"Once more the man cried her name, and she knelt forward and bent above him."Oh, at last, Coira!" said he. "After so long! ... And I thought it was another dream.""Do you dream of me, Bayard?" she asked. And he said—"From the very first. From that evening in the Champs Elysées. Your eyes, they've haunted me from the very first."There was a dream of you," he said, "that I had so often—but I cannot quite remember because my head hurts. What is the matter with my head? I was—going somewhere. It was so very important that I should go, but I have forgotten where it was and why I had to go there. I remember only that you called to me—called me back—and I saw your eyes—and I couldn't go. You needed me.""Ah, sorely, Bayard! Sorely!" cried the girl above him."And now," said he, whispering."Now?" she said."Coira, I love you," said the man on the couch. And Coira O'Hara gave a single dry sob. She said—"Oh, my dear love! now I wish that I might die after hearing you say that. My life, Bayard, is full now. It's full of joy and gratefulness and everything that is sweet. I wish I might die before other things come to spoil it."Ste. Marie—or that part of him which lay at La Lierre, laughed with a fine scorn, albeit very weakly."Why not live instead?" said he. "And what can come to spoil our life for us?"Our life!" he said again in a whisper. A flash of remembrance seemed to come to him for he smiled, and said—"Coira, we'll go to Vavau.""Anywhere!" said she. "Anywhere!""So that we go together.""Yes," she said gently, "so that we two go together." She tried with a desperate fierceness to make herself like the man before her, to put away, by sheer power of will, all memory, the knowledge of everything save what was in this little room, but it was the vainest of all vain efforts. She saw herself for a thief and a cheat—stealing, for love's sake, the mere body of the man she loved while mind and soul were absent. In her agony she almost cried out aloud as the words said themselves within her. And she denied them. She said—"His mind may be absent but his soul is here. He loves me. It is I, not that other. Can I not have my poor little hour of pretence? A little hour out of all a lifetime! Shall I have nothing at all?"But the voice which had accused her said—"If he knew, would he say he loves you?" And she hid her face, for she knew that he would not—even if it were true."Coira!" whispered the man on the couch, and she raised her head. In the half darkness he could not have seen how she was suffering. Her face was only a warm blur to him, vague and sweet and beautiful, with tender eyes. He said—"I think—I'm falling asleep. My head is so very, very queer! What is the matter with my head? Coira, do you think I might be kissed before I go to sleep?"She gave a little cry of intolerable anguish. It seemed to her that she was being tortured beyond all reason or endurance. She felt suddenly very weak and she was afraid that she was going to faint away. She laid her face down upon the couch where Ste. Marie's head lay. Her cheek was against his and her hair across his eyes.The man gave a little contented sigh and fell asleep.Later, she rose stiffly and wearily to her feet. She stood for a little while looking down upon him. It was as if she looked upon the dead body of a lover. She seemed to say a still and white and tearless farewell to him. Her little hour was done, and it had been, instead of joy, bitterness unspeakable: ashes in the mouth. Then she went out of the room and closed the door.In the hall outside she stood a moment considering, and finally mounted the stairs and went to her father's door. She knocked and thought she heard a slight stirring inside, but there was no answer. She knocked twice again and called out her father's name, saying that she wished to speak to him, but still he made no reply, and, after waiting a little longer, she turned away. She went downstairs again and out upon the terrace. The terrace and the lawn before it were still chequered with silver and deep black, but the moon was an hour lower in the west. A little cool breeze had sprung up and it was sweet and grateful to her. She sat down upon one of the stone benches and leant her head back against the trunk of a tree which stood beside, and she remained there for a long time, still and relaxed in a sort of bodily and mental languor—an exhaustion of flesh and spirit.There came shambling footsteps upon the turf and the old Michel advanced into the moonlight from the gloom of the trees, emitting mechanical and not very realistic groans. He had been hard put to it to find any one before whom he could pour out his tale of heroism and suffering. Coira O'Hara looked upon him coldly, and the gnome groaned with renewed and somewhat frightened energy."What is the matter with you?" she asked. "Why are you about at this hour?" The old Michel told his piteous tale with tears and passion, protesting that he had succumbed only before the combined attack of twenty armed men, and exhibiting his wounds. But the girl gave a brief and mirthless laugh."You were bribed to tell that, I suppose," said she. "By M. Ste. Marie? Yes, probably. Well, tell it to my father to-morrow! You'd better go to bed now." The old man stared at her with open mouth for a breathless moment, and then shambled hastily away, looking over his shoulder, at intervals, until he was out of sight.But after that the girl still remained in her place from sheer weariness and lack of impulse to move. She fell to wondering about Captain Stewart and what had become of him, but she did not greatly care. She had a feeling that her world had come to its end, and she was quite indifferent about those who still peopled its ashes—or about all of them save her father.She heard the distant sound of a motor-car, and at that sat up quickly, for it might be Ste. Marie's friend Mr. Hartley returning from Paris. The sound came nearer and ceased, but she waited for ten minutes before rapid steps approached from the east wall and Hartley was before her.He cried at once—"Where's Ste. Marie? Where is he? He hasn't tried to walk into the city?""He is asleep in the house," said the girl. "He was struck on the head and stunned. I got him into the house and he is asleep now."Of course," she said, "we could wake him, but it would probably be better to let him sleep as long as he will if it is possible. It will save him a great deal of pain I think. He'll have a frightful headache if he's wakened now. Could you come for him or send for him to-morrow—towards noon?""Why—yes, I suppose so," said Richard Hartley. "Yes, of course, if you think that's better. Could I just see him for a moment?" He stared at the girl a bit suspiciously and Coira looked back at him with a little tired smile, for she read his thought."You want to make sure," said she. "Of course! Yes, come in. He's sleeping very soundly." She led the man into that dim room where Ste. Marie lay, and Hartley's quick eye noted the basin of water and the stained towels and the little bottle of aromatic salts. He bent over his friend to see the bruise at the side of the head, and listened to the sleeper's breathing. Then the two went out again to the moonlit terrace."You must forgive me," said he when they had come there. "You must forgive me for seeming suspicious, but—all this wretched business—and he is my closest friend.—I've come to suspect everybody. I was unjust, for you helped us to get away. I beg your pardon!"The girl smiled at him again, her little white tired smile, and she said—"There is nothing I would not do to make amends—now that I know—the truth.""Yes," said Hartley. "I understand. Arthur Benham told me how Stewart lied to you all. Was it he who struck Ste. Marie?" She nodded."And then tried to shoot him—but he didn't succeed in that. I wonder where he is—Captain Stewart?""I have him out in the car," Hartley said. "Oh, he shall pay, you may be sure! If he doesn't die and cheat us, that is. I nearly ran the car over him a few minutes ago. If it hadn't been for the moonlight I would have done for him. He was lying on his face in that lane that leads to the Issy road. I don't know what is the matter with him. He's only half conscious and he's quite helpless. He looks as if he'd had a stroke of apoplexy or something. I must hurry him back to Paris, I suppose, and get him under a doctor's care. I wonder what's wrong with him?" The girl shook her head, for she did not know of Stewart's epileptic seizures. She thought it quite possible that he had suffered a stroke of apoplexy as Hartley suggested, for she remembered the half-mad state he had been in.Richard Hartley stood for a time in thought."I must get Stewart back to Paris at once," he said finally. "I must get him under care, and in a safe place from which he can't escape. It will want some managing. If I can get away, I'll come out here again in the morning; but if not, I'll send the car out with orders to wait here until Ste. Marie is ready to return to the city. Are you sure he's all right—that he isn't badly hurt?""I think he will be all right," she said, "save for the pain. He was only stunned." And Hartley nodded."He seems to be breathing quite naturally," said he. "That's arranged then. The car will be here in waiting, and I shall come with it if I can. Tell him when he wakes." He put out his hand to her, and the girl gave him hers very listlessly but smiling. She wished he would go, and leave her alone.Then in a moment more he did go, and she heard his quick steps down through the trees, and heard, a little later, the engine of the motor car start up with a sudden loud volley of explosions. And so she was left to her solitary watch. She noticed as she turned to go indoors that the blackness of the night was just beginning to grey towards dawn.CHAPTER XXIXTHE SCALES OF INJUSTICESte. Marie slept soundly until mid-morning—that is to say, about ten o'clock—and then awoke with a dull pain in his head and a sensation of extreme giddiness, which became something like vertigo when he attempted to rise. However, with the aid of the old Michel he got somehow upstairs to his room, and made a rather sketchy toilet.Coira came to him there and, while he lay still across the bed, told him about the happenings of the night after he had received his injury. She told him also that the motor was waiting for him, outside the wall, and that Richard Hartley had sent a message by the chauffeur, to say that he was very busy in Paris making arrangements about Stewart, who had come out of his strange state of half insensibility only to rave in a delirium."So," she said, "you can go now whenever you are