Jason Part 23

"Michel is busy," said Coira O'Hara, "so I have brought your coffee."

She came into the sunlit room holding the steaming bowl of cafe au lait before her in her two hands. Over it her eyes went out to the man who lay in his bed, a long and steady and very grave look. "A G.o.ddess that lady, a queen among G.o.ddesses--" Thus the little Jew of the Boulevard de la Madeleine. Ste. Marie gazed back at her, and his heart was sick within him to think of the contemptible role Fate had laid upon this girl to play: the candle to the moth, the bait to the eager, unskilled fish, the lure to charm a foolish boy.

The girl's splendid beauty seemed to fill all that bright room with, as it were, a richer, subtler light. There could be no doubt of her potency. Older and wiser heads than young Arthur Benham's might well forget the world for her. Ste. Marie watched, and the heartsickness within him was like a physical pain, keen and bitter. He thought of that first and only previous meeting--the single minute in the Champs-Elysees, when her eyes had held him, had seemed to beseech him out of some deep agony. He thought of how they had haunted him afterward both by day and by night--calling eyes--and he gave a little groan of sheer bitterness, for he realized that all this while she was laying her snares about the feet of an inexperienced boy, decoying him to his ruin.

There was a name for such women, an ugly name. They were called adventuresses.

The girl set the bowl which she carried down upon a table not far from the bed. "You will need a tray or something," said she. "I suppose you can sit up against your pillows? I'll bring a tray and you can hold it on your knees and eat from it." She spoke in a tone of very deliberate indifference and detachment. There seemed even to be an edge of scorn in it, but nothing could make that deep and golden voice harsh or unlovely.

As the girl's extraordinary beauty had filled all the room with its light, so the sound of her voice seemed to fill it with a sumptuous and hushed resonance like a temple bell m.u.f.fled in velvet. "I must bring something to eat, too," she said. "Would you prefer croissants or brioches or plain bread-and-b.u.t.ter? You might as well have what you like."

"Thank you!" said Ste. Marie. "It doesn't matter. Anything. You are most kind. You are Hebe, Mademoiselle, server of feasts." The girl turned her head for a moment and looked at him with some surprise.

"If I am not mistaken," she said, "Hebe served to G.o.ds." Then she went out of the room, and Ste. Marie broke into a sudden delighted laugh behind her. She would seem to be a young woman with a tongue in her head. She had seized the rash opening without an instant's hesitation.

The black cat, which had been cruising, after the inquisitive fashion of its kind, in far corners of the room, strolled back and looked up to the table where the bowl of coffee steamed and waited.

"Get out!" cried Ste. Marie. "Va t'en, sale pet.i.t animal! Go and eat birds! That's _my_ coffee. Va! Sauve toi! He, voleur que tu es!" He sought for something by way of missile, but there was nothing within reach.

The black cat turned its calm and yellow eyes toward him, looked back to the aromatic feast, and leaped expertly to the top of the table. Ste.

Marie shouted and made horrible threats. He waved an impotent pillow, not daring to hurl it for fear of smashing the table's entire contents, but the black cat did not even glance toward him. It smelled the coffee, sneezed over it because it was hot, and finally proceeded to lap very daintily, pausing often to take breath or to shake its head, for cats disapprove of hot dishes, though they will partake of them at a pinch.

There came a step outside the door, and the thief leaped down with some haste, yet not quite in time to escape observation. Mlle. O'Hara came in, breathing terrible threats.

"Has that wretched animal touched your coffee?" she cried. "I hope not."

But Ste. Marie laughed weakly from his bed, and the guilty beast stood in mid-floor, brown drops beading its black chin and hanging upon its whiskers.

"I did what I could, Mademoiselle," said Ste. Marie, "but there was nothing to throw. I am sorry to be the cause of so much trouble."

"It is nothing," said she. "I will bring some more coffee, only it will take ten minutes, because I shall have to make some fresh." She made as if she would smile a little in answer to him, but her face turned grave once more and she went out of the room with averted eyes.

Thereafter Ste. Marie occupied himself with watching idly the movements of the black cat, and, as he watched, something icy cold began to grow within him, a sensation more terrible than he had ever known before. He found himself shivering as if that summer day had all at once turned to January, and he found that his face was wet with a chill perspiration.

When the girl at length returned she found him lying still, his face to the wall. The black cat was in her path as she crossed the room, so that she had to thrust it out of the way with her foot, and she called it names for moving with such lethargy.

"Here is the coffee at last," she said. "I made it fresh. And I have brought some brioches. Will you sit up and have the tray on your knees?"

"Thank you," said Ste. Marie. "I do not wish anything."

"You do not--" she repeated after him. "But I have made the coffee especially for you," she protested. "I thought you wanted it. I don't understand."

