Jason Part 14

He rose to take his leave, and Ste. Marie went with him to the 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. I suppose 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 down the stair, and Ste. Marie returned to his unpacking.

Nothing more of consequence occurred in the next few days. Hartley had unearthed a somewhat shabby adventurer who swore to having seen the Irishman O'Hara in Paris within a month, but it was by no means certain that this being did not merely affirm what he believed to be desired of him, and in any case the information was of no especial value, since it was O'Hara's present whereabouts that was the point at issue. So it came to Thursday evening. Ste. Marie received a note from Captain Stewart during the day, reminding him that he was to come to the rue du Faubourg St. Honore that evening, and asking him to come early, at ten or thereabouts, so that the two could have a comfortable chat before any one else turned up. Ste. Marie had about decided not to go at all, but the courtesy of this special invitation from Miss Benham's uncle made it rather impossible for him to stay away. He tried to persuade Hartley to follow him on later in the evening, but that gentleman flatly refused and went away to dine with some English friends at Armenonville.

So Ste. Marie, in a vile temper, dined quite alone at Lavenue's, beside the Gare Montparna.s.se, and toward ten o'clock drove across the river to the rue du Faubourg. Captain Stewart's flat was up five stories, at the top of the building in which it was located, and so, well above the noises of the street. Ste. Marie went up in the automatic lift, and at the door above his host met him in person, saying that the one servant he kept was busy making preparations in the kitchen beyond. They entered a large room, long but comparatively shallow, in shape not unlike the sitting-room in the rue d'a.s.sas, but very much bigger, and Ste. Marie uttered an exclamation of surprise and pleasure, for he had never before seen an interior anything like this. The room was decorated and furnished entirely in Chinese and j.a.panese articles of great age and remarkable beauty. Ste. Marie knew little of the hieratic art of these two countries, but he fancied that the place must be an endless delight to the expert.

The general tone of the room was gold, dulled and softened by great age until 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 expanse of the walls was covered by a brownish-yellow cloth, coa.r.s.e like burlap, and against it, round the room, hung sixteen large panels representing the sixteen Rakan. They were early copies--fifteenth century, Captain Stewart said--of those famous originals by the Chinese Sung master Ririomin, which have been for six hundred years or more the treasures of j.a.pan. They were mounted upon j.a.panese brocade of blue and dull gold, framed in keyaki wood, and out of their brown, time-stained shadows the great Rakan scowled or grinned or placidly gazed, grotesquely graceful masterpieces of a perished art.

At the far end of the room, under a gilded canopy of intricate wood-carving, stood upon his pedestal of many-petalled lotus a great statue of Amida Buddha in the yogi att.i.tude of contemplation, and at intervals against the other walls other smaller images stood or sat: Buddha, in many incarnations; Kwannon, G.o.ddess of mercy; Jizo Bosatzu Hotei, pot-bellied, G.o.d of contentment; Jingo-Kano, G.o.d of war. In the centre of the place was a Buddhist temple table, and priests' chairs, lacquered and inlaid, stood about the room. The floor was covered with Chinese rugs, dull yellow with blue flowers, and over a doorway which led into another room was fixed a huge rama of Chinese pierced carving, gilded, in which there were trees and rocks and little grouped figures of the hundred immortals.

It, was, indeed an extraordinary room. Ste. Marie looked about its mellow glow with a half-comprehending wonder, and he looked at the man beside him 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, of course, those who go in for the Oriental arts. Most of my friends think it bizarre--too grotesque and unusual. I have tried to satisfy them by including those comfortable low divan-couches (they refuse altogether to sit in the priests' chairs), but still they are unhappy."

He called his servant, who came to take Ste. Marie's hat and coat and returned with smoking things.

"It seems entirely wonderful to me," said the younger man. "I'm not an expert at all--I don't know who the gentlemen in those sixteen panels are, for example--but it is very beautiful. I have never seen anything like it at all." He gave a little laugh. "Will it sound very impertinent in me, I wonder, if I express surprise--not surprise at finding this magnificent room, but at discovering that this sort of thing is a taste and, very evidently, a serious study of yours? You--I remember your saying once with some feeling that it was youth and beauty and--well, freshness that you liked best to be surrounded by. This," said Ste.

Marie, waving an inclusive hand, "was young so many centuries ago! It fairly breathes antiquity and death."

"Yes," said Captain Stewart, thoughtfully. "Yes, that is quite true."

The two had seated themselves upon one of the broad, low benches which had been built into the place to satisfy the Philistine.

"I find it hard to explain," he said, "because both things are pa.s.sions of mine. Youth--I could not exist without it. Since I have it no longer in my own body, I wish to see it about me. It gives me life. It keeps my heart beating. I must have it near. And then this--antiquity and death, beautiful things made by hands dead centuries ago in an alien country! I love this, too. I didn't speak too strongly; it is a sort of pa.s.sion with me--something quite beyond the collector's mania--quite beyond that. Sometimes, do you know, I stay at home in the evening, and I 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 that Buddha, for example. Think how long he has been smiling like that, and waiting! Waiting for what? There is something mysterious beyond all words 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. The dead men carved better than we do. We couldn't manage that with such simple means. We can only reproduce what is before us. We can't carve questions--mysteries--everlasting riddles."