ready. Arthur is with his family, Captain Stewart is under guard, and your work is done. You ought to be glad—even though you are suffering pain."Ste. Marie looked up at her."Do I seem glad, Coira?" said he. And she said—"You will be glad to-morrow—and always, I hope and pray. Always, always!"The man held one hand over his aching eyes."I have," he said, "queer half-memories. I wish I could remember distinctly."He looked up at her again."I dropped down by the gate in the wall. When I awoke I was in a room in the house. How did that happen?""Oh," she said, turning her face away, "we got you up to the house almost at once." But Ste. Marie frowned thoughtfully."'We'? Who do you mean by 'we'?""Well then, I," the girl said. "It was not difficult.""Coira!" cried the man, "do you mean that you carried me bodily all that long distance? You?""Carried or dragged," she said. "As much one as the other. It was not very difficult. I'm strong, for a woman.""Oh, child, child!" he cried. And he said—"I remember more. It was you who held Stewart, and kept him from shooting me. I heard the shot and I heard you scream. The last thought I had was that you had been killed in saving me. That's what I went out into the blank, thinking."He covered his eyes again as if the memory were intolerable. But after a while he said—"You saved my life, you know." And the girl answered him—"I had nearly taken it once before. It was I who called Michel that day you came over the wall, the day you were shot. I nearly murdered you once. I owed you something. Perhaps we're even now." She saw that he did not at all remember that hour in the little room—her hour of bitterness, and she was glad. She had felt sure that it would be so. For the present she did not greatly suffer; she had come to a state beyond active suffering—a chill state of dulled sensibilities.The old Justine knocked at the door to ask if monsieur was going into the city soon, or if she should give the chauffeur hisdéjeunerand tell him to wait."Are you fit to go?" Coira asked. And he said—"I suppose as fit as I shall be." He got to his feet, and the things about him swam dangerously, but he could walk by using great care. The girl stood white and still, and she avoided his eyes."It is not good-bye," said he. "I shall see you soon again—and I hope, often—often, Coira." The words had a flat and foolish sound, but he could find no others. It was not easy to speak."I suppose I must not ask to see your father?" said he, and she told him that her father had locked himself in his own room and would see no one, would not even open his door to take in food.Ste. Marie went to the stairs, leaning upon the shoulder of the stout old Justine, but, before he had gone, Coira checked him for an instant. She said—"Tell Arthur, if he speaks to you about me, that what I said in the note I gave him last night, I meant quite seriously. I gave him a note to read after he reached home. Tell him for me that it was final. Will you do that?""Yes, of course," said Ste. Marie. He looked at her with some wonder because her words had been very emphatic."Yes," he said, "I will tell him. Is that all?""All but good-bye," said she. "Good-bye, Bayard!"She stood at the head of the stairs while he went down them. And she came after him to the landing halfway where the stairs turned in the opposite direction for their lower flight. When he went out of the front door he looked back, and she was standing there above him—a straight, still figure, dark against the light of the windows behind her.He went straight to the Rue d'Assas. He found that while he sat still in the comfortable tonneau of the motor his head was fairly normal, and the world did not swing and whirl about in that sickening fashion. But when the car lurched or bumped over an obstruction it made him giddy, and he would have fallen had he been standing.The familiar streets of the Montparnasse and Luxembourg quarters had for his eyes all the charm and delight of home things to the returned traveller. He felt as if he had been away for months, and he caught himself looking for changes, and it made him laugh. He was much relieved when he found that his concierge was not on watch, and that he could slip unobserved up the stairs and into his rooms. The rooms were fresh and clean, for they had been aired and tended daily.Arrived there he wrote a little note to a friend of his who was a doctor and lived in the Rue Notre Dame des Champs, asking this man to call as soon as it might be convenient. He sent the note by the chauffeur, and then lay down, dressed as he was, to wait, for he could not stand or move about without a painful dizziness. The doctor came within a half-hour, examined Ste. Marie's bruised head and bound it up. He gave him a dose of something with a vile taste, which he said would take away the worst of the pain in a few hours, and he also gave him a sleeping potion, and made him go to bed."You'll be fairly fit by evening," he said. "But don't stir until then. I'll leave word below that you're not to be disturbed."So it happened that when Richard Hartley came dashing up an hour or two later he was not allowed to see his friend, and Ste. Marie slept a dreamless sleep until dark.He awoke then, refreshed but ravenous with hunger, and found that there was only a dull ache in his battered head. The dizziness and the vertigo were almost completely gone. He made lights and dressed with care. He felt like a little girl making ready for a party; it was so long—or seemed so long—since he had put on evening clothes. Then he went out, leaving at the loge of the concierge a note for Hartley to say where he might be found. He went to Lavenue's and dined in solitary pomp, for it was after nine o'clock. Again it seemed to him that it was months since he had done the like—sat down to a real table for a real dinner. At ten he got into a fiacre and drove to the Rue de l'Université.The man who admitted him said that mademoiselle was alone in the drawing-room, and he went there at once. He was dully conscious that something was very wrong, but he had suffered too much within the past few hours to be analytical, and he did not know what it was that was wrong. He should have entered that room with a swift and eager step, with shining eyes, with a high-beating heart. He went into it slowly, wrapped in a mantle of strange apathy.Helen Benham came forward to meet him and took both his hands in hers. Ste. Marie was amazed to see that she seemed not to have altered at all—in spite of this enormous lapse of time, in spite of all that had happened in it. And yet, unaltered, she seemed to him a stranger, a charming and gracious stranger with an icily beautiful face, He wondered at her and at himself, and he was a little alarmed, because he thought that he must be ill. That blow upon the head must, after all, have done something terrible to him."Ah, Ste. Marie!" she said in her well-remembered voice—and again he wondered that the voice should be so high-pitched, and so without colour or feeling. "How glad I am," she said, "that you are safely out of it all! How you have suffered for us, Ste. Marie! You look white and ill. Sit down, please! Don't stand!" She drew him to a comfortable chair, and he sat down in it obediently. He could not think of anything to say, though he was not, as a rule, tongue-tied, but the girl did not seem to expect any answer, for she went on at once with a rather odd air of haste—"Arthur is here with us, safe and sound. Richard Hartley brought him back from that dreadful place, and he has talked everything over with my grandfather, and it's all right. They both understand now, and there'll be no more trouble. We have had to be careful, very careful, and we have had to—well, to rearrange the facts a little so as to leave—my uncle—to leave Captain Stewart's name out of it. It would not do to shock my grandfather by telling him the truth. Perhaps, later; I don't know. That will have to be thought of. For the present we have left my uncle out of it—and put the blame entirely upon this other man. I forget his name.""The blame cannot rest there," said Ste. Marie sharply. "It is not deserved, and I shall not allow it to be left so. Captain Stewart lied to O'Hara throughout. You cannot leave the blame with an innocent man.""Still—" she said, "such a man!"Ste. Marie looked at her, frowning, and the girl turned her eyes away. She may have had the grace to be a little ashamed."Think of the difficulty we were in!" she urged. "Captain Stewart is my grandfather's own son. We cannot tell him now, in his weak state, that his own son is—what he is."There was reason if not justice in that, and Ste. Marie was forced to admit it. He said—"Ah well! for the present, then. That can be arranged later. The main point is that I've found your brother for you. I've brought him back."Miss Benham looked up at him and away again, and she drew a quick breath. He saw her hands move restlessly in her lap, and he was aware that for some odd reason she was very ill at ease. At last she said—"Ah, but—but have you, dear Ste. Marie? Have you?"After a brief silence she stole another swift glance at the man, and he was staring in open and frank bewilderment. She rushed into rapid speech."Ah," she cried, "don't misunderstand me! Don't think that I'm brutal or ungrateful for all you've—you've suffered in trying to help us. Don't think that! I can—we can never be grateful enough, never! But stop and think! Yes, I know this all sounds hideous, but it's so terribly important. I shouldn't dream of saying a word of it if it weren't so important, if so much didn't depend upon it. But stop and think! Was it, dear Ste. Marie, was it, after all, you? Was it you who brought Arthur to us?"The man fairly blinked at her, owl-like. He was beyond speech."Wasn't it Richard?" she hurried on. "Wasn't it Richard Hartley? Ah, if I could only say it without seeming so contemptibly heartless! If only I needn't say it at all! But it must be said because of what depends upon it."Think! Go back to the beginning! Wasn't it Richard who first began to suspect my uncle? Didn't he tell you or write to you what he had discovered, and so set you upon the right track? And after you had—well, just fallen into their hands, with no hope of ever escaping, yourself—to say nothing of bringing Arthur back—wasn't it Richard who came to your rescue and brought it all to victory? Oh, Ste. Marie, I must be just to him as well as to you! Don't you see that? However grateful I may be to you for what you have done—suffered—I cannot, in justice, give you what I was to have given you, since it is, after all, Richard who has