Jason Part 20

He left his hat and stick behind him, under a shrub, and he began to make his way up the half-bare branches of the gnarled cedar. They bore him well, without crack or rustle, and the way was very easy. No ladder made by man could have offered a much simpler ascent. So, mounting slowly and with care, his head came level with the top of the wall. He climbed to the next branch, a foot higher, and rested there. The drooping foliage from the upper part of the cedar-tree, which was still alive, hung down over him and cloaked him from view, but through its aromatic screen he could see as freely as through the window curtain in the rue d'a.s.sas.

The house lay before him, a little to the left and perhaps a hundred yards away. It was a disappointing house to find in that great enclosure, for though it was certainly neither small nor trivial, it was as certainly far from possessing anything like grandeur. It had been in its day a respectable, unpretentious square structure of three stories, entirely without architectural beauty, but also entirely without the ornate hideousness of the modern villas along the route de Clamart. Now, however, the stucco was gone in great patches from its stone walls, giving them an unpleasantly diseased look, and long neglect of all decent cares had lent the place the air almost of desertion. Anciently the grounds before the house had been laid out in the formal fashion with a terrace and geometrical lawns and a pool and a fountain and a rather fine, long vista between clipped larches, but the same neglect which had made shabby the stuccoed house had allowed gra.s.s and weeds to grow over the gravel paths, underbrush to spring up and to encroach upon the geometrical turf-plots, the long double row of clipped larches to flourish at will or to die or to fall prostrate and lie where they had fallen.

So all the broad enclosure was a scene of heedless neglect, a riot of unrestrained and wanton growth, where should have been decorous and orderly beauty. It was a sight to bring tears to a gardener's eyes, but it had a certain untamed charm of its own, for all that. The very riot of it, the wanton prodigality of untouched natural growth, produced an effect that was by no means all disagreeable.

An odd and whimsical thought came into Ste. Marie's mind that thus must have looked the garden and park round the castle of the sleeping beauty when the prince came to wake her.

But sleeping beauties and unkempt grounds went from him in a flash when he became aware of a sound which was like the sound of voices.

Instinctively he drew farther back into the shelter of his aromatic screen. His eyes swept the s.p.a.ce below him from right to left, and could see no one. So he sat very still, save for the thunderous beat of a heart which seemed to him like drum-beats when soldiers are marching, and he listened--"all ears," as the phrase goes.

The sound was in truth a sound of voices. He was presently a.s.sured of that, but for some time he could not make out from which direction it came. And so he was the more startled when quite suddenly there appeared from behind a row of tall shrubs two young people moving slowly together up the untrimmed turf in the direction of the house.

The two young people were Mlle. Coira O'Hara and Arthur Benham, and upon the brow of this latter youth there was no sign of dungeon pallor, upon his free-moving limbs no ball and chain. There was no apparent reason why he should not hasten back to the eager arms in the rue de l'Universite if he chose to--unless, indeed, his undissembling att.i.tude toward Mlle. Coira O'Hara might serve as a reason. The young man followed at her heel with much the manner and somewhat the appearance of a small dog humbly conscious of unworthiness, but hopeful nevertheless of an occasional kind word or pat on the head.

The world wheeled multi-colored and kaleidoscopic before Ste. Marie's eyes, and in his ears there was a rushing of great winds, but he set his teeth and clung with all the strength he had to the tree which sheltered him. His first feeling, after that initial giddiness, was anger, sheer anger, a bewildered and astonished fury. He had thought to find this poor youth in captivity, pining through prison bars for the home and the loved ones and the familiar life from which he had been ruthlessly torn.

Yet here he was strolling in a suburban garden with a lady--free, free as air, or so he seemed. Ste. Marie thought of the grim and sorrowful old man in Paris who was sinking untimely into his grave because his grandson did not return to him; he thought of that timid soul--more shadow than woman--the boy's mother; he thought of Helen Benham's tragic eyes, and he could have beaten young Arthur half to death in that moment in the righteous rage that stormed within him.

But he turned his eyes from this wretched youth to the girl who walked beside, a little in advance, and the rage died in him swiftly.

After all, was she not one to make any boy--or any man--forget duty, home, friends, everything?

Rather oddly his mind flashed back to the morning and to the words of the little photographer, Bernstein. Perhaps the Jew had put it as well as any man could:

"She was a G.o.ddess, that lady, a queen of G.o.ddesses ... the young Juno before marriage...."

Ste. Marie nodded his head. Yes, she was just that. The little Jew had spoken well. It could not be more fairly put--though without doubt it could have been expressed at much greater length and with a great deal more eloquence. The photographer's other words came also to his mind, the more detailed description, and again he nodded his head, for this, too, was true.

"She was all color--brown skin with a dull-red stain under the cheeks, and a great ma.s.s of hair that was not black but very nearly black--except in the sun, and then there were red lights in it."