Through the pale-blue, wreathing smoke of his cigarette Captain Stewart gazed down the room to where eternal Buddha stood and smiled eternally.

And from there the man's eyes moved with slow enjoyment along the opposite wall over those who sat or stood there, over the panels of the ancient Rakan, over carved lotus, and gilt contorted dragon forever in pursuit of the holy pearl. He drew a short breath which seemed to bespeak extreme contentment, the keenest height of pleasure, and he stirred 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 be oddly revolting. It was the face of a voluptuary in the presence of his desire. He was uncomfortable, and wished to say something to break the silence, but, as often occurs at such a time, he could think of nothing to say. So there was a brief silence between them. But presently Captain Stewart roused himself with an obvious effort.

"Here, this won't do!" said he, in a tone of whimsical apology. "This won't do, you know. I'm floating off on my hobby (and there's a mixed metaphor that would do credit to your own Milesian blood!). I'm boring you to extinction, and I don't want to do that, for I'm anxious that you should come here again--and often. I should like to have you form the habit. What was it I had in mind to ask you about? Ah, yes! The journey to Dinard and Deauville. I am afraid it turned out to be fruitless or you would have let me know."

"Entirely fruitless," said Ste. Marie.

He went on to tell the elder man of his investigation, and of his certainty that no one resembling Arthur Benham had been at either of the two places.

"It's no affair of mine, to be sure," he said, "but I rather suspect that your agent was deceiving you--pretending to have accomplished something by way of making you think he was busy."

Ste. Marie was so sure the other would immediately disclaim this that he waited for the word, and gave a little smothered laugh when Captain Stewart said, promptly:

"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 more disappointed than you could possibly be over the failure of your efforts, but I am quite sure my man thought he had something worth working upon.

By-the-way, I have received another rather curious communication--from Ostend this time. I will show you the letter, and you may try your luck there 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 door-bell rang and he paused. "Ah, well," he said, "another time. Here are some of my guests.

They have come earlier than I had expected."

The new arrivals were three very perfectly dressed ladies, one of them an operatic light, who chanced not to be singing that evening and whom Ste. Marie had met before. The two others were rather difficult of cla.s.sification, but probably, he thought, ornaments of that mysterious border-land between the two worlds which seems to give shelter to so many people against whose characters nothing definite is known, but whose antecedents and connections are not made topics of conversation.

The three ladies seemed to be on very friendly terms with Captain Stewart, and greeted him with much noisy delight. One of the uncla.s.sified two, when her host, with a glance toward 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 they all seemed to know one another very well, and proceeded to make themselves quite at home. Ste. Marie regarded them with a reflective and not over-enthusiastic eye, and he wondered a good deal why he had been asked here to meet them. He was as far from a prig or a sn.o.b as any man could very well be, and he often went to very Bohemian parties which were given by his painter or musician friends, but these people seemed to him quite different. The men, with the exception of two eminent opera-singers, who quite obviously had been asked because of their voices, were the sort of men who abound at such places as Ostend and Monte Carlo, and Baden-Baden in the race week. That is not to say that they were ordinary racing touts or the cheaper kind of adventurers (there was a count among them, and a marquis who had recently been divorced by his American wife), but adventurers of a sort they undoubtedly were. There was not one of them, so far as Ste. Marie was aware, who was received anywhere in good society, and he resented very much being compelled to meet them.

Naturally enough, he felt much less concern on the score of the ladies.

It is an undoubted and well-nigh universal truth that men who would refuse outright to meet certain cla.s.ses of their own s.e.x show no reluctance whatever over meeting the women of a corresponding circle--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 have identically the same point of view; that, while they cast looks of loathing and horror upon certain of their sisters, they will meet with pleasure any presentable man whatever his crimes or vices.

Ste. Marie was very much puzzled over all this. It seemed to him so unnecessary that a man who really had some footing in the newer society of 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, in the light of a past conversation, significant fact: all of the people in the room were young; all of them in their varying fashions and degrees very attractive to look upon; all full to overflowing of life and spirits and the determination to have a good time. He saw Captain Stewart moving among them, playing very gracefully his role of host, and the man seemed to have dropped twenty years from his shoulders. A miracle of rejuvenation seemed to have come upon him: his eyes were bright and eager, the color was high in his cheeks, and the dry, pedantic tone had gone from his voice. Ste. Marie watched him, and at last he thought he understood. It was half revolting, half pathetic, he thought, but it certainly was interesting to see.

Duval, the great ba.s.so of the Opera, accompanied at the piano by one of the uncla.s.sified ladies, was just finishing Mephistopheles' drinking song out of _Faust_ when the door-bell rang.

