Jason Part 41

"It is not good-bye," said he. "I shall see you soon again--and I hope, often--often, Coira."

The words had a flat and foolish sound, but he could find no others. It was not easy to speak.

"I suppose I must not ask to see your father?" said he.

And she told him that her father had locked himself in his own room and would see no one--would not even open his door to take in food.

Ste. Marie went to the stairs leaning upon the shoulder of the stout old Justine, but before he had gone Coira checked him for an instant. She said:

"Tell Arthur, if he speaks to you about me, that what I said in the note I gave him last night I meant quite seriously. I gave him a note to read after he reached home. Tell him for me that it was final. Will you do that?"

"Yes, of course," said Ste. Marie.

He looked at her with some wonder, because her words had been very emphatic.

"Yes," he said, "I will tell him. Is that all?"

"All but good-bye," said she. "Good-bye, Bayard!"

She stood at the head of the stairs while he went down them. And she came after him to the landing, half-way, where the stairs turned in the opposite direction for their lower flight. When he went out of the front door he looked back, and she was standing there above him, a straight, still figure, dark against the light of the windows behind her.

He went straight to the rue d'a.s.sas. He found that while he sat still in the comfortable tonneau of the motor his head was fairly normal, and the world did not swing and whirl about in that sickening fashion. But when the car lurched or b.u.mped over an obstruction it made him giddy, and he would have fallen had he been standing.

The familiar streets of the Montparna.s.se and Luxembourg quarters had for his eyes all the charm and delight of home things to the returned traveller. He felt as if he had been away for months, and he caught himself looking for changes, and it made him laugh. He was much relieved when he found that his concierge was not on watch, and that he could slip un.o.bserved up the stairs and into his rooms. The rooms were fresh and clean, for they had been aired and tended daily.

Arrived there, he wrote a little note to a friend of his who was a doctor and lived in the rue Notre Dame des Champs, asking this man to call as soon as it might be convenient. He sent the note by the chauffeur and then lay down, dressed as he was, to wait, for he could not stand or move about without a painful dizziness. The doctor came within a half-hour, examined Ste. Marie's bruised head, and bound it up.

He gave him a dose of something with a vile taste which he said would take away the worst of the pain in a few hours, and he also gave him a sleeping-potion, and made him go to bed.

"You'll be fairly fit by evening," he said. "But don't stir until then.

I'll leave word below that you're not to be disturbed."

So it happened that when Richard Hartley came dashing up an hour or two later he was not allowed to see his friend, and Ste. Marie slept a dreamless sleep until dark.

He awoke then, refreshed but ravenous with hunger, and found that there was only a dull ache in his battered head. The dizziness and the vertigo were almost completely gone. He made lights and dressed with care. He felt like a little girl making ready for a party, it was so long--or seemed so long;--since he had put on evening clothes. Then he went out, leaving at the loge of the concierge a note for Hartley, to say where he might be found. He went to Lavenue's and dined in solitary pomp, for it was after nine o'clock. Again it seemed to him that it was months since he had done the like--sat down to a real table for a real dinner. At ten he got into a fiacre and drove to the rue de l'Universite.

The man who admitted him said that Mademoiselle was alone in the drawing-room, and he went there at once. He was dully conscious that something was very wrong, but he had suffered too much within the past few hours to be a.n.a.lytical, and he did not know what it was that was wrong. He should have entered that room with a swift and eager step, with shining eyes, with a high-beating heart. He went into it slowly, wrapped in a mantle of strange apathy.

Helen Benham came forward to meet him, and took both his hands in hers.

Ste. Marie was amazed to see that she seemed not to have altered at all--in spite of this enormous lapse of time, in spite of all that had happened in it. And yet, unaltered, she seemed to him a stranger, a charming and gracious stranger with an icily beautiful face. He wondered at her and at himself, and he was a little alarmed because he thought that he must be ill. That blow upon the head must, after all, have done something terrible to him.

"Ah, Ste. Marie!" she said, in her well-remembered voice--and again he wondered that the voice should be so high-pitched and so without color or feeling. "How glad I am," she said, "that you are safely out of it all! How you have suffered for us, Ste. Marie! You look white and ill.

Sit down, please! Don't stand!"

She drew him to a comfortable chair, and he sat down in it obediently.

He could not think of anything to say, though he was not, as a rule, tongue-tied; but the girl did not seem to expect any answer, for she went on at once with a rather odd air of haste:

"Arthur is here with us, safe and sound. Richard Hartley brought him back from that dreadful place, and he has talked everything over with my grandfather, and it's all right. They both understand now, and there'll be no more trouble. We have had to be careful, very careful, and we have had to--well, to rearrange the facts a little so as to leave--my uncle--to leave Captain Stewart's name out of it. It would not do to shock my grandfather by telling him the truth. Perhaps later; I don't know. That will have to be thought of. For the present we have left my uncle out of it, and put the blame entirely upon this other man. I forget his name."

"The blame cannot rest there," said Ste. Marie, sharply. "It is not deserved, and I shall not allow it to be left so. Captain Stewart lied to O'Hara throughout. You cannot leave the blame with an innocent man."

"Still," she said, "such a man!"

Ste. Marie looked at her, frowning, and the girl turned her eyes away.

She may have had the grace to be a little ashamed.

"Think of the difficulty we were in!" she urged. "Captain Stewart is my grandfather's own son. We cannot tell him now, in his weak state, that his own son is--what he is."

