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Jason: A Romance

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Title: Jason: A Romance

Author: Justus Miles Forman


        
Release date: August 23, 2004 [eBook #13261]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JASON: A ROMANCE ***

JASON

A ROMANCE

BY
JUSTUS MILES FORMAN

AUTHOR OF
"A STUMBLING BLOCK" "BUCHANAN'S WIFE"
"THE ISLAND OF ENCHANTMENT"

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
W. HATHERELL, R.I.

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
MCMIX


COPYRIGHT, 1908.

       *       *       *       *       *


À PARIS

MÈRE MYSTÉRIEUSE ... SOEUR CONSOLATRICE
ENCHANTERESSE AUX YEUX VOILÉS
JÉ DÉDIE CE PETIT ROMAN
EN RECONNAISSANCE
J.M.F.


       *       *       *       *       *




CONTENTS

     I. STE. MARIE HEARS OF A MYSTERY AND MEETS A DARK LADY

    II. THE LADDER TO THE STARS

   III. STE. MARIE MAKES A VOW, BUT A PAIR OF EYES HAUNT HIM

    IV. OLD DAVID STEWART

     V. JASON SETS FORTH UPON THE GREAT ADVENTURE

    VI. A BRAVE GENTLEMAN RECEIVES A HURT, BUT VOLUNTEERS IN A GOOD CAUSE

   VII. CAPTAIN STEWART MAKES A KINDLY OFFER

  VIII. JASON MEETS WITH A MISADVENTURE AND DREAMS A DREAM

    IX. JASON GOES UPON A JOURNEY, AND RICHARD HARTLEY PLEADS FOR HIM

     X. CAPTAIN STEWART ENTERTAINS

    XI. A GOLDEN LADY ENTERS--THE EYES AGAIN

   XII. THE NAME OF THE LADY WITH THE EYES--EVIDENCE HEAPS UP SWIFTLY

  XIII. THE VOYAGE TO COLCHIS

   XIV. THE WALLS OF AEA

    XV. A CONVERSATION AT LA LIERRE

   XVI. THE BLACK CAT

  XVII. THOSE WHO WERE LEFT BEHIND

 XVIII. A CONVERSATION OVERHEARD

   XIX. THE INVALID TAKES THE AIR

    XX. THE STONE BENCH AT THE ROND POINT

   XXI. A MIST DIMS THE SHINING STAR

  XXII. A SETTLEMENT REFUSED

 XXIII. THE LAST ARROW

  XXIV. THE JOINT IN THE ARMOR

   XXV. MEDEA GOES OVER TO THE ENEMY

  XXVI. BUT THE FLEECE ELECTS TO REMAIN

 XXVII. THE NIGHT'S WORK

XXVIII. MEDEA'S LITTLE HOUR

  XXIX. THE SCALES OF INJUSTICE

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

       *       *       *       *       *




I

STE. MARIE HEARS OF A MYSTERY AND MEETS A DARK LADY


From Ste. Marie's little flat, which overlooked the gardens, they drove
down the quiet rue du Luxembourg, and at the Place St. Sulpice turned to
the left. They crossed the Place St. Germain des Prés, where lines of
home-bound working-people stood waiting for places in the electric
trams, and groups of students from the Beaux Arts or from Julien's sat
under the awnings of the Deux Magots, and so, beyond that busy square,
they came into the long and peaceful stretch of the Boulevard St.
Germain. The warm, sweet dusk gathered round them as they went, and the
evening air was fresh and aromatic in their faces. There had been a
little gentle shower in the late afternoon, and roadway and pavement
were still damp with it. It had wet the new-grown leaves of the
chestnuts and acacias that bordered the street. The scent of that living
green blended with the scent of laid dust and the fragrance of the last
late-clinging chestnut blossoms; it caught up a fuller, richer burden
from the overflowing front of a florist's shop; it stole from open
windows a savory whiff of cooking, a salt tang of wood smoke; and the
soft little breeze--the breeze of coming summer--mixed all together and
tossed them and bore them down the long, quiet street; and it was the
breath of Paris, and it shall be in your nostrils and mine, a keen agony
of sweetness, so long as we may live and so wide as we may
wander--because we have known it and loved it--and in the end we shall
go back to breathe it when we die.

The strong white horse jogged evenly along over the wooden pavement, its
head down, the little bell at its neck jingling pleasantly as it went.
The cocher, a torpid, purplish lump of gross flesh, pyramidal, pearlike,
sat immobile in his place. The protuberant back gave him an
extraordinary effect of being buttoned into his fawn-colored coat wrong
side before. At intervals he jerked the reins like a large strange toy,
and his strident voice said:

"Hé!" to the stout white horse, which paid no attention whatever. Once
the beast stumbled and the pearlike lump of flesh insulted it, saying:

"Hé! veux tu, cochon!"

Before the War Office a little black slip of a milliner's girl dodged
under the horse's head, saving herself and the huge box slung to her arm
by a miracle of agility, and the cocher called her the most frightful
names, without turning his head and in a perfunctory tone quite free
from passion.

Young Hartley laughed and turned to look at his companion, but Ste.
Marie sat still in his place, his hat pulled a little down over his
brows and his handsome chin buried in the folds of the white silk
muffler with which for some obscure reason he had swathed his neck.

"This is the first time in many years," said the Englishman, "that I
have known you to be silent for ten whole minutes. Are you ill, or are
you making up little epigrams to say at the dinner-party?"

Ste. Marie waved a despondent glove.

"I 'ave," said he, "w'at you call ze blue. Papillons noirs--clouds in my
soul." It was a species of jest with Ste. Marie--and he seemed never to
tire of it--to pretend that he spoke English very brokenly. As a matter
of fact, he spoke it quite as well as any Englishman and without the
slightest trace of accent. He had discovered a long time before this--it
may have been while the two were at Eton together--that it annoyed
Hartley very much, particularly when it was done in company and before
strangers. In consequence he became on such occasions a sort of
comic-paper caricature of his race, and by dint of much practice, added
to a naturally alert mind, he became astonishingly ingenious in the
torture of that honest but unimaginative gentleman whom he considered
his best friend. He achieved the most surprising expressions by the mere
literal translation of French idiom, and he could at any time bring
Hartley to a crimson agony by calling him "my dear "'before other men,
whereas at the equivalent "mon cher" the Englishman would doubtless
never, as the phrase goes, have batted an eye.

"Ye-es," he continued, sadly, "I 'ave ze blue. I weep. Weez ze tears
full ze eyes. Yes." He descended into English. "I think something's
going to happen to me. There's calamity, or something, in the air.
Perhaps I'm going to die."

"Oh, I know what you are going to do, right enough," said the other man.
"You're going to meet the most beautiful woman--girl--in the world at
dinner, and of course you are going to fall in love with her."

"Ah, the Miss Benham!" said Ste. Marie, with a faint show of interest.
"I remember now, you said that she was to be there. I had forgotten.
Yes, I shall be glad to meet her. One hears so much. But why am I of
course going to fall in love with her?"

"Well, in the first place," said Hartley, "you always fall in love with
all pretty women as a matter of habit, and, in the second place,
everybody--well, I suppose you--no one could help falling in love with
her, I should think."

"That's high praise to come from you," said the other. And Hartley said,
with a short, not very mirthful laugh:

"Oh, I don't pretend to be immune. We all--everybody who knows her.
You'll understand presently."

Ste. Marie turned his head a little and looked curiously at his friend,
for he considered that he knew the not very expressive intonations of
that young gentleman's voice rather well, and this was something
unusual. He wondered what had been happening during his six months'
absence from Paris.

"I dare say that's what I feel in the air, then," he said, after a
little pause. "It's not calamity; it's love.

"Or maybe," he said, quaintly, "it's both. L'un n'empêche pas I'autre."
And he gave an odd little shiver, as if that something in the air had
suddenly blown chill upon him.

They were passing the corner of the Chamber of Deputies, which faces the
Pont de la Concorde. Ste. Marie pulled out his watch and looked at it.

"Eight-fifteen," said he. "What time are we asked for--eight-thirty?
That means nine: It's an English house, and nobody will be on time. It's
out of fashion to be prompt nowadays."

"I should hardly call the Marquis de Saulnes English, you know,"
objected Hartley.

"Well, his wife is," said the other, "and they're altogether English in
manner. Dinner won't be before nine. Shall we get out, and walk across
the bridge and up the Champs-Elysées? I should like to, I think. I like
to walk at this time of the evening--between the daylight and the dark."
Hartley nodded a rather reluctant assent, and Ste. Marie prodded the
pear-shaped cocher in the back with his stick. So they got down at the
approach to the bridge, Ste. Marie gave the cocher a piece of two
francs, and they turned away on foot. The pear-shaped one looked at the
coin in his fat hand as if it were something unclean and
contemptible--something to be despised. He glanced at the dial of his
taximeter, which had registered one franc twenty-five, and pulled the
flag up. He spat gloomily out into the street, and his purple lips moved
in words. He seemed to say something like "Sale diable de métier!"
which, considering the fact that he had just been overpaid, appears
unwarrantably pessimistic in tone. Thereafter he spat again, picked up
his reins and jerked them, saying:

"Hè, Jean Baptiste! Uip, uip!" The unemotional white horse turned up the
boulevard, trotting evenly at its steady pace, head down, the little
bell at its neck jingling pleasantly as it went. It occurs to me that
the white horse was probably unique. I doubt that there was another
horse in Paris rejoicing in that extraordinary name.

But the two young men walked slowly on across the Pont de la Concorde.
They went in silence, for Hartley was thinking still of Miss Helen
Benham, and Ste. Marie was thinking of Heaven knows what. His gloom was
unaccountable unless he had really meant what he said about feeling
calamity in the air. It was very unlike him to have nothing to say.
Midway of the bridge he stopped and turned to look out over the river,
and the other man halted beside him. The dusk was thickening almost
perceptibly, but it was yet far from dark. The swift river ran leaden
beneath them, and the river boats, mouches and hirondelles, darted
silently under the arches of the bridge, making their last trips for the
day. Away to the west, where their faces were turned, the sky was still
faintly washed with color, lemon and dusky orange and pale thin green. A
single long strip of cirrus cloud was touched with pink, a lifeless old
rose, such as is popular among decorators for the silk hangings of a
woman's boudoir. And black against this pallid wash of colors the tour
Eiffel stood high and slender and rather ghostly. By day it is an ugly
thing, a preposterous iron finger upthrust by man's vanity against God's
serene sky; but the haze of evening drapes it in a merciful
semi-obscurity and it is beautiful.

Ste. Marie leaned upon the parapet of the bridge, arms folded before him
and eyes afar. He began to sing, à demi-voix, a little phrase out of
_Louise_--an invocation to Paris--and the Englishman stirred uneasily
beside him. It seemed to Hartley that to stand on a bridge, in a top-hat
and evening clothes, and sing operatic airs while people passed back and
forth behind you, was one of the things that are not done. He tried to
imagine himself singing in the middle of Westminster Bridge at half-past
eight of an evening, and he felt quite hot all over at the thought. It
was not done at all, he said to himself. He looked a little nervously at
the people who were passing, and it seemed to him that they stared at
him and at the unconscious Ste. Marie, though in truth they did nothing
of the sort. He turned back and touched his friend on the arm, saying:

"I think we'd best be getting along, you know." But Ste. Marie was very
far away, and did not hear. So then he fell to watching the man's dark
and handsome face, and to thinking how little the years at Eton and the
year or two at Oxford had set any real stamp upon him. He would never be
anything but Latin, in spite of his Irish mother and his public school.
Hartley thought what a pity that was. As Englishmen go, he was not
illiberal, but, no more than he could have altered the color of his
eyes, could he have believed that anything foreign would not be improved
by becoming English. That was born in him, as it is born in most
Englishmen, and it was a perfectly simple and honest belief. He felt a
deeper affection for this handsome and volatile young man whom all women
loved, and who bade fair to spend his life at their successive feet--for
he certainly had never shown the slightest desire to take up any sterner
employment--he felt a deeper affection for Ste. Marie than for any other
man he knew, but he had always wished that Ste. Marie were an
Englishman, and he had always felt a slight sense of shame over his
friend's un-English ways.

After a moment he touched him again on the arm, saying:

"Come along! We shall be late, you know. You can finish your little
concert another time."

"Eh!" cried Ste. Marie. "Quoi, donc?" He turned with a start.

"Oh yes!" said he. "Yes, come along! I was mooning. Allons! Allons, my
old!" He took Hartley's arm and began to shove him along at a rapid
walk. "I will moon no more," he said. "Instead, you shall tell me about
the wonderful Miss Benham whom everybody is talking about. Isn't there
something odd connected with the family? I vaguely recall something
unusual--some mystery or misfortune or something. But first a moment!
One small moment, my old. Regard me that!" They had come to the end of
the bridge, and the great Place de la Concorde lay before them.

"In all the world," said Ste. Marie--and he spoke the truth--"there is
not another such square. Regard it, mon brave! Bow yourself before it!
It is a miracle."

The great bronze lamps were alight, and they cast reflections upon the
still damp pavement about them. To either side, the trees of the
Tuileries gardens and of the Cours la Reine and the Champs-Elysées lay
in a solid black mass; in the middle, the obelisk rose slender and
straight, its pointed top black against the sky; and beneath, the water
of the Nèreid fountains splashed and gurgled. Far beyond, the gay lights
of the rue Royale shone in a yellow cluster; and beyond these still, the
tall columns of the Madeleine ended the long vista. Pedestrians and cabs
crept across that vast space and seemed curiously little, like black
insects, and round about it all the eight cities of France sat atop
their stone pedestals and looked on. Ste. Marie gave a little sigh of
pleasure, and the two moved forward, bearing to the left, toward the
Champs-Elysées.

"And now," said he, "about these Benhams. What is the thing I cannot
quite recall? What has happened to them?"

"I suppose," said the other man, "you mean the disappearance of Miss
Benham's young brother a month ago--before you returned to Paris. Yes,
that was certainly very odd--that is, it was either very odd or very
commonplace. And in either case the family is terribly cut up about it.
The boy's name was Arthur Benham, and he was rather a young fool, but
not downright vicious, I should think. I never knew him at all well, but
I know he spent his time chiefly at the Café de Paris and at the Olympia
and at Longchamps and at Henry's Bar. Well, he just disappeared, that is
all. He dropped completely out of sight between two days, and though the
family has had a small army of detectives on his trail they've not
discovered the smallest clew. It's deuced odd altogether. You might
think it easy to disappear like that, but it's not."

"No--no," said Ste. Marie, thoughtfully. "No, I should fancy not.

"This boy," he said, after a pause--"I think I had seen him--had him
pointed out to me--before I went away. I think it was at Henry's Bar,
where all the young Americans go to drink strange beverages. I am quite
sure I remember his face. A weak face, but not quite bad."

And after another little pause he asked:

"Was there any reason why he should have gone away--any quarrel or that
sort of thing?"

"Well," said the other man, "I rather think there was something of the
sort. The boy's uncle--Captain Stewart--middle-aged, rather prim old
party--you'll have met him, I dare say--he intimated to me one day that
there had been some trivial row. You see, the lad isn't of age yet,
though he is to be in a few months, and so he has had to live on an
allowance doled out by his grandfather, who's the head of the house. The
boy's father is dead. There's a quaint old beggar, if you like--the
grandfather. He was rather a swell in the diplomatic, in his day, it
seems--rather an important swell. Now he's bedridden. He sits all day in
bed and plays cards with his granddaughter or with a very superior
valet, and talks politics with the men who come to see him. Oh yes, he's
a quaint old beggar. He has a great quantity of white hair and an
enormous square white beard and the fiercest eyes I ever saw, I should
think. Everybody's frightened out of their wits of him. Well, he sits up
there and rules his family in good old patriarchal style, and it seems
he came down a bit hard on the poor boy one day over some folly or
other, and there was a row and the boy went out of the house swearing
he'd be even."

"Ah, well, then," said Ste. Marie, "the matter seems simple enough. A
foolish boy's foolish pique. He is staying in hiding somewhere to
frighten his grandfather. When he thinks the time favorable he will come
back and be wept over and forgiven."

The other man walked a little way in silence.

"Ye-es," he said, at last. "Yes, possibly. Possibly you are right.
That's what the grandfather thinks. It's the obvious solution.
Unfortunately there is more or less against it. The boy went away
with--so far as can be learned--almost no money, almost none at all. And
he has already been gone a month. Miss Benham, his sister, is sure that
something has happened to him, and I'm a bit inclined to think so, too.
It's all very odd. I should think he might have been kidnapped but that
no demand has been made for money."

"He was not," suggested Ste. Marie--"not the sort of young man to do
anything desperate--make away with himself?" Hartley laughed.

"Oh, Lord, no!" said he. "Not that sort of young man at all. He was a
very normal type of rich and spoiled and somewhat foolish American boy."

"Rich?" inquired the other, quickly.

"Oh yes; they're beastly rich. Young Arthur is to come into something
very good at his majority, I believe, from his father's estate, and the
old grandfather is said to be indecently rich--rolling in it! There's
another reason why the young idiot wouldn't be likely to stop away of
his own accord. He wouldn't risk anything like a serious break with the
old gentleman. It would mean a loss of millions to him, I dare say, for
the old beggar is quite capable of cutting him off if he takes the
notion. Oh, it's a bad business all through."

And after they had gone on a bit he said it again, shaking his head:

"It's a bad business! That poor girl, you know. It's hard on her. She
was fond of the young ass for some reason or other. She's very much
broken up over it."

