XVIII
A CONVERSATION OVERHEARD
In the upper chamber at La Lierre the days dragged very slowly by, andthe man who lay in bed there counted interminable hours and prayed forthe coming of night with its merciful oblivion of sleep. His inactionwas made bitterer by the fact that the days were days of green and gold,of breeze-stirred tree-tops without his windows, of vagrant sweet airsthat stole in upon his solitude, bringing him all the warm fragrance ofsummer and of green things growing.
He suffered little pain. There was, for the first three or four days, adull and feverish ache in his wounded leg, but presently even thatpassed, and the leg hurt him only when he moved it. He thought sometimesthat he would be grateful for a bit of physical anguish to make thehours pass more quickly.
The other inmates of the house held aloof from him. Once a day O'Haracame in to see to the wound, but he maintained a well-nigh completesilence over his work, and answered questions only with a brief yes orno. Sometimes he did not answer them at all. The old Michel came twicedaily, but this strange being had quite plainly been frightened intodumbness, and there was nothing to be got out of him. He shambledhastily about the place, his one scared eye upon the man in bed, and assoon as possible fled away, closing the door behind him. SometimesMichel brought in the meals, sometimes his wife, a creature so like himthat the two might well have passed for twin survivors of some unknownrace; sometimes--thrice altogether in that first week--Coira O'Harabrought the tray, and she was as silent as the others.
So Ste. Marie was left alone to get through the interminable days asbest he might, and ever afterward the week remained in his memory as asort of nightmare. Lying idle in his bed, he evolved many surprising andfantastic schemes for escape, for getting word to the outside world ofhis presence here, and one by one he gave them up in disgust as theirimpossibility forced itself upon him. Plans and schemes were uselesswhile he lay bedridden, unfamiliar even with the house wherein he dwelt,with the garden and park that surrounded it.
As for aid from any of the inmates of the place, that was to be laughedat. They were engaged together in a scheme so desperate that failuremust mean utter ruin to them all. He sometimes wondered if the twoservants could be bribed. Avarice unmistakable gleamed from theirlittle, glittering, ratlike eyes, but he was sure that they would sellout for no small sum, and in so far as he could remember there had beenin his pockets, when he came here, not more than five or six louis.Doubtless the old Michel had managed to abstract those in his dailyoffices about the room, for Ste. Marie knew that the clothes hung in acloset across from his bed. He had seen them there once when thecloset-door was open.
Any help that might come to him must come from outside--and what helpwas to be expected there? Over and over again he reminded himself of howlittle Richard Hartley knew. He might suspect Stewart of complicity inthis new disappearance, but how was he to find out anything definite?How was any one to do so?
It was at such times as this, when brain and nerves were strained andworn almost to breaking-point, that Ste. Marie had occasion to begrateful for the Southern blood that was in him, the strong tinge offatalism which is common alike to Latin and to Oriental. It rescued himmore than once from something like nervous breakdown, calmed himsuddenly, lifted his burdens from outwearied shoulders, and left him inpeace to wait until some action should be possible. Then, in such hours,he would fall to thinking of the girl for whose sake, in whose cause, helay bedridden, beset with dangers. As long before, she came to him in asort of waking vision--a being but half earthly, enthroned high abovehim, calm-browed, very pure, with passionless eyes that gazed into fardistance and were unaware of the base things below. What would she thinkof him, who had sworn to be true knight to her, if she could know how hehad bungled and failed? He was glad that she did not know, that if hehad blundered into peril the knowledge of it could not reach her to hurther pride.
And sometimes, also, with a great sadness and pity, he thought of poorCoira O'Hara and of the pathetic wreck her life had fallen into. Thegirl was so patently fit for better things! Her splendid beauty was nota cheap beauty. She was no coarse-blown, gorgeous flower, imperfect attelltale points. It was good blood that had modelled her darkperfection, good blood that had shaped her long and slim and taperinghands.
