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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 aid of Michel's shoulder, he made the passage 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 recognised 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 gnome-like 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 apologises 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 grass 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 grass.
As he had observed, a week before from the top of his wall, a double row of larches led straight down away from the front of the house, making a wide and long vista interrupted, halfway to its end, by a rond point, in the centre of which was 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 towards 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 towards 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 gaiety, 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 realising 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 circumference, unclean and choked with lily pads, and the fountain, a naked lady holding aloft a shell, 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.
CHAPTER 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 stitches into a mysterious garment of white, with lace on it, and, over her not too arduous toil, she sang à demi voix, a little German song all about the tender passions.
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 apologise 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.
"I don't know," she said in her deep voice, "what my father would wish. I did not know that you were coming into the garden this morning or – "
"Or else," said Ste. Marie with a little touch of bitterness in his tone, "or else you would not have been here. You would have remained in the house."
He made a bow.
"To-morrow, mademoiselle," said he, "and for the remainder of the days that I may be at La Lierre, I shall stay in my room. You need have no fear of me." All the man's life he had been spoilt. The girl's bearing hurt him absurdly, and a little of the hurt may have betrayed itself in his face as he turned away, for she came towards him with a swift movement, saying —
"No! no! Wait!
"I have hurt you," she said with a sort of wondering distress. "You have let me hurt you… And yet surely you must see … you must realise on what terms … Do you forget that you are not among your friends … outside? … This is so very different!"
"I had forgotten," said he. "Incredible as it sounds, I had for a moment forgotten. Will you grant me your pardon for that?
"And yet," he persisted after a moment's pause, "yet, mademoiselle, consider a little! It is likely that – circumstances have so fallen that it seems I shall be here within your walls for a time, perhaps a long time. I am able to walk a little now. Day by day I shall be stronger, better able to get about. Is there not some way – are there not some terms under which we could meet without embarrassment? Must we for ever glare at each other and pass by warily, just because we – well, hold different views about – something?" It was not a premeditated speech at all. It had never until this moment occurred to him to suggest any such arrangement with any member of the household at La Lierre. At another time he would doubtless have considered it undignified if not downright unwise to hold intercourse of any friendly sort with this band of contemptible adventurers. The sudden impulse may have been born of his long week of almost intolerable loneliness, or it may have come of the warm exhilaration of this first breath of sweet outdoor air, or perhaps it needed neither of these things, for the girl was very beautiful – enchantment breathed from her, and though he knew what she was, in what despicable plot she was engaged, he was too much Ste. Marie to be quite indifferent to her. Though he looked upon her sorrowfully and with pain and vicarious shame, he could not have denied the spell she wielded. After all he was Ste. Marie.
Once more the girl looked up very gravely under her brows and her eyes met the man's eyes.
"I don't know," she said. "Truly I don't know. I think I should have to ask my father about it.
"I wish," she said, "that we might do that. I should like it. I should like to be able to talk to some one – about the things I like – and care for. I used to talk with my father about things. But not lately. There is no one now." Her eyes searched him.
"Would it be possible, I wonder," said she. "Could we two put everything else aside – forget altogether who we are and why we are here. Is that possible?"
"We could only try, mademoiselle," said Ste. Marie. "If we found it a failure we could give it up." He broke into a little laugh.
"And besides," he said, "I can't help thinking that two people ought to be with me all the time I am in the garden here – for safety's sake. I might catch the old Michel napping one day, you know, throttle him, take his rifle away and escape. If there were two I couldn't do that."
For an instant she met his laugh with an answering smile, and the smile came upon her sombre beauty like a moment of golden light upon darkness. But afterwards she was grave again and thoughtful.
"Is it not rather foolish," she asked, "to warn us – to warn me of possibilities like that? You might quite easily do what you have said. You are putting us on our guard against you."
"I meant to, mademoiselle," said Ste. Marie. "I meant to. Consider my reasons. Consider what I was pleading for!" And he gave a little laugh when the colour began again to rise in the girl's cheeks.
She turned away from him, shaking her head, and he thought that he had said too much and that she was offended, but after a moment the girl looked up and, when she met his eyes, she laughed outright.
"I cannot for ever be scowling and snarling at you," said she. "It is quite too absurd. Will you sit down for a little while? I don't know whether or not my father would approve, but we have met here by accident, and there can be no harm surely in our exchanging a few civil words. If you try to bring up forbidden topics I can simply go away – and besides Michel stands ready to murder you if it should become necessary. I think his failure of a week ago is very heavy on his conscience."
Ste. Marie sat down in one corner of the long stone bench, and he was very glad to do it, for his leg was beginning to cause him some discomfort. It felt hot, and as if there were a very tight band round it above the knee. The relief must have been apparent in his face, for Mlle. O'Hara looked at him in silence for a moment, and she gave a little troubled anxious frown. Men can be quite indifferent to suffering in each other if the suffering is not extreme, and women can be too; but men are quite miserable in the presence of a woman who is in pain, and women, before a suffering man, while they are not miserable are always full of a desire to do something that will help. And that might be a small additional proof (if any more proof were necessary) that they are much the more practical of the two sexes.