"Yes," said Ste. Marie, "it is hard for her--for all the family, of
course. A bad business, as you say." He spoke absently, for he was
looking ahead at something which seemed to be a motor accident. They had
by this time got well up the Champs-Elysées and were crossing the Rond
Point. A motor-car was drawn up alongside the curb just beyond, and a
little knot of people stood about it and seemed to look at something on
the ground.

"I think some one has been run down," said Ste. Marie. "Shall we have a
look?" They quickened their pace and came to where the group of people
stood in a circle looking upon the ground, and two gendarmes asked many
questions and wrote voluminously in their little books. It appeared that
a delivery boy mounted upon a tricycle cart had turned into the wrong
side of the avenue and had got himself run into and overturned by a
motor-car going at a moderate rate of speed. For once the sentiment of
those mysterious birds of prey which flock instantaneously from nowhere
round an accident, was against the victim and in favor of the frightened
and gesticulating chauffeur.

Ste. Marie turned an amused face from this voluble being to the other
occupants of the patently hired car, who stood apart, adding very little
to the discussion. He saw a tall and bony man with very bright blue eyes
and what is sometimes called a guardsman's mustache--the drooping,
walruslike ornament which dates back a good many years now. Beyond this
gentleman he saw a young woman in a long, gray silk coat and a motoring
veil. He was aware that the tall man was staring at him rather fixedly
and with a half-puzzled frown, as though he thought that they had met
before and was trying to remember when, but Ste. Marie gave the man but
a swift glance. His eyes were upon the dark face of the young woman
beyond, and it seemed to him that she called aloud to him in an actual
voice that rang in his ears. The young woman's very obvious beauty, he
thought, had nothing to do with the matter. It seemed to him that her
eyes called him. Just that. Something strange and very potent seemed to
take sudden and almost tangible hold upon him--a charm, a spell, a
magic--something unprecedented, new to his experience. He could not take
his eyes from hers, and he stood staring.

As before, on the Pont de la Concorde, Hartley touched him on the arm,
and abruptly the chains that had bound him were loosened.

"We must be going on, you know," the Englishman said, and Ste. Marie
said, rather hurriedly:

"Yes, yes, to be sure! Come along!" But at a little distance he turned
once more to look back. The chauffeur had mounted to his place, the
delivery boy was upon his feet again, little the worse for his tumble,
and the knot of bystanders had begun to disperse, but it seemed to Ste.
Marie that the young woman in the long silk coat stood quite still where
she had been, and that her face was turned toward him, watching.

"Did you notice that girl?" said Hartley, as they walked on at a brisker
pace. "Did you see her face? She was rather a tremendous beauty, you
know, in her gypsyish fashion. Yes, by Jove, she was!"

"Did I see her?" repeated Ste. Marie. "Yes. Oh yes. She had very strange
eyes. At least, I think it was the eyes. I don't know. I've never seen
any eyes quite like them. Very odd!"

He said something more in French which Hartley did not hear, and the
Englishman saw that he was frowning.

"Oh, well, I shouldn't have said there was anything strange about them,"
Hartley said; "but they certainly were beautiful. There's no denying
that. The man with her looked rather Irish, I thought."

They came to the Etoile, and cut across it toward the Avenue Hoche. Ste.
Marie glanced back once more, but the motor-car and the delivery boy and
the gendarmes were gone.

"What did you say?" he asked, idly.

"I said the man looked Irish," repeated his friend. All at once Ste.
Marie gave a loud exclamation.

"Sacred thousand devils! Fool that I am! Dolt! Why didn't I think of it
before?"

Hartley stared at him, and Ste. Marie stared down the Champs-Elysées
like one in a trance.

"I say," said the Englishman, "we really must be getting on, you know;
we're late." And as they went along down the Avenue Hoche, he demanded:
"Why are you a dolt and whatever else it was? What struck you so
suddenly?"

"I remembered all at once," said Ste. Marie, "where I had seen that man
before and with whom I last saw him. I'll tell you about it later.
Probably it's of no importance, though."

"You're talking rather like a mild lunatic," said the other. "Here we
are at the house!"

       *       *       *       *       *




II

THE LADDER TO THE STARS


Miss Benham was talking wearily to a strange, fair youth with an
impediment in his speech, and was wondering why the youth had been asked
to this house, where in general one was sure of meeting only interesting
people, when some one spoke her name, and she turned with a little sigh
of relief. It was Baron de Vries, the Belgian First Secretary of
Legation, an old friend of her grandfather's, a man made gentle and
sweet by infinite sorrow. He bowed civilly to the fair youth and bent
over the girl's hand.

"It is very good," he said, "to see you again in the world. We have need
of you, nous autres. Madame your mother is well, I hope--and the bear?"
He called old Mr. Stewart "the bear" in a sort of grave jest, and that
fierce octogenarian rather liked it.

"Oh yes," the girl said, "we're all fairly well. My mother had one of
her headaches to-night and so didn't come here, but she's as well as
usual, and 'the bear'--yes, he's well enough physically, I should think,
but he has not been quite the same since--during the past month. It has
told upon him, you know. He grieves over it much more than he will
admit."

"Yes," said Baron de Vries, gravely. "Yes, I know." He turned about
toward the fair young man, but that youth had drifted away and joined
himself to another group. Miss Benham looked after him and gave a little
exclamation of relief.

"That person was rather terrible," she said. "I can't think why he is
here. Marian so seldom has dull people."

"I believe," said the Belgian, "that he is some connection of De
Saulnes'. That explains his presence." He lowered his voice. "You have
heard no--news? They have found no trace?"

"No," said she. "Nothing. Nothing at all. I'm rather in despair. It's
all so hideously mysterious. I am sure, you know, that something has
happened to him. It's--very, very hard. Sometimes I think I can't bear
it. But I go on. We all go on."

Baron de Vries nodded his head strongly.

"That, my dear child, is just what you must do," said he. "You must go
on. That is what needs the real courage, and you have courage. I am not
afraid for you. And sooner or later you will hear of him--from him. It
is impossible nowadays to disappear for very long. You will hear from
him." He smiled at her, his slow, grave smile that was not of mirth but
of kindness and sympathy and cheer.

"And if I may say so," he said, "you are doing very wisely to come out
once more among your friends. You can accomplish no good by brooding at
home. It is better to live one's normal life--even when it is not easy
to do it. I say so who know."

The girl touched Baron de Vries' arm for an instant with her hand--a
little gesture that seemed to express thankfulness and trust and
affection.

"If all my friends were like you!" she said to him. And after that she
drew a quick breath as if to have done with these sad matters, and she
turned her eyes once more toward the broad room where the other guests
stood in little groups, all talking at once, very rapidly and in loud
voices.

"What extraordinarily cosmopolitan affairs these dinner-parties in new
Paris are!" she said. "They're like diplomatic parties, only we have a
better time and the men don't wear their orders. How many nationalities
should you say there are in this room now?"

"Without stopping to consider," said Baron de Vries, "I say ten." They
counted, and out of fourteen people there were represented nine races.

"I don't see Richard Hartley," Miss Benham said. "I had an idea he was
to be here. Ah!" she broke off, looking toward the doorway. "Here he
comes now!" she said. "He's rather late. Who is the Spanish-looking man
with him, I wonder? He's rather handsome, isn't he?"

Baron de Vries moved a little forward to look, and exclaimed in his
turn. He said:

"Ah, I did not know he was returned to Paris. That is Ste. Marie." Miss
Benham's eyes followed the Spanish-looking young man as he made his way
through the joyous greetings of friends toward his hostess.

"So that is Ste. Marie!" she said, still watching him. "The famous Ste.
Marie!" She gave a little laugh.

"Well, I don't wonder at the reputation he bears for--gallantry and that
sort of thing. He looks the part, doesn't he?"

"Ye-es," admitted her friend. "Yes, he is sufficiently beau garçon.
But--yes--well, that is not all, by any means. You must not get the idea
that Ste. Marie is nothing but a genial and romantic young
squire-of-dames. He is much more than that. He has very fine qualities.
To be sure, he appears to possess no ambition in particular, but I
should be glad if he were my son. He comes of a very old house, and
there is no blot upon the history of that house--nothing but
faithfulness and gallantry and honor. And there is, I think, no blot
upon Ste. Marie himself. He is fine gold."

The girl turned and stared at Baron de Vries with some astonishment.

"You speak very strongly," said she. "I have never heard you speak so
strongly of any one, I think."

The Belgian made a little deprecatory gesture with his two hands, and he
laughed.

"Oh, well, I like the boy. And I should hate to have you meet him for
the first time under a misconception. Listen, my child! When a young man
is loved equally by both men and women, by both old and young, that
young man is worthy of friendship and trust. Everybody likes Ste. Marie.
In a sense, that is his misfortune. The way is made too easy for him.
His friends stand so thick about him that they shut off his view of the
heights. To waken ambition in his soul he has need of solitude or
misfortune or grief. Or," said the elderly Belgian, laughing gently--"or
perhaps the other thing might do it best--the more obvious thing?"

The girl's raised eyebrows questioned him, and when he did not answer,
she said:

"What thing, then?"

"Why, love," said Baron de Vries. "Love, to be sure. Love is said to
work miracles, and I believe that to be a perfectly true saying. Ah, he
is coming here!"

The Marquise de Saulnes, who was a very pretty little Englishwoman with
a deceptively doll-like look, approached, dragging Ste. Marie in her
wake. She said:

"My dearest dear, I give you of my best. Thank me and cherish him! I
believe he is to lead you to the place where food is, isn't he?" She
beamed over her shoulder and departed, and Miss Benham found herself
confronted by the Spanish-looking man. Her first thought was that he was
not as handsome as he had seemed at a distance, but something much
better. For a young man she thought his face was rather oddly
weather-beaten, as if he might have been very much at sea, and it was
too dark to be entirely pleasing. But she liked his eyes, which were not
brown or black, as she had expected, but a very unusual dark gray--a
sort of slate color. And she liked his mouth, too, while disapproving of
the fierce little upturned mustache which seemed to her a bit operatic.
It was her habit--and it is not an unreliable habit--to judge people by
their eyes and mouths. Ste. Marie's mouth pleased her because the lips
were neither thin nor thick, they were not drawn into an unpleasant line
by unpleasant habits, they did not pout as so many Latin lips do, and
they had at one corner a humorous expression which she found curiously
agreeable.

"You are to cherish me," Ste. Marie said. "Orders from headquarters. How
does one cherish people?" The corner of his very expressive mouth
twitched, and he grinned at her.

Miss Benham did not approve of young men who began an acquaintance in
this very familiar manner. She thought that there was a certain
preliminary and more formal stage which ought to be got through with
first, but Ste, Marie's grin was irresistible. In spite of herself, she
found that she was laughing.

"I don't quite know," she said. "It sounds rather appalling, doesn't it?
Marian has such an extraordinary fashion of hurling people at each
other's heads! She takes my breath away at times."

"Ah, well," said Ste. Marie, "perhaps we can settle upon something when
I've led you to the place where food is. And, by-the-way, what are we
waiting for? Are we not all here? There's an even number." He broke off
with a sudden exclamation of pleasure; and when Miss Benham turned to
look, she found that Baron de Vries, who had been talking to some
friends, had once more come up to where she stood.

She watched the greeting between the two men, and its quiet affection
impressed her very much. She knew Baron de Vries well, and she knew that
it was not his habit to show or to feel a strong liking for young and
idle men. This young man must be very worth while to have won the regard
of that wise old Belgian. Just then Hartley, who had been barricaded
behind a cordon of friends, came up to her in an abominable temper over
his ill luck, and a few moments later the dinner procession was formed
and they went in.

At table Miss Benham found herself between Ste. Marie and the same
strange, fair youth who had afflicted her in the drawing-room. She
looked upon him now with a sort of dismayed terror, but it developed
that there was nothing to fear from the fair youth. He had no attention
to waste upon social amenities. He fell upon his food with a wolfish
passion extraordinary to see and also--alas!--to hear. Miss Benham
turned from him to meet Ste. Marie's delighted eye.

"Tell him for me," begged that gentleman, "that soup should be seen--not
heard."

But Miss Benham gave a little shiver of disgust. "I shall tell him
nothing whatever," she said. "He's quite too dreadful, really! People
shouldn't be exposed to that sort of thing. It's not only the noises.
Plenty of very charming and estimable Germans, for example, make strange
noises at table. But he behaves like a famished dog over a bone. I
refuse to have anything to do with him. You must make up the loss to me,
M. Ste. Marie. You must be as amusing as two people." She smiled across
at him in her gravely questioning fashion. "I'm wondering," she said,
"if I dare ask you a very personal question. I hesitate because I don't
like people who presume too much upon a short acquaintance--and our
acquaintance has been very, very short, hasn't it? even though we may
have heard a great deal about each other beforehand. I wonder--"

"Oh, I should ask it if I were you!" said Ste. Marie, at once. "I'm an
extremely good-natured person. And, besides, I quite naturally feel
flattered at your taking interest enough to ask anything about me."

"Well," said she, "it's this: Why does everybody call you just 'Ste.
Marie'? Most people are spoken of as Monsieur this or that--if there
isn't a more august title; but they all call you Ste. Marie without any
Monsieur. It seems rather odd."

Ste. Marie looked puzzled. "Why," he said, "I don't believe I know,
just. I'd never thought of that. It's quite true, of course. They never
do use a Monsieur or anything, do they? How cheeky of them! I wonder why
it is? I'll ask Hartley."

He did ask Hartley later on, and Hartley didn't know, either. Miss
Benham asked some other people, who were vague about it, and in the end
she became convinced that it was an odd and quite inexplicable form of
something like endearment. But nobody seemed to have formulated it to
himself.

"The name is really 'De Ste. Marie,'" he went on, "and there's a title
that I don't use, and a string of Christian names that one never
employs. My people were Béarnais, and there's a heap of ruins on top of
a hill in the Pyrenees where they lived. It used to be Ste. Marie de
Mont-les-Roses, but afterward, after the Revolution, they called it Ste.
Marie de Mont Perdu. My great-grandfather was killed there, but some old
servants smuggled his little son away and saved him."

He seemed to Miss Benham to say that in exactly the right manner, not in
the cheap and scoffing fashion which some young men affect in speaking
of ancestral fortunes or misfortunes, nor with too much solemnity. And
when she allowed a little silence to occur at the end, he did not go on
with his family history, but turned at once to another subject. It
pleased her curiously.

The fair youth at her other side continued to crouch over his food,
making fierce and animal-like noises. He never spoke or seemed to wish
to be spoken to, and Miss Benham found it easy to ignore him altogether.
It occurred to her once or twice that Ste. Marie's other neighbor might
desire an occasional word from him, but, after all, she said to herself
that was his affair and beyond her control. So these two talked together
through the entire dinner period, and the girl was aware that she was
being much more deeply affected by the simple, magnetic charm of a man
than ever before in her life. It made her a little angry, because she
was unfamiliar with this sort of thing and distrusted it. She was rather
a perfect type of that phenomenon before which the British and
Continental world stands in mingled delight and exasperation--the
American unmarried young woman, the creature of extraordinary beauty and
still more extraordinary poise, the virgin with the bearing and
savoir-faire of a woman of the world, the fresh-cheeked girl with the
calm mind of a savante and the cool judgment, in regard to men and
things, of an ambassador. The European world says she is cold, and that
may be true; but it is well enough known that she can love very deeply.
It says that, like most queens, and for precisely the same set of
reasons, she later on makes a bad mother; but it is easy to point to
queens who are the best of mothers. In short, she remains an enigma,
and, like all other enigmas, forever fascinating.

Miss Benham reflected that she knew almost nothing about Ste. Marie save
for his reputation as a carpet knight, and Baron de Vries' good opinion,
which could not be despised. And that made her the more displeased when
she realized how promptly she was surrendering to his charm. In a moment
of silence she gave a sudden little laugh which seemed to express a
half-angry astonishment.

"What was that for?" Ste. Marie demanded.

The girl looked at him for an instant and shook her head.

"I can't tell you," said she. "That's rude, isn't it? I'm sorry. Perhaps
I will tell you one day, when we know each other better."

But inwardly she was saying: "Why, I suppose this is how they all
begin--all these regiments of women who make fools of themselves about
him! I suppose this is exactly what he does to them all!"

It made her angry, and she tried quite unfairly to shift the anger, as
it were, to Ste. Marie--to put him somehow in the wrong. But she was by
nature very just, and she could not quite do that, particularly as it
was evident that the man was using no cheap tricks. He did not try to
flirt with her, and he did not attempt to pay her veiled compliments,
though she was often aware that when her attention was diverted for a
few moments his eyes were always upon her, and that is a compliment that
few women can find it in their hearts to resent.

"You say," said Ste. Marie, "'when we know each other better.' May one
twist that into a permission to come and see you--I mean, really see
you--not just leave a card at your door to-morrow by way of observing
the formalities?"

"Yes," she said. "Oh yes, one may twist it into something like that
without straining it unduly, I think. My mother and I shall be very glad
to see you. I'm sorry she is not here to-night to say it herself."

Then the hostess began to gather together her flock, and so the two had
no more speech. But when the women had gone and the men were left about
the dismantled table, Hartley moved up beside Ste. Marie and shook a sad
head at him. He said:

"You're a very lucky being. I was quietly hoping, on the way here, that
I should be the fortunate man, but you always have all the luck. I hope
you're decently grateful."