saved my brother. I cannot, can I? Surely you must see it. And you must see how it hurts me to have to say it. I had hoped that—you would understand—without my speaking."Still the man sat in his trance of astonishment, speechless. For the first time in his life he was brought face to face with the amazing, the appalling injustice of which a woman is capable when her heart is concerned. This girl wished to believe that to Richard Hartley belonged the credit for rescuing her brother, and, lo! she believed it. A score of juries might have decided against her, a hundred proofs controverted her decision, but she would have been deaf and blind. It is only women who accomplish miracles of reasoning like that.Ste. Marie took a long breath and he started to speak, but in the end shook his head and remained silent. Through the whirl and din of falling skies he was yet able to see the utter futility of words. He could have adduced a hundred arguments to prove her absurdity. He could have shown her that before he ever read Hartley's note he had decided upon Stewart's guilt—and for much better reasons than Hartley had. He could have pointed out to her that it was he, not Hartley, who discovered young Benham's whereabouts; that it was he who summoned Hartley there; and that, as a matter of fact, Hartley need not have come at all, since the boy had been persuaded to go home in any case.He thought of all these things and more, and, in a moment of sheer anger at her injustice, he was on the point of stating them, but he shook his head and remained silent. After all, of what use was speech? He knew that it could make no impression upon her, and he knew why. For some reason, in some way, she had turned, during his absence, to Richard Hartley, and there was nothing more to be said. There was no treachery on Hartley's part. He knew that, and it never even occurred to him to blame his friend. Hartley was as faithful as any one who ever lived. It seemed to be nobody's fault. It had just happened.He looked at the girl before him with a new expression, an expression of sheer curiosity. It seemed to him wellnigh incredible that any human being could be so unjust and so blind. Yet he knew her to be, in other matters, one of the fairest of all women, just and tender and thoughtful and true. He knew that she prided herself upon her cool impartiality of judgment. He shook his head with a little sigh, and ceased to wonder any more. It was beyond him.He became aware that he ought to say something, and he said—"Yes. Yes, I—see. I see what you mean. Yes, Hartley did all you say. I hadn't meant to rob Hartley of the credit he deserves. I suppose you're right." He was possessed of a sudden longing to get away out of that room, and he rose to his feet."If you don't mind," he said, "I think I'd better go. This is—well, it's a bit of a facer, you see. I want to think it over. Perhaps to-morrow—you don't mind?" He saw a swift relief flash into Miss Benham's eyes, but she murmured a few words of protest that had a rather perfunctory sound. Ste. Marie shook his head."Thanks! I won't stay," said he. "Not just now. I—think I'd better go." He had a confused realisation of platitudinous adieux, of a silly formality of speech, and he found himself in the hall. Once he glanced back, and Miss Benham was standing where he had left her, looking after him with a calm and unimpassioned face. He thought that she looked rather like a very beautiful statue.The butler came to him to say that Mr. Stewart would be glad if he would look in before leaving the house, and so he went upstairs and knocked at old David's door. He moved like a man in a dream, and the things about him seemed to be curiously unreal and rather far away, as they seem sometimes in a fever.He was admitted at once, and he found the old man sitting up in bed, clad in one of his incredibly gorgeous mandarin's jackets—plum-coloured satin, this time, with peonies—overflowing with spirits and good-humour. His grandson sat in a chair near at hand. The old man gave a shout of welcome—"Ah, here's Jason, at last, back from Colchis. Welcome home to—whatever the name of the place was. Welcome home!" He shook Ste. Marie's hand with hospitable violence, and Ste. Marie was astonished to see upon what a new lease of life and strength the old man seemed to have entered. There was no ingratitude or misconception here, certainly. Old David quite overwhelmed his visitor with thanks and with expressions of affection."You've saved my life among other things!" he said in his gruff roar. "I was ready to go, but, by the Lord, I'm going to stay a while longer now! This world's a better place than I thought—a much better place." He shook a heavily-waggish head."If I didn't know," said he, "what your reward is to be for what you've done, I should be in despair over it all, because there is nothing else in the world that would be anything like adequate. You've been making sure of the reward downstairs, I dare say? Eh, what? Yes?""You mean——?" asked the younger man.And old David said—"I mean Helen, of course. What else?"Ste. Marie was not quite himself. At another time he might have got out of the room with an evasive answer, but he spoke without thinking. He said—"Oh—yes! I suppose—I suppose I ought to tell you that Miss Benham—well, she has changed her mind. That is to say——""What!" shouted old David Stewart, in his great voice. "What is that?""Why, it seems," said Ste. Marie, "it seems that I only blundered. It seems that Hartley rescued your grandson, not I. And I suppose he did, you know. When you come to think of it, I suppose he did."David Stewart's great white beard seemed to bristle like the ruff of an angry dog, and his eyes flashed fiercely under their shaggy brows."Do you mean to tell me that after all you've done and—and gone through, Helen has thrown you over? Do you mean to tell me that?""Well," argued Ste. Marie uncomfortably, "well, you see, she seems to be right. I did bungle it, didn't I? It was Hartley who came and pulled us out of the hole.""Hartley be damned!" cried the old man in a towering rage. And he began to pour out the most extraordinary flood of furious invective upon his granddaughter and upon Richard Hartley, whom he quite unjustly termed a snake-in-the-grass, and finally upon all women, past, contemporary or still to be born.Ste. Marie, in fear of old David's health, tried to calm him, and the faithful valet came running from the room beyond with prayers and protestations, but nothing would check that astonishing flow of fury until it had run its full course. Then the man fell back upon his pillows, crimson, panting and exhausted; but the fierce eyes glittered still, and they boded no good for Miss Helen Benham."You're well rid of her!" said the old gentleman, when at last he was once more able to speak. "You're well rid of her. I congratulate you! I am ashamed and humiliated, and a great burden of obligation is shifted to me—though I assume it with pleasure—but I congratulate you. You might have found out too late what sort of a woman she is."Ste. Marie began to protest and to explain, and say that Miss Benham had been quite right in what she said, but the old gentleman only waved an impatient arm to him; and presently, when he saw the valet making signs across the bed, and saw that his host was really in a state of complete exhaustion after the outburst, he made his adieux and got away.Young Arthur Benham, who had been sitting almost silent during the interview, followed him out of the room, and closed the door behind them. For the first time Ste. Marie noted that the boy's face was white and strained. Young Arthur pulled a crumpled square of folded paper from his pocket and shook it at the other man."Do you know what this is?" he cried. "Do you know what's in this?" Ste. Marie shook his head, but a sudden recollection came to him."Ah!" said he, "that must be the note Mlle. O'Hara spoke of. She asked me to tell you that she meant it—whatever it may be—quite seriously; that it was final. She didn't explain. She just said that; that you were to take it as final."The lad gave a sudden, very bitter sob."She has thrown me over!" he said. "She says I'm not to come back to her."Ste. Marie gave a wordless cry, and he began to tremble."You can read it if you want to," the boy said. "Perhaps you can explain it. I can't. Do you want to read it?" The elder man stood staring at him whitely, and the boy repeated his words. He said—"You can read it if you want to," and at last Ste. Marie took the paper between stiff hands and held it to the light. Coira O'Hara said briefly that too much was against their marriage. She mentioned his age, the certain hostility of his family, their different tastes, a number of other things. But in the end she said she had begun to realise that she did not love him as she ought to do if they were to marry. And so, the note said finally, she gave him up to his family, she released him altogether, and she begged him not to come back to her or to urge her to change her mind. Also she made the trite but very sensible observation that he would be glad of his freedom before the year was out.Ste. Marie's unsteady fingers opened, and the crumpled paper slipped through them to the floor. Over it the man and the boy looked at each other in silence. Young Arthur Benham's face was white, and it was strained and contorted with its first grief. But first griefs do not last very long. Coira O'Hara had told the truth; before the year was out the lad would be glad of his freedom. But the man's face was white also, white and still, and his eyes held a strange expression which the boy could not understand, and at which he wondered. The man was trembling a little from head to foot. The boy wondered about that too, but abruptly he cried out—"What's up? Where are you going?" for Ste. Marie had turned all at once and was running down the stairs as fast as he could run.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE NIGHT'S WORK
The fourteen long hours dragged themselves by. They seemed interminable, but somehow they passed and the appointed time drew near. Ste. Marie spent the greater part of the afternoon reading, but twice he lay down upon the bed and tried to sleep, and once he actually dozed off for a brief space. The old Michel brought his meals. He had thought it possible that Coira might manage to bring the dinner-tray, as she had already done on several occasions, and so make an opportunity for informing him as to young Arthur's state of mind. But she did not come and no word came from her. So evening drew on and the dusk gathered and deepened into darkness.
Ste. Marie walked his floor and prayed for the hours to pass. He had candles and matches, and there was even a lamp in the room so that he could have read if he chose, but he knew that the words would have been meaningless to him, that he was incapable of abstracting his thought from the night's stern work. He began to be anxious over not having heard from Mlle. O'Hara. She had said that she would talk with Arthur Benham during the afternoon, and then slip a note under Ste. Marie's door. Yet no word had come from her, and, to the man pacing his floor in the darkness, the fact took on proportions tremendous and fantastic. Something had happened. The boy had broken his promise, burst out upon O'Hara, or more probably upon his uncle, and the house was by the ears. Coira was watched—even locked in her room. Stewart had fled! A score of such terrible possibilities rushed through Ste. Marie's brain and tortured him. He was in a state of nervous tension that was almost unendurable, and the little noises of the night outside, a wind-stirred rustle of leaves, a bird's flutter among the branches, the sound of a cracking twig, made him start violently and catch his breath.
Then at his utmost need came reassurance and something like ease of mind. He heard a sound of voices at the front of the house, and sprang to his balconied window to listen. Captain Stewart and O'Hara were walking upon the brick-paved terrace and chatting calmly over their cigars. The man above, prone upon the floor, his head pressed against the ivy-masked grille of the balcony, listened, and though he could hear their words only at intervals when they passed beneath him, he knew that they spoke of trivial matters in voices free of strain or concern.
He drew back with a breath of relief, and at that moment a sound across the room arrested him: a soft scraping sound such as a mouse might make. He went where it was, and a little square of paper gleamed white through the darkness just within the door. Ste. Marie caught it up and took it to the far side of the room away from the window. He struck a match, opened the folded paper, and a single line of writing was there—
"He will go with you. Wait by the door in the wall."
The man nearly cried out with joy.
He struck another match and looked at his watch. It was a quarter to ten. Four hours left out of the fourteen.
Once more he lay down upon the bed and closed his eyes. He knew that he could not sleep, but he was tired from long tramping up and down the room and from the strain of over-tried nerves. From hour to hour he looked at his watch by match-light, but he did not leave the bed until half-past one. Then he rose and took a long breath, and the time was at hand.
He stood a little while gazing out into the night. An old moon was high overhead in a cloudless sky, and that would make the night's work both easier and more difficult, but, on the whole, he was glad of it. He looked to the east towards that wall where was the little wooden door, and the way was under cover of trees and shrubbery for the whole distance save a little space beside the house. He listened and the night was very still—no sound from the house below him—no sound anywhere save the barking of a dog from far away, and, after an instant, the whistle of a distant train.
Ste. Marie turned back into the room and pulled the sheets from his bed. He rolled them, corner-wise, into a sort of rope and knotted them together securely. Then he went to one of the east windows. There was no balcony there, but, as in all French upper windows, a wood and iron bar fixed into the stone casing at both ends, with a little grille below it. It crossed the window-space a third of the distance from bottom to top. He bent one end of the improvised rope to this, made it fast, and let the other end hang out. The east side of the house was in shadow, and the rolled sheet, a vague white line, disappeared into the darkness below, but Ste. Marie knew that it must reach nearly to the ground. He had made use of it because he was afraid there would be too much noise if he tried to climb down the ivy. The room directly underneath was the drawing-room, and he knew that it was closed and shuttered and unoccupied both by day and by night. The only danger, he decided, was from the sleeping-room behind his own, with its windows opening close by; but though he did not know it he was safe there also, for the room was Coira O'Hara's.
He felt in his pocket for the pistol and it was ready to hand. Then he buttoned his coat round him and swung himself out of the window. He held his body away from the wall with one knee, and went down, hand under hand. It was so quietly done that it did not even rouse the birds in the near-by trees. Before he realised that he had come to the lower windows his feet touched the earth and he was free.
He stood for a moment where he was, and then slipped rapidly across the open moonlit space into the inky gloom of the trees. He made a half-circle round before the house and looked up at it. It lay grey and black and still in the night. Where the moonlight was upon it it was grey, where there was shadow black as black velvet, and the windows were like open dead eyes. He looked towards Arthur Benham's room, and there was no light, but he knew that the boy was awake and waiting there, shivering probably in the dark. He wondered where Coira O'Hara was, and he pictured her lying in her bed fronting the gloom with sleepless open eyes looking into those to-morrows which she had said she saw so well. He wondered bitterly what the to-morrows were to bring her, but he caught himself up with a stern determination and put her out of his mind. He did not dare think of her in that hour.
He turned and began to make his way silently under the trees towards the appointed meeting place. Once he thought of the old Michel, and wondered where that gnarled and withered watch-dog had betaken himself. Somewhere, within or without the house, he was asleep, or pretended to sleep, and Ste. Marie knew that he could be trusted. The man's cupidity and his hatred of Captain Stewart together would make him faithful—or faithless, as one chose to look upon it.
He came to that place where a row of lilac shrubs stood against the wall and a half-dead cedar stretched gnarled branches above. He was a little before his time, and he settled himself to listen and wait, his sharp ears keenly on the alert, his eyes turned towards the dark and quiet house.
The little noises of the night broke upon him with exaggerated clamour. A crackling twig was a thunderous crash, a bird's sleepy stir was the sound of pursuit and disaster. A hundred times he heard the cautious approach of Richard Hartley's motor-car without the wall, and he fell into a panic of fear lest that machine prove unruly, break down, puncture a tyre, or burst into a series of ear-splitting explosions. But at last—it seemed to him that he had waited untold hours and that the dawn must be nigh—there came an unmistakable rustling from overhead and the sound of hard-drawn breath. The top of the wall, just at that point, was in moonlight, and a man's head appeared over it, then an arm and then a leg. Hartley called down to him in a whisper, and Ste. Marie, from the gloom beneath, whispered a reply. He said—
"The boy has promised to come with us. We shan't have to fight for it." Richard Hartley said—
"Thank God!" He spoke to some one outside and then, turning about, let himself down to arm's length and dropped to the ground.
"Thank God!" he said again. "The two men who were to have come with me didn't show up. I waited as long as I dared, and then came on with only the chauffeur. He's waiting outside by the car ready to crank up when I give the word. The car's just a few yards away headed out for the road. How are we to get back over the wall?"
Ste. Marie explained that Arthur Benham was to come out to join them at the wooden door, and doubtless would bring a key. If not, the three of them could scale fifteen feet easily enough in the way soldiers and firemen are trained to do it. He told his friend all that was necessary for the time, and they went together along the wall to the more open space beside the little door.
They waited there in silence for five minutes, and once Hartley, with his back towards the house, struck a match under his sheltering coat, looked to see what time it was, and it was three minutes past two.
"He ought to be here!" the man growled. "I don't like waiting. Good Lord, you don't think he's funked it, do you? Eh?" Ste. Marie did not answer, but he was breathing very fast and he could not keep his hands still.
The dog which he had heard from his window began barking again very far away in the night, and kept it up incessantly. Perhaps he was barking at the moon.
"I'm going a little way towards the house," said Ste. Marie at last. "We can't see the terrace from here." But before he had started they heard the sound of hurrying feet, and Richard Hartley began to curse under his breath. He said—
"Does the young idiot want to rouse the whole place? Why can't he come quietly?"
Ste. Marie began to run forward, slipping the pistol out of his pocket and holding it ready in his hand, for his quick ears told him that there was more than one pair of feet coming through the night. He went to where he could command the approach from the house and halted there, but all at once he gave a low cry and started forward again, for he saw that Arthur Benham and Coira O'Hara were running together, and that they were in desperate haste. He called out to them and the girl cried—
"Go to the door in the wall! The door in the wall! Oh, be quick!" He fell into step beside her, and, as they ran, he said—
"You're going with him? You're coming with us?" The girl answered him—
"No! no!" and she sprang to the little low door and began to fit the iron key into the lock. The three men stood about her, and young Arthur Benham drew his breath in great shivering gasps that were like sobs.
"They heard us!" he cried in a whisper. "They're after us. They heard us on the stairs. I—stumbled and fell. For God's sake, Coira, be quick!"
The girl fumbled desperately with the clumsy key, and dropped upon her knees to see the better. Once she said in a whisper: "I can't turn it. It won't turn," and at that Richard Hartley pushed her out of the way and lent his greater strength to the task.
[image]"The girl fumbled desperately with the clumsy key."
[image]
[image]
"The girl fumbled desperately with the clumsy key."
A sudden loud cry came from the house, a hoarse screeching cry in a voice which might have been either man's or woman's, but was as mad and as desperate and as horrible in that still night as the screech of a tortured animal—or of a maniac. It came again and again and it was nearer.