The girl's sharp glance seemed to assure her that Ste. Marie was comfortable, now that he was sitting down, for the frown went from her brows, and she began to arrange the mysterious white garment in her lap in preparation to go on with her work.
Ste. Marie watched her for awhile in a contented silence. The leaves overhead stirred under a puff of air, and a single yellow beam of sunlight came down and shivered upon the girl's dark head and played about the bundle of white over which her hands were busy. She moved aside to avoid it, but it followed her, and when she moved back it followed again and danced in her lap, as if it were a live thing with a malicious sense of humour. It might have been Tinker Bell out of Peter Pan, only it did not jingle. Mlle. O'Hara uttered an exclamation of annoyance, and Ste. Marie laughed at her, but in a moment the leaves overhead were still again, and the sunbeam with a sense of humour was gone to torment some one else.
Still, neither of the two spoke, and Ste. Marie continued to watch the girl bent above her sewing. He was thinking of what she had said to him when he asked her if she read Spanish – that her mother had been Spanish. That would account then for her dark eyes. It would account for the darkness of her skin too, but not for its extraordinary clearness and delicacy, for Spanish women are apt to have dull skins of an opaque texture. This was, he said to himself, an Irish skin with a darker stain, and he was quite sure that he had never before seen anything at all like it.
Apart from colouring she was all Irish, of the type which has become famous the world over, and which in the opinion of men who have seen women in all countries, and have studied them, is the most beautiful type that exists in our time.
Ste. Marie was dark himself and, in the ordinary nature of things, he should have preferred a fair type in women. In theory, for that matter, he did prefer it; but it was impossible for him to sit near Coira O'Hara, and watch her bent head and busy hovering hands and remain unstirred by her splendid beauty. He found himself wondering why one kind of loveliness more than another should exert a potent and mysterious spell by virtue of mere proximity, and when the woman who bore it was entirely passive. If this girl had been looking at him the matter would have been easy to understand, for an eye-glance is often downright hypnotic, but she was looking at the work in her hands and, so far as could be judged, she had altogether forgotten his presence; yet the mysterious spell, the potent enchantment, breathed from her like a vapour, and he could not be insensible to it. It was like sorcery.
The girl looked up so suddenly that Ste. Marie jumped. She said —
"You are not a very talkative person. Are you always as silent as this?"
"No," said he, "I am not. I offer my humblest apologies. It seems as if I were not being properly grateful for being allowed to sit here with you, but to tell the truth I was buried in thought." They had begun to talk in French, but, midway of Ste. Marie's speech, the girl glanced towards the old Michel, who stood a short distance away, and so he changed to English.
"In that case," she said, regarding her work with her head on one side like a bird – "in that case you might at least tell me what your thoughts were. They might be interesting." Ste. Marie gave a little embarrassed laugh.
"I'm sorry," said he, "but I'm afraid they were too personal. I'm afraid if I told you, you'd get up and go away, and be frigidly polite to me when next we passed each other in the garden here.
"But there's no harm," he said, "in telling you one thing that occurred to me. It occurred to me that, as far as a young girl can be said to resemble an elderly woman, you bear a most remarkable resemblance to a very dear old friend of mine who lives near Dublin – Lady Margaret Craith. She's a widow and almost all of her family are dead, I believe (I didn't know any of them), and she lives there in a huge old house with a park, quite alone, with her army of servants. I go to see her whenever I'm in Ireland, because she is one of the sweetest souls I have ever known."
He became aware suddenly that Mlle. O'Hara's head was bent very low over her sewing, and that her face, or as much of it as he could see, was crimson.
"Oh I – I beg your pardon!" cried Ste. Marie. "I've done something dreadful. I don't know what it is, but I'm very, very sorry. Please forgive me if you can!"
"It is nothing," she said in a low voice, and after a moment she looked up for the swiftest possible glance and down again.
"That is my – aunt," she said. "Only – please, let us talk about something else! Of course you couldn't possibly have known."
"No," said Ste. Marie gravely. "No, of course. You are very good to forgive me." He was silent a little while, for what the girl had told him surprised him very much indeed, and touched him too. He remembered again the remark of his friend when O'Hara had passed them on the boulevard —
"There goes some of the best blood that ever came out of Ireland. See what it has fallen to!"
"It is a curious fact," said he, "that you and I are very close compatriots in the matter of blood – if 'compatriots' is the word. You are Irish and Spanish. My mother was Irish and my people were Bearnais, which is about as much Spanish as French – and indeed there was a great deal of blood from across the mountains in them, for they often married Spanish wives." He pulled the Bayard out of his pocket.
"The Ste. Marie in here married a Spanish lady, didn't he?"
The girl looked up to him once more.
"Yes," she said. "Yes, I remember. He was a brave man, monsieur. He had a great soul. And he died nobly."
"Well, as for that," he said, flushing a little, "the Ste. Maries have all died rather well." He gave a short laugh.
"Though I must admit," said he, "that the last of them came precious near falling below the family standard a week ago. I should think that probably none of my respected forefathers was killed in climbing over a garden wall. Autres temps autres moeurs."