"Mon vieux," said Ste. Marie, "my feet are upon the stars. No!" He shook
his head as if the figure displeased him. "No, my feet are upon the
ladder to the stars. Grateful? What does a foolish word like grateful
mean? Don't talk to me. You are not worthy to trample among my
magnificent thoughts. I am a god upon Olympus."

"You said just now," objected the other man, practically, "that your
feet were on a ladder. There are no ladders from Olympus to the stars."

"Ho!" said Ste. Marie. "Ho! Aren't there, though? There shall be ladders
all over Olympus, if I like. What do you know about gods and stars? I
shall be a god climbing to the heavens, and I shall be an angel of
light, and I shall be a miserable worm grovelling in the night here
below, and I shall be a poet, and I shall be anything else I happen to
think of--all of them at once, if I choose. And you shall be the
tongue-tied son of perfidious Albion that you are, gaping at my
splendors from a fog-bank--a November fog-bank in May. Who is the
desiccated gentleman bearing down upon us?"

       *       *       *       *       *




III

STE. MARIE MAKES A VOW, BUT A PAIR OF EYES HAUNT HIM


Hartley looked over his shoulder and gave a little exclamation of
distaste.

"It's Captain Stewart, Miss Benham's uncle," he said, lowering his
voice. "I'm off. I shall abandon you to him. He's a good old soul, but
he bores me." Hartley nodded to the man who was approaching, and then
made his way to the end of the table, where their host sat discussing
aero-club matters with a group of the other men.

Captain Stewart dropped into the vacant chair, saying: "May I recall
myself to you, M. Ste. Marie? We met, I believe, once or twice, a couple
of years ago. My name's Stewart."

Captain Stewart--the title was vaguely believed to have been borne some
years before in the American service, but no one appeared to know much
about it--was not an old man. He could not have been, at this time, much
more than fifty, but English-speaking acquaintances often called him
"old Stewart," and others "ce vieux Stewart." Indeed, at a first glance
he might have passed for anything up to sixty, for his face was a good
deal more lined and wrinkled than it should have been at his age. Ste.
Marie's adjective had been rather apt. The man had a desiccated
appearance. Upon examination, however, one saw that the blood was still
red in his cheeks and lips, and, although his neck was thin and withered
like an old man's, his brown eyes still held their fire. The hair was
almost gone from the top of his large, round head, but it remained at
the sides--stiff, colorless hair, with a hint of red in it. And there
were red streaks in his gray mustache, which was trained outward in two
loose tufts, like shaving-brushes. The mustache and the shallow chin
under it gave him an odd, catlike appearance. Hartley, who rather
disliked the man, used to insist that he had heard him mew.

Ste. Marie said something politely non-committal, though he did not at
all remember the alleged meeting two years before, and he looked at
Captain Stewart with a real curiosity and interest in his character as
Miss Benham's uncle. He thought it very civil of the elder man to make
these friendly advances when it was in no way incumbent upon him to do
so.

"I noticed," said Captain Stewart, "that you were placed next my niece,
Helen Benham, at dinner. This must be the first time you two have met,
is it not? I remember speaking of you to her some months ago, and I am
quite sure she said that she had not met you. Ah, yes, of course, you
have been away from Paris a great deal since she and her mother--her
mother is my sister: that is to say, my half-sister--have come here to
live with my father." He gave a little gentle laugh. "I take an elderly
uncle's privilege," he said, "of being rather proud of Helen. She is
called very pretty, and she certainly has great poise."

Ste. Marie drew a quick breath, and his eyes began to flash as they had
done a few moments before when he told Hartley that his feet were upon
the ladder to the stars.

"Miss Benham!" he cried. "Miss Benham is--" He hung poised so for a
moment, searching, as it were, for words of sufficient splendor, but in
the end he shook his head and the gleam faded from his eyes. He sank
back in his chair, sighing. "Miss Benham," said he, "is extremely
beautiful."

And again her uncle emitted his little gentle laugh, which may have
deceived Hartley into believing that he had heard the man mew. The sound
was as much like mewing as it was like anything else.

"I am very glad," Captain Stewart said, "to see her come out once more
into the world. She needs distraction. We--You may possibly have heard
that the family is in great distress of mind over the disappearance of
my young nephew. Helen has suffered particularly, because she is
convinced that the boy has met with foul play. I myself think it very
unlikely--very unlikely indeed. The lack of motive, for one thing, and
for another--Ah, well, a score of reasons! But Helen refuses to be
comforted. It seems to me much more like a boy's prank--his idea of
revenge for what he considered unjust treatment at his grandfather's
hands. He was always a headstrong youngster, and he has been a bit
spoiled. Still, of course, the uncertainty is very trying for us
all--very wearing."

"Of course," said Ste. Marie, gravely. "It is most unfortunate. Ah,
by-the-way!" He looked up with a sudden interest. "A rather odd thing
happened," he said, "as Hartley and I were coming here this evening. We
walked up the Champs-Elysées from the Concorde, and on the way Hartley
had been telling me of your nephew's disappearance. Near the Rond Point
we came upon a motor-car which was drawn up at the side of the
street--there had been an accident of no consequence, a boy tumbled over
but not hurt. Well, one of the two occupants of the motor-car was a man
whom I used to see about Maxim's and the Café de Paris and the
Montmartre places, too, some time ago--a rather shady character whose
name I've forgotten. The odd part of it all was that on the last
occasion or two on which I saw your nephew he was with this man. I think
it was in Henry's Bar. Of course, it means nothing at all. Your nephew
doubtless knew scores of people, and this man is no more likely to have
information about his present whereabouts than any of the others. Still,
I should have liked to ask him. I didn't remember who he was till he had
gone."

Captain Stewart shook his head sadly, frowning down upon the cigarette
from which he had knocked the ash.

"I am afraid poor Arthur did not always choose his friends with the best
of judgment," said he. "I am not squeamish, and I would not have boys
kept in a glass case, but--yes, I'm afraid Arthur was not always too
careful." He replaced the cigarette neatly between his lips. "This man,
now--this man whom you saw to-night--what sort of looking man will he
have been?"

"Oh, a tall, lean man," said Ste. Marie. "A tall man with blue eyes and
a heavy, old-fashioned mustache. I just can't remember the name."

The smoke stood still for an instant over Captain Stewart's cigarette,
and it seemed to Ste. Marie that a little contortion of anger fled
across the man's face and was gone again. He stirred slightly in his
chair. After a moment he said:

"I fancy, from your description--I fancy I know who the man was. If it
is the man I am thinking of, the name is--Powers. He is, as you have
said, a rather shady character, and I more than once warned my nephew
against him. Such people are not good companions for a boy. Yes, I
warned him."

"Powers," said Ste. Marie, "doesn't sound right to me, you know. I can't
say the fellow's name myself, but I'm sure--that is, I think--it's not
Powers."

"Oh yes," said Captain Stewart, with an elderly man's half-querulous
certainty. "Yes, the name is Powers. I remember it well. And I
remember--Yes, it was odd, was it not, your meeting him like that, just
as you were talking of Arthur? You--oh, you didn't speak to him, you
say? No, no, to be sure! You didn't recognize him at once. Yes, it was
odd. Of course, the man could have had nothing to do with poor Arthur's
disappearance. His only interest in the boy at any time would have been
for what money Arthur might have, and he carried none, or almost none,
away with him when he vanished. Eh, poor lad! Where can he be to-night,
I wonder? It's a sad business, M. Ste. Marie--a sad business."

Captain Stewart fell into a sort of brooding silence, frowning down at
the table before him, and twisting with his thin ringers the little
liqueur glass and the coffee-cup which were there. Once or twice, Ste.
Marie thought, the frown deepened and twisted into a sort of scowl, and
the man's fingers twitched on the cloth of the table; but when at last
the group at the other end of the board rose and began to move towards
the door, Captain Stewart rose also and followed them. At the door he
seemed to think of something, and touched Ste. Marie upon the arm.

"This--ah, Powers," he said, in a low tone--"this man whom you saw
to-night! You said he was one of two occupants of a motor-car. Yes? Did
you by any chance recognize the other?"

"Oh, the other was a young woman," said Ste. Marie. "No, I never saw her
before. She was very handsome."

Captain Stewart said something under his breath and turned abruptly
away. But an instant later he faced about once more, smiling. He said,
in a man-of-the-world manner, which sat rather oddly upon him:

"Ah, well, we all have our little love-affairs. I dare say this shady
fellow has his." And for some obscure reason Ste. Marie found the speech
peculiarly offensive.

In the drawing-room he had opportunity for no more than a word with Miss
Benham, for Hartley, enraged over his previous ill success, cut in ahead
of him and manoeuvred that young lady into a corner, where he sat before
her, turning a square and determined back to the world. Ste. Marie
listlessly played bridge for a time, but his attention was not upon it,
and he was glad when the others at the table settled their accounts and
departed to look in at a dance somewhere. After that he talked for a
little with Marian de Saulnes, whom he liked and who made no secret of
adoring him. She complained loudly that he was in a vile temper, which
was not true; he was only restless and distrait and wanted to be alone;
and so, at last, he took his leave without waiting for Hartley.

Outside, in the street, he stood for a moment, hesitating, and an
expectant fiacre drew up before the house, the cocher raising an
interrogative whip. In the end Ste. Marie shook his head and turned away
on foot. It was a still, sweet night of soft airs, and a moonless,
starlit sky, and the man was very fond of walking in the dark. From the
Etoile he walked down the Champs-Elysées, but presently turned toward
the river. His eyes were upon the mellow stars, his feet upon the ladder
thereunto. He found himself crossing the Pont des Invalides, and halted
midway to rest and look. He laid his arms upon the bridge's parapet and
turned his face outward. Against it bore a little gentle breeze that
smelled of the purifying water below and of the night and of green
things growing. Beneath him the river ran black as flowing ink, and
across its troubled surface the many-colored lights of the many bridges
glittered very beautifully, swirling arabesques of gold and crimson. The
noises of the city--beat of hoofs upon wooden pavements, horn of train
or motor-car, jingle of bell upon cab-horse--came here faintly and as if
from a great distance. Above the dark trees of the Cours la Reine the
sky glowed, softly golden, reflecting the million lights of Paris.

Ste. Marie closed his eyes, and against darkness he saw the beautiful
head of Helen Benham, the clear-cut, exquisite modelling of feature and
contour, the perfection of form and color. Her eyes met his eyes, and
they were very serene and calm and confident. She smiled at him, and the
new contours into which her face fell with the smile were more perfect
than before. He watched the turn of her head, and the grace of the
movement was the uttermost effortless grace one dreams that a queen
should have. The heart of Ste. Marie quickened in him, and he would have
gone down upon his knees.

He was well aware that with the coming of this girl something
unprecedented, wholly new to his experience, had befallen him--an
awakening to a new life. He had been in love a very great many times. He
was usually in love. And each time his heart had gone through the same
sweet and bitter anguish, the same sleepless nights had come and gone
upon him, the eternal and ever new miracle had wakened spring in his
soul, had passed its summer solstice, had faded through autumnal regrets
to winter's death; but through it all something within him had waited
asleep.

He found himself wondering dully what it was--wherein lay the great
difference?--and he could not answer the question he asked. He knew only
that whereas before he had loved, he now went down upon prayerful knees
to worship. In a sudden poignant thrill the knightly fervor of his
forefathers came upon him, and he saw a sweet and golden lady set far
above him upon a throne. Her clear eyes gazed afar, serene and
untroubled. She sat wrapped in a sort of virginal austerity, unaware of
the base passions of men. The other women whom Ste. Marie had--as he was
pleased to term it--loved had certainly come at least half-way to meet
him, and some of them had come a good deal farther than that. He could
not, by the wildest flight of imagination, conceive this girl doing
anything of that sort. She was to be won by trial and high endeavor, by
prayer and self-purification--not captured by a warm eye-glance, a
whispered word, a laughing kiss. In fancy he looked from the crowding
cohorts of these others to that still, sweet figure set on high, wrapped
in virginal austerity, calm in her serene perfection, and his soul
abased itself before her. He knelt in an awed and worshipful adoration.

So before quest or tournament or battle must those elder Ste.
Maries--Ste. Maries de Mont-les-Roses---have knelt, each knight at the
feet of his lady, each knightly soul aglow with the chaste ardor of
chivalry.

The man's hands tightened upon the parapet of the bridge, he lifted his
face again to the shining stars where-among, as his fancy had it, she
sat enthroned. Exultingly he felt under his feet the rungs of the
ladder, and in the darkness he swore a great oath to have done forever
with blindness and grovelling, to climb and climb, forever to climb,
until at last he should stand where she was--cleansed and made worthy by
long endeavor--at last meet her eyes and touch her hand.

It was a fine and chivalric frenzy, and Ste. Marie was passionately in
earnest about it, but his guardian angel--indeed, Fate herself--must
have laughed a little in the dark, knowing what manner of man he was in
less exalted hours.

It was an odd freak of memory that at last recalled him to earth. Every
man knows that when a strong and, for the moment, unavailing effort has
been made to recall something lost to mind, the memory, in some
mysterious fashion, goes on working long after the attention has been
elsewhere diverted, and sometimes hours afterward, or even days,
produces quite suddenly and inappropriately the lost article. Ste. Marie
had turned, with a little sigh, to take up, once more, his walk across
the Pont des Invalides, when seemingly from nowhere, and certainly by no
conscious effort, a name flashed into his mind. He said it aloud:

"O'Hara! O'Hara! That tall, thin chap's name was O'Hara, by Jove! It
wasn't Powers at all!" He laughed a little as he remembered how very
positive Captain Stewart had been. And then he frowned, thinking that
the mistake was an odd one, since Stewart had evidently known a good
deal about this adventurer. Captain Stewart, though, Ste. Marie
reflected, was exactly the sort to be very sure he was right about
things. He had just the neat and precise and semi-scholarly personality
of the man who always knows. So Ste. Marie dismissed the matter with
another brief laugh, but a cognate matter was less easy to dismiss. The
name brought with it a face--a dark and splendid face with tragic eyes
that called. He walked a long way thinking about them and wondering. The
eyes haunted him. It will have been reasonably evident that Ste. Marie
was a fanciful and imaginative soul. He needed but a chance word, the
sight of a face in a crowd, the glance of an eye, to begin
story-building, and he would go on for hours about it and work himself
up to quite a passion with his imaginings. He should have been a writer
of fiction.

He began forthwith to construct romances about this lady of the
motor-car. He wondered why she should have been with the shady
Irishman--if Irishman he was--O'Hara, and with some anxiety he wondered
what the two were to each other. Captain Stewart's little cynical jest
came to his mind, and he was conscious of a sudden desire to kick Miss
Benham's middle-aged uncle.

The eyes haunted him. What was it they suffered? Out of what misery did
they call--and for what? He walked all the long way home to his little
flat overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens, haunted by those eyes. As he
climbed his stair it suddenly occurred to him that they had quite driven
out of his mind the image of his beautiful lady who sat among the stars,
and the realization came to him with a shock.

       *       *       *       *       *




IV

OLD DAVID STEWART


It was Miss Benham's custom, upon returning home at night from
dinner-parties or other entertainments, to look in for a few minutes on
her grandfather before going to bed. The old gentleman, like most
elderly people, slept lightly, and often sat up in bed very late into
the night, reading or playing piquet with his valet. He suffered
hideously at times from the malady which was killing him by degrees, but
when he was free from pain the enormous recuperative power, which he had
preserved to his eighty-sixth year, left him almost as vigorous and
clear-minded as if he had never been ill at all. Hartley's description
of him had not been altogether a bad one: "a quaint old beggar... a
great quantity of white hair and an enormous square white beard and the
fiercest eyes I ever saw..." He was a rather "quaint old beggar,"
indeed! He had let his thick, white hair grow long, and it hung down
over his brows in unparted locks as the ancient Greeks wore their hair.
He had very shaggy eyebrows, and the deep-set eyes under them gleamed
from the shadow with a fierceness which was rather deceptive but none
the less intimidating. He had a great beak of a nose, but the mouth
below could not be seen. It was hidden by the mustache and the enormous
square beard. His face was colorless, almost as white as hair and beard;
there seemed to be no shadow or tint anywhere except the cavernous
recesses from which the man's eyes gleamed and sparkled. Altogether he
was certainly "a quaint old beggar."

He had, during the day and evening, a good many visitors, for the old
gentleman's mind was as alert as it ever had been, and important men
thought him worth consulting. The names which the admirable valet Peters
announced from time to time were names which meant a great deal in the
official and diplomatic world of the day. But if old David felt
flattered over the unusual fashion in which the great of the earth
continued to come to him, he never betrayed it. Indeed, it is quite
probable that this view of the situation never once occurred to him. He
had been thrown with the great of the earth for more than half a
century, and he had learned to take it as a matter of course.

On her return from the Marquise de Saulnes' dinner-party, Miss Benham
went at once to her grandfather's wing of the house, which had its own
street entrance, and knocked lightly at his door. She asked the
admirable Peters, who opened to her, "Is he awake?" and being assured
that he was, went into the vast chamber, dropping her cloak on a chair
as she entered.

David Stewart was sitting up in his monumental bed behind a sort of
invalid's table which stretched across his knees without touching them.
He wore over his night-clothes a Chinese mandarin's jacket of old red
satin, wadded with down, and very gorgeously embroidered with the cloud
and bat designs, and with large round panels of the imperial five-clawed
dragon in gold. He had a number of these jackets--they seemed to be his
one vanity in things external--and they were so made that they could be
slipped about him without disturbing him in his bed, since they hung
down only to the waist or thereabouts. They kept the upper part of his
body, which was not covered by the bedclothes, warm, and they certainly
made him a very impressive figure.