"A queen among goddesses!" The words remained with him, and he knew thatthey were true. She might have held up her head among the greatest, thisadventurer's girl; but what chance had she had? What merest ghost of achance?
He watched her on the rare occasions when she came into the room. Hewatched the poise of her head, her walk, the movements she made, and hesaid to himself that there was no woman of his acquaintance whose gracewas more perfect--certainly none whose grace was so native.
Once he complained to her of the desperate idleness of his days, andasked her to lend him a book of some kind, a review, even a dailynewspaper, though it be a week old.
"I should read the very advertisements with joy," he said.
She went out of the room and returned presently with an armful of books,which she laid upon the bed without comment.
"In my prayers, Mademoiselle," cried Ste. Marie, "you shall be foremostforever!" He glanced at the row of titles and looked up in sheerastonishment. "May I ask whose books these are?" he said.
"They are mine," said the girl. "I caught up the ones that lay first athand. If you don't care for any of them, I will choose others."
The books were: _Diana of the Crossways, Richard Feverel,_ HenriLavedan's _Le Duel_, Maeterlinck's _Pelleas et Melisande, Don Quixote dela Mancha_, in Spanish, a volume of Virgil's _Eclogues_, and the _Lifeof the Chevalier Bayard_, by the Loyal Servitor. Ste. Marie stared ather.
"Do you read Spanish," he demanded, "and Latin, as well as French andEnglish?"
"My mother was Spanish," said she. "And as for Latin, I began to read itwith my father when I was a child. Shall I leave the books here?"
Ste. Marie took up the _Bayard_ and held it between his hands.
"It is worn from much reading, Mademoiselle," he said.
"It is the best of all," said she. "The very best of all. I didn't knowI had brought you that."
She made a step toward him as if she would take the book away, and overit their eyes met and were held. In that moment it may have come to themboth who she was, who so loved the knight without fear and withoutreproach--the daughter of art Irish adventurer of ill repute--for theirfaces began suddenly to flush with red, and after an instant the girlturned away.
"It is of no consequence," said she. "You may keep the book if you careto."
And Ste. Marie said, very gently: "Thank you, Mademoiselle. I will keepit for a little while."
So she went out of the room and left him alone.
This was at noon on the sixth day, and, after he had swallowed hastilythe lunch which had been set before him, Ste. Marie fell upon the bookslike a child upon a new box of sweets. Like the child again, it wasdifficult for him to choose among them. He opened one and then another,gloating over them all, but in the end he chose the _Bayard_, and forhours lost himself among the high deeds of the Preux Chevalier and hisfaithful friends--among whom, by the way, there was a Ste. Marie whodied nobly for France. It was late afternoon when at last he laid thebook down with a sigh and settled himself more comfortably among thepillows.
The sun was not in the room at that hour, but from where he lay he couldsee it on the tree-tops, gold upon green. Outside his south window theleaves of a chestnut which stood there quivered and rustled gently undera soft breeze. Delectable odors floated in to Ste. Marie's nostrils, andhe thought how very pleasant it would be if he were lying on the turfunder the trees instead of bedridden in this upper chamber, which he hadcome to hate with a bitter hatred.
He began to wonder if it would be possible to drag himself across thefloor to that south window, and so to lie down for a while with his headin the tiny balcony beyond, his eyes turned to the blue sky. Astir withthe new thought, he sat up in bed and carefully swun
g his feet out tillthey hung to the floor. The wound in the left leg smarted and burned,but not too severely, and with slow pains Ste. Marie stood up. He almostcried out when he discovered that it could be done quite easily. Heessayed to walk, and he was a little weak, but by no means helpless. Hefound that it gave him pain to raise his left leg in the ordinary actionof walking or to bend that knee, but he could get about well enough bydragging the injured member beside him, for when it was straight itsupported him without protest.
