Jason Part 27

The boy's face came before him as it had looked with that sudden hard and bitter expression. What did he mean by saying that no one knew the crookedness of humanity under money temptation better than he knew it after something that had happened to him? In a sense his words were doubtless very true. Captain Stewart--and he must have been "old Charlie"; Ste. Marie remembered that the name was Charles--O'Hara, and O'Hara's daughter stood excellent examples of that bit of cynicism, but obviously the boy had not spoken in that sense--certainly not before Mlle. O'Hara! He meant something else, then. But what--what?

Ste. Marie rose with some difficulty to his feet and carried the pillows back to the bed whence he had taken them. He sat down upon the edge of the bed, staring in great perplexity across the room at the open window, but all at once he uttered an exclamation and smote his hands together.

"That boy doesn't know!" he cried. "They're tricking him, these others!"

The lad's face came once more before him, and it was a foolish and stubborn face, perhaps, but it was neither vicious nor mean. It was the face of an honest, headstrong boy who would be incapable of the cold cruelty to which all circ.u.mstances seemed to point.

"They're tricking him somehow!" cried Ste. Marie again. "They're lying to him and making him think--"

What was it they were making him think, these three conspirators? What possible thing could they make him think other than the plain truth?

Ste. Marie shook a weary head and lay down among his pillows. He wished that he had "old Charlie" in a corner of that room with his fingers round "old Charlie's" wicked throat. He would soon get at the truth then; or O'Hara, either, that grim and saturnine chevalier d'industrie, though O'Hara would be a bad handful to manage; or--Ste. Marie's head dropped back with a little groan when the face of young Arthur's enchantress came between him and the opposite wall of the room and her great and tragic eyes looked into his.

It seemed incredible that that queen among G.o.ddesses should be what she was!

XIX

THE INVALID TAKES THE AIR

When O'Hara, the next morning, went through the formality of looking in upon his patient, and after a taciturn nod was about to go away again, Ste. Marie called him back. He said, "Would you mind waiting a moment?"

and the Irishman halted inside the door. "I made an experiment yesterday," said Ste. Marie, "and I find that, after a poor fashion, I can walk--that is to say, I can drag myself about a little without any great pain if I don't bend the left leg."

O'Hara returned to the bed and made a silent examination of the bullet wound, which, it was plain to see, was doing very well indeed. "You'll be all right in a few days," said he, "but you'll be lame for a week yet--maybe two. As a matter of fact, I've known men to march half a day with a hole in the leg worse than yours, though it probably was not quite pleasant."

"I'm afraid I couldn't march very far," said Ste. Marie, "but I can hobble a bit. The point is, I'm going mad from confinement in this room.

Do you think I might be allowed to stagger about the garden for an hour, or sit there under one of the trees? I don't like to ask favors, but, so far as I can see, it could do no harm. I couldn't possibly escape, you see. I couldn't climb a fifteen-foot wall even if I had two good legs; as it is, with a leg and a half, I couldn't climb anything."

The Irishman looked at him sharply, and was silent for a time, as if considering. But at last he said: "Of course there is no reason whatever for granting you any favors here. You're on the footing of a spy--a captured spy--and you're very lucky not to have got what you deserved instead of a trumpery flesh wound." The man's face twisted into a heavy scowl. "Unfortunately," said he, "an accident has put me--put us in as unpleasant a position toward you as you had put yourself toward us. We seem to stand in the position of having tried to poison you, and--well, we owe you something for that. Still, I'd meant to keep you locked up in this room so long as it was necessary to have you at La Lierre." He scowled once more in an intimidating fashion at Ste. Marie, and it was evident that he found himself embarra.s.sed. "And," he said, awkwardly, "I suppose I owe something to your father's son.... Look here! If you're to be allowed in the garden, you must understand that it's at fixed hours and not alone. Somebody will always be with you, and old Michel will be on hand to shoot you down if you try to run for it or if you try to communicate with Arthur Benham. Is that understood?"

"Quite," said Ste. Marie, gayly. "Quite understood and agreed to. And many thanks for your courtesy. I sha'n't forget it. We differ rather widely on some rather important subjects, you and I, but I must confess that you're very generous, and I thank you. The old Michel has my full permission to shoot at me if he sees me trying to fly over a fifteen-foot wall."

"He'll shoot without asking your permission," said the Irishman, grimly, "if you try that on, but I don't think you'll be apt to try it for the present--not with a crippled leg." He pulled out his watch and looked at it. "Nine o'clock," said he. "If you care to begin to-day you can go out at eleven for an hour. I'll see that old Michel is ready at that time."