It occurred to Ste. Marie, whimsically, that the two young people might have stepped out of the door of Bernstein's studio straight into this garden, judging from their bearing each to the other.

"Ah, a thing to touch the heart! Such devotion as that! Alas, that the lady should seem so cold to it! ... Still, a G.o.ddess! What would you? A queen among G.o.ddesses! ... One would not have them laugh and make little jokes.... Make eyes at love-sick boys. No, indeed!"

Certainly Mlle. Coira O'Hara was not making eyes at the love-sick boy who followed at her heel this afternoon. Perhaps it would be going too far to say that she was cold to him, but it was very plain to see that she was bored and weary, and that she wished she might be almost anywhere else than where she was. She turned her beautiful face a little toward the wall where Ste. Marie lay perdu, and he could see that her eyes had the same dark fire, the same tragic look of appeal that he had seen in them before--once in the Champs-Elysees and again in his dreams.

Abruptly he became aware that while he gazed, like a man in a trance, the two young people walked on their way and were on the point of pa.s.sing beyond reach of eye or ear. He made a sudden involuntary movement as if he would call them back, and for the first time his faithful hiding-place, strained beyond silent endurance, betrayed him with a loud rustle of shaken branches. Ste. Marie shrank back, his heart in his throat. It was too late to retreat now down the tree. The damage was already done. He saw the two young people halt and turn to look, and after a moment he saw the boy come slowly forward, staring. He heard him say:

"What's up in that tree? There's something in the tree." And he heard the girl answer: "It's only birds fighting. Don't bother!" But young Arthur Benham came on, staring up curiously until he was almost under the high wall.

Then Ste. Marie's strange madness, or the hand of Fate, or whatever power it was which governed him on that day, thrust him on to the ultimate pitch of recklessness. He bent forward from his insecure perch over the wall until his head and shoulders were in plain sight, and he called down to the lad below in a loud whisper:

"Benham! Benham!"

The boy gave a sharp cry of alarm and began to back away. And after a moment Ste. Marie heard the cry echoed from Coira O'Hara. He heard her say:

"Be careful! Be careful, Arthur! Come away! Oh, come away quickly!"

Ste. Marie raised his own voice to a sort of cry. He said:

"Wait! I tell you to wait, Benham! I must have a word with you. I come from your family--from Helen!"

To his amazement the lad turned about and began to run toward where the girl stood waiting; and so, without a moment's hesitation, Ste. Marie threw himself across the top of the wall, hung for an instant by his hands, and dropped upon the soft turf. Scarcely waiting to recover his balance, he stumbled forward, shouting:

"Wait! I tell you, wait! Are you mad? Wait, I say! Listen to me!"

Vaguely, in the midst of his great excitement, he had heard a whistle sound as he dropped inside the wall. He did not know then whence the shrill call had come, but afterward he knew that Coira O' Hara had blown it. And now, as he ran forward toward the two who stood at a distance staring at him, he heard other steps and he slackened his pace to look.

A man came running down among the black-boled trees, a strange, squat, gnomelike man whose gait was as uncouth as his dwarfish figure. He held something in his two hands as he ran, and when he came near he threw this thing with a swift movement up before him, but he did not pause in his odd, scrambling run.

Ste. Marie felt a violent blow upon his left leg between hip and knee.

He thought that somebody had crept up behind him and struck him; but as he whirled about he saw that there was no one there, and then he heard a noise and knew that the gnomelike running man had shot him. He faced about once more toward the two young people. He was very angry and he wished to say so, and very much he wished to explain why he had trespa.s.sed there, and why they had no right to shoot him as if he were some wretched thief. But he found that in some quite absurd fashion he was as if fixed to the ground. It was as if he had suddenly become of the most ponderous and incredible weight, like lead--or that other metal, not gold, which is the heaviest of all. Only the metal, seemingly, was not only heavy but fiery hot, and his strength was incapable of holding it up any longer. His eyes fixed themselves in a bewildered stare upon the figure of Mlle. Coira O'Hara; he had time to observe that she had put up her two hands over her face, then he fell down forward, his head struck something very hard, and he knew no more.

XV

A CONVERSATION AT LA LIERRE

Captain Stewart walked nervously up and down the small inner drawing-room at La Lierre, his restless hands fumbling together behind him, and his eyes turning every half-minute with a sharp eagerness to the closed door. But at last, as if he were very tired, he threw himself down in a chair which stood near one of the windows, and all his tense body seemed to relax in utter exhaustion. It was not a very comfortable chair that he had sat down in, but there were no comfortable chairs in the room--nor, for that matter, in all the house. When he had taken the place, about two months before this time, he had taken it furnished, but that does not mean very much in France. No French country-houses--or town-houses, either--are in the least comfortable, by Anglo-Saxon standards, and that is at least one excellent reason why Frenchmen spend just as little time in them as they possibly can. Half the cafes in Paris would promptly put up their shutters if Parisian homes could all at once turn themselves into something like English or American ones. As for La Lierre, it was even more dreary and bare and tomblike than other country-houses, because it was, after all, a sort of ruin, and had not been lived in for fifteen years, save by an ancient caretaker and his nearly as ancient wife. And that was, perhaps, why it could be taken on a short lease at such a very low price.