He took his pillows across to the window and disposed them there, for itwas a French window opening to the floor, and the level of the littlebalcony outside was but a few inches above the level of the room. Thenthe desire seized him to make a tour of his prison walls. He went firstto the closet where he had seen his clothes hanging, and they were stillthere. He felt in the pockets and withdrew his little English pigskinsovereign-purse. It had not been tampered with, and he gave anexclamation of relief over that, for he might later on have use formoney. There were eight louis in it, each in its little separatecompartment, and in another pocket he found a fifty-franc note and somesilver. He went to the two east windows and looked out. The trees stoodthick together on that side of the house, but between two of them hecould see the park wall fifty yards away. He glanced down, and the sideof the house was covered thick with the ivy which had given the placeits name, but there was no water-pipe near, nor any other thing whichseemed to offer foot or hand hold, unless, perhaps, the ivy might provestrong enough to bear a man's weight. Ste. Marie made a mental note tolook into that when he was a little stronger, and turned back to thesouth window where he had disposed his pillows.
The unaccustomed activity was making his wound smart and prickle, and helay down at once with head and shoulders in the open air, and out of thewarm and golden sunshine and the emerald shade the breath of summer cameto him and wrapped him round with sweetness and pillowed him upon itsfragrant breast.
He became aware after a long time of voices below, and turned upon hiselbows to look. The ivy had clambered upon and partly covered the irongrille of the little balcony, and he could observe without being seen.Young Arthur Benham and Coira O'Hara had come out of the door of thehouse, and they stood upon the raised and paved terrace which ran thewidth of the facade, and seemed to hesitate as to the direction theyshould take. Ste. Marie heard the girl say:
"It's cooler here in the shade of the house," and after a moment the twocame along the shady terrace whose outer margin was set at intervalswith stained and discolored marble nymphs upon pedestals, and betweenthe nymphs with moss-grown stone benches. They halted before a benchupon which, earlier in the day, a rug had been spread out to dry in thesun and had been forgotten, and after a moment's further hesitation theysat down upon it. Their faces were turned toward the house, and everyword that they spoke mounted in that still air clear and distinct to theears of the man above.
Ste. Marie wriggled back into the room and sat up to consider. Thethought of deliberately listening to a conversation not meant for himsent a hot flush to his cheeks. He told himself that it could not bedone, and that there was an end to the matter. Whatever might hang uponit, it could not be asked of him that he should stoop to dishonor. Butat that the heavy and grave responsibility, which really did hang uponhim and upon his actions, came before his mind's eye and loomed theremountainous. The fate of this foolish boy who was set round with thievesand adventurers--even though his eyes were open and he knew where hestood--that came to Ste. Marie and confronted him; and the picture of abitter old man who was dying of grief came to him; and a mother's face;and _hers_. There could be no dishonor in the face of all this, only aduty very clear and plain. He crept back to his place, his arms foldedbeneath him as he lay, his eyes at the thin screen of ivy which cloakedthe balcony grille.
Young Arthur Benham appeared to be giving tongue to a rather sharpattack of homesickness. It may be that long confinement within the wallsof La Lierre was beginning to try him somewhat.
"Mind you," he declared, as Ste. Marie's ears came once more withinrange--"mind you, I'm not saying that Paris hasn't got its points. Ithas. Oh yes! And so has London, and so has Ostend, and so has MonteCarlo. Verree much so! I like Paris. I like the theatres and thevaudeville shows in the Champs-Elysees, and I like Longchamps. I likethe boys who hang around Henry's Bar. They're good sports all right, allright! But, by golly, I want to go home! Put me off at the corner ofForty-second Street and Broadway, and I'll ask no more. Set me down at 7P.M., right there on the corner outside the Knickerbocker, for that'swhere I would live and die." There came into the lad's somewhat stridentvoice a softness that was almost pathetic. "You don't know Broadway,Coira, do you? Nix! of course not. Little girl, it's the one street ofall this large world. It's the equator that runs north and south insteadof east and west. It's a long, bright, gay, live wire!--that's whatBroadway is. And I give you my word of honor, like a little man, thatit--is--not--slow. No-o, indeed! When I was there last it was beingcalled the 'Gay White Way.' It is not called the 'Gay White Way' now. Ithas had forty other new, good names since then, and I don't know whatthey are, but I do know that it is forever gay, and that the electricsigns are still blazing all along the street, and the street-cars arestill killing people in the good old fashion, and the news-boys arestill dodging under the automobiles to sell you a _Woild_ or a _Choinal_or, if it's after twelve at night, a _Morning Telegraph_. Coira, mygirl, standing on that corner after dark you can see the electric signsof fifteen theatres, not one of them more than five minutes' walk away;and just round the corner there are more. I want to go home! I want totake one large, unparalleled leap from here and come down at the cornerI told you about. D'you know what I'd do? We'll say it's 7 P.M. andbeginning to get dark. I'd dive into the Knickerbocker--that's the hotelthat the bright and happy people go to for dinner or supper--and I'dengage a table up on the terrace. Then I'd telephone to a little friendof mine whose name is Doe--John Doe--and in about ten minutes he'd haveleft the crowd he was standing in line with and he'd come galloping up,that glad to see me you'd cry to watch him. We'd go up on the terrace,where the potted palms grow, for our dinner, and the tables all aroundus would be full of people that would know Johnnie Doe and me, andthey'd all make us drink drinks and tell us how glad they were to see usaboard again. And after dinner," said young Arthur Benham, with wide andsmiling eyes--"after dinner we'd go to see one of the roof-garden shows.Let me tell you they've got the Marigny or the Ambassadeurs or theJardin de Paris beaten to a pulp--to--a--pulp! And after the show we'dslip round to the stage-door--you bet we would!--and capture the twomost beautiful ladies in the world and take 'em off to supper."
He wrinkled his young brow in great perplexity. "Now I wonder," said he,anxiously--"I wonder where we'd go for supper. You see," he apologized,"it's two years since I left the Real Street, and, gee! what a lot canhappen on Broadway in two years! There's probably half a dozen newsupper-places that I don't know anything about, and one of them's theplace where the crowd goes. Well, anyhow, we'd go to that place, andthere'd be a band playing, and the electric fans would go round andround, and Johnnie Doe and I and the two most beautiful ladies would putit all over the other pikers there."
Young Benham gave a little sigh of pleasure and excitement. "That's whatI'd like to do to-night," said he, "and that's what I'll do, you can betyour sh--boots, when all this silly mess is over and I'm a free man.I'll hike back to good old Broadway, and if ever you see any one tryingto pry me loose from it again you can laugh yourself to death, becausehe'll never, never succeed.
"That's where I'll go," he said, nodding, "when this waiting isover--straight back to Liberty Land and the bright lights. The rest ofthe family can stay here till they die, if they want to--and I supposethey do--_I'm_ going home as soon as I've got my money. Old Charlie'llmanage all that for me. He'll get a lawyer to look after it, and I won'thave to see anybody in the family at all.
"Nine more weeks shut in by stone walls!" said the boy, staring abouthim with a sort of bitter
ness. "Nine weeks more!"
"Is it so hard as that?" asked the girl.
There was no foolish coquetry in her tone. She spoke as if the wordsinvolved no personal question at all, but there was a little smile ather lips, and Arthur Benham turned toward her quickly and caught at herhands.
"No, no!" he cried. "I didn't mean that. You know I didn't mean that.You're worth nine years' waiting. You're the best--d'you hear?--the bestthere is. There's nobody anywhere that can touch you. Only--well, thisplace is getting on my nerves. It's got me worn to a frazzle. I feellike a criminal doing time."
"You came very near having to do time somewhere else," said the girl."If this M. Ste. Marie hadn't blundered we should have had them allround our ears, and you'd have had to run for it."
"Yes," the boy said, nodding gravely. "Yes, that was great luck."
He raised his head and looked up along the windows above him.
"Which is his room?" he asked, and Mlle. O'Hara said:
"The one just overhead, but he's in bed far back from the window. Hecouldn't possibly hear us talking."