There was reason if not justice in that, and Ste. Marie was forced to admit it. He said:

"Ah, well, for the present, then. That can be arranged later. The main point is that I've found your brother for you. I've brought him back."

Miss Benham looked up at him and away again, and she drew a quick breath. He saw her hands move restlessly in her lap, and he was aware that for some odd reason she was very ill at ease. At last she said:

"Ah, but--but have you, dear Ste. Marie? Have you?"

After a brief silence she stole another swift glance at the man, and he was staring in open and frank bewilderment. She rushed into rapid speech.

"Ah," she cried, "don't misunderstand me! Don't think that I'm brutal or ungrateful for all you've--you've suffered in trying to help us! Don't think that! I can--we can never be grateful enough--never! But stop and think! Yes, I know this all sounds hideous, but it's so terribly important. I shouldn't dream of saying a word of it if it weren't so important, if so much didn't depend upon it. But stop and think! Was it, dear Ste. Marie, was it, after all, you? Was it you who brought Arthur to us?"

The man fairly blinked at her, owl-like. He was beyond speech.

"Wasn't it Richard?" she hurried on. "Wasn't it Richard Hartley? Ah, if I could only say it without seeming so contemptibly heartless! If only I needn't say it at all! But it must be said because of what depends upon it. Think! Go back to the beginning! Wasn't it Richard who first began to suspect my uncle? Didn't he tell you or write to you what he had discovered, and so set you upon the right track? And after you had--well, just fallen into their hands, with no hope of ever escaping yourself--to say nothing of bringing Arthur back--wasn't it Richard who came to your rescue and brought it all to victory? Oh, Ste. Marie, I must be just to him as well as to you! Don't you see that? However grateful I may be to you for what you have done--suffered--I cannot, in justice, give you what I was to have given you, since it is, after all, Richard who has saved my brother. I cannot, can I? Surely you must see it. And you must see how it hurts me to have to say it. I had hoped that--you would understand--without my speaking."

Still the man sat in his trance of astonishment, speechless. For the first time in his life he was brought face to face with the amazing, the appalling injustice of which a woman is capable when her heart is concerned. This girl wished to believe that to Richard Hartley belonged the credit of rescuing her brother, and lo! she believed it. A score of juries might have decided against her, a hundred proofs controverted her decision, but she would have been deaf and blind. It is only women who accomplish miracles of reasoning like that.

Ste. Marie took a long breath and he started to speak, but in the end shook his head and remained silent. Through the whirl and din of falling skies he was yet able to see the utter futility of words. He could have adduced a hundred arguments to prove her absurdity. He could have shown her that before he ever read Hartley's note he had decided upon Stewart's guilt--and for much better reasons than Hartley had. He could have pointed out to her that it was he, not Hartley, who discovered young Benham's whereabouts, that it was he who summoned Hartley there, and that, as a matter of fact, Hartley need not have come at all, since the boy had been persuaded to go home in any case.

He thought of all these things and more, and in a moment of sheer anger at her injustice he was on the point of stating them, but he shook his head and remained silent. After all, of what use was speech? He knew that it could make no impression upon her, and he knew why. For some reason, in some way, she had turned during his absence to Richard Hartley, and there was nothing more to be said. There was no treachery on Hartley's part. He knew that, and it never even occurred to him to blame his friend. Hartley was as faithful as any one who ever lived. It seemed to be n.o.body's fault. It had just happened.

He looked at the girl before him with a new expression, an expression of sheer curiosity. It seemed to him well-nigh incredible that any human being could be so unjust and so blind. Yet he knew her to be, in other matters, one of the fairest of all women, just and tender and thoughtful and true. He knew that she prided herself upon her cool impartiality of judgment. He shook his head with a little sigh and ceased to wonder any more. It was beyond him. He became aware that he ought to say something, and he said:

"Yes. Yes, I--see. I see what you mean. Yes, Hartley did all you say. I hadn't meant to rob Hartley of the credit he deserves. I suppose you're right."

He was possessed of a sudden longing to get away out of that room, and he rose to his feet.

"If you don't mind," he said, "I think I'd better go. This is--well, it's a bit of a facer, you see. I want to think it over. Perhaps to-morrow--you don't mind?"

He saw a swift relief flash into Miss Benham's eyes, but she murmured a few words of protest that had a rather perfunctory sound. Ste. Marie shook his head.

"Thanks! I won't stay," said he. "Not just now. I--think I'd better go."

He had a confused realization of plat.i.tudinous adieus, of a silly formality of speech, and he found himself in the hall. Once he glanced back and Miss Benham was standing where he had left her, looking after him with a calm and unimpa.s.sioned face. He thought that she looked rather like a very beautiful statue.

The butler came to him to say that Mr. Stewart would be glad if he would look in before leaving the house, and so he went up-stairs and knocked at old David's door. He moved like a man in a dream, and the things about him seemed to be curiously unreal and rather far away, as they seem sometimes in a fever.

He was admitted at once, and he found the old man sitting up in bed, clad in one of his incredibly gorgeous mandarin's jackets--plum-colored satin this time, with peonies--overflowing with spirits and good-humor.

His grandson sat in a chair near at hand. The old man gave a shout of welcome:

"Ah, here's Jason at last, back from Colchis! Welcome home to--whatever the name of the place was! Welcome home!"