"Oh, hurry! hurry!" said the girl. "Can't you be quick? They're coming." And, as she spoke, the little group about the wall heard the engine of the motor-car outside start up with a staccato roar, and knew that the faithful chauffeur was ready for them.
"I'm getting it, I think!" said Richard Hartley between his teeth. "I'm getting it. Turn, you beast! Turn!"
There was a sound of hurrying feet, and Ste. Marie spun about. He cried—
"Don't wait for me! Jump into the car and go! Don't wait anywhere. Come back after you've left Benham at home!" He began to run forward toward those running feet, and he did not know that the girl followed after him. A short distance away there was a little open space of moonlight, and in its midst, at full career, he met the Irishman O'Hara, a gaunt and grotesque figure in his sleeping suit, barefooted, with empty hands. Beyond him still, some one else ran stumbling, and sobbed and uttered mad cries.
Ste. Marie dropped his pistol to the ground and sprang upon the Irishman. He caught him about the body and arms, and the two swayed and staggered under the tremendous impact. At just that moment, from behind, came the crash of the opened door and triumphant shouts. Ste. Marie gave a little gasp of triumph too, and clung the harder to the man with whom he fought. He drove his head into the Irishman's shoulder, and set his muscles with a grip which was like iron. He knew that it could not endure long, for the Irishman was stronger than he; but the grip of a nervous man who is keyed up to a high tension is incredibly powerful for a little while. Trained strength is nothing beside it.
It seemed to Ste. Marie in this desperate moment—it cannot have been more than a minute or two at the most—that a strange and uncanny miracle befel him. It was as if he became two. Soul and body, spirit and straining flesh, seemed to him to separate, to stand apart each from the other. There was a thing of iron flesh and thews which had locked itself about an enemy, and clung there madly with but one purpose, one single thought—to grip and grip and never loosen until flesh should be torn from bones. But apart, the spirit looked on with a complete detachment. It looked beyond—he must have raised his head to glance over O'Hara's shoulder—saw a mad figure staggering forward in the moonlight, and knew the figure for Captain Stewart. It saw an upraised arm and was not afraid, for the work was almost done now. It listened and was glad, hearing the motor-car without the walls leap forward into the night, and its puffing grow fainter and fainter with distance. It knew that the thing of strained sinews received a crashing blow upon back-flung head, and that the iron muscles were slipping away from their grip, but it was still glad, for the work was done.
Only at the last, before red and whirling lights had obscured the view, before consciousness was dissolved in unconsciousness, came horror and agony, for the eyes saw Captain Stewart back away and raise the thing he had struck with, a large revolver, saw Coira O'Hara, a swift and flashing figure in the moonlight, throw herself upon him, before he could fire, heard together a woman's scream and the roar of the pistol's explosion, and so knew no more.
CHAPTER XXVIII
COIRA'S LITTLE HOUR
When Coira O'Hara came to herself from the moment's swoon into which she had fallen she rose to her knees and stared wildly about her. She seemed to be alone in the place, and her first thought was to wonder how long she had lain there. Captain Stewart had disappeared. She remembered her struggle with him to prevent him from firing at Ste. Marie, and she remembered her desperate agony when she realised that she could not hold him much longer. She remembered the accidental discharge of the revolver into the air, she remembered being thrown violently to the ground—and that was all.
Where was her father and where was Ste. Marie? The first question answered itself, for, as she turned her eyes towards the west, she saw O'Hara's tall ungainly figure disappearing in the direction of the house. She called his name twice, but it may be that the man did not hear for he went on without pausing and was lost to sight.
The girl became aware of something which lay on the ground near her, half in and half out of the patch of silver moonlight. For some moments she stared at it uncomprehending. Then she gave a sharp scream and struggled to her feet. She ran to the thing which lay there motionless and fell upon her knees beside it. It was Ste. Marie, his face upturned to the sky, one side of his head black and damp. Stewart had not shot him, but that crashing blow with the clubbed revolver had struck him full and fair and he was very still.
For an instant the girl's strength went out of her and she dropped lax across the body, her face upon Ste. Marie's breast. But after that she tore open coat and waistcoat and felt for a heartbeat. It seemed to her that she found life, and she began to believe that the man had only been stunned.
Once more she rose to her feet and looked about her. There was no one to lend her aid. She bent over the unconscious man and slipped her arms about him. Though Ste. Marie was tall he was slightly built, by no means heavy, and the girl was very strong. She found that she could carry him a little way, dragging his feet after her. When she could go no farther she laid him down, and crouched over him, waiting until her strength should return. And this she did for a score of times; but each time the distance she went was shorter, and her breathing came with deeper gasps, and the trembling in her limbs grew more terrible. At the last she moved in a sort of fever, an evil dream of tortured body and reeling brain. But she had got Ste. Marie up through the park to the terrace and into the house, and, with a last desperate effort, she had laid him upon a couch in a certain little room which opened from the lower hall. Then she fell down before him and lay still for a long time.
When she came to herself again the man was stirring feebly and muttering to himself under his breath. With slow and painful steps she got across the room, and pulled the bell cord. She remained there ringing until the old Justine, blinking and half dressed, appeared with a candle in the doorway. Coira told the woman to make lights and then to bring water and a certain little bottle of aromatic salts which was in her room upstairs. The old Justine exclaimed and cried out, but the girl flew at her in a white fury, and she tottered away as fast as old legs could move, once she had set alight the row of candles on the mantel shelf. Then Coira O'Hara went back to the man who lay outstretched on the low couch, and knelt beside him looking into his face. The man stirred and moved his head slowly. Half articulate words came from his lips and she made out that he was saying her name in a dull monotone—only her name, over and over again. She gave a little cry of grief and gladness, and hid her face against him as she had done once before, out in the night.
The old woman returned with a jug of water, towels and the bottle of aromatic salts. The two of them washed that red stain from Ste. Marie's head and found that he had received a severe bruise, and that the flesh had been cut before and above the ear.
"Thank God!" the girl said, "it is only a flesh wound. If it were a fracture he would be breathing in that horrible loud way they always do. He's breathing naturally. He has only been stunned.
"You may go now!" she said. "Only, bring a glass and some drinking water—cold."
So the old woman went away to do her errand, returned and went away again, and the two were left together. Coira held the salts bottle to Ste. Marie's nostrils, and he gasped and sneezed and tried to turn his head away from it, but it brought him to his senses—and doubtless to a good deal of pain. Once when he could not escape the thing he broke into a fit of weak cursing, and the girl laughed over him tenderly and let him be.
Very slowly Ste. Marie opened his eyes and, in the soft half light, the girl's face was bent above him, dark and sweet and beautiful—near, so near that her breath was warm upon his lips. He said her name again in an incredulous whisper—
"Coira! Coira!" And she said—
"I am here." But the man was in a strange borderland of half consciousness, and his ears were deaf.
He said, gazing up at her—
"Is it—another dream?" And he tried to raise one hand from where it lay beside him, but the hand wavered and fell aslant across his body. It had not the strength yet to obey him.
He said, still in his weak whisper—
"Oh, beautiful—and sweet—and true!"
The girl gave a little sob and hid her face.
"A goddess!" he whispered. "'A queen among goddesses!' That's—what the little Jew said. 'A queen among goddesses.—The young Juno, before——'" He stirred restlessly where he lay, and he complained—
"My head hurts! What's the matter with my head? It hurts."
She dipped one of the towels in the basin of cold water and held it to the man's brow. The chill of it must have been grateful for his eyes closed and he breathed a little satisfied. "Ah!
"It mustn't hurt to-night," said he. "To-night at two—by the little door in the garden wall. And he's coming with us. The young fool is coming with us.... So she and I go out of each other's lives....
"Coira!" he cried with a sudden sharpness. "Coira, I won't have it! Am I going to lose you ... like this? Am I going to lose you after all ... now that we know?" He put up his hand once more—a weak and uncertain hand. It touched the girl's warm cheek and a sudden violent shiver wrung the man on the couch. His eyes sharpened and stared with something like fear.
"Real!" he cried, whispering. "Real? ... Not a dream?"
"Oh, very real, my Bayard!" said she. A thought came to her and she drew away from the couch, and sat back upon her heels, looking at the man with grave and sombre eyes. In that moment she fought within herself a battle of right and wrong.
"He doesn't remember," she said. "He doesn't know. He is like a little child. He knows nothing but that we two—are here together. Nothing else. Nothing!"
His state was plain to see. He dwelt still in that vague borderland between worlds. He had brought with him no memories, and no memories followed him save those her face had wakened. Within the girl a great and tender passion of love fought for possession of this little hour.
"It will be all I shall ever have!" she cried piteously. "And it cannot harm him. He won't remember it when he comes to his senses. He'll sleep again and—forget. He'll go back to her and never know. And I shall never even see him again. Why can't I have my little sweet hour?"