He said: "Ah, Helen! Come in! Come in! Sit down on the bed there and
tell me what you have been doing!" He pushed aside the pack of cards
which was spread out on the invalid's table before him, and with great
care counted a sum of money in francs and half-francs and nickel
twenty-five centime pieces. "I've won seven francs fifty from Peters
to-night," he said, chuckling gently. "That is a very good evening,
indeed. Very good! Where have you been, and who were there?"

"A dinner-party at the De Saulnes'," said Miss Benham, making herself
comfortable on the side of the great bed. "It's a very pleasant place.
Marian is, of course, a dear, and they're quite English and
unceremonious. You can talk to your neighbor at dinner instead of
addressing the house from a platform, as it were. French dinner-parties
make me nervous."

Old David gave a little growling laugh.

"French dinner-parties at least keep people up to the mark in the art of
conversation," said he. "But that is a lost art, anyhow, nowadays, so I
suppose one might as well be quite informal and have done with it. Who
were there?"

"Oh, well"--she considered, "no one, I should think, who would interest
you. Rather an indifferent set. Pleasant people, but not inspiring. The
Marquis had some young relative or connection who was quite odious and
made the most surprising noises over his food. I met a new man whom I
think I am going to like very much, indeed. He wouldn't interest you,
because he doesn't mean anything in particular, and of course he
oughtn't to interest me for the same reason. He's just an idle, pleasant
young man, but--he has great charm--very great charm. His name is Ste.
Marie. Baron de Vries seems very fond of him, which surprised me,
rather."

"Ste. Marie!" exclaimed the old gentleman, in obvious astonishment.
"Ste. Marie de Mont Perdu?"

"Yes," she said. "Yes, that is the name, I believe. You know him, then?
I wonder he didn't mention it."

"I knew his father," said old David. "And his grandfather, for that
matter. They're Gascon, I think, or Béarnais; but this boy's mother will
have been Irish, unless his father married again.

"So you've been meeting a Ste. Marie, have you?--and finding that he has
great charm?" The old gentleman broke into one of his growling laughs,
and reached for a long black cigar, which he lighted, eying his
granddaughter the while over the flaring match. "Well," he said, when
the cigar was drawing, "they all have had charm. I should think there
has never been a Ste. Marie without it. They're a sort of embodiment of
romance, that family. This boy's great-grandfather lost his life
defending a castle against a horde of peasants in 1799; his grandfather
was killed in the French campaign in Mexico in '39--at Vera Cruz it was,
I think; and his father died in a filibustering expedition ten years
ago. I wonder what will become of the last Ste. Marie?" Old David's eyes
suddenly sharpened. "You're not going to fall in love with Ste. Marie
and marry him, are you?" he demanded.

Miss Benham gave a little angry laugh, but her grandfather saw the color
rise in her cheeks for all that.

"Certainly not," she said, with great decision, "What an absurd idea!
Because I meet a man at a dinner-party and say I like him, must I marry
him to-morrow? I meet a great many men at dinners and things, and a few
of them I like. Heavens!"

"'Methinks the lady doth protest too much,'" muttered old David into his
huge beard.

"I beg your pardon?" asked Miss Benham, politely.

But he shook his head, still growling inarticulately, and began to draw
enormous clouds of smoke from the long black cigar. After a time he took
the cigar once more from his lips and looked thoughtfully at his
granddaughter, where she sat on the edge of the vast bed, upright and
beautiful, perfect in the most meticulous detail. Most women when they
return from a long evening out look more or less the worse for
it--deadened eyes, pale cheeks, loosened coiffure tell their inevitable
tale. Miss Benham looked as if she had just come from the hands of a
very excellent maid. She looked as freshly soignée as she might have
looked at eight that evening instead of at one. Not a wave of her
perfectly undulated hair was loosened or displaced, not a fold of the
lace at her breast had departed from its perfect arrangement.

"It is odd," said old David Stewart, "your taking a fancy to young Ste.
Marie. Of course, it's natural, too, in a way, because you are complete
opposites, I should think--that is, if this lad is like the rest of his
race. What I mean is that merely attractive young men don't, as a rule,
attract you."

"Well, no," she admitted, "they don't usually. Men with brains attract
me most, I think--men who are making civilization, men who are ruling
the world, or at least doing important things for it. That's your fault,
you know. You taught me that."

The old gentleman laughed.

"Possibly," said he. "Possibly. Anyhow, that is the sort of men you
like, and they like you. You're by no means a fool, Helen; in fact,
you're a woman with brains. You could wield great influence married to
the proper sort of man."

"But not to M. Ste. Marie," she suggested, smiling across at him.

"Well, no," he said. "No, not to Ste. Marie. It would be a mistake to
marry Ste. Marie--if he is what the rest of his house have been. The
Ste. Maries live a life compounded of romance and imagination and
emotion. You're not emotional."

"No," said Miss Benham, slowly and thoughtfully. It was as if the idea
were new to her. "No, I'm not, I suppose. No. Certainly not."

"As a matter of fact," said old David, "you're by nature rather cold.
I'm not sure it isn't a good thing. Emotional people, I observe, are
usually in hot water of some sort. When you marry you're very likely to
choose with a great deal of care and some wisdom. And you're also likely
to have what is called a career. I repeat that you could wield great
influence in the proper environment."

The girl frowned across at her grandfather reflectively.

"Do you mean by that," she asked, after a little silence--"do you mean
that you think I am likely to be moved by sheer ambition and nothing
else in arranging my life? I've never thought of myself as a very
ambitious person."

"Let us substitute for ambition common-sense," said old David. "I think
you have a great deal of common-sense for a woman--and so young a woman.
How old are you by-the-way? Twenty-two? Yes, to be sure. I think you
have great common-sense and appreciation of values. And I think you're
singularly free of the emotionalism that so often plays hob with them
all. People with common-sense fall in love in the right places."

"I don't quite like the sound of it," said Miss Benham. "Perhaps I am
rather ambitious--I don't know. Yes, perhaps. I should like to play some
part in the world, I don't deny that. But--am I as cold as you say? I
doubt it very much. I doubt that."

"You're twenty-two," said her grandfather, "and you have seen a good
deal of society in several capitals. Have you ever fallen in love?"

Oddly, the face of Ste. Marie came before Miss Benham's eyes as if she
had summoned it there. But she frowned a little and shook her head,
saying:

"No, I can't say that I have. But that means nothing. There's plenty of
time for that. And you know," she said, after a pause--"you know I'm
rather sure I could fall in love--pretty hard. I'm sure of that. Perhaps
I have been waiting. Who knows?"

"Aye, who knows?" said David. He seemed all at once to lose interest in
the subject, as old people often do without apparent reason, for he
remained silent for a long time, puffing at the long black cigar or
rolling it absently between his fingers. After awhile he laid it down in
a metal dish which stood at his elbow, and folded his lean hands before
him over the invalid's table. He was still so long that at last his
granddaughter thought he had fallen asleep, and she began to rise from
her seat, taking care to make no noise; but at that the old man stirred
and put out his hand once more for the cigar. "Was young Richard Hartley
at your dinner-party?" he asked, and she said:

"Yes. Oh yes, he was there. He and M. Ste. Marie came together, I
believe. They are very close friends."

"Another idler," growled old David. "The fellow's a man of parts--and a
man of family. What's he idling about here for? Why isn't he in
Parliament, where he belongs?"

"Well," said the girl, "I should think it is because he is too much a
man of family--as you put it. You see, he'll succeed his cousin, Lord
Risdale, before very long, and then all his work would have been for
nothing, because he'll have to take his seat in the Lords. Lord Risdale
is unmarried, you know, and a hopeless invalid. He may die any day. I
think I sympathize with poor Mr. Hartley. It would be a pity to build up
a career for one's self in the lower House, and then suddenly, in the
midst of it, have to give it all up. The situation is rather paralyzing
to endeavor, isn't it?"

"Yes, I dare say," said old David, absently. He looked up sharply.
"Young Hartley doesn't come here as much as he used to do."

"No," said Miss Benham, "he doesn't." She gave a little laugh. "To avoid
cross-examination," she said, "I may as well admit that he asked me to
marry him and I had to refuse. I'm sorry, because I like him very much,
indeed."

Old David made an inarticulate sound which may have been meant to
express surprise--or almost anything else. He had not a great range of
expression.

"I don't want," said he, "to seem to have gone daft on the subject of
marriage, and I see no reason why you should be in any haste about it.
Certainly I should hate to lose you, my child, but--Hartley as the next
Lord Risdale is undoubtedly a good match. And you say you like him."

The girl looked up with a sort of defiance, and her face was a little
flushed.

"I don't love him," she said. "I like him immensely, but I don't love
him, and, after all--well, you say I'm cold, and I admit I'm more or
less ambitious, but, after all--well, I just don't quite love him. I
want to love the man I marry."

Old David Stewart held up his black cigar and gazed thoughtfully at the
smoke which streamed thin and blue and veil-like from its lighted end.

"Love!" he said, in a reflective tone. "Love!" He repeated the word two
or three times slowly, and he stirred a little in his bed. "I have
forgotten what it is," said he. "I expect I must be very old. I have
forgotten what love--that sort of love--is like. It seems very far away
to me and rather unimportant. But I remember that I thought it important
enough once, a century or two ago. Do you know, it strikes me as rather
odd that I have forgotten what love is like. It strikes me as rather
pathetic." He gave a sort of uncouth grimace and stuck the black cigar
once more into his mouth. "Egad!" said he, mumbling indistinctly over
the cigar, "how foolish love seems when you look back at it across fifty
or sixty years!"

Miss Benham rose to her feet smiling, and she came and stood near where
the old man lay propped up against his pillows. She touched his cheek
with her cool hand, and old David put up one of his own hands and patted
it.

"I'm going to bed now," said she. "I've sat here talking too long. You
ought to be asleep, and so ought I."

"Perhaps! Perhaps!" the old man said. "I don't feel sleepy, though. I
dare say I shall read a little." He held her hand in his and looked up
at her.

"I've been talking a great deal of nonsense about marriage," said he.
"Put it out of your head! It's all nonsense. I don't want you to marry
for a long time. I don't want to lose you." His face twisted a little,
quite suddenly. "You're precious near all I have left, now," he said.

The girl did not answer at once, for it seemed to her that there was
nothing to say. She knew that her grandfather was thinking of the lost
boy, and she knew what a bitter blow the thing had been to him. She
often thought that it would kill him before his old malady could run its
course.

But after a moment she said, very gently: "We won't give up hope. We'll
never give up hope. Think! he might come home to-morrow! Who knows?"

"If he has stayed away of his own accord," cried out old David Stewart,
in a loud voice, "I'll never forgive him--not if he comes to me
to-morrow on his knees! Not even if he comes to me on his knees!"

The girl bent over her grandfather, saying: "Hush! hush! You mustn't
excite yourself." But old David's gray face was working, and his eyes
gleamed from their cavernous shadows with a savage fire.

"If the boy is staying away out of spite," he repeated, "he need never
come back to me. I won't forgive him." He beat his unemployed hand upon
the table before him, and the things which lay there jumped and danced.
"And if he waits until I'm dead and then comes back," said he, "he'll
find he has made a mistake--a great mistake. He'll find a surprise in
store for him, I can tell you that. I won't tell you what I have done,
but it will be a disagreeable surprise for Master Arthur, you may be
sure."

The old gentleman fell to frowning and muttering in his choleric
fashion, but the fierce glitter began to go out of his eyes and his
hands ceased to tremble and clutch at the things before him. The girl
was silent, because again there seemed to her to be nothing that she
could say. She longed very much to plead her brother's cause, but she
was sure that would only excite her grandfather, and he was growing
quieter after his burst of anger. She bent down over him and kissed his
cheek.

"Try to go to sleep," she said. "And don't torture yourself with
thinking about all this. I'm as sure that poor Arthur is not staying
away out of spite as if he were myself. He's foolish and headstrong, but
he's not spiteful, dear. Try to believe that. And now I'm really going.
Good-night." She kissed him again and slipped out of the room. And as
she closed the door she heard her grandfather pull the bell-cord which
hung beside him and summoned the excellent Peters from the room beyond.

       *       *       *       *       *




V

JASON SETS FORTH UPON THE GREAT ADVENTURE


Miss Benham stood at one of the long drawing-room windows of the house
in the rue de l'Université, and looked out between the curtains upon the
rather grimy little garden, where a few not very prosperous cypresses
and chestnuts stood guard over the rows of lilac shrubs and the
box-bordered flower-beds and the usual moss-stained fountain. She was
thinking of the events of the past month, the month which had elapsed
since the evening of the De Saulnes' dinner-party. They were not at all
startling events; in a practical sense there were no events at all, only
a quiet sequence of affairs which was about as inevitable as the night
upon the day--the day upon the night again. In a word, this girl, who
had considered herself very strong and very much the mistress of her
feelings, found, for the first time in her life, that her strength was
as nothing at all against the potent charm and magnetism of a man who
had almost none of the qualities she chiefly admired in men. During the
month's time she had passed from a phase of angry self-scorn through a
period of bewilderment not unmixed with fear, and from that she had come
into an unknown world, a land very strange to her, where old standards
and judgments seemed to be valueless--a place seemingly ruled altogether
by new emotions, sweet and thrilling, or full of vague terrors as her
mood veered here or there.

That sublimated form of guesswork which is called "woman's intuition"
told her that Ste. Marie would come to her on this afternoon, and that
something in the nature of a crisis would have to be faced. It can be
proved even by poor masculine mathematics that guesswork, like other
gambling ventures, is bound to succeed about half the time, and it
succeeded on this occasion. Even as Miss Benham stood at the window
looking out through the curtains, M. Ste. Marie was announced from the
doorway.

She turned to meet him with a little frown of determination, for in his
absence she was often very strong, indeed, and sometimes she made up and
rehearsed little speeches of great dignity and decision in which she
told him that he was attempting a quite hopeless thing, and, as a
well-wishing friend, advised him to go away and attempt it no longer.
But as Ste. Marie came quickly across the room toward her, the little
frown wavered and at last fled from her face and another look came
there. It was always so. The man's bodily presence exerted an absolute
spell over her.

"I have been sitting with your grandfather for half an hour," Ste. Marie
said. And she said:

"Oh, I'm glad! I'm very glad! You always cheer him up. He hasn't been
too cheerful or too well of late." She unnecessarily twisted a chair
about, and after a moment sat down in it. And she gave a little laugh.
"This friendship which has grown up between my grandfather and you,"
said she--"I don't understand it at all. Of course, he knew your father
and all that; but you two seem such very different types, I shouldn't
think you would amuse each other at all. There's Mr. Hartley, for
example. I should expect my grandfather to like him very much better
than you, but he doesn't--though I fancy he approves of him much more."

She laughed again, but a different laugh; and when he heard it Ste.
Marie's eyes gleamed a little and his hands moved beside him.

"I expect," said she--"I expect, you know, that he just likes you
without stopping to think why--as everybody else does. I fancy it's just
that. What do you think?"

"Oh, I?" said the man. "I--how should I know? I know it's a great
privilege to be allowed to see him--such a man as that. And I know we
get on wonderfully well. He doesn't condescend, as most old men do who
have led important lives. We just talk as two men in a club might talk,
and I tell him stories and make him laugh. Oh yes, we get on wonderfully
well."

"Oh," said she, "I've often wondered what you talk about. What did you
talk about to-day?"

Ste. Marie turned abruptly away from her and went across to one of the
windows--the window where she had stood earlier, looking out upon the
dingy garden. She saw him stand there, with his back turned, the head a
little bent, the hands twisting together behind him, and a sudden fit of
nervous shivering wrung her. Every woman knows when a certain thing is
going to be said to her, and usually she is prepared for it, though
usually, also, she says she is not. Miss Benham knew what was coming
now, and she was frightened, not of Ste. Marie, but of herself. It meant
so very much to her--more than to most women at such a time. It meant,
if she said yes to him, the surrender of almost all the things she had
cared for and hoped for. It meant the giving up of that career which old
David Stewart had dwelt upon a month ago.

Ste. Marie turned back into the room. He came a little way toward where
the girl sat, and halted, and she could see that he was very pale. A
sort of critical second self noticed that he was pale and was surprised,
because, although men's faces often turn red, they seldom turn
noticeably pale except in very great nervous crises--or in works of
fiction; while women, on the contrary, may turn red and white twenty
times a day, and no harm done. He raised his hands a little way from his
sides in the beginning of a gesture, but they dropped again as if there
was no strength in them.

"I told him," said Ste. Marie, in a flat voice--"I told your grandfather
that I--loved you more than anything in this world or in the next. I
told him that my love for you had made another being of me--a new being.
I told him that I wanted to come to you and to kneel at your feet, and
to ask you if you could give me just a little, little hope--something to
live for, a light to climb toward. That is what we talked about, your
grandfather and I."

"Ste. Marie! Ste. Marie!" said the girl, in a half whisper. "What did my
grandfather say to you?" she asked, after a silence.

Ste. Marie looked away.

"I cannot tell you," he said. "He--was not quite sympathetic."

The girl gave a little cry.

"Tell me what he said!" she demanded. "I must know what he said."

The man's eyes pleaded with her, but she held him with her gaze, and in
the end he gave in.

"He said I was a damned fool," said Ste. Marie.