The room in which Captain Stewart sat was behind the large drawing-room, which was always kept closed now, and it looked out by one window to the west, and by two windows to the north, over a corner of the kitchen garden and a vista of trees beyond. It was a high-ceiled room with walls bare except for two large mirrors in the Empire fashion, which stared at each other across the way with dull and flaking eyes. Under each of these stood a heavy gilt and ebony console with a top of chocolate-colored marble, and in the centre of the room there was a table of a like fashion to the consoles. Further than this there was nothing save three chairs, upon one of which lay Captain Stewart's dust-coat and motoring cap and goggles.

A shaft of golden light from the low sun slanted into the place through the western window from which the Venetians had been pulled back, and fell across the face of the man who lay still and lax in his chair, eyes closed and chin dropped a little so that his mouth hung weakly open. He looked very ill, as, indeed, any one might look after such an attack as he had suffered on the night previous. That one long moment of deathly fear before he had fallen down in a fit had nearly killed him. All through this following day it had continued to recur until he thought he should go mad. And there was worse still. How much did Olga Nilssen know? And how much had she told? She had astonished and frightened him when she had said that she knew about the house on the road to Clamart, for he thought he had hidden his visits to La Lierre well. He wondered rather drearily how she had discovered them, and he wondered how much she knew more than she had admitted. He had a half-suspicion of something like the truth, that Mlle. Nilssen knew only of Coira O'Hara's presence here, and drew a rather natural inference. If that was all, there was no danger from her--no more, that is, than had already borne its fruit, for Stewart knew well enough that Ste. Marie must have learned of the place from her. In any case Olga Nilssen had left Paris--he had discovered that fact during the day--and so for the present she might be eliminated as a source of peril.

The man in the chair gave a little groan and rolled his head wearily to and fro against the uncomfortable chair-back, for now he came to the real and immediate danger, and he was so very tired and ill, and his head ached so sickeningly that it was almost beyond him to bring himself face to face with it.

There was the man who lay helpless upon a bed up-stairs! And there were the man's friends, who were not at all helpless or bedridden or in captivity!

A wave of almost intolerable pain swept through Stewart's aching head, and he gave another groan which was almost like a child's sob. But at just that moment the door which led into the central hall opened, and the Irishman O'Hara came into the room. Captain Stewart sprang to his feet to meet him, and he caught the other man by the arm in his eagerness.

"How is he?" he cried out. "How is he? How badly was he hurt?"

"The patient?" said O'Hara. "Let go my arm! Hang it, man, you're pinching me! Oh, he'll do well enough. He'll be fit to hobble about in a week or ten days. The bullet went clean through his leg and out again without cutting an artery. It was a sort of miracle--and a d.a.m.ned lucky miracle for all hands, too! If we'd had a splintered bone or a severed artery to deal with I should have had to call in a doctor. Then the fellow would have talked, and there'd have been the devil to pay. As it is, I shall be able to manage well enough with my own small skill. I've dressed worse wounds than that in my time. By Jove, it was a miracle, though!" A sudden little gust of rage swept him. He cried out: "That confounded fool of a gardener, that one-eyed Michel, ought to be beaten to death. Why couldn't he have slipped up behind this fellow and knocked him on the head, instead of shooting him from ten paces away? The benighted idiot! He came near upsetting the whole boat!"

"Yes," said Captain Stewart, with a sharp, hard breath, "he should have shot straighter or not at all."

The Irishman stared at him with his bright blue eyes, and after a moment he gave a short laugh.

"Jove, you're a bloodthirsty beggar, Stewart!" said he. "That would have been a rum go, if you like! Killing the fellow! All his friends down on us like hawks, and the police and all that! You can't go about killing people in the outskirts of Paris, you know--at least not people with friends. And this chap looks like a gentleman, more or less, so I take it he has friends. As a matter of fact, his face is rather familiar. I think I've seen him before, somewhere. You looked at him just now through the crack of the door; do you know who he is? Coira tells me he called out to Arthur by name, but Arthur says he never saw him before and doesn't know him at all."

Captain Stewart shivered. It had not been a pleasant moment for him, that moment when he had looked through the crack of the door and recognized Ste. Marie.

"Yes," he said, half under his breath--"yes, I know who he is. A friend of the family."

The Irishman's lips puckered to a low whistle. He said: