The Quest: A Romance

by Justus Miles Forman

  *CHAPTER XXIII*

  *THE LAST ARROW--AND A PROMISE*

  The one bird-like eye of the old Michel regarded Ste. Marie with aglance of mingled cunning and humour. It might have been said totwinkle.

  "To the east, monsieur?" inquired the old Michel.

  "Precisely!" said Ste. Marie. "To the east, _mon vieux_." It was themorning of the fourth day after that talk with Captain Stewart besidethe rose gardens.

  The two bore to the eastward, down among the trees, and presently cameto the spot where a certain trespasser had once leapt down from the topof the high wall and had been shot for his pains. The old Michel haltedand leant upon the barrel of his carbine. With an air of completedetachment, an air vague and aloof as of one in a reverie, he gazed awayover the tree-tops of the ragged park; but Ste. Marie went in under therow of lilac shrubs which stood close against the wall, and a passer-bymight have thought the man looking for figs on thistles--for lilacs inlate July. He had gone there with eagerness, with flushed cheeks andbright eyes; he emerged, after some moments, moving slowly, withdowncast head.

  "There are no lilac blooms now, monsieur," observed the old Michel, andhis prisoner said in a low voice--

  "No, _mon vieux_. No. There are none." He sighed and drew a longbreath. So the two stood for some time silent, Ste. Marie a littlepale, his eyes fixed upon the ground, his hands chafing together behindhim: the gardener with his one bright eye upon his charge. But in theend Ste. Marie sighed again and began to move away, followed by thegardener. They went across the broad park, past the double row oflarches, through that space where the chestnut trees stood in straightclose rows, and so came to the west wall which skirted the road toClamart. Ste. Marie felt in his pocket and withdrew the last of thefour letters--the last there could be, for he had no more stamps. Theothers he had thrown over the wall, one each morning, beginning with theday after he had made the first attempt to bribe old Michel. As he hadexpected, twenty-four hours of avaricious reflection had proved too muchfor that gnome-like being.

  One each day he had thrown over the wall, weighted with a pebble tuckedloosely under the flap of the improvised envelope in such a manner thatit would drop out when the letter struck the ground beyond. And eachfollowing day he had gone with high hopes to the appointed place underthe cedar-tree to pick figs of thistles, lilac blooms in late July. Butthere had been nothing there.

  "Turn your back, Michel!" said Ste. Marie. And the old man said from alittle distance--

  "It is turned, monsieur. I see nothing. Monsieur throws little stonesat the birds to amuse himself. It does not concern me."

  Ste. Marie slipped a pebble under the flap of the envelope and threw hisletter over the wall. It went like a soaring bird, whirlinghorizontally, and it must have fallen far out in the middle of the roadnear the tramway. For the third time that morning the prisoner drew asigh. He said--

  "You may turn round now, my friend," and the old Michel faced him.

  "We have shot our last arrow," said he. "If this also fails, Ithink--well, I think the _bon Dieu_ will have to help us then.

  "Michel," he inquired, "do you know how to pray?"

  "Sacred thousand swine, no!" cried the ancient gnome in somethingbetween astonishment and horror. "No, monsieur. _Pas mon metier, ca!_"He shook his head rapidly from side to side like one of those toys in ashop window whose heads oscillate upon a pivot. But all at once a gleamof inspiration sparkled in his lone eye.

  "There is the old Justine!" he suggested. "_Toujours sur les genoux,cette imbecile la._"

  "In that case," said Ste. Marie, "you might ask the lady to say onelittle extra prayer for--the pebble I threw at the birds just now._Hein?_" He withdrew from his pocket the last two louis d'or, andMichel took them in a trembling hand. There remained but the note offifty francs and some silver.

  "The prayer shall be said, monsieur," declared the gardener. "It shallbe said. She shall pray all night or I will kill her."

  "Thank you!" said Ste. Marie. "You are kindness itself. A gentlesoul."

  They turned away to retrace their steps, and Michel rubbed the side ofhis head with a reflective air.

  "The old one is a madman," said he. The "old one" meant CaptainStewart. "A madman. Each day he is madder, and this morning he struckme--here on the head, because I was too slow. Eh! a little more of that,and--who knows? Just a little more, a small little! Am I a dog, to bebeaten? _Hein_? _Je ne le crois pas_. _He_!" He called CaptainStewart two unprintable names, and, after a moment's thought, he calledhim an animal, which is not so much of an anti-climax as it may seem,because to call anybody an animal in French is a serious matter.

  The gardener was working himself up into something of a quiet passion,and Ste. Marie said--

  "Softly, my friend! Softly!" It occurred to him that the man'sresentment might be of use, later on, and he said--

  "You speak the truth. The old one is an animal, and he is also a greatrascal." But Michel betrayed the makings of a philosopher. He saidwith profound conviction--

  "Monsieur, all men are great rascals. It is I who say it." And at thatSte. Marie had to laugh.