And the girl, after an instant of staring, broke into a little fit of
nervous, overwrought laughter, and covered her face with her hands.

He threw himself upon his knees before her, and her laughter died away.
An Englishman or an American cannot do that. Richard Hartley, for
example, would have looked like an idiot upon his knees, and he would
have felt it. But it did not seem extravagant with Ste. Marie. It became
him.

"Listen! Listen!" he cried to her, but the girl checked him before he
could go on.

She dropped her hands from her face, and she bent a little forward over
the man as he knelt there. She put out her hands and took his head for a
swift instant between them, looking down into his eyes. At the touch a
sudden wave of tenderness swept her--almost an engulfing wave; it almost
overwhelmed her and bore her away from the land she knew. And so when
she spoke her voice was not quite steady. She said:

"Ah, dear Ste. Marie! I cannot pretend to be cold toward you. You have
laid a spell upon me, Ste. Marie. You enchant us all, somehow, don't
you? I suppose I'm not so different from the others as I thought I was.
And yet," she said, "he was right, you know. My grandfather was right.
No, let me talk, now. I must talk for a little. I must try to tell you
how it is with me--try somehow to find a way. He was right. He meant
that you and I were utterly unsuited to each other, and so, in calm
moments, I know we are. I know that well enough. When you're not with
me, I feel very sure about it. I think of a thousand excellent reasons
why you and I ought to be no more to each other than friends. Do you
know, I think my grandfather is a little uncanny. I think he has
prophetic powers. They say very old people often have. He and I talked
about you when I came home from that dinner-party at the De Saulnes', a
month ago--the dinner-party where you and I first met. I told him that I
had met a man whom I liked very much--a man with great charm; and though
I must have said the same sort of thing to him before about other men,
he was quite oddly disturbed, and talked for a long time about it--about
the sort of man I ought to marry and the sort I ought not to marry. It
was unusual for him. He seldom says anything of that kind. Yes, he is
right. You see, I'm ambitious in a particular way. If I marry at all I
ought to marry a man who is working hard in politics or in something of
that kind. I could help him. We could do a great deal together."

"I could go into politics!" cried Ste. Marie; but she shook her head,
smiling down upon him.

"No, not you, my dear. Politics least of all. You could be a soldier, if
you chose. You could fight as your father and your grandfather and the
others of your house have done. You could lead a forlorn hope in the
field. You could suffer and starve and go on fighting. You could die
splendidly, but--politics, no! That wants a tougher shell than you have.
And a soldier's wife! Of what use to him is she?"

Ste. Marie's face was very grave. He looked up to her, smiling.

"Do you set ambition before love, my Queen?" he asked, and she did not
answer him at once.

She looked into his eyes, and she was as grave as he.

"Is love all?" she said, at last. "Is love all? Ought one to think of
nothing but love when one is settling one's life forever? I wonder? I
look about me, Ste. Marie," she said, "and in the lives of my
friends--the people who seem to me to be most worth while, the people
who are making the world's history for good or ill--and it seems to me
that in their lives love has the second place--or the third. I wonder if
one has the right to set it first. There is, of course," she said, "the
merely domestic type of woman--the woman who has no thought and no
interest beyond her home. I am not that type of woman. Perhaps I wish I
were. Certainly they are the happiest. But I was brought up among--well,
among important people--men of my grandfather's kind. All my training
has been toward that life. Have I the right, I wonder, to give it all
up?"

The man stirred at her feet, and she put out her hands to him quickly.

"Do I seem brutal?" she cried. "Oh, I don't want to be! Do I seem very
ungenerous and wrapped up in my own side of the thing? I don't mean to
be that, but--I'm not sure. I expect it's that. I'm not sure, and I
think I'm a little frightened." She gave him a brief, anxious smile that
was not without its tenderness. "I'm so sure," she said, "when I'm away
from you. But when you're here--oh, I forget all I've thought of. You
lay your spell upon me."

Ste. Marie gave a little wordless cry of joy. He caught her two hands in
his and held them against his lips. Again that great wave of tenderness
swept her, almost engulfing. But when it had ebbed she sank back once
more in her chair, and she withdrew her hands from his clasp.

"You make me forget too much," she said. "I think you make me forget
everything that I ought to remember. Oh, Ste. Marie, have I any right to
think of love and happiness while this terrible mystery is upon
us--while we don't know whether poor Arthur is alive or dead? You've
seen what it has brought my grandfather to! It is killing him. He has
been much worse in the past fortnight. And my mother is hardly a ghost
of herself in these days. Ah, it is brutal of me to think of my own
affairs--to dream of happiness at such a time." She smiled across at him
very sadly. "You see what you have brought me to!" she said.

Ste. Marie rose to his feet. If Miss Benham, absorbed in that warfare
which raged within her, had momentarily forgotten the cloud of sorrow
under which her household lay, so much the more had he, to whom the
sorrow was less intimate, forgotten it. But he was ever swift to
sympathy, Ste. Marie--as quick as a woman, and as tender. He could not
thrust his love upon the girl at such a time as this. He turned a little
away from her, and so remained for a moment. When he faced about again
the flush had gone from his cheeks and the fire from his eyes. Only
tenderness was left there.

"There has been no news at all this week?" he asked, and the girl shook
her head.

"None! None! Shall we ever have news of him, I wonder? Must we go on
always and never know? It seems to me almost incredible that any one
could disappear so completely. And yet, I dare say, many people have
done it before and have been as carefully sought for. If only I could
believe that he is alive! If only I could believe that!"

"I believe it," said Ste. Marie.

"Ah," she said, "you say that to cheer me. You have no reason to offer."

"Dead bodies very seldom disappear completely," said he. "If your
brother died anywhere there would be a record of the death. If he were
accidentally killed there would be a record of that, too; and, of
course, you are having all such records constantly searched?"

"Oh yes," she said. "Yes, of course--at least, I suppose so. My uncle
has been directing the search. Of course, he would take an obvious
precaution like that."

"Naturally," said Ste. Marie. "Your uncle, I should say, is an unusually
careful man." He paused a moment to smile. "He makes his little
mistakes, though. I told you about that man O'Hara, and about how sure
Captain Stewart was that the name was Powers. Do you know"--Ste. Marie
had been walking up and down the room, but he halted to face her--"do
you know, I have a very strong feeling that if one could find this man
O'Hara, one would learn something about what became of your brother? I
have no reason for thinking that, but I feel it."

"Oh," said the girl, doubtfully, "I hardly think that could be so. What
motive could the man have for harming my brother?"

"None," said Ste. Marie; "but he might have an excellent motive for
hiding him away--kidnapping him. Is that the word? Yes, I know, you're
going to say that no demand has been made for money, and that is where
my argument--if I can call it an argument--is weak. But the fellow may
be biding his time. Anyhow, I should like to have five minutes alone
with him. I'll tell you another thing. It's a trifle, and it may be of
no consequence, but I add it to my vague and--if you like--foolish
feeling, and make something out of it. I happened, some days ago, to
meet at the Café de Paris a man who I knew used to know this O'Hara. He
was not, I think, a friend of his at all, but an acquaintance. I asked
him what had become of O'Hara, saying that I hadn't seen him in some
weeks. Well, this man said O'Hara had gone away somewhere a couple of
months ago. He didn't seem at all surprised, for it appears the
Irishman--if he is an Irishman--is decidedly a haphazard sort of person,
here to-day, gone to-morrow. No, the man wasn't surprised, but he was
rather angry, because he said O'Hara owed him some money. I said I
thought he must be mistaken about the fellow's absence, because I'd seen
him in the street within the month--on the evening of our dinner-party,
you remember--but this man was very sure that I had made a mistake. He
said that if O'Hara had been in town he was sure to have known it. Well,
the point is here. Your brother disappears at a certain time. At the
same time this Irish adventurer disappears, too, _and_ your brother was
known to have frequented the Irishman's company. It may be only a
coincidence, but I can't help feeling that there's something in it."

Miss Benham was sitting up straight in her chair with a little alert
frown.

"Have you spoken of this to my uncle?" she demanded.

"Well--no," said Ste. Marie. "Not the latter part of it--that is, not my
having heard of O'Hara's disappearance. In the first place, I learned of
that only three days ago, and I have not seen Captain Stewart since--I
rather expected to find him here to-day; and, in the second place, I was
quite sure that he would only laugh. He has laughed at me two or three
times for suggesting that this Irishman might know something. Captain
Stewart is--not easy to convince, you know."

"I know," she said, looking away. "He's always very certain that he's
right. Well, perhaps he is right. Who knows?" She gave a little sob.
"Oh!" she cried, "shall we ever have my brother back? Shall we ever see
him again? It is breaking my heart, Ste. Marie, and it is killing my
grandfather and, I think, my mother, too! Oh, can nothing be done?"

Ste. Marie was walking up and down the floor before her, his hands
clasped behind his back. When she had finished speaking the girl saw him
halt beside one of the windows, and after a moment she saw his head go
up sharply and she heard him give a sudden cry. She thought he had seen
something from the window which had wrung that exclamation from him, and
she asked:

"What is it?"

But abruptly the man turned back into the room and came across to where
she sat. It seemed to her that his face had a new look--a very strange
exaltation which she had never before seen there. He said:

"Listen! I do not know if anything can be done that has not been done
already, but if there is anything I shall do it, you may be sure."

"_You_, Ste. Marie?" she cried, in a sharp voice. "_You?_"

"And why not I?" he demanded.

"Oh, my friend," said she, "you could do nothing! You wouldn't know
where to turn, how to set to work. Remember that a score of men who are
skilled in this kind of thing have been searching for two months. What
could you do that they haven't done?"

"I do not know, my Queen," said Ste. Marie, "but I shall do what I can.
Who knows? Sometimes the fool who rushes in where angels have feared to
tread succeeds where they have failed. Oh, let me do this!" he cried
out. "Let me do it for both our sakes--for yours and for mine! It is for
your sake most. I swear that! It is to set you at peace again, bring
back the happiness you have lost. But it is for my sake, too, a little.
It will be a test of me, a trial. If I can succeed here where so many
have failed, if I bring back your brother to you--or, at least, discover
what has become of him--I shall be able to come to you with less shame
for my--unworthiness."

He looked down upon her with eager, burning eyes, and, after a little,
the girl rose to face him. She was very white, and she stared at him
silently.

"When I came to you to-day," he went on, "I knew that I had nothing to
offer you but my faithful love and my life, which has been a life
without value. In exchange for that I asked too much. I knew it, and you
knew it, too. I know well enough what sort of man you ought to marry,
and what a brilliant career you could make for yourself in the proper
place--what great influence you could wield. But I asked you to give
that all up, and I hadn't anything to offer in its place--nothing but
love. My Queen, give me a chance now to offer you more! If I can bring
back your brother or news of him, I can come to you without shame and
ask you to marry me, because if I can succeed in that you will know that
I can succeed in other things. You will be able to trust me. You'll know
that I can climb. It shall be a sort of symbol. Let me go!"

The girl broke into a sort of sobbing laughter.

"Oh, divine madman!" she cried. "Are you all mad, you Ste. Maries, that
you must be forever leading forlorn hopes? Oh, how you are, after all, a
Ste. Marie! Now, at last, I know why one cannot but love you. You're the
knight of old. You're chivalry come down to us. You're a ghost out of
the past when men rode in armor with pure hearts seeking the Great
Adventure. Oh, my friend," she said, "be wise. Give this up in time. It
is a beautiful thought, and I love you for it, but it is madness--yes,
yes, a sweet madness, but mad, nevertheless! What possible chance would
you have of success? And think--think how failure would hurt you--and
me! You must not do it, Ste. Marie."

"Failure will never hurt me, my Queen," said he, "because there are no
hurts in the grave, and I shall never give over searching until I
succeed or until I am dead." His face was uplifted, and there was a sort
of splendid fervor upon it. It was as if it shone.

The girl stared at him dumbly. She began to realize that the knightly
spirit of those gallant, long dead gentlemen was indeed descended upon
the last of their house, that he burnt with the same pure fire which had
long ago lighted them through quest and adventure, and she was a little
afraid with an almost superstitious fear. She put out her hands upon the
man's shoulders, and she moved a little closer to him, holding him.

"Oh, madness, madness!" she said, watching his face.

"Let me do it!" said Ste. Marie.

And after a silence that seemed to endure for a long time, she sighed,
shaking her head, and said she:

"Oh, my friend, there is no strength in me to stop you. I think we are
both a little mad, and I know that you are very mad, but I cannot say
no. You seem to have come out of another century to take up this quest.
How can I prevent you? But listen to one thing. If I accept this
sacrifice, if I let you give your time and your strength to this almost
hopeless attempt, it must be understood that it is to be within certain
limits. I will not accept any indefinite thing. You may give your
efforts to trying to find trace of my brother for a month if you like,
or for three months, or six, or even a year, but not for more than that.
If he is not found in a year's time we shall know that--we shall know
that he is dead, and that--further search is useless. I cannot say how
I--Oh, Ste. Marie, Ste. Marie, this is a proof of you, indeed! And I
have called you idle. I have said hard things of you. It is very bitter
to me to think that I have said those things."

"They were true, my Queen," said he, smiling. "They were quite, quite
true. It is for me to prove now that they shall be true no longer." He
took the girl's hand in his rather ceremoniously, and bent his head and
kissed it. As he did so he was aware that she stirred, all at once,
uneasily, and when he had raised his head he looked at her in question.

"I thought some one was coming into the room," she explained, looking
beyond him. "I thought some one started to come in between the portières
yonder. It must have been a servant."

"Then it is understood," said Ste. Marie. "To bring you back your
happiness, and to prove myself in some way worthy of your love, I am to
devote myself with all my effort and all my strength to finding your
brother or some trace of him, and until I succeed I will not see your
face again, my Queen."

"Oh, that!" she cried--"that, too?"

"I will not see you," said he, "until I bring you news of him, or until
my year is passed and I have failed utterly. I know what risk I run. If
I fail, I lose you. That is understood, too. But if I succeed--"

"Then?" she said, breathing quickly. "Then?"

"Then," said he, "I shall come to you, and I shall feel no shame in
asking you to marry me, because then you will know that there is in me
some little worthiness, and that in our lives together you need not be
buried in obscurity--lost to the world."

"I cannot find any words to say," said she. "I am feeling just now very
humble and very ashamed. It seems that I haven't known you at all. Oh
yes, I am ashamed."

The girl's face, habitually so cool and composed, was flushed with a
beautiful flush, and it had softened, and it seemed to quiver between a
smile and a tear. With a swift movement she leaned close to him, holding
by his shoulder, and for an instant her cheek was against his. She
whispered to him:

"Oh, find him quickly, my dear! Find him quickly, and come back to me!"

Ste. Marie began to tremble, and she stood away from him. Once he looked
up, but the flush was gone from Miss Benham's cheeks and she was pale
again. She stood with her hands tight clasped over her breast. So he
bowed to her very low, and turned and went out of the room and out of
the house.

So quickly did he move at this last that a man who had been, for some
moments, standing just outside the portières of the doorway had barely
time to step aside into the shadows of the dim hall. As it was, Ste.
Marie, in a more normal moment, must have seen that the man was there;
but his eyes were blind, and he saw nothing. He groped for his hat and
stick as if the place were a place of gloom, and, because the footman
who should have been at the door was in regions unknown, he let himself
out, and so went away.

Then the man who stood apart in the shadows crossed the hall to a small
room which was furnished as a library, but not often used. He closed the
door behind him, and went to one of the windows which gave upon the
street. And he stood there for a long time, drawing absurd invisible
pictures upon the glass with one finger and staring thoughtfully out
into the late June afternoon.

       *       *       *       *       *




VI

A BRAVE GENTLEMAN RECEIVES A HURT, BUT VOLUNTEERS IN A GOOD CAUSE


When Ste. Marie had gone, Miss Benham sat alone in the drawing-room for
almost an hour. She had been stirred that afternoon more deeply than she
thought she had ever been stirred before, and she needed time to regain
that cool poise, that mental equilibrium, which was normal to her and
necessary for coherent thought.

She was still in a sort of fever of bewilderment and exaltation, still
all aglow with the man's own high fervor; but the second self which so
often sat apart from her, and looked on with critical, mocking eyes,
whispered that to-morrow, the fever past, the fervor cooled, she must
see the thing in its true light--a glorious lunacy born of a moment of
enthusiasm. It was finely romantic of him, this mocking second self
whispered to her--picturesque beyond criticism--but, setting aside the
practical folly of it, could even the mood last?

The girl rose to her feet with an angry exclamation. She found herself
intolerable at such times as this.

"If there's a heaven," she cried out, "and by chance I ever go there, I
suppose I shall walk sneering through the streets and saying to myself:
'Oh yes, it's pretty enough, but how absurd and unpractical!'"

She passed before one of the small, narrow mirrors which were let into
the walls of the room in gilt Louis Seize frames with candles beside
them, and she turned and stared at her very beautiful reflection with a
resentful wonder.

"Shall I always drag along so far behind him?" she said. "Shall I never
rise to him, save in the moods of an hour?"

She began suddenly to realize what the man's going away meant--that she
might not see him again for weeks, months, even a year. For was it at
all likely that he could succeed in what he had undertaken?

"Why did I let him go?" she cried. "Oh, fool, fool, to let him go!" But
even as she said it she knew that she could not have held him back.

