Jason Part 42

He shook Ste. Marie's hand with hospitable violence, and Ste. Marie was astonished to see upon what a new lease of life and strength the old man seemed to have entered. There was no ingrat.i.tude or misconception here, certainly. Old David quite overwhelmed his visitor with thanks and with expressions of affection.

"You've saved my life among other things!" he said, in his gruff roar.

"I was ready to go, but, by the Lord, I'm going to stay awhile longer now! This world's a better place than I thought--a much better place."

He shook a heavily waggish head. "If I didn't know," said he, "what your reward is to be for what you've done, I should be in despair over it all, because there is nothing else in the world that would be anything like adequate. You've been making sure of the reward down-stairs, I dare say? Eh, what? Yes?"

"You mean--?" asked the younger man.

And old David said: "I mean Helen, of course. What else?"

Ste. Marie was not quite himself. At another time he might have got out of the room with an evasive answer, but he spoke without thinking. He said:

"Oh--yes! I suppose--I suppose I ought to tell you that Miss Benham--well, she has changed her mind. That is to say--"

"What!" shouted old David Stewart, in his great voice. "What is that?"

"Why, it seems," said Ste. Marie--"it seems that I only blundered. It seems that Hartley rescued your grandson, not I. And I suppose he did, you know. When you come to think of it, I suppose he did."

David Stewart's great white beard seemed to bristle like the ruff of an angry dog, and his eyes flashed fiercely under their s.h.a.ggy brows. "Do you mean to tell me that after all you've done and--and gone through, Helen has thrown you over? Do you mean to tell me that?"

"Well," argued Ste. Marie, uncomfortably--"well, you see, she seems to be right. I did bungle it, didn't I? It was Hartley who came and pulled us out of the hole."

"Hartley be d.a.m.ned!" cried the old man, in a towering rage. And he began to pour out the most extraordinary flood of furious invective upon his granddaughter and upon Richard Hartley, whom he quite unjustly termed a snake-in-the-gra.s.s, and finally upon all women, past, contemporary, or still to be born.

Ste. Marie, in fear for old David's health, tried to calm him, and the faithful valet came running from the room beyond with prayers and protestations, but nothing would check that astonishing flow of fury until it had run its full course. Then the man fell back upon his pillows, crimson, panting, and exhausted, but the fierce eyes glittered still, and they boded no good for Miss Helen Benham.

"You're well rid of her!" said the old gentleman, when at last he was once more able to speak. "You're well rid of her! I congratulate you! I am ashamed and humiliated, and a great burden of obligation is shifted to me--though I a.s.sume it with pleasure--but I congratulate you. You might have found out too late what sort of a woman she is."

Ste. Marie began to protest and to explain and to say that Miss Benham had been quite right in what she said, but the old gentleman only waved an impatient arm to him, and presently, when he saw the valet making signs across the bed, and saw that his host was really in a state of complete exhaustion after the outburst, he made his adieus and got away.

Young Arthur Benham, who had been sitting almost silent during the interview, followed him out of the room and closed the door behind them.

For the first time Ste. Marie noted that the boy's face was white and strained. He pulled a crumpled square of folded paper from his pocket and shook it at the other man. "Do you know what this is?" he cried. "Do you know what's in this?"

Ste. Marie shook his head, but a sudden recollection came to him.

"Ah," said he, "that must be the note Mlle. O'Hara spoke of! She asked me to tell you that she meant it--whatever it may be--quite seriously; that it was final. She didn't explain. She just said that--that you were to take it as final."

The lad gave a sudden very bitter sob. "She has thrown me over!" he said. "She says I'm not to come back to her."

Ste. Marie gave a wordless cry, and he began to tremble.

"You can read it if you want to," the boy said. "Perhaps you can explain it. I can't. Do you want to read it?"

The elder man stood staring at him whitely, and the boy repeated his words.

He said, "You can read it if you want to," and at last Ste. Marie took the paper between stiff hands, and held it to the light.

Coira O'Hara said, briefly, that too much was against their marriage.

She mentioned his age, the certain hostility of his family, their different tastes, a number of other things. But in the end she said she had begun to realize that she did not love him as she ought to do if they were to marry. And so, the note said, finally, she gave him up to his family, she released him altogether, and she begged him not to come back to her, or to urge her to change her mind. Also she made the trite but very sensible observation that he would be glad of his freedom before the year was out.

Ste. Marie's unsteady fingers opened and the crumpled paper slipped through them to the floor. Over it the man and the boy looked at each other in silence. Young Arthur Benham's face was white, and it was strained and contorted with its first grief. But first griefs do not last very long. Coira O'Hara had told the truth--before the year was out the lad would be glad of his freedom. But the man's face was white also, white and still, and his eyes held a strange expression which the boy could not understand and at which he wondered. The man was trembling a little from head to foot. The boy wondered about that, too, but abruptly he cried out: "What's up? Where are you going?" for Ste. Marie had turned all at once and was running down the stairs as fast as he could run.

x.x.x

JASON SAILS BACK TO COLCHIS.--JOURNEY'S END

In the hall below, Ste. Marie came violently into contact with and nearly overturned Richard Hartley, who was just giving his hat and stick to the man who had admitted him. Hartley seized upon him with an exclamation of pleasure, and wheeled him round to face the light. He said:

"I've been pursuing you all day. You're almost as difficult of access here in Paris as you were at La Lierre. How's the head?"

Ste. Marie put up an experimental hand. He had forgotten his injury.

"Oh, that's all right," said he. "At least, I think so. Anderson fixed me up this afternoon. But I haven't time to talk to you. I'm in a hurry.

To-morrow we'll have a long chin. Oh, how about Stewart?"

He lowered his voice, and Hartley answered him in the same tone.

"The man is in a delirium. Heaven knows how it'll end. He may die and he may pull through. I hope he pulls through--except for the sake of the family--because then we can make him pay for what he's done. I don't want him to go scot free by dying."

"Nor I," said Ste. Marie, fiercely. "Nor I. I want him to pay, too--long and slowly and hard; and if he lives I shall see that he does it, family or no family. Now I must be off."

Ste. Marie's face was shining and uplifted. The other man looked at it with a little envious sigh.

"I see everything is all right," said he, "and I congratulate you. You deserve it if ever any one did."

Ste. Marie stared for an instant, uncomprehending. Then he saw.

"Yes," he said, gently, "everything is all right."

It was plain that the Englishman did not know of Miss Benham's decision.

He was incapable of deceit. Ste. Marie threw an arm over his friend's shoulder and went with him a little way toward the drawing-room.

"Go in there," he said. "You'll find some one glad to see you, I think.

And remember that I said everything is all right."

He came back after he had turned away, and met Hartley's puzzled frown with a smile.

"If you've that motor here, may I use it?" he asked. "I want to go somewhere in a hurry."

"Of course," the other man said. "Of course. I'll go home in a cab."

So they parted, and Ste. Marie went out to the waiting car.

On the left bank the streets are nearly empty of traffic at night, and one can make excellent time over them. Ste. Marie reached the Porte de Versailles, at the city's limits, in twenty minutes and dashed through Issy five minutes later. In less than half an hour from the time he had left the rue de l'Universite he was under the walls of La Lierre. He looked at his watch, and it was not quite half-past eleven.