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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 nobody'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 wellnigh 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 realisation of platitudinous adieux, 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 unimpassioned 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 upstairs 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-coloured satin, this time, with peonies – overflowing with spirits and good-humour. 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!" 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 ingratitude 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 a while 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 downstairs, 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 shaggy 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 damned!" 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-grass, and finally upon all women, past, contemporary or still to be born.
Ste. Marie, in fear of 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 assume 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 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 adieux 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. Young Arthur 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 realise 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.
CHAPTER XXX
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 towards 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'Université he was under the walls of La Lierre. He looked at his watch, and it was not quite half-past eleven.
He tried the little door in the wall, and it was unlocked, so he passed in and closed the door behind him. Inside he found that he was running, and he gave a little laugh, but of eagerness and excitement, not of mirth. There were dim lights in one or two of the upper windows, but none below, and there was no one about. He pulled at the door bell, and, after a few impatient moments, pulled again and still again. Then he noticed that the heavy door was ajar, and since no one answered his ringing he pushed the door open and went in.
The lower hall was quite dark, but a very faint light came down from above through the well of the staircase. He heard dragging feet in the upper hall and then upon one of the upper flights, for the stairs, broad below, divided at a half way landing and continued upward, in an opposite direction, in two narrower flights. A voice, very faint and weary, called —
"Who is there? Who is ringing, please?" And Coira O'Hara, holding a candle in her hand, came upon the stair landing, and stood gazing down into the darkness. She wore a sort of dressing gown, a heavy white garment which hung in straight long folds to her feet, and fell away from the arm that held the candle on high. The yellow beams of light struck down across her head and face, and, even at the distance, the man could see how white she was, and hollow-eyed and worn – a pale wraith of the splendid beauty that had walked in the garden at La Lierre.
"Who is there, please?" she asked again. "I can't see. What is it?"
"It is I, Coira!" said Ste. Marie, and she gave a sharp cry. The arm which was holding the candle overhead shook and fell beside her, as if the strength had gone out of it. The candle dropped to the floor, spluttered there for an instant, and went out, but there was still a little light from the hall above.
Ste. Marie sprang up the stairs to where the girl stood, and caught her in his arms, for she was on the verge of faintness. Her head fell back away from him, and he saw her eyes through half-closed lids, her white teeth through parted lips. She was trembling, but, for that matter, so was he, at the touch of her, the heavy and sweet burden in his arms. She tried to speak, and he heard a whisper —
"Why? Why? Why?"
"Because it is my place, Coira!" said he. "Because I cannot live away from you. Because we belong together."
The girl struggled weakly and pushed against him. Once more he heard whispering words, and made out that she tried to say —
"Go back to her! Go back to her! You belong there." But at that he laughed aloud.
"I thought so too," said he. "But she thinks otherwise. She'll have none of me, Coira. It's Richard Hartley now. Coira, can you love a jilted man? I've been jilted – thrown over – dismissed."
Her head came up in a flash, and she stared at him, suddenly rigid and tense in his arms.
"Is that true?" she demanded.
"Yes, my love!" said he, and she began to weep, with long, comfortable sobs, her face hidden in the hollow of his shoulder. On one other occasion she had wept before him, and he had been horribly embarrassed, but he bore this present tempest without, as it were, winking. He gloried in it. He tried to say so. He tried to whisper to her, his lips pressed close to the ear that was nearest them, but he found that he had no speech. Words would not come to his tongue; it trembled and faltered, and was still for sheer inadequacy.
Rather oddly, in that his thoughts were chaos, swallowed up in the surge of feeling, a memory struck through to him of that other exaltation which had swept him to the stars. He looked upon it and was amazed because now he saw it, in clear light, for the thing it had been. He saw it for a fantasy, a self-evoked wraith of the imagination, a dizzy flight of the spirit through spirit space. He saw that it had not been love at all, and he realised how little a part Helen Benham had ever really played in it. A cold and still-eyed figure for him to wrap the veil of his imagination round, that was what she had been. There were times when the sweep of his upward flight had stirred her a little, wakened in her some vague response, but for the most part she had stood aside and looked on, wondering.
The mist was rent away from that rainbow-painted cobweb, and at last the man saw and understood. He gave an exclamation of wonder, and the girl who loved him raised her head once more, and the two looked each into the other's eyes for a long time. They fell into hushed and broken speech.
"I have loved you so long, so long!" she said, "and so hopelessly. I never thought – I never believed. – To think that in the end you have come to me! I cannot believe it!"
"Wait and see!" cried the man. "Wait and see!" She shivered a little.
"If it is not true I should like to die before I find out. I should like to die now, Bayard, with your arms holding me up, and your eyes close, close."
Ste. Marie's arms tightened round her with a sudden fierceness. He hurt her, and she smiled up at him. Their two hearts beat one against the other, and they beat very fast.
"Don't you understand," he cried, "that life's only just beginning – day's just dawning, Coira? We've been lost in the dark. Day's coming now. This is only the sunrise."
"I can believe it at last," she said, "because you hold me close, and you hurt me a little, and I'm glad to be hurt. And I can feel your heart beating. Ah, never let me go, Bayard! I should be lost in the dark again, if you let me go." A sudden thought came to her, and she bent back her head to see the better.
"Did you speak with Arthur?" And he said —
"Yes. He asked me to read your note, so I read it. That poor lad! I came straight to you then. Straight and fast!"
"You knew why I did it?" she said, and Ste. Marie said —
"Now I know."
"I could not have married him," said she. "I could not. I never thought I should see you again, but I loved you and I could not have married him. – Ah, impossible! And he'll be glad, later on. You know that. It will save him any more trouble with his family, and besides – he's so very young! Already, I think, he was beginning to chafe a little. I thought so more than once.
"Oh, I'm trying to justify myself!" she cried. "I'm trying to find reasons, but you know the true reason. You know it."
"I thank God for it!" he said.
So they stood clinging together in that dim place, and broken whispering speech passed between them or long silences when speech was done. But at last they went down the stairs and out upon the open terrace where the moonlight lay.
"It was in the open sweet air," the girl said, "that we came to know each other. Let us walk in it now. The house smothers me." She looked up when they had passed the west corner of the façade, and drew a little sigh.
"I am worried about my father," said she. "He will not answer me when I call to him, and he has eaten nothing all day long. Bayard, I think his heart is broken. Ah! but to-morrow we shall mend it again. In the morning I shall make him let me in, and I shall tell him – what I have to tell."
They turned down under the trees, where the moonlight made silver splashes about their feet, and the sweet night air bore soft against their faces. Coira went a half step in advance, her head laid back upon the shoulder of the man she loved, and his arm held her up from falling.
So at last we leave them, walking there in the tender moonlight, with the breath of roses about them, and their eyes turned to the coming day. It is still night, and there is yet one cloud of sorrow to shadow them somewhat, for upstairs in his locked room a man lies dead across the floor with an empty pistol beside him – heart-broken, as the girl had feared. But where a great love is shadows cannot last very long, not even such shadows as this. The morning must dawn – and joy cometh of a morning.
So we leave them walking together in the moonlight, their faces turned towards the coming day.