She began to be afraid, not for him, but of herself. He had taught her
what it might be to love. For the first time love's premonitory
thrill--promise of unspeakable, uncomprehended mysteries--had wrung her,
and the echo of that thrill stirred in her yet; but what might not
happen in his long absence? She was afraid of that critical and
analyzing power of mind which she had so long trained to attack all that
came to her. What might it not work with the new thing that had come? To
what pitiful shreds might it not be rent while he who only could renew
it was away? She looked ahead at the weeks and months to come, and she
was terribly afraid.

She went out of the room and up to her grandfather's chamber and knocked
there. The admirable Peters, who opened to her, said that his master had
not been very well, and was just then asleep, but as they spoke together
in low tones the old gentleman cried, testily, from within:

"Well? Well? Who's there? Who wants to see me? Who is it?"

Miss Benham went into the dim, shaded room, and when old David saw who
it was he sank back upon his pillows with a pacified growl. He certainly
looked ill, and he had grown thinner and whiter within the past month,
and the lines in his waxlike face seemed to be deeper scored.

The girl went up beside the bed and stood there a moment, after she had
bent over and kissed her grandfather's cheek, stroking with her hand the
absurdly gorgeous mandarin's jacket--an imperial yellow one this time.

"Isn't this new?" she asked. "I seem never to have seen this one before.
It's quite wonderful."

The old gentleman looked down at it with the pride of a little girl over
her first party frock. He came as near simpering as a fierce person of
eighty-six, with a square white beard, can come.

"Rather good--what? What?" said he. "Yes, it's new. De Vries sent it me.
It is my best one. Imperial yellow. Did you notice the little Show
medallions with the swastika? Young Ste. Marie was here this afternoon."
He introduced the name with no pause or change of expression, as if Ste.
Marie were a part of the decoration of the mandarin's jacket. "I told
him he was a damned fool."

"Yes," said Miss Benham, "I know. He said you did. I suppose," she said,
"that in a sort of very informal fashion I am engaged to him. Well, no,
perhaps not quite that; but he seems to consider himself engaged to me,
and when he has finished something very important that he has undertaken
to do he is coming to ask me definitely to marry him. No, I suppose we
aren't engaged yet; at least, I'm not. But it's almost the same, because
I suppose I shall accept him whether he fails or succeeds in what he is
doing."

"If he fails in it, whatever it may be," said old David, "he won't give
you a chance to accept him; he won't come back. I know him well enough
for that. He's a romantic fool, but he's a thoroughgoing fool. He plays
the game." The old man looked up to his granddaughter, scowling a
little. "You two are absurdly unsuited to each other," said he, "and I
told Ste. Marie so. I suppose you think you're in love with him."

"Yes," said the girl, "I suppose I do."

"Idleness and all? You were rather severe on idleness at one time."

"He isn't idle any more," said she. "He has undertaken--of his own
accord--to find Arthur. He has some theory about it; and he is not going
to see me again until he has succeeded--or until a year is past. If he
fails, I fancy he won't come back."

Old David gave a sudden hoarse exclamation, and his withered hands shook
and stirred before him. Afterward he fell to half-inarticulate
muttering.

"The young romantic fool!--Don Quixote--like all the rest of them--those
Ste. Maries. The fool and the angels. The angels and the fool."

The girl distinguished words from time to time. For the most part, he
mumbled under his breath. But when he had been silent a long time, he
said, suddenly:

"It would be ridiculously like him to succeed."

The girl gave a little sigh.

"I wish I dared hope for it," said she. "I wish I dared hope for it."

She had left a book that she wanted in the drawing-room, and, when
presently her grandfather fell asleep in his fitful manner, she went
down after it. In crossing the hall she came upon Captain Stewart, who
was dressed for the street and had his hat and stick in his hands. He
did not live in his father's house, for he had a little flat in the rue
du Faubourg St. Honoré, but he was in and out a good deal. He paused
when he saw his niece, and smiled upon her a benignant smile which she
rather disliked, because she disliked benignant people. The two really
saw very little of each other, though Captain Stewart often sat for
hours together with his sister, up in a little boudoir which she had
furnished in the execrable taste which to her meant comfort, while that
timid and colorless lady embroidered strange tea cloths with stranger
flora, and prattled about the heathen, in whom she had an academic
interest.

He said: "Ah, my dear! It's you?"

Indisputably it was, and there seemed to be no use of denying it, so
Miss Benham said nothing, but waited for the man to go on if he had more
to say.

"I dropped in," he continued, "to see my father, but they told me he was
asleep, and so I didn't disturb him. I talked a little while with your
mother instead."

"I have just come from him," said Miss Benham. "He dozed off again as I
left. Still, if you had anything in particular to tell him, he'd be glad
to be wakened, I fancy. There's no news?"

"No," said Captain Stewart, sadly--"no, nothing. I do not give up hope,
but I am, I confess, a little discouraged."

"We are all that, I should think," said Miss Benham, briefly.

She gave him a little nod and turned away into the drawing-room. Her
uncle's peculiar dry manner irritated her at times beyond bearing, and
she felt that this was one of the times. She had never had any reason
for doubting that he Was a good and kindly soul, but she disliked him
because he bored her. Her mother bored her, too--the poor woman bored
everybody--but the sense of filial obligation was strong enough in the
girl to prevent her from acknowledging this even to herself. In regard
to her uncle she had no sense of obligation whatever, except to be as
civil to him as possible, and so she kept out of his way. She heard the
heavy front door close, and gave a little sigh of relief.

"If he had come in here and tried to talk to me," she said, "I should
have screamed."

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile Ste. Marie, a man moving in a dream, uplifted,
cloud-enwrapped, made his way homeward. He walked all the long
distance--that is, looking backward upon it, later, he thought he must
have walked, but the half-hour was a blank to him, an indeterminate, a
chaotic whirl of things and emotions.

In the little flat in the rue d'Assas he came upon Richard Hartley, who,
having found the door unlocked and the master of the place absent, had
sat comfortably down, with a pipe and a stack of _Couriers Français_, to
wait. Ste. Marie burst into the doorway of the room where his friend sat
at ease. Hat, gloves, and stick fell away from him in a sort of shower.
He extended his arms high in the air. His face was, as it were,
luminous. The Englishman regarded him morosely. He said:

"You look as if somebody had died and left you money. What the devil you
looking like that for?"

"Hé!" cried Ste. Marie, in a great voice. "Hé, the world is mine!
Embrace me, my infant! Sacred name of a pig, why do you sit there?
Embrace me!"

He began to stride about the room, his head between his hands. Speech
lofty and ridiculous burst from him in a sort of splutter of fireworks,
but the Englishman sat still in his chair, and a gray, bleak look came
upon him, for he began to understand. He was more or less used to these
outbursts, and he bore them as patiently as he could, but though seven
times out of the ten they were no more than spasms of pure joy of
living, and meant, "It's a fine spring day," or "I've just seen two
beautiful princesses of milliners in the street," an inner voice told
him that this time it meant another thing. Quite suddenly he realized
that he had been waiting for this--bracing himself against its
onslaught. He had not been altogether blind through the past month. Ste.
Marie seized him and dragged him from his chair.

"Dance, lump of flesh! Dance, sacred English rosbif that you are! Sing,
gros polisson! Sing!" Abruptly, as usual, the mania departed from him,
but not the glory; his eyes shone bright and triumphant. "Ah, my old,"
said he, "I am near the stars at last. My feet are on the top rungs of
the ladder. Tell me that you are glad!"

The Englishman drew a long breath.

"I take it," said he, "that means that you're--that she has accepted
you, eh?" He held out his hand. He was a brave and honest man. Even in
pain he was incapable of jealousy. He said: "I ought to want to murder
you, but I don't. I congratulate you. You're an undeserving beggar, but
so were the rest of us. It was an open field, and you've won quite
honestly. My best wishes!"

Then at last Ste. Marie understood, and in a flash the glory went out of
his face. He cried: "Ah, mon cher ami! Pig that I am to forget. Pig!
Pig! Animal!"

The other man saw that tears had sprung to his eyes, and was horribly
embarrassed to the very bottom of his good British soul.

"Yes! Yes!" he said, gruffly. "Quite so, quite so! No consequence!" He
dragged his hands away from Ste. Marie's grasp, stuck them in his
pockets, and turned to the window beside which he had been sitting. It
looked out over the sweet green peace of the Luxembourg Gardens, with
their winding paths and their clumps of trees and shrubbery, their
flaming flower-beds, their groups of weather-stained sculpture. A youth
in laborer's corduroys and an unclean beret strolled along under the
high palings; one arm was about the ample waist of a woman somewhat the
youth's senior, but, as ever, love was blind. The youth carolled in a
high, clear voice, "Vous êtes si jolie," a song of abundant sentiment,
and the woman put up one hand and patted his cheek. So they strolled on
and turned up into the rue Vavin.

Ste. Marie, across the room, looked at his friend's square back, and
knew that in his silent way the man was suffering. A great sadness, the
recoil from his trembling heights of bliss, came upon him and enveloped
him. Was it true that one man's joy must inevitably be another's pain?
He tried to imagine himself in Hartley's place, Hartley in his, and he
gave a little shiver. He knew that if that bouleversement were actually
to take place he would be as glad for his friend's sake as poor Hartley
was now for his, but he knew also that the smile of congratulation would
be a grimace of almost intolerable pain, and so he knew what Hartley's
black hour must be like.

"You must forgive me," he said. "I had forgotten. I don't know why.
Well, yes, happiness is a very selfish state of mind, I suppose. One
thinks of nothing but one's self--and one other. I--during this past
month I've been in the clouds. You must forgive me."

The Englishman turned back into the room. Ste. Marie saw that his face
was as completely devoid of expression as it usually was, that his
hands, when he chose and lighted a cigarette, were quite steady, and he
marvelled. That would have been impossible for him under such
circumstances.

"She has accepted you, I take it?" said Hartley again.

"Not quite that," said he. "Sit down and I'll tell you about it." So he
told him about his hour with Miss Benham, and about what had been agreed
upon between them, and about what he had undertaken to do. "Apart from
wishing to do everything in this world that I can do to make her happy,"
he said--"and she will never be at peace again until she knows the truth
about her brother--apart from that, I'm purely selfish in the thing.
I've got to win her respect, as well as--the rest. I want her to respect
me, and she has never quite done that. I'm an idler. So are you, but you
have a perfectly good excuse. I have not. I've been an idler because it
suited me, because nothing turned up, and because I have enough to eat
without working for my living. I know how she has felt about all that.
Well, she shall feel it no longer."

"You're taking on a big order," said the other man.

"The bigger the better," said Ste. Marie. "And I shall succeed in it or
never see her again. I've sworn that."

The odd look of exaltation that Miss Benham had seen in his face, the
look of knightly fervor, came there again, and Hartley saw it, and knew
that the man was stirred by no transient whim. Oddly enough he thought,
as had the girl earlier in the day, of those elder Ste. Maries, who had
taken sword and lance and gone out into a strange world--a place of
unknown terrors--afire for the Great Adventure. And this was one of
their blood.

"I'm afraid you don't realize," he went on, "the difficulties you've got
to face. Better men than you have failed over this thing, you know."

"A worse might nevertheless succeed," said Ste. Marie. And the other
said:

"Yes. Oh yes. And there's always luck to be considered, of course. You
might stumble on some trace." He threw away his cigarette and lighted
another, and he smoked it down almost to the end before he spoke. At
last he said: "I want to tell you something. The reason why I want to
tell it comes a little later. A few weeks before you returned to Paris I
asked Miss Benham to marry me."

Ste. Marie looked up with a quick sympathy. "Ah," said he. "I have
sometimes thought--wondered. I have wondered if it went as far as that.
Of course, I could see that you had known her well, though you seldom go
there nowadays."

"Yes," said Hartley, "it went as far as that, but no farther. She--well,
she didn't care for me--not in that way. So I stiffened my back and shut
my mouth, and got used to the fact that what I'd hoped for was
impossible. And now comes the reason for telling you what I've told. I
want you to let me help you in what you're going to do--if you think you
can, that is. Remember, I--cared for her, too. I'd like to do something
for her. It would never have occurred to me to do this until you thought
of it, but I should like very much to lend a hand--do some of the work.
D'you think you could let me in?"

Ste. Marie stared at him in open astonishment, and, for an instant,
something like dismay.

"Yes, yes! I know what you're thinking," said the Englishman. "You'd
hoped to do it all yourself. It's _your_ game. I know. Well, it's your
game even if you let me come in. I'm just a helper. Some one to run
errands. Some one, perhaps, to take counsel with now and then. Look at
it on the practical side. Two heads are certainly better than one.
Certainly I could be of use to you. And besides--well, I want to do
something for her. I--cared, too, you see. D'you think you could take me
in?"

It was the man's love that made his appeal irresistible. No one could
appeal to Ste. Marie on that score in vain. It was true that he had
hoped to work alone--to win or lose alone; to stand, in this matter,
quite on his own feet; but he could not deny the man who had loved her
and lost her. Ste. Marie thrust out his hand.

"You love her, too!" he said. "That is enough. We work together. I have
a possibly foolish idea that if we can find a certain man we will learn
something about Arthur Benham. I'll tell you about it."

But before he could begin the door-bell jangled.

       *       *       *       *       *




VII

CAPTAIN STEWART MAKES A KINDLY OFFER


Ste. Marie scowled.

"A caller would come singularly malapropos just now," said he. "I've
half a mind not to go to the door. I want to talk this thing over with
you."

"Whoever it is," objected Hartley, "has been told by the concierge that
you're at home. It may not be a caller, anyhow. It may be a parcel or
something. You'd best go."

So Ste. Marie went out into the little passage, blaspheming fluently the
while. The Englishman heard him open the outer door of the flat. He
heard him exclaim, in great surprise:

"Ah, Captain Stewart! A great pleasure! Come in! Come in!"

And he permitted himself a little blaspheming on his own account, for
the visitor, as Ste. Marie had said, came most malapropos, and, besides,
he disliked Miss Benham's uncle. He heard the American say:

"I have been hoping for some weeks to give myself the pleasure of
calling here, and to-day such an excellent pretext presented itself that
I came straightaway."

Hartley heard him emit his mewing little laugh, and heard him say, with
the elephantine archness affected by certain dry and middle-aged
gentlemen:

"I come with congratulations. My niece has told me all about it. Lucky
young man! Ah--"

He reached the door of the inner room and saw Richard Hartley standing
by the window, and he began to apologize profusely, saying that he had
had no idea that Ste. Marie was not alone. But Ste. Marie said:

"It doesn't in the least matter. I have no secrets from Hartley. Indeed,
I have just been talking with him about this very thing."

But for all that he looked curiously at the elder man, and it struck him
as very odd that Miss Benham should have gone straight to her uncle and
told him all this. It did not seem in the least like her, especially as
he knew the two were on no terms of intimacy. He decided that she must
have gone up to her grandfather's room to discuss it with that old
gentleman--a reasonable enough hypothesis--and that Captain Stewart must
have come in during the discussion. Quite evidently he had wasted no
time in setting out upon his errand of congratulation.

"Then," said Captain Stewart, "if I am to be good-naturedly forgiven for
my stupidity, let me go on and say, in my capacity as a member of the
family, that the news pleased me very much. I was glad to hear it."

He shook Ste. Marie's hand, looking very benignant indeed, and Ste.
Marie was quite overcome with pleasure and gratitude; it seemed to him
such a very kindly act in the elder man. He produced things to smoke and
drink, and Captain Stewart accepted a cigarette and mixed himself a
rather stiff glass of absinthe--it was between five and six o'clock.

"And now," said he, when he was at ease in the most comfortable of the
low cane chairs, and the glass of opalescent liquor was properly curdled
and set at hand--"now, having congratulated you and--ah, welcomed you,
if I may put it so, as a probable future member of the family--I turn to
the other feature of the affair."

He had an odd trick of lowering his head and gazing benevolently upon an
auditor as if over the top of spectacles. It was one of his elderly
ways. He beamed now upon Ste. Marie in this manner, and, after a moment,
turned and beamed upon Richard Hartley, who gazed stolidly back at him
without expression.

"You have determined, I hear," said he, "to join us in our search for
poor Arthur. Good! Good! I welcome you there, also."

Ste. Marie stirred uneasily in his chair.

"Well," said he, "in a sense, yes. That is, I've determined to devote
myself to the search, and Hartley is good enough to offer to go in with
me; but I think, if you don't mind--of course, I know it's very
presumptuous and doubtless idiotic of us--but, if you don't mind, I
think we'll work independently. You see--well, I can't quite put it into
words, but it's our idea to succeed or fail quite by our own efforts. I
dare say we shall fail, but it won't be for lack of trying."

Captain Stewart looked disappointed.

"Oh, I think--" said he. "Pardon me for saying it, but I think you're
rather foolish to do that." He waved an apologetic hand. "Of course, I
comprehend your excellent motive. Yes, as you say, you want to succeed
quite on your own. But look at the practical side! You'll have to go
over all the weary weeks of useless labor we have gone over. We could
save you that. We have examined and followed up, and at last given over,
a hundred clews that on the surface looked quite possible of success.
You'll be doing that all over again. In short, my dear friend, you will
merely be following along a couple of months behind us. It seems to me a
pity. I sha'n't like to see you wasting your time and efforts."

He dropped his eyes to the glass of Pernod which stood beside him, and
he took it in his hand and turned it slowly and watched the light gleam
in strange pearl colors upon it. He glanced up again with a little smile
which the two younger men found oddly pathetic.