Once more the man cried her name, and she knelt forward and bent above him.
"Oh, at last, Coira!" said he. "After so long! ... And I thought it was another dream."
"Do you dream of me, Bayard?" she asked. And he said—
"From the very first. From that evening in the Champs Elysées. Your eyes, they've haunted me from the very first.
"There was a dream of you," he said, "that I had so often—but I cannot quite remember because my head hurts. What is the matter with my head? I was—going somewhere. It was so very important that I should go, but I have forgotten where it was and why I had to go there. I remember only that you called to me—called me back—and I saw your eyes—and I couldn't go. You needed me."
"Ah, sorely, Bayard! Sorely!" cried the girl above him.
"And now," said he, whispering.
"Now?" she said.
"Coira, I love you," said the man on the couch. And Coira O'Hara gave a single dry sob. She said—
"Oh, my dear love! now I wish that I might die after hearing you say that. My life, Bayard, is full now. It's full of joy and gratefulness and everything that is sweet. I wish I might die before other things come to spoil it."
Ste. Marie—or that part of him which lay at La Lierre, laughed with a fine scorn, albeit very weakly.
"Why not live instead?" said he. "And what can come to spoil our life for us?
"Our life!" he said again in a whisper. A flash of remembrance seemed to come to him for he smiled, and said—
"Coira, we'll go to Vavau."
"Anywhere!" said she. "Anywhere!"
"So that we go together."
"Yes," she said gently, "so that we two go together." She tried with a desperate fierceness to make herself like the man before her, to put away, by sheer power of will, all memory, the knowledge of everything save what was in this little room, but it was the vainest of all vain efforts. She saw herself for a thief and a cheat—stealing, for love's sake, the mere body of the man she loved while mind and soul were absent. In her agony she almost cried out aloud as the words said themselves within her. And she denied them. She said—
"His mind may be absent but his soul is here. He loves me. It is I, not that other. Can I not have my poor little hour of pretence? A little hour out of all a lifetime! Shall I have nothing at all?"
But the voice which had accused her said—
"If he knew, would he say he loves you?" And she hid her face, for she knew that he would not—even if it were true.
"Coira!" whispered the man on the couch, and she raised her head. In the half darkness he could not have seen how she was suffering. Her face was only a warm blur to him, vague and sweet and beautiful, with tender eyes. He said—
"I think—I'm falling asleep. My head is so very, very queer! What is the matter with my head? Coira, do you think I might be kissed before I go to sleep?"
She gave a little cry of intolerable anguish. It seemed to her that she was being tortured beyond all reason or endurance. She felt suddenly very weak and she was afraid that she was going to faint away. She laid her face down upon the couch where Ste. Marie's head lay. Her cheek was against his and her hair across his eyes.
The man gave a little contented sigh and fell asleep.
Later, she rose stiffly and wearily to her feet. She stood for a little while looking down upon him. It was as if she looked upon the dead body of a lover. She seemed to say a still and white and tearless farewell to him. Her little hour was done, and it had been, instead of joy, bitterness unspeakable: ashes in the mouth. Then she went out of the room and closed the door.
In the hall outside she stood a moment considering, and finally mounted the stairs and went to her father's door. She knocked and thought she heard a slight stirring inside, but there was no answer. She knocked twice again and called out her father's name, saying that she wished to speak to him, but still he made no reply, and, after waiting a little longer, she turned away. She went downstairs again and out upon the terrace. The terrace and the lawn before it were still chequered with silver and deep black, but the moon was an hour lower in the west. A little cool breeze had sprung up and it was sweet and grateful to her. She sat down upon one of the stone benches and leant her head back against the trunk of a tree which stood beside, and she remained there for a long time, still and relaxed in a sort of bodily and mental languor—an exhaustion of flesh and spirit.
There came shambling footsteps upon the turf and the old Michel advanced into the moonlight from the gloom of the trees, emitting mechanical and not very realistic groans. He had been hard put to it to find any one before whom he could pour out his tale of heroism and suffering. Coira O'Hara looked upon him coldly, and the gnome groaned with renewed and somewhat frightened energy.
"What is the matter with you?" she asked. "Why are you about at this hour?" The old Michel told his piteous tale with tears and passion, protesting that he had succumbed only before the combined attack of twenty armed men, and exhibiting his wounds. But the girl gave a brief and mirthless laugh.
"You were bribed to tell that, I suppose," said she. "By M. Ste. Marie? Yes, probably. Well, tell it to my father to-morrow! You'd better go to bed now." The old man stared at her with open mouth for a breathless moment, and then shambled hastily away, looking over his shoulder, at intervals, until he was out of sight.
But after that the girl still remained in her place from sheer weariness and lack of impulse to move. She fell to wondering about Captain Stewart and what had become of him, but she did not greatly care. She had a feeling that her world had come to its end, and she was quite indifferent about those who still peopled its ashes—or about all of them save her father.
She heard the distant sound of a motor-car, and at that sat up quickly, for it might be Ste. Marie's friend Mr. Hartley returning from Paris. The sound came nearer and ceased, but she waited for ten minutes before rapid steps approached from the east wall and Hartley was before her.
He cried at once—
"Where's Ste. Marie? Where is he? He hasn't tried to walk into the city?"
"He is asleep in the house," said the girl. "He was struck on the head and stunned. I got him into the house and he is asleep now.
"Of course," she said, "we could wake him, but it would probably be better to let him sleep as long as he will if it is possible. It will save him a great deal of pain I think. He'll have a frightful headache if he's wakened now. Could you come for him or send for him to-morrow—towards noon?"
"Why—yes, I suppose so," said Richard Hartley. "Yes, of course, if you think that's better. Could I just see him for a moment?" He stared at the girl a bit suspiciously and Coira looked back at him with a little tired smile, for she read his thought.
"You want to make sure," said she. "Of course! Yes, come in. He's sleeping very soundly." She led the man into that dim room where Ste. Marie lay, and Hartley's quick eye noted the basin of water and the stained towels and the little bottle of aromatic salts. He bent over his friend to see the bruise at the side of the head, and listened to the sleeper's breathing. Then the two went out again to the moonlit terrace.
"You must forgive me," said he when they had come there. "You must forgive me for seeming suspicious, but—all this wretched business—and he is my closest friend.—I've come to suspect everybody. I was unjust, for you helped us to get away. I beg your pardon!"
The girl smiled at him again, her little white tired smile, and she said—
"There is nothing I would not do to make amends—now that I know—the truth."
"Yes," said Hartley. "I understand. Arthur Benham told me how Stewart lied to you all. Was it he who struck Ste. Marie?" She nodded.
"And then tried to shoot him—but he didn't succeed in that. I wonder where he is—Captain Stewart?"
"I have him out in the car," Hartley said. "Oh, he shall pay, you may be sure! If he doesn't die and cheat us, that is. I nearly ran the car over him a few minutes ago. If it hadn't been for the moonlight I would have done for him. He was lying on his face in that lane that leads to the Issy road. I don't know what is the matter with him. He's only half conscious and he's quite helpless. He looks as if he'd had a stroke of apoplexy or something. I must hurry him back to Paris, I suppose, and get him under a doctor's care. I wonder what's wrong with him?" The girl shook her head, for she did not know of Stewart's epileptic seizures. She thought it quite possible that he had suffered a stroke of apoplexy as Hartley suggested, for she remembered the half-mad state he had been in.
Richard Hartley stood for a time in thought.
"I must get Stewart back to Paris at once," he said finally. "I must get him under care, and in a safe place from which he can't escape. It will want some managing. If I can get away, I'll come out here again in the morning; but if not, I'll send the car out with orders to wait here until Ste. Marie is ready to return to the city. Are you sure he's all right—that he isn't badly hurt?"
"I think he will be all right," she said, "save for the pain. He was only stunned." And Hartley nodded.
"He seems to be breathing quite naturally," said he. "That's arranged then. The car will be here in waiting, and I shall come with it if I can. Tell him when he wakes." He put out his hand to her, and the girl gave him hers very listlessly but smiling. She wished he would go, and leave her alone.
Then in a moment more he did go, and she heard his quick steps down through the trees, and heard, a little later, the engine of the motor car start up with a sudden loud volley of explosions. And so she was left to her solitary watch. She noticed as she turned to go indoors that the blackness of the night was just beginning to grey towards dawn.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE SCALES OF INJUSTICE
Ste. Marie slept soundly until mid-morning—that is to say, about ten o'clock—and then awoke with a dull pain in his head and a sensation of extreme giddiness, which became something like vertigo when he attempted to rise. However, with the aid of the old Michel he got somehow upstairs to his room, and made a rather sketchy toilet.