  He had not consciously directed his feet, but without direction they ledhim round the corner of the rose gardens and towards the _rond point_.He knew well whom he would find there. She had not failed him duringthe past three days. Each morning he had found her in her place, and,for his allotted hour--which more than once stretched itself out tonearly two hours, if he had but known--they had sat together on thestone bench or, tiring of that, had walked under the trees beyond.

  Long afterwards Ste. Marie looked back upon these hours with, amongother emotions, a great wonder, at himself and at her. It seemed to himthen one of the strangest relationships--intimacies, for it might wellbe so called--that ever existed between a man and a woman, and he wasamazed at the ease, the unconsciousness with which it had come about.

  But during this time he did not allow himself to wonder or toexamine--scarcely even to think. The hours were golden hours, unrelated,he told himself, to anything else in his life or in his interest. Theywere like pleasant dreams, very sweet while they endured, but to be putaway and forgotten upon the waking. Only, in that long afterwards, heknew that they had not been put away, that they had been with himalways, that the morning hour had remained in his thoughts all the restof the long day, and that he had waked upon the morrow with a keen andexquisite sense of something sweet to come.

  It was a strange fool's paradise that the man dwelt in, and in somesmall vague measure he must, even at the time, have known it, for it iscertain that he deliberately held himself away fromthought--realisation; that he deliberately shut his eyes, held his ears,lest he should hear or see.

  That he was not faithless to his duty has been shown. He did his utmostthere, but he was for the time helpless save for efforts to communicatewith Richard Hartley, and those efforts could consume no more than tenminutes out of the weary day.

  So he drifted, wilfully blind to bearings, wilfully deaf to sound ofwarning or peril, and he found a companionship sweeter and fuller andmore perfect than he had ever before known in all his life, though thatis not to say very much, because sympathetic companionships between menand women are very rare indeed, and Ste. Marie had never experiencedanything which could fairly be called by that name. He had had, as hasbeen related, many flirtations and not a few so-called love affairs; butneither of these two sorts of intimacies are of necessity trueintimacies at all: men often feel varying degrees of love for womenwithout the least true understanding or sympathy or real companionship.

  He was wondering as he bore round the corner of the rose gardens, onthis day, in just what mood he would find her. It seemed to him that intheir brief acquaintance he had seen her in almost all the moods thereare, from bitter gloom to the irrepressible gaiety of a little child.He had told her once that she was like an organ, and she had laughed athim for being pretentious and hig
h-flown, though she could upon occasionbe quite high-flown enough herself for all ordinary purposes.

  He reached the cleared margin of the _rond point_, and a little coldfear stirred in him when he did not hear her singing under her breath,as she was wont to do when alone, but he went forward, and she was therein her place upon the stone bench. She had been reading, but the booklay forgotten beside her and she sat idle, her head laid back againstthe thick stems of shrubbery which grew behind, her hands in her lap.It was a warm still morning with the promise of a hot afternoon, and thegirl was dressed in something very thin and transparent andcool-looking, open in a little square at the throat and with sleeveswhich came only to her elbows. The material was pale and dull yellowwith very vaguely defined green leaves in it, and against it the girl'sdark and clear skin glowed rich and warm and living, as pearls glow andseem to throb against the dead tints of the fabric upon which they arelaid.

  She did not move when he came before her, but looked up to him gravelywithout stirring her head.

  "She did not move when he came before her."]

  "I didn't hear you come," said she. "You don't drag your left leg anymore. You walk almost as well as if you had never been wounded."

  "I'm almost all right again," he answered. "I suppose I couldn't run orjump, but I certainly can walk very much like a human being. May I sitdown?"

  Mlle. O'Hara put out one hand and drew the book closer to make a placefor him on the stone bench, and he settled himself comfortably there,turned a little so that he was facing towards her.

  It was indicative of the state of intimacy into which the two had grownthat they did not make polite conversation with each other, but indeedwere silent for some little time after Ste. Marie had seated himself.It was he who spoke first. He said--

  "You look vaguely classical to-day. I have been trying to guess why andI cannot. Perhaps it's because your--what does one say: frock, dress,gown? because it is cut out square at the throat."

  "If you mean by classical, Greek," said she, "it wouldn't be square atthe neck at all. It would be pointed--V-shaped. And it would be verydifferent in other ways too. You are not an observing person afterall."

  "For all that," insisted Ste. Marie, "you look classical. You look likesome lady one reads about in Greek poems--Helen or Iphigenia or Medea orsomebody."

