The Quest: A Romance

by Justus Miles Forman

  *CHAPTER X*

  *CAPTAIN STEWART ENTERTAINS*

  Ste. Marie returned, after three days, from Dinard in a depressed andsomewhat puzzled frame of mind. He had found no trace whatever ofArthur Benham either at Dinard or at Deauville, and, what was more, hewas unable to discover that any one even remotely resembling that youthhad been seen at either place. The matter of identification, it seemedto him, should be a rather simple one. In the first place, the boy'sappearance was not at all French, nor for that matter English: it wasvery American. Also he spoke French--so Ste. Marie had been told--verybadly, having for the language that scornful contempt peculiar toAnglo-Saxons of a certain type. His speech, it seemed, was, like hisappearance, ultra-American, full of strange idioms and oddly pronounced.In short, such a youth would be rather sure to be remembered by anyhotel management and staff with which he might have come in contact.

  At first Ste. Marie pursued his investigations quietly and, as it were,casually, but, after his initial failure, he went to the managements ofthe various hotels and lodging-houses and to the cafes and bathingestablishments, and told them with all frankness a part of thetruth--that he was searching for a young man whose disappearance hadcaused great distress to his family. He was not long in discoveringthat no such young man could have been either in Dinard or Deauville.

  The thing which puzzled him was that, apart from finding no trace of themissing boy, he also found no trace of Captain Stewart's agent--the manwho had been first on the ground. No one seemed able to recollect thatsuch a person had been making inquiries, and Ste. Marie began to suspectthat his friend was being imposed upon. He determined to warn Stewartthat his agents were earning their fees too easily.

  So he returned to Paris more than a little dejected and sore over thiswaste of time and effort. He arrived by a noon tram, and drove acrossthe city in a fiacre to the Rue d'Assas. But as he was in the midst ofunpacking his portmanteau, for he kept no servant (a woman came in oncea day to "do" the rooms), the door-bell rang. It was Baron de Vries,and Ste. Marie admitted him with an exclamation of surprise andpleasure.

  "You passed me in the street just now," explained the Belgian, "and, asI was a few minutes early for a lunch engagement, I followed you up."

  He pointed with his stick at the open bag.

  "Ah, you have been on a journey! Detective work?"

  Ste. Marie pushed his guest into a chair, gave him cigarettes, and toldhim about the fruitless expedition to Dinard. He spoke also of hisbelief that Captain Stewart's agent had never really found a clue atall, and at that Baron de Vries nodded his grey head and said, "Ah!" ina tone of some significance. Afterwards he smoked a little while insilence, but presently he said, as if with some hesitation--

  "May I be permitted to offer a word of advice?"

  "But surely!" cried Ste. Marie, kicking away the half-empty portmanteau."Why not?"

  "Do whatever you are going to do in this matter according to your ownjudgment," said the elder man. "Or according to Mr. Hartley's and yourcombined judgments. Make your investigations without reference to ourfriend Captain Stewart." He halted there as if that were all he hadmeant to say, but when he saw Ste. Marie's raised eyebrows, he frownedand went on slowly as if picking his words with some care.

  "I should be sorry," he said, "to have Captain Stewart at the head ofany investigation of this nature in which I was deeply interested--justnow, at any rate. I am afraid--It is difficult to say. I do not wishto say too much--I am afraid he is not quite the man for the position."

  Ste. Marie nodded his head with great emphasis.

  "Ah!" he cried, "that's just what I have felt, you know, all along. Andit's what Hartley felt too, I'm sure. No, Stewart is not the sort for adetective. He's too cock-sure. He won't admit that he might possiblybe wrong now and then. He's too----"

  "He is too much occupied with other matters," said Baron de Vries. Ste.Marie sat down on the edge of a chair.

  "Other matters?" he demanded. "That sounds mysterious. What othermatters?"

  "Oh, there is nothing very mysterious about it," said the elder man. Hefrowned down at his cigarette and brushed some fallen ash neatly fromhis knees.

  "Captain Stewart," said he, "is badly worried, and has been for the pastyear or so--badly worried over money matters and other things. He haslost enormous sums at play, as I happen to know; and he has lost stillmore enormous sums at Auteuil and at Longchamps. Also the ladies arenot without their demands."

  Ste. Marie gave a shout of laughter.

  "_Comment donc!_" he cried. "_Ce vieillard?_"

  "Ah well," deprecated the other man, "_Vieillard_ is putting it ratherhigh. He can't be more than fifty, I should think. To be sure he looksolder, but then, in his day, he lived a great deal in a short time. Doyou happen to remember Olga Nilssen?"

