Jason Part 35

"Coira! Coira!" he cried, and neither of the two knew that he called her for the first time by her name. "Oh, child," said he, "how they have lied to you and tricked you! I might have known, I might have seen it, but I was a blind fool. I thought--intolerable things. I might have known. They have lied to you most d.a.m.nably, Coira."

She stared at him in a breathless silence without movement of any sort.

Only her face seemed to have turned a little whiter and her great eyes darker, so that they looked almost black and enormous in that still face.

He told her, briefly, the truth: how young Arthur had had frequent quarrels with his grandfather over his waste of money, how after one of them, not at all unlike the others, he had disappeared, and how Captain Stewart, in desperate need, had set afoot his plot to get the lad's greater inheritance for himself. He described for her old David Stewart and the man's bitter grief, and he told her about the will, about how he had begun to suspect Captain Stewart, and of how he had traced the lost boy to La Lierre. He told her all that he knew of the whole matter, and he knew almost all there was to know, and he did not spare himself even his misconception of the part she had played, though he softened that as best he could.

Midway of his story Mlle. O'Hara bent her head and covered her face with her hands. She did not cry out or protest or speak at all. She made no more than that one movement, and after it she stood quite still, but the sight of her, bowed and shamed, stripped of pride, as it had been of garments, was more than the man could bear.

He cried her name, "Coira!" And when she did not look up, he called once more upon her. He said: "Coira, I cannot bear to see you stand so. Look at me. Ah, child, look at me! Can you realize," he cried--"can you even begin to think what a great joy it is to me to know at last that you have had no part in all this? Can't you see what it means to me? I can think of nothing else. Coira, look up!"

She raised her white face, and there were no tears upon it, but a still anguish too great to be told. It would seem never to have occurred to her to doubt the truth of his words. She said: "It is I who might have known. Knowing what you have told me now, it seems impossible that I could have believed. And Captain Stewart--I always hated him--loathed him--distrusted him. And yet," she cried, wringing her hands, "how could I know? How could I know?"

The girl's face writhed suddenly with her grief, and she stared up at Ste. Marie with terror in her eyes. She whispered: "My father! Oh, Ste.

Marie, my father! It is not possible. I will not believe--he cannot have done this, knowing. My father, Ste. Marie!"

The man turned his eyes away, and she gave a sobbing cry.

"Has he," she said, slowly, "done even this for me? Has he given--his honor, also--when everything else was--gone? Has he given me his honor, too? Oh," she said, "why could I not have died when I was a little child? Why could I not have done that? To think that I should have lived to--bring my father to this! I wish I had died. Ste. Marie," she said, pleading with him. "Ste. Marie, do you think--my father--knew?"

"Let me think," said he. "Let me think! Is it possible that Stewart has lied to you all--to one as to another? Let me think!" His mind ran back over the matter, and he began to remember instances which had seemed to him odd, but to which he had attached no importance. He remembered O'Hara's puzzled and uncomprehending face when he, Ste. Marie, had spoken of Stewart's villany. He remembered the man's indignation over the affair of the poison, and his fairness in trying to make amends. He remembered other things, and his face grew lighter and he drew a great breath of relief. He said: "Coira, I do not believe he knew. Stewart has lied equally to you all--tricked each one of you." And at that the girl gave a cry of gladness and began to weep.

As long as men and women continue to stand upon opposite sides of a great gulf--and that will be as long as they exist together in this world--just so long will men continue to be unhappy and ill at ease in the face of women's tears, even though they know vaguely that tears may mean just anything at all, and by no means always grief.

Ste. Marie stood first upon one foot and then upon the other. He looked anxiously about him for succor. He said, "There! there!" or words to that effect, and once he touched the shoulder of the girl who stood weeping before him, and he was very miserable indeed.

But quite suddenly, in the midst of his discomfort, she looked up to him, and she was smiling and flushed, so that Ste. Marie stared at her in utter amazement.

"So now at last," said she, "I have back my Bayard. And I think the rest--doesn't matter very much."

"Bayard?" said he, wondering. "I don't understand," he said.

"Then," said she, "you must just go without understanding. For I shall never, never explain." The bright flush went from her face and she turned grave once more. "What is to be done?" she asked. "What must we do now, Ste. Marie--I mean about Arthur Benham? I suppose he must be told."

"Either he must be told," said the man, "or he must be taken back to his home by force." He told her about the four letters which in four days he had thrown over the wall into the Clamart road. "It was on the chance,"

he said, "that some one would pick one of them up and post it, thinking it had been dropped there by accident. What has become of them I don't know. I know only that they never reached Hartley."

The girl nodded thoughtfully. "Yes," said she, "that was the best thing you could have done. It ought to have succeeded. Of course--" She paused a moment and then nodded again. "Of course," said she, "I can manage to get a letter in the post now. We'll send it to-day if you like. But I was wondering--would it be better or not to tell Arthur the truth? It all depends upon how he may take it--whether or not he will believe you.