"I should like to see you succeed," said Captain Stewart. "I like to see
youth and courage and high hope succeed." He said: "I am past the age of
romance, though I am not so very old in years. Romance has passed me by,
but--I love it still. It still stirs me surprisingly when I see it in
other people--young people who are simple and earnest, and who--and who
are in love." He laughed gently, still turning the glass in his hand. "I
am afraid you will call me a sentimentalist," he said, "and an elderly
sentimentalist is, as a rule, a ridiculous person. Ridiculous or not,
though, I have rather set my heart on your success in this undertaking.
Who knows? You may succeed where we others have failed. Youth has such a
way of charging in and carrying all before it by assault--such a way of
overleaping barriers that look unsurmountable to older eyes! Youth!
Youth! Eh, my God," said he, "to be young again, just for a little
while! To feel the blood beat strong and eager! Never to be tired! Eh,
to be like one of you youngsters! You, Ste. Marie, or you, Hartley!
There's so little left for people when youth is gone!"

He bent his head again, staring down upon the glass before him, and for
a while there was a silence which neither of the younger men cared to
break.

"Don't refuse a helping hand," said Captain Stewart, looking up once
more. "Don't be over-proud. I may be able to set you upon the right
path. Not that I have anything definite to work upon--I haven't, alas!
But each day new clews turn up. One day we shall find the real one, and
that may be one that I have turned over to you to follow out. One never
knows."

Ste. Marie looked across at Richard Hartley, but that gentleman was
blowing smoke-rings and to all outward appearance giving them his entire
attention. He looked back to Captain Stewart, and Stewart's eyes
regarded him, smiling a little wistfully, he thought. Ste. Marie scowled
out of the window at the trees of the Luxembourg Gardens.

"I hardly know," said he. "Of course, I sound a braying ass in
hesitating even a moment; but, in a way, you understand, I'm so anxious
to do this or to fail in it quite on my own. You're--so tremendously
kind about it that I don't know what to say. I must seem very
ungrateful, I know; but I'm not."

"No," said the elder man, "you don't seem ungrateful at all. I
understand exactly how you feel about it, and I applaud your
feeling--but not your judgment. I am afraid that for the sake of a
sentiment you're taking unnecessary risks of failure."

For the first time Richard Hartley spoke.

"I've an idea, you know," said he, "that it's going to be a matter
chiefly of luck. One day somebody will stumble on the right trail, and
that might as well be Ste. Marie or I as your trained detectives. If you
don't mind my saying so, sir--I don't want to seem rude--your trained
detectives do not seem to accomplish much in two months, do they?"

Captain Stewart looked thoughtfully at the younger man.

"No," he said, at last. "I am sorry to say they don't seem to have
accomplished much--except to prove that there are a great many places
poor Arthur has _not_ been to and a great many people who have _not_
seen him. After all, that is something--the elimination of ground that
need not be worked over again." He set down the glass from which he had
been drinking. "I cannot agree with your theory," he said. "I cannot
agree that such work as this is best left to an accidental solution.
Accidents are too rare. We have tried to go at it in as scientific a way
as could be managed--by covering large areas of territory, by keeping
the police everywhere on the alert, by watching the boy's old friends
and searching his favorite haunts. Personally, I am inclined to think
that he managed to slip away to America very early in the course of
events, before we began to search for him, and, of course, I am having a
careful watch kept there as well as here. But no trace has appeared as
yet--nothing at all trustworthy. Meanwhile, I continue to hope and to
work, but I grow a little discouraged. In any case, though, we shall
hear of him in three months more if he is alive."

"Why three months?" asked Ste. Marie. "What do you mean by that?"

"In three months," said Captain Stewart, "Arthur will be of age, and he
can demand the money left him by his father. If he is alive he will turn
up for that. I have thought, from the first, that he is merely hiding
somewhere until this time should be past. He--you must know that he went
away very angry, after a quarrel with his grandfather? My father is not
a patient man. He may have been very harsh with the boy."

"Ah, yes," said Hartley; "but no boy, however young or angry, would be
foolish enough to risk an absolute break with the man who is going to
leave him a large fortune. Young Benham must know that his grandfather
would never forgive him for staying away all this time if he stayed away
of his own accord. He must know that he'd be taking tremendous risks of
being cut off altogether."

"And besides," added Ste. Marie, "it is quite possible that your father,
sir, may die at any time--any hour. And he's very angry at his grandson.
He may have cut him off already."

Captain Stewart's eyes sharpened suddenly, but he dropped them to the
glass in his hand.

"Have you any reason for thinking that?" he asked.

"No," said Ste. Marie. "I beg your pardon. I shouldn't have said it.
That is a matter which concerns your family alone. I forgot myself. The
possibility occurred to me suddenly for the first time."

But the elder man looked up at him with a smile.

"Pray don't apologize," said he. "Surely we three can speak frankly
together! And, frankly, I know nothing of my father's will. But I don't
think he would cut poor Arthur off, though he is, of course, very angry
about the boy's leaving in the manner he did. No, I am sure he wouldn't
cut him off. He was fond of the lad, very fond--as we all were."

Captain Stewart glanced at his watch and rose with a little sigh.

"I must be off," said he. "I have to dine out this evening, and I must
get home to change. There is a cabstand near you?" He looked out of the
window. "Ah, yes! Just at the corner of the Gardens."

He turned about to Ste. Marie, and held out his hand with a smile. He
said:

"You refuse to join forces with us, then? Well, I'm sorry. But, for all
that, I wish you luck. Go your own way, and I hope you'll succeed. I
honestly hope that, even though your success may show me up for an
incompetent bungler."

He gave a little kindly laugh, and Ste. Marie tried to protest.

"Still," said the elder man, "don't throw me over altogether. If I can
help you in any way, little or big, let me know. If I can give you any
hints, any advice, anything at all, I want to do it. And if you happen
upon what seems to be a promising clew come and talk it over with me.
Oh, don't be afraid! I'll leave it to you to work out. I sha'n't spoil
your game."

"Ah, now, that's very good of you," said Ste. Marie. "Only you make me
seem more than ever an ungrateful fool. Thanks, I will come to you with
my troubles if I may. I have a foolish idea that I want to follow out a
little first, but doubtless I shall be running to you soon for
information."

The elder man's eyes sharpened again with keen interest.

"An idea!" he said, quickly. "You have an idea? What--May I ask what
sort of an idea?"

"Oh, it's nothing," declared Ste. Marie. "You have already laughed at
it. I just want to find that man O'Hara, that's all. I've a feeling that
I should learn something from him."

"Ah!" said Captain Stewart, slowly. "Yes, the man O'Hara. There's
nothing in that, I'm afraid. I've made inquiries about O'Hara. It seems
he left Paris six months ago, saying he was off for America. An old
friend of his told me that. So you must have been mistaken when you
thought you saw him in the Champs-Elysées; and he couldn't very well
have had anything to do with poor Arthur. I'm afraid that idea is hardly
worth following up."

"Perhaps not," said Ste. Marie. "I seem to start badly, don't I? Ah,
well, I'll have to come to you all the sooner, then."

"You'll be welcome," promised Captain Stewart. "Good-bye to you!
Good-day, Hartley. Come and see me, both of you. You know where I live."

He took his leave then, and Hartley, standing beside the window, watched
him turn down the street, and at the corner get into one of the fiacres
there and drive away.

Ste. Marie laughed aloud.

"There's the second time," said he, "that I've had him about O'Hara. If
he is as careless as that about everything, I don't wonder he hasn't
found Arthur Benham. O'Hara disappeared from Paris--publicly, that
is--at about the time young Benham disappeared. As a matter of fact, he
remains, or at least for a time remained, in the city without letting
his friends know, because I made no mistake about seeing him in the
Champs-Elysées. All that looks to me suspicious enough to be worth
investigation. Of course," he admitted, doubtfully--"of course, I'm no
detective; but that's how it looks to me."

"I don't believe Stewart is any detective, either," said Richard
Hartley. "He's altogether too cocksure. That sort of man would rather
die than admit he is wrong about anything. He's a good old chap, though,
isn't he? I liked him to-day better than ever before. I thought he was
rather pathetic when he went on about his age."

"He has a good heart," said Ste. Marie. "Very few men under the
circumstances would come here and be as decent as he was. Most men would
have thought I was a presumptuous ass, and would have behaved
accordingly."

Ste. Marie took a turn about the room, and his face began to light up
with its new excitement and exaltation.

"And to-morrow!" he cried--"to-morrow we begin! To-morrow we set out
into the world and the Adventure is on foot! God send it success!"

He laughed across at the other man; but it was a laugh of eagerness, not
of mirth.

"I feel," said he, "like Jason. I feel as if we were to set sail
to-morrow for Colchis and the Golden Fleece."

"Y-e-s," said the other man, a little dryly--"yes, perhaps. I don't want
to seem critical, but isn't your figure somewhat ill chosen?"

"'Ill chosen'?" cried Ste. Marie. "What d'you mean? Why ill chosen?"

"I was thinking of Medea," said Richard Hartley.

       *       *       *       *       *



VIII

JASON MEETS WITH A MISADVENTURE AND DREAMS A DREAM


So on the next day these two rode forth upon their quest, and no quest
was ever undertaken with a stouter courage or with a grimmer
determination to succeed. To put it fancifully, they burned their tower
behind them, for to one of them, at least--to him who led--there was no
going back.

But, after all, they set forth under a cloud, and Ste. Marie took a
heavy heart with him. On the evening before an odd and painful incident
had befallen--a singularly unfortunate incident.

It chanced that neither of the two men had a dinner engagement that
evening, and so, after their old habit, they dined together. There was
some wrangling over where they should go, Hartley insisting upon
Armenonville or the Madrid, in the Bois, Ste. Marie objecting that these
would be full of tourists so late in June, and urging the claims of some
quiet place in the Quarter, where they could talk instead of listening
perforce to loud music. In the end, for no particular reason, they
compromised on the little Spanish restaurant in the rue Helder. They
went there about eight o'clock, without dressing, for it is a very quiet
place which the world does not visit, and they had a sopa de yerbas, and
some langostinos, which are shrimps, and a heavenly arroz, with fowl in
it, and many tender, succulent strips of red pepper. They had a salad
made out of a little of everything that grows green, with the true
Spanish oil, which has a tang and a bouquet unappreciated by the
Philistine; and then they had a strange pastry and some cheese and green
almonds. And to make then glad, they drank a bottle of old red
Valdepenas, and afterward a glass each of a special Manzanilla, upon
which the restaurant very justly prides itself.

It was a simple dinner and a little stodgy for that time of the year,
but the two men were hungry and sat at table, almost alone in the upper
room, for a long time, saying how good everything was, and from time to
time despatching the saturnine waiter, a Madrileno, for more peppers.
When at last they came out into the narrow street, and thence to the
thronged Boulevard des Italiens, it was nearly eleven o'clock. They
stood for a little time in the shelter of a kiosk, looking down the
boulevard to where the Place de l'Opéra opened wide and the lights of
the Café de la Paix shone garish in the night. And Ste. Marie said:

"There's a street fête in Montmartre. We might drive home that way."

"An excellent idea," said the other man. "The fact that Montmartre lies
in an opposite direction from home makes the plan all the better. And
after that we might drive home through the Bois. That's much farther in
the wrong direction. Lead on!"

So they sprang into a waiting fiacre, and were dragged up the steep,
stone-paved hill to the heights, where La Bohême still reigns, though
the glory of Moulin Rouge has departed and the trail of the tourist is
over all. They found Montmartre very much en fête. In the Place Blanche
were two of the enormous and brilliantly lighted merry-go-rounds, which
only Paris knows--one furnished with stolid cattle, theatrical-looking
horses, and Russian sleighs; the other with the ever-popular galloping
pigs. When these dreadful machines were in rotation, mechanical organs,
concealed somewhere in their bowels, emitted hideous brays and shrieks
which mingled with the shrieks of the ladies mounted upon the galloping
pigs, and together insulted a peaceful sky.

The square was filled with that extremely heterogeneous throng which the
Parisian street fête gathers together, but it was, for the most part, a
well-dressed throng, largely recruited from the boulevards, and it was
quite determined to have a very good time in the cheerful, harmless
Latin fashion. The two men got down from their fiacre and elbowed a way
through the good-natured crowd to a place near the more popular of the
merry-go-rounds. The machine was in rotation. Its garish lights shone
and glittered, its hidden mechanical organ blared a German waltz tune,
the huge, pink-varnished pigs galloped gravely up and down as the
platform upon which they were mounted whirled round and round. A little
group of American trippers, sight-seeing with a guide, stood near by,
and one of the group, a pretty girl with red hair, demanded plaintively
of the friend upon whose arm she hung: "Do you think momma would be
shocked if we took a ride? Wouldn't I love to!"

Hartley turned, laughing, from this distressed maiden to Ste. Marie. He
was wondering, with mild amusement, why anybody should wish to do such a
foolish thing; but Ste. Marie's eyes were fixed upon the galloping pigs,
and the eyes shone with a wistful excitement. To tell the truth, it was
impossible for him to look on at any form of active amusement without
thirsting to join it. A joyous and carefree lady in a blue hat, who was
mounted astride upon one of the pigs, hurled a paper serpentine at him
and shrieked with delight when it knocked his hat off.

"That's the second time she has hit me with one of those things," he
said, groping about his feet for the hat. "Here, stop that boy with the
basket!"

A vendor of the little rolls of paper ribbon was shouting his wares
through the crowd. Ste. Marie filled his pockets with the things, and
when the lady with the blue hat came round, on the next turn, lassoed
her neatly about the neck and held the end of the ribbon till it broke.
Then he caught a fat gentleman, who was holding himself on by his
steed's neck, in the ear, and the red-haired American girl laughed
aloud.

"When the thing stops," said Ste. Marie, "I'm going to take a ride--just
one ride. I haven't ridden a pig for many years."

Hartley jeered at him, calling him an infant, but Ste. Marie bought more
serpentines, and when the platform came to a stop clambered up to it and
mounted the only unoccupied pig he could find. His friend still scoffed
at him and called him names, but Ste. Marie tucked his long legs round
the pig's neck and smiled back, and presently the machine began again to
revolve.

At the end of the first revolution Hartley gave a shout of delight, for
he saw that the lady with the blue hat had left her mount and was making
her way along the platform toward where Ste. Marie sat hurling
serpentines in the face of the world. By the next time round she had
come to where he was, mounted astride behind him, and was holding
herself with one very shapely arm round his neck, while with the other
she rifled his pockets for ammunition. Ste. Marie grinned, and the
public, loud in its acclaims, began to pelt the two with serpentines
until they were hung with many-colored ribbons like a Christmas-tree.
Even Richard Hartley was so far moved out of the self-consciousness with
which his race is cursed as to buy a handful of the common missiles, and
the lady in the blue hat returned his attention with skill and despatch.

But as the machine began to slacken its pace, and the hideous wail and
blare of the concealed organ died mercifully down, Hartley saw that his
friend's manner had all at once altered, that he sat leaning forward
away from the enthusiastic lady with the blue hat, and that the paper
serpentines had dropped from his hands. Hartley thought that the rapid
motion must have made him a little giddy, but presently, before the
merry-go-round had quite stopped, he saw the man leap down and hurry
toward him through the crowd. Ste. Marie's face was grave and pale. He
caught Hartley's arm in his hand and turned him round, crying, in a low
voice:

"Come out of this as quickly as you can! No, in the other direction. I
want to get away at once!"

"What's the matter?" Hartley demanded. "Lady in the blue hat too
friendly? Well, if you're going to play this kind of game you might as
well play it."

"Helen Benham was down there in the crowd," said Ste. Marie. "On the
opposite side from you. She was with a party of people who got out of
two motor-cars to look on. They were in evening things, so they had come
from dinner somewhere, I suppose. She saw me."

"The devil!" said Hartley, under his breath. Then he gave a shout of
laughter, demanding: "Well, what of it? You weren't committing any
crime, were you? There's no harm in riding a silly pig in a silly
merry-go-round. Everybody does it in these fête things." But even as he
spoke he knew how extremely unfortunate the meeting was, and the
laughter went out of his voice.

"I'm afraid," said Ste. Marie, "she won't see the humor of it. Good God,
what a thing to happen! _You_ know well enough what she'll think of me.
At five o'clock this afternoon," he said, bitterly, "I left her with a
great many fine, high-sounding words about the quest I was to give my
days and nights to--for her sake. I went away from her like a--knight
going into battle--consecrated. I tell you, there were tears in her eyes
when I went. And _now_--now, at midnight--she sees me riding a galloping
pig in a street fête with a girl from the boulevards sitting on the pig
with me and holding me round the neck before a thousand people. What
will she think of me? What but one thing can she possibly think? Oh, I
know well enough! I saw her face before she turned away. And," he cried,
"I can't even go to her and explain--if there's anything to explain, and
I suppose there is not. I can't even go to her. I've sworn not to see
her."

"Oh, I'll do that," said the other man. "I'll explain it to her, if any
explanation's necessary. I think you'll find that she will laugh at it."

But Ste. Marie shook his head.

"No, she won't," said he.

And Hartley could say no more; for he knew Miss Benham, and he was very
much afraid that she would not laugh.

They found a fiacre at the side of the square and drove home at once.
They were almost entirely silent all the long way, for Ste. Marie was
buried in gloom, and the Englishman, after trying once or twice to cheer
him up, realized that he was best left to himself just then, and so held
his tongue. But in the rue d'Assas, as Ste. Marie was getting
down--Hartley kept the fiacre to go on to his rooms in the Avenue de
l'Observatoire--he made a last attempt to lighten the man's depression.
He said:

"Don't you be a silly ass about this! You're making much too much of it,
you know. I'll go to her to-morrow or next day and explain, and she'll
laugh---if she hasn't already done so. You know," he said, almost
believing it himself, "you are paying her a dashed poor compliment in
thinking she's so dull as to misunderstand a little thing of this kind.
Yes, by Jove, you are!"