  "I do," said Ste. Marie. "I remember her very well indeed; I was a sortof go-between in settling up that affair with Morrison. Morrison'speople asked me to do what I could. Yes, I remember her well, and withsome pleasure. I felt sorry for her, you know. People didn't quiteknow the truth of that affair. Morrison behaved very badly to her."

  "Yes," said Baron de Vries, "and Captain Stewart has behaved very badlyto her also. She is furious with rage or jealousy or both. She goesabout, I am told, threatening to kill him, and it would be rather likeher to do it one day. Well, I have dragged in all this scandal by wayof showing you that Stewart has his hands full of his own affairs justnow, and so cannot give the attention he ought to give to hunting outhis nephew. As you suggest, his agents may be deceiving him. I don'tknow, I suppose they could do it easily enough. If I were you I wouldset to work quite independently of him."

  "Yes," said Ste. Marie in an absent tone. "Oh yes, I shall do that, youmay be sure." He gave a sudden smile.

  "He's a queer type, this Captain Stewart," said Ste. Marie. "He beginsto interest me very much. I had never suspected this side of him(though I remember now that I once saw him coming out of a milliner'sshop). He looks rather an ascetic, rather donnish, don't you think? Iremember that he talked to me one day quite pathetically about feelinghis age and about liking young people round him. He's an odd character.Fancy him mixed up in an affair with Olga Nilssen! or, rather, fancy herinvolved in an affair with him! What can she have seen in him? She'snot mercenary, you know. At least she used not to be."

  "Ah! there," said Baron de Vries, "you enter upon a _terra incognita_.No one can say what a woman sees in this man or in that. It's beyondour ken." He rose to take his leave, and Ste. Marie went with him tothe door.

  "I've been asked to a sort of party at Stewart's rooms this week," Ste.Marie said. "I don't know whether I shall go or not. Probably not. Isuppose I shouldn't find Olga Nilssen there?"

  "Well, no," said the Belgian, laughing. "No, I hardly think so.Good-bye! Think over what I've told you. Good-bye!" He went away downthe stair, and Ste. Marie returned to his unpacking.

  Nothing more of consequence occurred in the next few days. Hartley hadunearthed a somewhat shabby adventurer, who swore to having seen theIrishman, O'Hara, in Paris within a month, but it was by no meanscertain that this being did not merely affirm what he believed to bedesired of him, and in any case the information was of no especialvalue, since it was O'Hara's present whereabouts that was the point atissue. So it came to Thursday evening. Ste. Marie received a note fromCaptain Stewart during the day, reminding him that he was to come to theRue du Faubourg St. Honore that evening, and asking him to come early,at ten or thereabouts, so that the two could have a comfortable chatbefore any one else turned up. Ste. Marie had about decided not to go atall, but the courtesy of this special invitation from Miss Benham'suncle made it rather impossible for him to stay away. He tried topersuade Hartley to follow him later on in the evening, but thatgentleman flatly refused, and went away to dine with some Englishfriends at Armenonville.

  So Ste. Marie, in a vile temper
, dined quite alone at Lavenue's, besidethe Gare Montparnasse, and towards ten o'clock drove across the river tothe Rue du Faubourg. Captain Stewart's flat was up five stories, at thetop of the building in which it was located, and so well above thenoises of the street. Ste. Marie went up in the automatic lift, and atthe door above his host met him in person, saying that the one servanthe kept was busy making preparations in the kitchen beyond. Theyentered a large room, long but comparatively shallow, in shape notunlike the sitting-room in the Rue d'Assas but very much bigger, andSte. Marie uttered an exclamation of surprise and pleasure, for he hadnever before seen an interior anything like this. The room was decoratedand furnished entirely in Chinese and Japanese articles of great age andremarkable beauty. Ste. Marie knew little of the hieratic art of thesetwo countries, but he fancied that the place must be an endless delightto the expert.

  The general tone of the room was gold, dulled and softened by great ageuntil it had ceased to glitter, and relieved by the dusty Chinese blue,and by old red faded to rose, and by warm ivory tints. The great expanseof the walls was covered by a brownish-yellow cloth, coarse, likeburlap, and against it round the room hung sixteen large panelsrepresenting the sixteen _Rakan_. They were early copies--fifteenthcentury, Captain Stewart said--of those famous originals by the Chinese_Sung_ master Ririomin, which have been for six hundred years or morethe treasures of Japan. They were mounted upon Japanese brocade of blueand dull gold, framed in keyaki wood, and, out of their browntime-stained shadows, the great _Rakan_ scowled or grinned or placidlygazed, grotesquely graceful masterpieces of a perished art.

  At the far end of the room, under a gilded canopy of intricatewood-carving, stood upon his pedestal of many-petalled lotus a greatstatue of Amida Buddha in the yogi attitude of contemplation, and atintervals against the other walls other smaller images stood or sat;Buddha in many incarnations; Kwannon, Goddess of Mercy; Jizo Bosatzu;Hotei, pot-bellied, God of Contentment; Jingo-Kano, God of War. In thecentre of the place was a Buddhist temple table; and priests' chairs,lacquered and inlaid, stood about the room. The floor was covered byChinese rugs, dull yellow with blue flowers; and over a doorway whichled into another room was fixed a huge rama of Chinese pierced carving,gilded, in which there were trees and rocks and little grouped figuresof the hundred immortals.

  It was indeed an extraordinary room. Ste. Marie looked about its mellowglow with a half-comprehending wonder, and he looked at the man besidehim curiously, for here was another side to this many-sided character.Captain Stewart smiled.

  "You like my museum?" he asked. "Few people care much for it except, ofcourse, those who go in for the Oriental arts. Most of my friends thinkit bizarre--too grotesque and unusual. I have tried to satisfy them byincluding those comfortable low divan couches (they refuse altogether tosit in the priests' chairs), but still they are unhappy." He called hisservant, who came to take Ste. Marie's hat and coat, and returned withsmoking things.

  "It seems entirely wonderful to me," said the younger man. "I'm not anexpert at all--I don't know who the gentlemen in those sixteen panelsare, for example; but it is very beautiful. I have never seen anythinglike it at all." He gave a little laugh.

  "Will it sound very impertinent in me, I wonder, if I expresssurprise--not surprise at finding this magnificent room, but atdiscovering that this sort of thing is a taste and, very evidently, aserious study of yours? You--I remember your saying once with somefeeling that it was youth and beauty and--well, freshness that you likedbest to be surrounded by. This," said Ste. Marie, waving an inclusivehand, "was young so many centuries ago! It fairly breathes antiquity anddeath."

  "Yes," said Captain Stewart thoughtfully. "Yes, that is quite true."The two had seated themselves upon one of the broad low benches whichhad been built into the place to satisfy the philistine.

  "I find it hard to explain," he said, "because both things are passionsof mine. Youth--I could not exist without it. Since I have it nolonger in my own body, I wish to see it about me. It gives me life. Itkeeps my heart beating. I must have it near. And then this--antiquityand death, beautiful things made by hands dead centuries ago in an aliencountry! I love this too. I didn't speak too strongly, it is a sort ofpassion with me--something quite beyond the collector's mania, quitebeyond that. Sometimes, do you know, I stay at home in the evening, andI sit here quite alone with the lights half on and, for hours together,I smoke and watch these things--the quiet, sure, patient smile of thatBuddha for example. Think how long he has been smiling like that, andwaiting! Waiting for what? There is something mysterious beyond allwords in that smile of his, that fixed, crudely carved wooden smile.No, I'll be hanged if it's crude! It is beyond our modern art. Thedead men carved better than we do. We couldn't manage that with suchsimple means. We can only reproduce what is before us. We can't carvequestions--mysteries--everlasting riddles."

  Through the pale blue wreathing smoke of his cigarette Captain Stewartgazed down the room to where Eternal Buddha stood and smiled eternally.And from there the man's eyes moved with slow enjoyment along theopposite wall over those who sat or stood there, over the panels of theancient Rakan, over carved lotus and gilt contorted dragon for ever inpursuit of the holy pearl. He drew a short breath which seemed tobespeak extreme contentment, the keenest height of pleasure, and hestirred a little where he sat and settled himself among the cushions.Ste. Marie watched him, and the expression of the man's face began to beoddly revolting. It was the face of a voluptuary in the presence of hisdesire. He was uncomfortable and wished to say something to break thesilence, but, as often occurs at such a time, he could think of nothingto say. So there was a brief silence between them. But presentlyCaptain Stewart roused himself with an obvious effort.

  "Here! this won't do," said he, in a tone of whimsical apology. "Thiswon't do, you know. I'm floating off on my hobby (and there's a mixedmetaphor that would do credit to your own Milesian blood!) I'm boringyou to extinction, and I don't want to do that, for I'm anxious that youshould come here again--and often. I should like to have you form thehabit.