Coira came to him there and, while he lay still across the bed, told him about the happenings of the night after he had received his injury. She told him also that the motor was waiting for him, outside the wall, and that Richard Hartley had sent a message by the chauffeur, to say that he was very busy in Paris making arrangements about Stewart, who had come out of his strange state of half insensibility only to rave in a delirium.
"So," she said, "you can go now whenever you are ready. Arthur is with his family, Captain Stewart is under guard, and your work is done. You ought to be glad—even though you are suffering pain."
Ste. Marie looked up at her.
"Do I seem glad, Coira?" said he. And she said—
"You will be glad to-morrow—and always, I hope and pray. Always, always!"
The man held one hand over his aching eyes.
"I have," he said, "queer half-memories. I wish I could remember distinctly."
He looked up at her again.
"I dropped down by the gate in the wall. When I awoke I was in a room in the house. How did that happen?"
"Oh," she said, turning her face away, "we got you up to the house almost at once." But Ste. Marie frowned thoughtfully.
"'We'? Who do you mean by 'we'?"
"Well then, I," the girl said. "It was not difficult."
"Coira!" cried the man, "do you mean that you carried me bodily all that long distance? You?"
"Carried or dragged," she said. "As much one as the other. It was not very difficult. I'm strong, for a woman."
"Oh, child, child!" he cried. And he said—
"I remember more. It was you who held Stewart, and kept him from shooting me. I heard the shot and I heard you scream. The last thought I had was that you had been killed in saving me. That's what I went out into the blank, thinking."
He covered his eyes again as if the memory were intolerable. But after a while he said—
"You saved my life, you know." And the girl answered him—
"I had nearly taken it once before. It was I who called Michel that day you came over the wall, the day you were shot. I nearly murdered you once. I owed you something. Perhaps we're even now." She saw that he did not at all remember that hour in the little room—her hour of bitterness, and she was glad. She had felt sure that it would be so. For the present she did not greatly suffer; she had come to a state beyond active suffering—a chill state of dulled sensibilities.
The old Justine knocked at the door to ask if monsieur was going into the city soon, or if she should give the chauffeur hisdéjeunerand tell him to wait.
"Are you fit to go?" Coira asked. And he said—
"I suppose as fit as I shall be." He got to his feet, and the things about him swam dangerously, but he could walk by using great care. The girl stood white and still, and she avoided his eyes.
"It is not good-bye," said he. "I shall see you soon again—and I hope, often—often, Coira." The words had a flat and foolish sound, but he could find no others. It was not easy to speak.
"I suppose I must not ask to see your father?" said he, and she told him that her father had locked himself in his own room and would see no one, would not even open his door to take in food.
Ste. Marie went to the stairs, leaning upon the shoulder of the stout old Justine, but, before he had gone, Coira checked him for an instant. She said—
"Tell Arthur, if he speaks to you about me, that what I said in the note I gave him last night, I meant quite seriously. I gave him a note to read after he reached home. Tell him for me that it was final. Will you do that?"
"Yes, of course," said Ste. Marie. He looked at her with some wonder because her words had been very emphatic.
"Yes," he said, "I will tell him. Is that all?"
"All but good-bye," said she. "Good-bye, Bayard!"
She stood at the head of the stairs while he went down them. And she came after him to the landing halfway where the stairs turned in the opposite direction for their lower flight. When he went out of the front door he looked back, and she was standing there above him—a straight, still figure, dark against the light of the windows behind her.
He went straight to the Rue d'Assas. He found that while he sat still in the comfortable tonneau of the motor his head was fairly normal, and the world did not swing and whirl about in that sickening fashion. But when the car lurched or bumped over an obstruction it made him giddy, and he would have fallen had he been standing.
The familiar streets of the Montparnasse and Luxembourg quarters had for his eyes all the charm and delight of home things to the returned traveller. He felt as if he had been away for months, and he caught himself looking for changes, and it made him laugh. He was much relieved when he found that his concierge was not on watch, and that he could slip unobserved up the stairs and into his rooms. The rooms were fresh and clean, for they had been aired and tended daily.
Arrived there he wrote a little note to a friend of his who was a doctor and lived in the Rue Notre Dame des Champs, asking this man to call as soon as it might be convenient. He sent the note by the chauffeur, and then lay down, dressed as he was, to wait, for he could not stand or move about without a painful dizziness. The doctor came within a half-hour, examined Ste. Marie's bruised head and bound it up. He gave him a dose of something with a vile taste, which he said would take away the worst of the pain in a few hours, and he also gave him a sleeping potion, and made him go to bed.
"You'll be fairly fit by evening," he said. "But don't stir until then. I'll leave word below that you're not to be disturbed."
So it happened that when Richard Hartley came dashing up an hour or two later he was not allowed to see his friend, and Ste. Marie slept a dreamless sleep until dark.
He awoke then, refreshed but ravenous with hunger, and found that there was only a dull ache in his battered head. The dizziness and the vertigo were almost completely gone. He made lights and dressed with care. He felt like a little girl making ready for a party; it was so long—or seemed so long—since he had put on evening clothes. Then he went out, leaving at the loge of the concierge a note for Hartley to say where he might be found. He went to Lavenue's and dined in solitary pomp, for it was after nine o'clock. Again it seemed to him that it was months since he had done the like—sat down to a real table for a real dinner. At ten he got into a fiacre and drove to the Rue de l'Université.
The man who admitted him said that mademoiselle was alone in the drawing-room, and he went there at once. He was dully conscious that something was very wrong, but he had suffered too much within the past few hours to be analytical, and he did not know what it was that was wrong. He should have entered that room with a swift and eager step, with shining eyes, with a high-beating heart. He went into it slowly, wrapped in a mantle of strange apathy.
Helen Benham came forward to meet him and took both his hands in hers. Ste. Marie was amazed to see that she seemed not to have altered at all—in spite of this enormous lapse of time, in spite of all that had happened in it. And yet, unaltered, she seemed to him a stranger, a charming and gracious stranger with an icily beautiful face, He wondered at her and at himself, and he was a little alarmed, because he thought that he must be ill. That blow upon the head must, after all, have done something terrible to him.
"Ah, Ste. Marie!" she said in her well-remembered voice—and again he wondered that the voice should be so high-pitched, and so without colour or feeling. "How glad I am," she said, "that you are safely out of it all! How you have suffered for us, Ste. Marie! You look white and ill. Sit down, please! Don't stand!" She drew him to a comfortable chair, and he sat down in it obediently. He could not think of anything to say, though he was not, as a rule, tongue-tied, but the girl did not seem to expect any answer, for she went on at once with a rather odd air of haste—
"Arthur is here with us, safe and sound. Richard Hartley brought him back from that dreadful place, and he has talked everything over with my grandfather, and it's all right. They both understand now, and there'll be no more trouble. We have had to be careful, very careful, and we have had to—well, to rearrange the facts a little so as to leave—my uncle—to leave Captain Stewart's name out of it. It would not do to shock my grandfather by telling him the truth. Perhaps, later; I don't know. That will have to be thought of. For the present we have left my uncle out of it—and put the blame entirely upon this other man. I forget his name."
"The blame cannot rest there," said Ste. Marie sharply. "It is not deserved, and I shall not allow it to be left so. Captain Stewart lied to O'Hara throughout. You cannot leave the blame with an innocent man."
"Still—" she said, "such a man!"
Ste. Marie looked at her, frowning, and the girl turned her eyes away. She may have had the grace to be a little ashamed.
"Think of the difficulty we were in!" she urged. "Captain Stewart is my grandfather's own son. We cannot tell him now, in his weak state, that his own son is—what he is."
There was reason if not justice in that, and Ste. Marie was forced to admit it. He said—
"Ah well! for the present, then. That can be arranged later. The main point is that I've found your brother for you. I've brought him back."
Miss Benham looked up at him and away again, and she drew a quick breath. He saw her hands move restlessly in her lap, and he was aware that for some odd reason she was very ill at ease. At last she said—
"Ah, but—but have you, dear Ste. Marie? Have you?"
After a brief silence she stole another swift glance at the man, and he was staring in open and frank bewilderment. She rushed into rapid speech.
"Ah," she cried, "don't misunderstand me! Don't think that I'm brutal or ungrateful for all you've—you've suffered in trying to help us. Don't think that! I can—we can never be grateful enough, never! But stop and think! Yes, I know this all sounds hideous, but it's so terribly important. I shouldn't dream of saying a word of it if it weren't so important, if so much didn't depend upon it. But stop and think! Was it, dear Ste. Marie, was it, after all, you? Was it you who brought Arthur to us?"
The man fairly blinked at her, owl-like. He was beyond speech.
"Wasn't it Richard?" she hurried on. "Wasn't it Richard Hartley? Ah, if I could only say it without seeming so contemptibly heartless! If only I needn't say it at all! But it must be said because of what depends upon it.