With a sudden movement the man turned toward her a white and drawn face.

"Mademoiselle," he cried, "it would have been more merciful to let your gardener shoot again yesterday. Much more merciful, Mademoiselle."

She stared at him under her straight, black brows.

"What do you mean?" she demanded. "More merciful? What do you mean by that?"

Ste. Marie stretched out a pointing finger, and the girl followed it.

She gave, after a tense instant, a single, sharp scream. And upon that:

"No, no! It's not true! It's not possible!"

Moving stiffly, she set down the bowl she carried, and the hot liquid splashed up round her wrists. For a moment she hung there, drooping, holding herself up by the strength of her hands upon the table. It was as if she had been seized with faintness. Then she sprang to where the cat crouched beside a chair. She dropped upon her knees and tried to raise it in her arms, but the beast bit and scratched at her feebly, and crept away to a little distance, where it lay struggling and very unpleasant to see.

"Poison!" she said, in a choked, gasping whisper. "Poison!" She looked once toward the man upon the bed, and she was white and shivering. "It's not true!" she cried again. "I--won't believe it! It's because the cat--was not used to coffee. Because it was hot. I won't believe it! I won't believe it!" She began to sob, holding her hands over her white face.

Ste. Marie watched her with puzzled eyes. If this was acting, it was very good acting. A little glimmer of hope began to burn in him--hope that in this last shameful thing, at least, the girl had had no part.

"It's impossible," she insisted, piteously. "I tell you it's impossible.

I brought the coffee myself from the kitchen. I took it from the pot there--the same pot we had all had ours from. It was never out of my sight--or, that is--I mean--"

She halted there, and Ste. Marie saw her eyes turn slowly toward the door, and he saw a crimson flush come up over her cheeks and die away, leaving her white again. He drew a little breath of relief and gladness, for he was sure of her now. She had had no part in it.

"It is nothing, Mademoiselle," said he, cheerfully. "Think no more of it. It is nothing."

"Nothing?" she cried, in a loud voice. "Do you call poison nothing?" She began to shiver again very violently. "You would have drunk it!" she said, staring at him in a white agony. "But for a miracle you would have drunk it--and died!"

Abruptly she came beside the bed and threw herself upon her knees there.

In her excitement and horror she seemed to have forgotten what they two were to each other. She caught him by the shoulders with her two hands, and the girl's violent trembling shook them both.

"Will you believe," she cried, "that I had nothing to do with this? Will you believe me? You must believe me!"

There was no acting in that moment. She was wrung with a frank anguish, an utter horror, and between her words there were hard and terrible sobs.

"I believe you, Mademoiselle," said the man, gently. "I believe you.

Pray think no more about it."

He smiled up into the girl's beautiful face, though within him he was still cold and a-shiver, as even the bravest man might well be at such an escape, and after a moment she turned away again. With unsteady hands she put the new-made bowl of coffee and the brioches and other things together upon the tray and started to carry it across the room to the bed, but half-way she turned back again and set the tray down. She looked about and found an empty gla.s.s, and she poured a little of the coffee into it. Ste. Marie, who was watching her, gave a sudden cry.

"No, no, Mademoiselle, I beg you! You must not!"

But the girl shook her head at him gravely over the gla.s.s.

"There is no danger," she said, "but I must be sure."

She drank what was in the gla.s.s, and afterward went across to one of the windows and stood there with her back to the room for a little time.

In the end she returned and once more brought the breakfast-tray to the bed. Ste. Marie raised himself to a sitting posture and took the thing upon his knees, but his hands were shaking.

"If I were not as helpless as a dead man, Mademoiselle," said he, "you should not have done that. If I could have stopped you, you should not have done it, Mademoiselle."

A wave of color spread up under the brown skin of the girl's face, but she did not speak. She stood by for a moment to see if he was supplied with everything he needed, and when Ste. Marie expressed his grat.i.tude for her pains she only bowed her head. Then presently she turned away and left the room.

Outside the door she met some one who was approaching. Ste. Marie heard her break into rapid and excited speech, and he heard O'Hara's voice in answer. The voice expressed astonishment and indignation and a sort of gruff horror, but the man who listened could hear only the tones, not the words that were spoken.

The Irishman came quickly into the room. He glanced once toward the bed where Ste. Marie sat eating his breakfast with apparent unconcern--there may have been a little bravado in this--and then bent over the thing which lay moving feebly beside a chair. When he rose again his face was hard and tense and his blue eyes glittered in a fashion that boded trouble for somebody.

"This looks very bad for us," he said, gruffly. "I should--I should like to have you believe that neither my daughter nor I had any part in it.

When I fight I fight openly, I don't use poison. Not even with spies."