  "What was it I had in mind to ask you about? Ah yes! The journey toDinard and Deauville. I am afraid it turned out to be fruitless or youwould have let me know."

  "Entirely fruitless," said Ste. Marie. He went on to tell the elder manof his investigation, and of his certainty that no one resembling ArthurBenham had been at either of the two places.

  "It's no affair of mine, to be sure," he said; "but I rather suspectthat your agent was deceiving you--pretending to have accomplishedsomething by way of making you think he was busy." Ste. Marie was sosure the other would immediately disclaim this that he waited for theword, and gave a little smothered laugh when Captain Stewart saidpromptly--

  "Oh no! No! That is impossible. I have every confidence in that man.He is one of my best. No, you are mistaken there. I am moredisappointed than you could possibly be over the failure of yourefforts, but I am quite sure my man thought he had something worthworking upon.

  "By the way, I have received another rather curious communication--fromOstend this time. I will show you the letter, and you may try your luckthere if you would care to." He felt in his pockets and then rose."I've left the thing in another coat," said he; "if you will allow me,I'll fetch it." But before he had turned away the doorbell rang, and hepaused.

  "Ah well," he said, "another time. Here are some of my guests. Theyhave come earlier than I had expected."

  The new arrivals were three very perfectly dressed ladies, one of theman operatic light who chanced not to be singing that evening, and whomSte. Marie had met before. The two others were rather difficult ofclassification, but probably, he thought, ornaments of that mysteriousborderland between the two worlds which seems to give shelter to so manypeople against whose characters nothing definite is known, but whoseantecedents and connexions are not made topics of conversation. Thethree ladies seemed to be on very friendly terms with Captain Stewart,and greeted him with much noisy delight
. One of the unclassified two,when her host, with a glance towards Ste. Marie, addressed her formally,seemed inordinately amused, and laughed for a long time.

  Within the next hour ten or a dozen other guests had arrived, and theyall seemed to know each other very well, and proceeded to makethemselves quite at home. Ste. Marie regarded them with a reflectiveand not over-enthusiastic eye, and he wondered a good deal why he hadbeen asked here to meet them. He was as far from a prig or a snob asany man could very well be, and he often went to very Bohemian partieswhich were given by his painter or musician friends, but these peopleseemed to him quite different. The men, with the exception of twoeminent opera singers, who quite obviously had been asked because oftheir voices, were the sort of men who abound at such places as Ostendand Monte Carlo, and Baden Baden in the race week. That is not to saythat they were ordinary racing touts or the cheaper kind of adventurers:there was a count among them, and a marquis who had recently beendivorced by his American wife; but adventurers of a sort theyundoubtedly were. There was not one of them, so far as Ste. Marie wasaware, who was received anywhere in good society, and he resented verymuch being compelled to meet them.

  Naturally enough he felt much less concern on the score of the ladies.It is an undoubted and wellnigh universal truth that men who wouldrefuse outright to meet certain classes of their own sex show noreluctance whatever over meeting the women of a correspondingcircle--that is, if the women are attractive. It is a depressing fact,and inclines one to sighs and head-shakes and some moral indignation,until the reverse truth is brought to light: namely, that women haveidentically the same point of view; that while they cast looks ofloathing and horror upon certain of their sisters, they will meet withpleasure any presentable man whatever his crimes or vices.

  Ste. Marie was very much puzzled over all this. It seemed to him sounnecessary that a man who really had some footing in the newer societyof Paris should choose to surround himself with people of this type;but, as he looked on and wondered, he became aware of a curious and, inthe light of a past conversation, significant fact. All of the peoplein the room were young, all of them in their varying fashions anddegrees very attractive to look upon, all full to overflowing of lifeand spirits and the determination to have a good time. He saw CaptainStewart moving among them, playing very gracefully his role of host, andthe man seemed to have dropped twenty years from his shoulders. Amiracle of rejuvenation seemed to have come upon him; his eyes werebright and eager, the colour was high in his cheeks, and the drypedantic tone had gone from his voice. Ste. Marie watched him, and atlast he thought he understood. It was half revolting, half pathetic, hethought, but it certainly was interesting to see.

  "He saw Captain Stewart moving among them."]

  Duval, the great basso of the Opera, accompanied at the piano by one ofthe unclassified ladies, was just finishing _Mefistofele's_ drinkingsong out of _Faust_ when the door-bell rang.