  "Helen had yellow hair, hadn't she?" objected Mlle. O'Hara. "I shouldthink I probably look more like Medea: Medea in Colchis beforeJason----" She seemed suddenly to realise that she had hit upon anunfortunate example, for she stopped short in the middle of hersentence, and a wave of colour swept up over her throat and face. For amoment Ste. Marie did not understand, then he gave a low exclamation,for Medea certainly had been an unhappy name. He remembered somethingthat Richard Hartley had said about that lady a long time before.

  He made another mistake, for to lessen the moment's embarrassment hegave speech to the first thought which entered his mind. He said--

  "Some one once remarked that you looked like the young Juno--beforemarriage. I expect it's true too."

  She turned upon him swiftly.

  "Who said that?" she demanded. "Who has ever talked to you about me?"

  "I beg your pardon!" he said. "I seem to be singularly stupid thismorning. A mild lunacy. You must forgive me, if you can. To tell youwhat you ask would be to enter upon forbidden ground, and I mustn't dothat."

  "Still, I should like to know," said the girl watching him with sombreeyes.

  "Well then," said he, "it was a little Jewish photographer in theBoulevard de la Madeleine." And she said--

  "Oh!" in a rather disappointed tone and looked away.

  "We seem to be making conversation chiefly about my personalappearance," she said presently. "There must be other topics, if oneshould try hard to find them. Tell me stories! You told me storiesyesterday; tell me more! You seem to be in a classical mood. You shallbe Odysseus, and I will be Nausicaa, the interesting laundress. Tell meabout wanderings and things! Have you any more islands for me?"

  "Yes!" said Ste. Marie, nodding at her slowly. "Yes, Nausicaa, I havemore islands for you. The seas are full of islands. What kind do youwant?"

  "A warm one," said the girl. "Even on a hot day like this I choose awarm one, because I hate the cold." She settled herself morecomfortably, with a little sigh of content that was exactly like achild's happy sigh when stories are going to be told before the fire.

  "I know an island," said Ste. Marie, "that I think you would likebecause it is warm and beautiful and very far away from troubles of allkinds. As well as I could make out when I went there nobody on theisland had ever even heard of trouble. Oh yes, you'd like it. Thepeople there are brown, and they're as beautiful as their own island.They wear hibiscus flowers stuck in their hair and they very seldom doany work."

  "I want to go there!" cried Mlle. Coira O'Hara. "I want to go there now,this afternoon, at once! Where is it?"

  "It's in the South Pacific," said he, "not so very far from Samoa andFiji and other groups that you will have heard about, and its name isVavau. It's one of the Tongans. It's a high, volcanic island, not aflat, coral one like the southern Tongans. I came to it one evening,sailing north from Nukualofa and Haapai, and it looked to me like asingle big mountain jutting up out of the sea, black-green against thesunset. It was very impressive. But it isn't a single mountain, it's alot of high broken hills covered with a tangle of vegetation and setround a narrow bay, a sort of fjord, three or four miles long, and atthe inner end of this are the village and the stores of the few whitetraders.

  "I'm afraid," said Ste. Marie, shaking his head--"I'm afraid I can'ttell you about it, after all. I can't seem to find the words. Youcan't put into language--at least I can't--those slow hot island daysthat are never too hot because the trades blow fresh and strong, or theisland nights that are more like black velvet with pearls sewed on itthan anything else. You can't describe the smell of orange-groves andthe look of palm-trees against the sky. You can't tell about the sweetsimple natural hospitality of the natives. They're like littleunsuspicious children.

  "In short," said he, "I shall have to give it up, after all, justbecause it's too big for me. I can only say that it's beautiful andunspeakably remote from the world, and that I think I should like to goback to Vavau and stay a long time, and let the rest of the world gohang."

  Mlle. O'Hara stared across the park of La Lierre with wide and shadowyeyes, and her lips trembled a little.

  "Oh, I want to go there!" she cried again. "I want to go there--andrest--and forget everything!"

  She turned upon him with a sudden bitter resentment.

  "Why do you tell me things like that?" she cried. "Oh yes, I know. Iasked you, but---- Can't you see?

  "To hide oneself away in a place like that!" she said. "To let the sunwarm you and the trade winds blow away--all that had ever tortured you!Just to rest and be at peace!"

  She turned her eyes to him once more.

  "You needn't be afraid that you have failed to make me see your island!I see it. I feel it. It doesn't need many words. I can shut my eyes,and I am there. But it was a little cruel. Oh, I know, I asked for it.

  "It's like the garden of the Hesperides, isn't it?"

  "Very like it," said Ste. Marie, "because there are oranges--groves ofthem. (And they were the golden apples, I take it.) Also it is veryfar away from the world, and the people live in complete and carelessignorance of how the world goes on. Emperors and kings die, wars comeand go; but they hear only a little faint echo of it all, longafterwards, and even that doesn't interest them."

  "I know," she said. "I understand. Didn't you know I'd understand?"

  "Yes," said he, nodding. "I suppose I did. We--feel things ratheralike, I suppose. We don't have to say them all out."