XI

A GOLDEN LADY ENTERS--THE EYES AGAIN

The music of voice and piano was very loud just then, so that the little, soft, whirring sound of the electric bell reached only one or two pairs of ears in the big room. It did not reach the host certainly, and neither he nor most of the others observed the servant make his way among the groups of seated or standing people and go to the outer door, which opened upon a tiny hallway. The song came to an end, and everybody was cheering and applauding and crying "Bravo!" or "Bis!" or one of the other things that people shout at such times, when, as if in unexpected answer to the outburst, a lady appeared between the yellow portieres and came forward a little way into the room. She was a tall lady of an extraordinary and immediately noticeable grace of movement--a lady with rather fair hair; but her eyebrows and eyelashes had been stained darker than it was their nature to be. She had the cla.s.sic Greek type of face--and figure, too--all but the eyes, which were long and narrow--narrow, perhaps, from a habit of going half closed; and when they were a little more than half closed they made a straight black line that turned up very slightly at the outer end with an Oriental effect which went oddly in that cla.s.sic face. There is a popular piece of sculpture now in the Luxembourg Gallery for which this lady "sat" as model to a great artist. Sculptors from all over the world go there to dream over its perfect line and contour, and little schoolgirls pretend not to see it, and middle-aged maiden tourists, with red Baedekers in their hands, regard it furtively and pa.s.s on, and after a while come back to look again.

The lady was dressed in some very close-clinging material which was not cloth of gold, but something very like it, only much duller--something which gleamed when she stirred, but did not glitter--and over her splendid shoulders was hung an Oriental scarf heavily worked with metallic gold. She made an amazing and dramatic picture in that golden room. It was as if she had known just what her surroundings would be and had dressed expressly for them.

The applause ceased as suddenly as if it had been trained to break off at a signal, and the lady came forward a little way, smiling a quiet, a.s.sured smile. At each step her knee threw out the golden stuff of her gown an inch or two, and it flashed suddenly--a dull, subdued flash in the overhead light--and died and flashed again. A few of the people in the room knew who the lady was, and they looked at one another with raised eyebrows and startled faces; but the others stared at her with an eager admiration, thinking that they had seldom seen anything so beautiful or so effective. Ste. Marie sat forward on the edge of his chair. His eyes sparkled, and he gave a little quick sigh of pleasurable excitement. This was drama, and very good drama, too, and he suspected that it might at any moment turn into a tragedy.

He saw Captain Stewart, who had been among a group of people half-way across the room, turn his head to look when the cries and the applause ceased so suddenly, and he saw the man's face stiffen by swift degrees, all the joyous, buoyant life gone out of it, until it was yellow and rigid like a dead man's face; and Ste. Marie, out of his knowledge of the relations between these two people, nodded, en connaisseur, for he knew that the man was very badly frightened.

So the host of the evening hung back, staring for what must have seemed to him a long and terrible time, though in reality it was but an instant; then he came forward quickly to greet the new-comer, and if his face was still yellow-white there was nothing in his manner but the courtesy habitual with him. He took the lady's hand, and she smiled at him, but her eyes did not smile--they were hard. Ste. Marie, who was the nearest of the others, heard Captain Stewart say:

"This is an unexpected pleasure, my dearest Olga!"

And to that the lady replied, more loudly: "Yes, I returned to Paris only to-day. You didn't know, of course. I heard you were entertaining this evening, and so I came, knowing that I should be welcome."

"Always!" said Captain Stewart--"always more than welcome!"

He nodded to one or two of the men who stood near, and when they approached presented them. Ste. Marie observed that he used the lady's true name--she had, at times, found occasion to employ others--and that he politely called her "Madame Nilssen" instead of "Mademoiselle." But at that moment the lady caught sight of Ste. Marie, and, crying out his name in a tone of delighted astonishment, turned away from the other men, brushing past them as if they had been furniture, and advanced holding out both her hands in greeting.

"Dear Ste. Marie!" she exclaimed. "Fancy finding you here! I'm so glad!

Oh, I'm so very glad! Take me away from these people! Find a corner where we can talk. Ah, there is one with a big seat! Allons-y!"

She addressed him for the most part in English, which she spoke perfectly--as perfectly as she spoke French and German and, presumably, her native tongue, which must have been Swedish.

They went to the broad, low seat, a sort of hard-cushioned bench, which stood against one of the walls, and made themselves comfortable there by the only possible means, which, owing to the width of the thing, was to sit far back with their feet stuck straight out before them. Captain Stewart had followed them across the room and showed a strong tendency to remain. Ste. Marie observed that his eyes were hard and bright and very alert, and that there were two bright spots of color in his yellow cheeks. It occurred to Ste. Marie that the man was afraid to leave him alone with Olga Nilssen, and he smiled to himself, reflecting that the lady, even if indiscreetly inclined, could tell him nothing--save in details--that he did not already know. But after a few rather awkward moments Mile. Nilssen waved an irritated hand.

"Go away!" she said to her host. "Go away to your other guests! I want to talk to Ste. Marie. We have old times to talk over."