"Eleven will suit me perfectly," said Ste. Marie. "You're very good.

Thanks once more!" The Irishman did not seem to hear. He replaced the watch in his pocket and turned away in silence. But before he left the room he stood a moment beside one of the windows, staring out into the morning sunshine, and the other man could see that his face had once more settled into the still and melancholic gloom which was characteristic of it. Ste. Marie watched, and for the first time the man began to interest him as a human being. He had thought of O'Hara before merely as a rather shady adventurer of a not very rare type, but he looked at the adventurer's face now and he saw that it was the face of a man of unspeakable sorrows. When O'Hara looked at one, one saw only a pair of singularly keen and hard blue eyes set under a bony brow. When those eyes were turned away, the man's attention relaxed, the face became a battle-ground furrowed and scarred with wrecked pride and with bitterness and with shame and with agony. Most soldiers of fortune have faces like that, for the world has used them very ill, and they have lost one precious thing after another until all are gone, and they have tasted everything that there is in life, and the flavor which remains is a very bitter flavor--dry, like ashes.

It came to Ste. Marie, as he lay watching this man, that the story of the man's life, if he could be made to tell it, would doubtless be one of the most interesting stories in the world, as must be the tale of the adventurous career of any one who has slipped down the ladder of respectability, rung by rung, into that shadowy no-man's-land where the furtive birds of prey foregather and hatch their plots. It was plain enough that O'Hara had, as the phrase goes, seen better days. Without question he was a villain, but, after all, a generous villain. He had been very decent about making amends for that poisoning affair. A cheaper rascal would have behaved otherwise. Ste. Marie suddenly remembered what a friend of his had once said of this mysterious Irishman. The two had been sitting on the terrace of a cafe, and as O'Hara pa.s.sed by Ste. Marie's friend pointed after him and said: "There goes some of the best blood that ever came out of Ireland. See what it has fallen to!"

Seemingly it had fallen pretty low. He would have liked very much to know about the downward stages, but he knew that he would never hear anything of them from the man himself, for O'Hara was clad, as it were, in an armor of taciturnity. He was incredibly silent. He wore mail that nothing could pierce.

The Irishman turned abruptly away and left the room, and Ste. Marie, with all the gay excitement of a little girl preparing for her first nursery party, began to get himself ready to go out. The old Michel had already been there to help him bathe and shave, so that he had only to dress himself and attend to his one conspicuous vanity--the painstaking arrangement of his hair, which he wore, according to the fashion of the day, parted a little at one side and brushed almost straight back, so that it looked rather like a close-fitting and incredibly glossy skullcap. Richard Hartley, who was inclined to joke at his friend's grave interest in the matter, said that it reminded him of patent-leather.

When he was dressed--and he found that putting on his left boot was no mean feat--Ste. Marie sat down in a chair by the window and lighted a cigarette. He had half an hour to wait, and so he picked up the volume of _Bayard_, which Coira O'Hara had not yet taken away from him, and began to read in it at random. He became so absorbed that the old Michel, come to summon him, took him by surprise. But it was a pleasant surprise and very welcome. He followed the old man out of the room with a heart that beat fast with eagerness.

The descent of the stairs offered difficulties, for the wounded leg protested sharply against being bent more than a very little at the knee. But by the aid of Michel's shoulder he made the pa.s.sage in safety and so came to the lower story. At the foot of the stairs some one opened a door almost in their faces, but closed it again with great haste, and Ste. Marie gave a chuckle of laughter, for, though it was almost dark there, he thought he had recognized Captain Stewart.

"So old Charlie's with us to-day, is he?" he said, aloud, and Michel queried:

"Comment, Monsieur?" because Ste. Marie had spoken in English.

They came out upon the terrace before the house, and the fresh, sweet air bore against their faces, and little flecks of live gold danced and shivered about their feet upon the moss-stained tiles. The gardener stepped back for an instant into the doorway, and reappeared bearing across his arms the short carbine with which Ste. Marie had already made acquaintance. The victim looked at this weapon with a laugh, and the old Michel's gnomelike countenance distorted itself suddenly and a weird cackle came from it.

"It is my old friend?" demanded Ste. Marie, and the gardener cackled once more, stroking the barrel of the weapon as if it were a faithful dog.

"The same, Monsieur," said he. "But she apologizes for not doing better."

"Beg her for me," said the young man, "to cheer up. She may get another chance."