She paused for a moment in frowning hesitation, and in the end said:
"Tell me about him, this Ste. Marie! Do you know anything about him?"
"No," said Arthur Benham, "I don't--not personally, that is. Of courseI've heard of him. Lots of people have spoken of him to me. And the oddpart of it is that they all had a good word to say. Everybody seemed tolike him. I got the idea that he was the best ever. I wanted to knowhim. I never thought he'd take on a piece of dirty work like this."
"Nor I," said the girl, in a low voice. "Nor I."
The boy looked up.
"Oh, you've heard of him, too, then?" said he.
And she said, still in her low voice, "I--saw him once."
"Well," declared young Benham, "it's beyond me. I give it up. You nevercan tell about people, can you? I guess they'll all go wrong whenthere's enough in it to make it worth while. That's what old Charliealways says. He says most people are straight enough when there'snothing in it, but make the pot big enough and they'll all go crooked."
The young man's face turned suddenly hard and old and bitter.
"Gee! I ought to know that well enough, oughtn't I?" he said. "I guessnobody knows that better than I do after what happened to me.... Comealong and take a walk in the garden, Maud! I'm sick of sitting still."
Mlle. Coira O'Hara looked up with a start, as if she had not beenlistening, but she rose when the boy held out his hand to her, and thetwo went down from the terrace and moved off toward the west.
Ste. Marie watched them until they had disappeared among the trees, andthen turned on his back, staring up into the softly stirring canopy ofgreen above him and the little rifts of bright blue sky. He did notunderstand at all. Something mysterious had crept in where all hadseemed so plain to the eye. Certain words that young Arthur Benham hadspoken repeated themselves in his mind, and he could not at once makethem out. Assuredly there was something mysterious here.
In the first place, what did the boy mean by "dirty work"? To be sure,spying, in its usual sense, is not held to be one of the noblest ofoccupations, but--in such a cause as this! It was absurd, ridiculous, tocall it "dirty work." And what did he mean by the words which he hadused afterward? Ste. Marie did not quite follow the idiom about the "bigenough pot," but he assumed that it referred to money. Did the youngfool think he was being paid for his efforts? That was ridiculous, too.
The boy's face came before him as it had looked with that sudden hardand bitter expression. What did he mean by saying that no one knew thecrookedness of humanity under money temptation better than he knew itafter something that had happened to him? In a sense his words weredoubtless very true. Captain Stewart--and he must have been "oldCharlie"; Ste. Marie remembered that the name was Charles--O'Hara, andO'Hara's daughter stood excellent examples of that bit of cynicism, butobviously the boy had not spoken in that sense--certainly not beforeMlle. O'Hara! He meant something else, then. But what--what?
Ste. Marie rose with some difficulty to his feet and carried the pillowsback to the bed whence he had taken them. He sat down upon the edge ofthe bed, staring in great perplexity across the room at the open window,but all at once he uttered an exclamation and smote his hands together.
"That boy doesn't know!" he cried. "They're tricking him, these others!"
The lad's face came once more before him, and it was a foolish andstubborn face, perhaps, but it was neither vicious nor mean. It was theface of an honest, headstrong boy who would be incapable of the coldcruelty to which all circumstances seemed to point.
"They're tricking him somehow!" cried Ste. Marie again. "They're lyingto him and making him think--"
What was it they were making him think, these three conspirators? Whatpossible thing could they make him think other than the plain truth?Ste. Marie shook a weary head and lay down among his pillows. He wishedthat he had "old Charlie" in a corner of that room with his fingersround "old Charlie's" wicked throat. He would soon get at the truththen; or O'Hara, either, that grim and saturnine chevalier d'industrie,though O'Hara would be a bad handful to manage; or--Ste. Marie's headdropped back with a little groan when the face of young Arthur'senchantress came between him and the opposite wall of the room and hergreat and tragic eyes looked into his.
It seemed incredible that that queen among goddesses should be what shewas!
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Jason: A Romance Page 18