"Think! Go back to the beginning! Wasn't it Richard who first began to suspect my uncle? Didn't he tell you or write to you what he had discovered, and so set you upon the right track? And after you had—well, just fallen into their hands, with no hope of ever escaping, yourself—to say nothing of bringing Arthur back—wasn't it Richard who came to your rescue and brought it all to victory? Oh, Ste. Marie, I must be just to him as well as to you! Don't you see that? However grateful I may be to you for what you have done—suffered—I cannot, in justice, give you what I was to have given you, since it is, after all, Richard who has saved my brother. I cannot, can I? Surely you must see it. And you must see how it hurts me to have to say it. I had hoped that—you would understand—without my speaking."
Still the man sat in his trance of astonishment, speechless. For the first time in his life he was brought face to face with the amazing, the appalling injustice of which a woman is capable when her heart is concerned. This girl wished to believe that to Richard Hartley belonged the credit for rescuing her brother, and, lo! she believed it. A score of juries might have decided against her, a hundred proofs controverted her decision, but she would have been deaf and blind. It is only women who accomplish miracles of reasoning like that.
Ste. Marie took a long breath and he started to speak, but in the end shook his head and remained silent. Through the whirl and din of falling skies he was yet able to see the utter futility of words. He could have adduced a hundred arguments to prove her absurdity. He could have shown her that before he ever read Hartley's note he had decided upon Stewart's guilt—and for much better reasons than Hartley had. He could have pointed out to her that it was he, not Hartley, who discovered young Benham's whereabouts; that it was he who summoned Hartley there; and that, as a matter of fact, Hartley need not have come at all, since the boy had been persuaded to go home in any case.
He thought of all these things and more, and, in a moment of sheer anger at her injustice, he was on the point of stating them, but he shook his head and remained silent. After all, of what use was speech? He knew that it could make no impression upon her, and he knew why. For some reason, in some way, she had turned, during his absence, to Richard Hartley, and there was nothing more to be said. There was no treachery on Hartley's part. He knew that, and it never even occurred to him to blame his friend. Hartley was as faithful as any one who ever lived. It seemed to be nobody's fault. It had just happened.
He looked at the girl before him with a new expression, an expression of sheer curiosity. It seemed to him wellnigh incredible that any human being could be so unjust and so blind. Yet he knew her to be, in other matters, one of the fairest of all women, just and tender and thoughtful and true. He knew that she prided herself upon her cool impartiality of judgment. He shook his head with a little sigh, and ceased to wonder any more. It was beyond him.
He became aware that he ought to say something, and he said—
"Yes. Yes, I—see. I see what you mean. Yes, Hartley did all you say. I hadn't meant to rob Hartley of the credit he deserves. I suppose you're right." He was possessed of a sudden longing to get away out of that room, and he rose to his feet.
"If you don't mind," he said, "I think I'd better go. This is—well, it's a bit of a facer, you see. I want to think it over. Perhaps to-morrow—you don't mind?" He saw a swift relief flash into Miss Benham's eyes, but she murmured a few words of protest that had a rather perfunctory sound. Ste. Marie shook his head.
"Thanks! I won't stay," said he. "Not just now. I—think I'd better go." He had a confused realisation of platitudinous adieux, of a silly formality of speech, and he found himself in the hall. Once he glanced back, and Miss Benham was standing where he had left her, looking after him with a calm and unimpassioned face. He thought that she looked rather like a very beautiful statue.
The butler came to him to say that Mr. Stewart would be glad if he would look in before leaving the house, and so he went upstairs and knocked at old David's door. He moved like a man in a dream, and the things about him seemed to be curiously unreal and rather far away, as they seem sometimes in a fever.
He was admitted at once, and he found the old man sitting up in bed, clad in one of his incredibly gorgeous mandarin's jackets—plum-coloured satin, this time, with peonies—overflowing with spirits and good-humour. His grandson sat in a chair near at hand. The old man gave a shout of welcome—
"Ah, here's Jason, at last, back from Colchis. Welcome home to—whatever the name of the place was. Welcome home!" He shook Ste. Marie's hand with hospitable violence, and Ste. Marie was astonished to see upon what a new lease of life and strength the old man seemed to have entered. There was no ingratitude or misconception here, certainly. Old David quite overwhelmed his visitor with thanks and with expressions of affection.
"You've saved my life among other things!" he said in his gruff roar. "I was ready to go, but, by the Lord, I'm going to stay a while longer now! This world's a better place than I thought—a much better place." He shook a heavily-waggish head.
"If I didn't know," said he, "what your reward is to be for what you've done, I should be in despair over it all, because there is nothing else in the world that would be anything like adequate. You've been making sure of the reward downstairs, I dare say? Eh, what? Yes?"
"You mean——?" asked the younger man.
And old David said—
"I mean Helen, of course. What else?"
Ste. Marie was not quite himself. At another time he might have got out of the room with an evasive answer, but he spoke without thinking. He said—
"Oh—yes! I suppose—I suppose I ought to tell you that Miss Benham—well, she has changed her mind. That is to say——"
"What!" shouted old David Stewart, in his great voice. "What is that?"
"Why, it seems," said Ste. Marie, "it seems that I only blundered. It seems that Hartley rescued your grandson, not I. And I suppose he did, you know. When you come to think of it, I suppose he did."
David Stewart's great white beard seemed to bristle like the ruff of an angry dog, and his eyes flashed fiercely under their shaggy brows.
"Do you mean to tell me that after all you've done and—and gone through, Helen has thrown you over? Do you mean to tell me that?"
"Well," argued Ste. Marie uncomfortably, "well, you see, she seems to be right. I did bungle it, didn't I? It was Hartley who came and pulled us out of the hole."
"Hartley be damned!" cried the old man in a towering rage. And he began to pour out the most extraordinary flood of furious invective upon his granddaughter and upon Richard Hartley, whom he quite unjustly termed a snake-in-the-grass, and finally upon all women, past, contemporary or still to be born.
Ste. Marie, in fear of old David's health, tried to calm him, and the faithful valet came running from the room beyond with prayers and protestations, but nothing would check that astonishing flow of fury until it had run its full course. Then the man fell back upon his pillows, crimson, panting and exhausted; but the fierce eyes glittered still, and they boded no good for Miss Helen Benham.
"You're well rid of her!" said the old gentleman, when at last he was once more able to speak. "You're well rid of her. I congratulate you! I am ashamed and humiliated, and a great burden of obligation is shifted to me—though I assume it with pleasure—but I congratulate you. You might have found out too late what sort of a woman she is."
Ste. Marie began to protest and to explain, and say that Miss Benham had been quite right in what she said, but the old gentleman only waved an impatient arm to him; and presently, when he saw the valet making signs across the bed, and saw that his host was really in a state of complete exhaustion after the outburst, he made his adieux and got away.
Young Arthur Benham, who had been sitting almost silent during the interview, followed him out of the room, and closed the door behind them. For the first time Ste. Marie noted that the boy's face was white and strained. Young Arthur pulled a crumpled square of folded paper from his pocket and shook it at the other man.
"Do you know what this is?" he cried. "Do you know what's in this?" Ste. Marie shook his head, but a sudden recollection came to him.
"Ah!" said he, "that must be the note Mlle. O'Hara spoke of. She asked me to tell you that she meant it—whatever it may be—quite seriously; that it was final. She didn't explain. She just said that; that you were to take it as final."
The lad gave a sudden, very bitter sob.
"She has thrown me over!" he said. "She says I'm not to come back to her."
Ste. Marie gave a wordless cry, and he began to tremble.
"You can read it if you want to," the boy said. "Perhaps you can explain it. I can't. Do you want to read it?" The elder man stood staring at him whitely, and the boy repeated his words. He said—
"You can read it if you want to," and at last Ste. Marie took the paper between stiff hands and held it to the light. Coira O'Hara said briefly that too much was against their marriage. She mentioned his age, the certain hostility of his family, their different tastes, a number of other things. But in the end she said she had begun to realise that she did not love him as she ought to do if they were to marry. And so, the note said finally, she gave him up to his family, she released him altogether, and she begged him not to come back to her or to urge her to change her mind. Also she made the trite but very sensible observation that he would be glad of his freedom before the year was out.
Ste. Marie's unsteady fingers opened, and the crumpled paper slipped through them to the floor. Over it the man and the boy looked at each other in silence. Young Arthur Benham's face was white, and it was strained and contorted with its first grief. But first griefs do not last very long. Coira O'Hara had told the truth; before the year was out the lad would be glad of his freedom. But the man's face was white also, white and still, and his eyes held a strange expression which the boy could not understand, and at which he wondered. The man was trembling a little from head to foot. The boy wondered about that too, but abruptly he cried out—
"What's up? Where are you going?" for Ste. Marie had turned all at once and was running down the stairs as fast as he could run.