Old Michel's face froze into an expression of anxious and rather frightened solicitude, but he waved his arm for the prisoner to precede him, and Ste. Marie began to limp down across the littered and unkempt sweep of turf. Behind him, at the distance of a dozen paces, he heard the shambling footfalls of his guard, but he had expected that, and it could not rob him of his swelling and exultant joy at treading once more upon green gra.s.s and looking up into blue sky. He was like a man newly released from a dungeon rather than from a sunny and by no means uncomfortable upper chamber. He would have liked to dance and sing, to run at full speed like a child until he was breathless and red in the face. Instead of that he had to drag himself with slow pains and some discomfort, but his spirit ran ahead, dancing and singing, and he thought that it even halted now and then to roll on the gra.s.s.

As he had observed a week before, from the top of the wall, a double row of larches led straight down away from the front of the house, making a wide and long vista interrupted half-way to its end by a rond point, in the centre of which were a pool and a fountain. The double row of trees was sadly broken now, and the trees were untrimmed and uncared for. One of them had fallen, probably in a wind-storm, and lay dead across the way. Ste. Marie turned aside toward the west and found himself presently among chestnuts, planted in close rows, whose tops grew in so thick a canopy above that but little sunshine came through, and there was no turf under foot, only black earth, hard-trodden, mossy here and there.

From beyond, in the direction he had chanced to take, and a little toward the west, a soft morning breeze bore to him the scent of roses so constant and so sweet, despite its delicacy, that to breathe it was like an intoxication. He felt it begin to take hold upon and to sway his senses like an exquisite, an insidious wine.

"The flower-gardens, Michel?" he asked, over his shoulder. "They are before us?"

"Ahead and to the left, Monsieur," said the old man, and he took up once more his slow and difficult progress.

But again, before he had gone many steps, he was halted. There began to reach his ears a rich but slender strain of sound, a golden thread of melody. At first he thought that it was a 'cello or the lower notes of a violin, but presently he became aware that it was a woman singing in a half-voice without thought of what she sang--as women croon to a child, or over their work, or when they are idle and their thoughts are far wandering.

The mistake was not as absurd as it may seem, for it is a fact that the voice which is called a contralto, if it is a good and clear and fairly resonant voice, sounds at a distance very much indeed like a 'cello or the lower register of a violin. And that is especially true when the voice is hushed to a half-articulate murmur. Indeed, this is but one of the many strange peculiarities of that most beautiful of all human organs. The contralto can rarely express the lighter things, and it is quite impossible for it to express merriment or gayety, but it can thrill the heart as can no other sound emitted by a human throat, and it can shake the soul to its very innermost hidden deeps. It is the soft, yellow gold of singing--the wine of sound; it is mystery; it is shadowy, unknown, beautiful places; it is enchantment. Ste. Marie stood still and listened. The sound of low singing came from the right. Without realizing that he had moved, he began to make his way in that direction, and the old Michel, carbine upon arm, followed behind him. He had no doubt of the singer. He knew well who it was, for the girl's speaking voice had thrilled him long before this. He came to the eastern margin of the grove of chestnuts and found that he was beside the open rond point, where the pool lay within its stone circ.u.mference, unclean and choked with lily-pads, and the fountain--a naked lady holding aloft a sh.e.l.l--stood above. The rond point was not in reality round; it was an oval with its greater axis at right angles to the long, straight avenue of larches. At the two ends of the oval there were stone benches with backs, and behind these, tall shrubs grew close and overhung, so that even at noonday the spots were shaded.

XX

THE STONE BENCH AT THE ROND POINT

Mlle. Coira O'Hara sat alone upon the stone bench at the hither end of the rond point. With a leisurely hand she put fine st.i.tches into a mysterious garment of white, with lace on it, and over her not too arduous toil she sang, a demi voix, a little German song all about the tender pa.s.sions.

Ste. Marie halted his dragging steps a little way off, but the girl heard him and turned to look. After that she rose hurriedly and stood as if poised for flight, but Ste. Marie took his hat in his hands and came forward.

"If you go away, Mademoiselle," said he, "if you let me drive you from your place, I shall limp across to that pool and fall in and drown myself, or I shall try to climb the wall yonder and Michel will have to shoot me."

He came forward another step.

"If it is impossible," he said, "that you and I should stay here together for a few little moments and talk about what a beautiful day it is--if that is impossible, why then I must apologize for intruding upon you and go on my way, inexorably pursued by the would-be murderer who now stands six paces to the rear. Is it impossible, Mademoiselle?" said Ste. Marie.

The girl's face was flushed with that deep and splendid understain. She looked down upon the white garment in her hand and away across the broad rond point, and in the end she looked up very gravely into the face of the man who stood leaning upon his stick before her.