He burst out laughing again at what seemed to him rather comic, but Mlle. O'Hara did not smile. She looked very gravely into his eyes and there seemed to be something like sorrow in her look. Ste. Marie wondered at it, but after a moment it occurred to him that he was very near forbidden ground, and that doubtless the girl was trying to give him a silent warning of it. He began to turn over the leaves of the book in his hand.
"You have marked a great many pages here," said he, and she said —
"It is my best of all books. I read in it very often. I am so thankful for it that there are no words to say how thankful I am – how glad I am that I have such a world as that to – take refuge in sometimes when this world is a little too unbearable. It does for me now what the fairy stories did when I was little. And to think that it's true, true! To think that once there truly were men like that —sans peur et sans reproche! It makes life worth while to think that those men lived even if it was long ago."
Ste. Marie bent his head over the little book, for he could not look at Mlle. O'Hara just then. It seemed to him wellnigh the most pathetic speech that he had ever heard. His heart bled for her. Out of what mean shadows had the girl to turn her weary eyes upward to this sunlight of ancient heroism!
"And yet, mademoiselle," said he gently, "I think there are such men alive to-day if only one will look for them. Remember! they were not common even in Bayard's time. Oh yes, I think there are preux chevaliers nowadays – only perhaps they don't go about things in quite the same fashion.
"Other times, other manners!" he said again.
"Do you know any such men?" she demanded, facing him with shadowy eyes. And he said —
"Yes. I know men who are in all ways as honourable and as high-hearted as Bayard was. In his place they would have acted as he did, but nowadays one has to practise heroism much less conspicuously – in the little things that few people see and that no one applauds or writes books about. It is much harder to do brave little acts than brave big ones."
"Yes," she agreed slowly. "Oh yes, of course." But there was no spirit in her tone, rather a sort of apathy. Once more the leaves overhead swayed in the breeze, opened a tiny rift, and the little trembling rays of sunshine shot down to her where she sat. She stretched out one hand cupwise, and the sunbeam, after a circling gyration, darted into it and lay there like a small golden bird panting, as it were, from flight.
"If I were a painter," said Ste. Marie, "I should be in torture and anguish of soul until I had painted you sitting there on a stone bench and holding a sunbeam in your hand. I don't know what I should call the picture, but I think it would be something figurative – symbolic. Can you think of a name?"
Coira O'Hara looked up at him with a slight smile, but her eyes were gloomy and full of dark shadows.
"It might be called any one of a great number of things, I should think," said she. "Happiness – belief – illusion.
"See! The sunbeam is gone."
CHAPTER XXI
A MIST DIMS THE SHINING STAR
Ste. Marie remained in his room all the rest of that day, and he did not see Mlle. O'Hara again, for Michel brought him his lunch and the old Justine his dinner. For the greater part of the time he sat in bed reading, but rose now and then and moved about the room. His wound seemed to have suffered no great inconvenience from the morning's outing. If he stood or walked too long it burned somewhat, and he had the sensation of a tight band round the leg, but this passed after he had lain down for a little while, or even sat in a chair with the leg straight out before him, so he knew that he was not to be crippled very much longer, and his thoughts began to turn more and more keenly upon the matter of escape.
He realised of course that now, since he was once more able to walk, he would be guarded with unremitting care every moment of the day, and quite possibly every moment of the night as well, though the simple bolting of his door on the outside would seem to answer the purpose save when he was out of doors. Once he went to the two east windows and hung out of them testing, as well as he could with his hands, the strength and tenacity of the ivy which covered that side of the house. He thought it seemed strong enough to give hand and foothold without being torn loose, but he was afraid it would make an atrocious amount of noise if he should try to climb down it, and besides he would need two very active legs for that.
At another time a fresh idea struck him, and he put it at once into action. There might be just a chance, when out one day with Michel, of getting near enough to the wall which ran along the Clamart road to throw something over it when the old man was not looking. In one of his pockets he had a cardcase with a little pencil fitted into a loop at one edge, and, in the case, it was his custom to carry postage stamps. He investigated, found pencil and stamps. Of course he had nothing but cards to write upon, and they were useless. He looked about the room and went through an empty chest of drawers in vain, but at last, on some shelves in the closet where his clothes had hung, he found several large sheets of coarse white paper: the shelves were covered with it loosely for the sake of cleanliness. He abstracted one of these sheets and cut it into squares of the ordinary note paper size, and he sat down and wrote a brief letter to Richard Hartley, stating where he was, that Arthur Benham was there, the O'Haras and, he thought, Captain Stewart. He did not write the names out, but put instead the initial letters of each name, knowing that Hartley would understand. He gave careful directions as to how the place was to be reached, and he asked Hartley to come as soon as possible by night to that wall where he himself had made his entrance, to climb up by the cedar-tree, and to drop his answer into the thick leaves of the lilac bushes immediately beneath – an answer naming a day and hour, preferably by night, when he could return with three or four to help him, surprise the household at La Lierre, and carry off young Benham.