  "I wonder," she said in a low voice, "if I'm glad or sorry." She staredunder her brows at the man beside her.

  "For it is very probable that when we have left L
a Lierre you and Ishall never meet again. I wonder if I'm----" For some obscure reasonshe broke off there and turned her eyes away, and she remained withoutspeaking for a long time. Her mind, as she sat there, seemed to go backto that southern island and to its peace and loveliness, for Ste. Marie,who watched her, saw a little smile come to her lips, and he saw hereyes half close and grow soft and tender, as if what they saw were verysweet to her. He watched many different expressions come upon thegirl's face and go again, but at last he seemed to see the oldbitterness return there and struggle with something wistful and eager.

  "I envy you your wide wanderings," she said presently. "Oh, I envy youmore than I can find any words for. Your will is the wind's will. Yougo where your fancy leads you, and you're free--free.

  "We have wandered, you know," said she, "my father and I. I can'tremember when we ever had a home to live in. But that is--that isdifferent--a different kind of wandering."

  "Yes," said Ste. Marie. "Yes, perhaps." And within himself he said,with sorrow and pity: "Different indeed!"

  As if at some sudden thought the girl looked up at him quickly.

  "Did that sound regretful?" she asked. "Did what I say sound--disloyalto my father? I didn't mean it to. I don't want you to think that Iregret it. I don't. It has meant being with my father. Wherever hehas gone I have gone with him, and if anything ever hasbeen--unpleasant, I was willing, oh, I was glad, glad to put up with itfor his sake and because I could be with him. If I have made his life alittle happier by sharing it, I am glad of everything. I don't regret."

  "And yet," said Ste. Marie gently, "it must have been hard sometimes."He pictured to himself that roving existence lived among such people asO'Hara must have known, and it sent a hot wave of anger and distressover him from head to foot. But the girl said--

  "I had my father. The rest of it didn't matter in the face of that."

  After a little silence she said--

  "M. Ste. Marie!" And the man said--

  "What is it, mademoiselle?"

  "You spoke the other day," she said, hesitating over her words, "aboutmy aunt, Lady Margaret Craith. I suppose I ought not to ask you moreabout her, for my father quarrelled with his people very long ago, andhe broke with them altogether. But--surely it can do no harm--just for amoment--just a very little! Could you tell me a little about her, M.Ste. Marie? What she is like and--and how she lives--and things likethat?"

  So Ste. Marie told her all that he could of the old Irishwoman who livedalone in her great house and ruled with a slack Irish hand, a sweetIrish heart, over tenants and dependants. And when he had come to anend the girl drew a little sigh and said--

  "Thank you! I am so glad to hear of her. I--wish everything weredifferent, so that----I----think I should love her very much if Imight."

  "Mademoiselle," said Ste. Marie, "will you promise me something?"

  She looked at him with her sombre eyes, and after a little she said--

  "I am afraid you must tell me first what it is. I cannot promiseblindly." He said--

  "I want you to promise me that if anything ever should happen--anydifficulty, trouble--anything to put you in the position of needing careor help or sympathy----"

  But she broke in upon him with a swift alarm, crying--

  "What do you mean? You're trying to hint at something that I don'tknow. What difficulty or trouble could happen to me? Please tell mejust what you mean."

  "I'm not hinting at any mystery," said Ste. Marie. "I don't know ofanything that is going to happen to you, but--will you forgive me forsaying it?--your father is, I take it, often exposed to danger ofvarious sorts. I'm afraid I can't quite express myself, only, if anytrouble should come to you, mademoiselle, will you promise me to go toLady Margaret, your aunt, and tell her who you are, and let her care foryou?"

  "There was an absolute break," she said. "Complete." But the man shookhis head, saying--

  "Lady Margaret won't think of that. She'll think only of you--that shecan mother you, perhaps save you grief--and of herself, that in her oldage she has a daughter. It would make a lonely old woman very happy,mademoiselle."

  The girl bent her head away from him, and Ste. Marie saw, for the firsttime since he had known her, tears in her eyes. After a long time shesaid--

  "I promise then.

  "But," she said, "it is very unlikely that it should ever comeabout--for more than one reason. Very unlikely."

  "Still, mademoiselle," said he, "I am glad you have promised. This isan uncertain world. One never can tell what will come with theto-morrows."

  "I can," the girl said with a little tired smile that Ste. Marie did notunderstand. "I can tell. I can see all the to-morrows--a long, long rowof them. I know just what they're going to be like--to the very end."

  But the man rose to his feet and looked down upon her as she sat beforehim. And he shook his head.

  "You are mistaken," he said. "Pardon me, but you are mistaken. No onecan see to-morrow--or the end of anything. The end may surprise youvery much."

  "I wish it would!" cried Mlle. O'Hara. "Oh, I wish it would!"