He's very stubborn, and he's frightened about this break with his family, and he is quite sure that he has been badly treated. Will he believe you? Of course, if he does believe he could escape from here quite easily at any time, and there'd be no necessity for a rescue. What do you think?"

"I think he ought to be told," said Ste. Marie. "If we try to carry him away by force there'll be a fight, of course, and--who knows what might happen? That we must leave for a last resort--a last desperate resort.

First we must tell the boy." Abruptly he gave a cry of dismay, and the girl looked up to him, staring. "But--but _you_, Coira!" said he, stammering. "But _you_! I hadn't realized--I hadn't thought--it never occurred to me what this means to you." The full enormity of the thing came upon him slowly. He was asking this girl to help him in robbing her of her lover.

She shook her head with a little wry smile. "Do you think," said she, "that knowing what I know now I would go on with that until he has made his peace with his family? Before, it was different. I thought him alone and ill-treated and hunted down. I could help him then, comfort him. Now I should be--all you ever thought me if I did not send him to his grandfather." She smiled again a little mirthlessly. "If his love for me is worth anything," she said, "he will come back--but openly this time, not in hiding. Then I shall know that he is--what I would have him be.

Otherwise--"

Ste. Marie looked away.

"But you must remember, Coira," said he, "that the lad is very young and that his family--they may try--it may be hard for him. They may say that he is too young to know--Ah, child, I should have thought of this!"

"Ste. Marie," said the girl, and after a moment he turned to face her.

"What shall you say to Arthur's family, Ste. Marie," she demanded, very soberly, "when they ask you if I--if Arthur should be allowed to--come back to me?"

A wave of color flooded the man's face and his eyes shone. He cried:

"I shall tell them, Coira, that if that wretched, half-baked lad should search this wide world round, from Paris on to Paris again, and if he should spend a lifetime searching, he would never find the beauty and the sweetness and the tenderness and the true faith that he left behind at La Lierre--nor the hundredth part of them. I should say that you are so much above him that he ought to creep to you on his knees from the rue de l'Universite to this garden, thanking G.o.d that you were here at the journey's end, and kissing the ground that he dragged himself over for sheer joy and grat.i.tude. I should tell them--Oh, I have no words! I could tell them so pitifully little of you! I think I should only say, 'Go to her and see!' I think I should just say that."

The girl turned her head away with a little sob. But afterward she faced him once more, and she looked up to him with sweet, half-shut eyes for a long time. At last she said:

"For love of whom, Ste. Marie, did you undertake this quest--this search for Arthur Benham? It was not in idleness or by way of a whim. It was for love. For love of whom?"

For some strange and inexplicable reason the words struck him like a blow and he stared whitely.

"I came," he said, at last, and his voice was oddly flat, "for his sister's sake. For love of her."

Coira O'Hara dropped her eyes. But presently she looked up again with a smile. She said, "G.o.d make you happy, my friend."

And she turned and moved away from him up among the trees. At a little distance she turned, saying:

"Wait where you are. I will fetch Arthur or send him to you. He must be told at once."

Then she went on and was lost to sight.

Ste. Marie followed a few steps after her and halted. His face was turned by chance toward the east wall, and suddenly he gave a great cry and smothered it with his hands over his mouth. His knees bent under him, and he was weak and trembling. Then he began to run. He ran with awkward steps, for his leg was not yet entirely recovered, but he ran fast, and his heart beat within him until he thought it must burst.

He was making for that spot which was overhung by the half-dead cedar-tree.

XXVI

BUT THE FLEECE ELECTS TO REMAIN

Ste. Marie came under the wall breathless and shaking. What he had seen there from a distance was no longer visible, but he pressed in close among the lilac shrubs and called out in an unsteady voice. He said: "Who is there? Who is it?" And after a moment he called again.

A hand appeared at the top of the high wall. The drooping screen of foliage was thrust aside, and he saw Richard Hartley's face looking down. Ste. Marie held himself by the strong stems of the lilacs, for once more his knees had weakened under him.

"There's no one in sight," Hartley said. "I can see for a long way. No one can see us or hear us." And he said: "I got your letter this morning--an hour ago. When shall we come to get you out--you and the boy? To-night?"

"To-night at two," said Ste. Marie. He spoke in a loud whisper. "I'm to talk with Arthur here in a few minutes. We must be quick. He may come at any time. I shall try to persuade him to go home willingly, but if he refuses we must take him by force. Bring a couple of good men with you to-night, and see that they're armed. Come in a motor and leave it just outside the wall by that small door that you pa.s.sed. Have you any money in your pockets? I may want to bribe the gardener."

Hartley searched in his pockets, and while he did so the man beneath asked:

"Is old David Stewart alive?"

"Just about," Hartley said. "He's very low, and he suffers a great deal, but he's quite conscious all the time. If we can fetch the boy to him it may give him a turn for the better. Where is Captain Stewart? I had spies on his trail for some time, but he has disappeared within the past three or four days. Once I followed him in his motor-car out past here, but I lost him beyond Clamart."