Ste. Marie looked up at him, and his face, in the light of the cab lamp,
showed a first faint gleam of hope.

"Do you think so?" he demanded. "Do you really think that? Maybe I am.
But--Oh, Lord, who would understand such an idiocy? Sacred imbecile that
I am! Why was I ever born? I ask you."

He turned abruptly, and began to ring at the door, casting a brief
"Good-night" over his shoulder. And after a moment Hartley gave it up
and drove away.

Above, in the long, shallow front room of his flat, with the three
windows overlooking the Gardens, Ste. Marie made lights, and after much
rummaging unearthed a box of cigarettes of a peculiarly delectable
flavor which had been sent him by a friend in the Khedivial household.
He allowed himself one or two of them now and then, usually in sorrowful
moments, as an especial treat; and this seemed to him to be the moment
for smoking all that were left. Surely his need had never been greater.
In England he had, of course, learned to smoke a pipe, but pipe-smoking
always remained with him a species of accomplishment; it never brought
him the deep and ruminative peace with which it enfolds the Anglo-Saxon
heart. The "vieux Jacob" of old-fashioned Parisian Bohemia inspired in
him unconcealed horror, of cigars he was suspicious because, he said,
most of the unpleasant people he knew smoked cigars, so he soothed his
soul with cigarettes, and he was usually to be found with one between
his fingers.

He lighted one of the precious Egyptians, and after a first ecstatic
inhalation went across to one of the long windows, which was open, and
stood there with his back to the room, his face to the peaceful,
fragrant night. A sudden recollection came to him of that other night a
month before when he had stood on the Pont des Invalides with his eyes
upon the stars, his feet upon the ladder thereunto. His heart gave a
sudden exultant leap within him when he thought how far and high he had
climbed, but after the leap it shivered and stood still when this
evening's misadventure came before him.

Would she ever understand? He had no fear that Hartley would not do his
best with her. Hartley was as honest and as faithful as ever a friend
was in this world. He would do his best. But even then--It was the
girl's inflexible nature that made the matter so dangerous. He knew that
she was inflexible, and he took a curious pride in it. He admired it. So
must have been those calm-eyed, ancient ladies for whom other Ste.
Maries went out to do battle. It was well-nigh impossible to imagine
them lowering their eyes to silly revelry. They could not stoop to such
as that. It was beneath their high dignity. And it was beneath hers
also. As for himself, he was a thing of patches. Here a patch of exalted
chivalry--a noble patch--there a patch of bourgeois, childlike love of
fun; here a patch of melancholic asceticism, there one of something
quite the reverse. A hopeless patchwork he was. Must she not shrink from
him when she knew? He could not quite imagine her understanding the
wholly trivial and meaningless impulse that had prompted him to ride a
galloping pig and cast paper serpentines at the assembled world.

Apart from her view of the affair, he felt no shame in it. The moment of
childish gayety had been but a passing mood. It had in no way slackened
his tense enthusiasm, dulled the keenness of his spirit, lowered his
high flight. He knew that well enough. But he wondered if she would
understand, and he could not believe it possible. The mood of exaltation
in which they had parted that afternoon came to him, and then the sight
of her shocked face as he had seen it in the laughing crowd in the Place
Blanche.

"What must she think of me?" he cried, aloud. "What must she think of
me?"

So, for an hour or more, he stood in the open window staring into the
fragrant night, or tramped up and down the long room, his hands behind
his back, kicking out of his way the chairs and things which impeded
him, torturing himself with fears and regrets and fancies, until at
last, in a calmer moment, he realized that he was working himself up
into an absurd state of nerves over something which was done and could
not now be helped. The man had an odd streak of fatalism in his
nature--that will have come of his Southern blood--and it came to him
now in his need. For the work upon which he was to enter with the morrow
he had need of clear wits, not scattered ones; a calm judgment, not
disordered nerves. So he took himself in hand, and it would have been
amazing to any one unfamiliar with the abrupt changes of the Latin
temperament to see how suddenly Ste. Marie became quiet and cool and
master of himself.

"It is done," he said, with a little shrug, and if his face was for a
moment bitter it quickly enough became impassive. "It is done, and it
cannot be undone--unless Hartley can undo it. And now, revenons à nos
moutons! Or, at least," said he, looking at his watch--and it was
between one and two--"at least, to our beds!"

So he went to bed, and, so well had he recovered from his fit of
excitement, he fell asleep almost at once. But for all that the jangled
nerves had their revenge. He who commonly slept like the dead, without
the slightest disturbance, dreamed a strange dream. It seemed to him
that he stood spent and weary in a twilight place--a waste place at the
foot of a high hill. At the top of the hill She sat upon a sort of
throne, golden in a beam of light from heaven--serene, very beautiful,
the end and crown of his weary labors. His feet were set to the ascent
of the height whereon she waited, but he was withheld. From the shadows
at the hill's foot a voice called to him in distress, anguish of
spirit--a voice he knew; but he could not say whose voice. It besought
him out of utter need, and he could not turn away from it.

Then from those shadows eyes looked upon him, very great and dark eyes,
and they besought him, too; he did not know what they asked, but they
called to him like the low voice, and he could not turn away.

He looked to the far height, and with all his power he strove to set his
feet toward it--the goal of long labor and desire; but the eyes and the
piteous voice held him motionless--for they needed him.

From this anguish he awoke trembling. And after a long time, when he was
composed, he fell asleep once more, and once more he dreamed the dream.

So morning found him pallid and unrefreshed. But by daylight he knew
whose eyes had besought him, and he wondered and was a little afraid.

       *       *       *       *       *




IX

JASON GOES UPON A JOURNEY, AND RICHARD HARTLEY PLEADS FOR HIM


It may as well be admitted at the outset that neither Ste. Marie nor
Richard Hartley proved themselves to be geniuses, hitherto undeveloped,
in the detective science. They entered upon their self-appointed task
with a fine fervor, but, as Miss Benham had suggested, with no other
qualifications in particular. Ste. Marie had a theory that, when engaged
in work of this nature, you went into questionable parts of the city,
ate and drank cheek by jowl with questionable people--if possible, got
them drunk while you remained sober (difficult feat), and sooner or
later they said things which put you on the right road to your goal, or
else confessed to you that they themselves had committed the particular
crime in which you were interested. He argued that this was the way it
happened in books, and that surely people didn't write books about
things of which they were ignorant.

Hartley, on the other hand, preferred the newer, or scientific, methods.
You sat at home with a pipe and a whiskey-and-water--if possible, in a
long dressing-gown with a cord round its middle. You reviewed all the
known facts of the case, and you did mathematics about them with Xs and
Ys and many other symbols, and in the end, by a system of elimination,
you proved that a certain thing must infallibly be true. The chief
difficulty for him in this was, he said, that he had been at Oxford
instead of at Cambridge, and so the mathematics were rather beyond him.

In practice, however, they combined the two methods, which was doubtless
as well as if they hadn't, because for some time they accomplished
nothing whatever, and so neither one was able to sneer at the other's
stupidity.

This is not to say that they found nothing in the way of clews. They
found an embarrassment of them, and for some days went about in a fever
of excitement over these; but the fever cooled when clew after clew
turned out to be misleading. Of course, Ste. Marie's first efforts were
directed toward tracing the movements of the Irishman O'Hara, but the
efforts were altogether unavailing. The man seemed to have disappeared
as noiselessly and completely as had young Arthur Benham himself. He was
unable even to settle with any definiteness the time of the man's
departure from Paris. Some of O'Hara's old acquaintances maintained that
they had seen the last of him two months before, but a shifty-eyed
person in rather cheaply smart clothes came up to Ste. Marie one evening
in Maxim's and said he had heard that Ste. Marie was making inquiries
about M. O'Hara. Ste. Marie said he was, and that it was an affair of
money; whereupon the cheaply smart individual declared that M. O'Hara
had left Paris six months before to go to the United States of America,
and that he had had a picture postal-card from him, some weeks since,
from New York. The informant accepted an expensive cigar and a Dubonnet
by way of reward, but presently departed into the night, and Ste. Marie
was left in some discouragement, his theory badly damaged.

He spoke of this encounter to Richard Hartley, who came on later to join
him, and Hartley, after an interval of silence and smoke, said: "That
was a lie! The man lied!"

"Name of a dog, why?" demanded Ste. Marie; but the Englishman shrugged
his shoulders.

"I don't know," he said. "But I believe it was a lie. The man came to
you--sought you out to tell his story, didn't he? And all the others
have given a different date? Well, there you are! For some reason, this
man or some one behind him--O'Hara himself, probably--wants you to
believe that O'Hara is in America. I dare say he's in Paris all the
while."

"I hope you're right," said the other. "And I mean to make sure, too. It
certainly was odd, this strange being hunting me out to tell me that. I
wonder, by-the-way, how he knew I'd been making inquiries about O'Hara.
I've questioned only two or three people, and then in the most casual
way. Yes, it's odd."

It was about a week after this--a fruitless week, full of the alternate
brightness of hope and the gloom of disappointment--that he met Captain
Stewart, to whom he had been, more than once, on the point of appealing.
He happened upon him quite by chance one morning in the rue Royale.
Captain Stewart was coming out of a shop, a very smart-looking shop,
devoted, as Ste. Marie, with some surprise and much amusement, observed,
to ladies' hats, and the price of hats must have depressed him, for he
looked in an ill humor, and older and more yellow than usual. But his
face altered suddenly when he saw the younger man, and he stopped and
shook Ste. Marie's hand with every evidence of pleasure.

"Well met! Well met!" he exclaimed. "If you are not in a hurry, come and
sit down somewhere and tell me about yourself."

They picked their way across the street to the terrace of the Taverne
Royale, which was almost deserted at that hour, and sat down at one of
the little tables, well back from the pavement, in a corner.

"Is it fair," queried Captain Stewart--"is it fair, as a rival
investigator, to ask you what success you have had?"

Ste. Marie laughed rather ruefully, and confessed that he had as yet no
success at all.

"I've just come," said he, "from pricking one bubble that promised well,
and Hartley is up in Montmartre destroying another, I fancy. Oh, well,
we didn't expect it to be child's play."

Captain Stewart raised his little glass of dry vermouth in an
old-fashioned salute and drank it.

"You," said he--"you were--ah, full of some idea of connecting this man,
this Irishman O'Hara, with poor Arthur's disappearance. You've found
that not so promising as you went on, I take it."

"Well, I've been unable to trace O'Hara," said Ste. Marie. "He seems to
have disappeared as completely as your nephew. I suppose you have no
clews to spare? I confess I'm out of them at the moment."

"Oh, I have plenty," said the elder man. "A hundred. More than I can
possibly look after." He gave a little chuckling laugh. "I've been
waiting for you to come to me," he said. "It was a little ungenerous,
perhaps, but we all love to say, 'I told you so.' Yes, I have a great
quantity of clews, and of course they all seem to be of the greatest and
most exciting importance. That's a way clews have."

He took an envelope from an inner pocket of his coat, and sorted several
folded papers which were in it.

"I have here," said he, "memoranda of two--chances, shall I call
them?--which seem to me very good, though, as I have already said, every
clew seems good. That is the maddening, the heart-breaking, part of such
an investigation. I have made these brief notes from letters received,
one yesterday, one the day before, from an agent of mine who has been
searching the bains de mer of the north coast. This agent writes that
some one very much resembling poor Arthur has been seen at Dinard and
also at Deauville, and he urges me to come there or to send a man there
at once to look into the matter. You will ask, of course, why this agent
himself does not pursue the clew he has found. Unfortunately, he has
been called to London upon some pressing family matter of his own; he is
an Englishman."

"Why haven't you gone yourself?" asked Ste. Marie.

But the elder man shrugged his shoulders and smiled a tired, deprecatory
smile.

"Oh, my friend," said he, "if I should attempt personally to investigate
one-half of these things, I should be compelled to divide myself into
twenty parts. No, I must stay here. There must be, alas! the spider at
the centre of the web. I cannot go; but if you think it worth while, I
will gladly turn over the memoranda of these last clews to you. They may
be the true clews, they may not. At any rate, some one must look into
them. Why not you and your partner--or shall I say assistant?"

"Why, thank you!" cried Ste. Marie. "A thousand thanks! Of course, I
shall be--we shall be glad to try this chance. On the face of it, it
sounds very reasonable. Your nephew, from what I remember of him, is
much more apt to be in some place that is amusing, some place of gayety,
than hiding away where it is merely dull, if he has his choice in the
matter--that is, if he is free. And yet--" He turned and frowned
thoughtfully at the elder man. "What I want to know," said he, "is how
the boy is supporting himself all this time? You say he had no money, or
very little, when he went away. How is he managing to live if your
theory is correct--that he is staying away of his own accord? It costs a
lot of money to live as he likes to live."

Captain Stewart nodded.

"Oh, that," said he--"that is a question I have often proposed to
myself. Frankly, it's beyond me. I can only surmise that poor Arthur,
who had scattered a small fortune about in foolish loans, managed,
before he actually disappeared (mind you, we didn't begin to look for
him until a week had gone by)--managed to collect some of this money,
and so went away with something in pocket. That, of course, is only a
guess."

"It is possible," said Ste. Marie, doubtfully, "but--I don't know. It is
not very easy to raise money from the sort of people I imagine your
nephew to have lent it to. They borrow, but they don't repay." He
glanced up with a half-laughing, half-defiant air. "I can't," said he,
"rid myself of a belief that the boy is here in Paris, and that he is
not free to come or go. It's only a feeling, but it is very strong in
me. Of course, I shall follow out these clews you've been so kind as to
give me. I shall go to Dinard and Deauville, and Hartley, I imagine,
will go with me, but I haven't great confidence in them."

Captain Stewart regarded him reflectively for a time, and in the end he
smiled.

"If you will pardon my saying it," he said, "your attitude is just a
little womanlike. You put away reason for something vaguely intuitive. I
always distrust intuition myself."

Ste. Marie frowned a little and looked uncomfortable. He did not relish
being called womanlike--few men do; but he was bound to admit that the
elder man's criticism was more or less just.

"Moreover," pursued Captain Stewart, "you altogether ignore the point of
motive--as I may have suggested to you before. There could be no
possible motive, so far as I am aware, for kidnapping or detaining, or
in any way harming, my nephew except the desire for money; but, as you
know, he had no large sum of money with him, and no demand has been made
upon us since his disappearance. I'm afraid you can't get round that."

"No," said Ste. Marie, "I'm afraid I can't. Indeed, leaving that
aside--and it can't be left aside--I still have almost nothing with
which to prop up my theory. I told you it was only a feeling."

He took up the memoranda which Captain Stewart had laid upon the
marble-topped table between them, and read the notes through.

"Please," said he, "don't think I am ungrateful for this chance. I am
not. I shall do my best with it, and I hope it may turn out to be
important." He gave a little wry smile. "I have all sorts of reasons,"
he said, "for wishing to succeed as soon as possible. You may be sure
that there won't be any delays on my part. And now I must be going on. I
am to meet Hartley for lunch on the other side of the river, and, if we
can manage it, I should like to start north this afternoon or evening."

"Good!" said Captain Stewart, smiling. "Good! That is what I call true
promptness. You lose no time at all. Go to Dinard and Deauville, by all
means, and look into this thing thoroughly. Don't be discouraged if you
meet with ill success at first. Take Mr. Hartley with you, and do your
best."

He paid for the two glasses of apéritif, and Ste. Marie could not help
observing that he left on the table a very small tip. The waiter cursed
him audibly as the two walked away.

"If you have returned by a week from to-morrow," he said, as they shook
hands, "I should like to have you keep that evening--Thursday--for me. I
am having a very informal little party in my rooms. There will be two or
three of the opera people there, and they will sing for us, and the
others will be amusing enough. All young--all young. I like young people
about me." He gave his odd little mewing chuckle. "And the ladies must
be beautiful as well as young. Come if you are here! I'll drop a line to
Mr. Hartley also."

He shook Ste. Marie's hand, and went away down the street toward the rue
du Faubourg St. Honoré where he lived.

Ste. Marie met Hartley as he expected to do, at lunch, and they talked
over the possibilities of the Dinard and Deauville expedition. In the
end they decided that Ste. Marie should go alone, but that he was to
telegraph, later on, if the clew looked promising. Hartley had two or
three investigations on foot in Paris, and stayed on to complete these.
Also he wished, as soon as possible, to see Helen Benham and explain
Ste. Marie's ride on the galloping pigs. Ten days had elapsed since that
evening, but Miss Benham had gone into the country the next day to make
a visit at the De Saulnes' château on the Oise.

So Ste. Marie packed a portmanteau with clothes and things, and departed
by a mid-afternoon train to Dinard, and toward five Richard Hartley
walked down to the rue de I'Université. He thought it just possible that
Miss Benham might by now have returned to town, but if not he meant to
have half an hour's chat with old David Stewart, whom he had not seen
for some weeks.

At the door he learned that mademoiselle was that very day returned and
was at home. So he went in to the drawing-room, reserving his visit to
old David until later. He found the room divided into two camps. At one
side Mrs. Benham conversed in melancholic monotones with two elderly
French ladies who were clad in depressing black of a dowdiness surpassed
only in English provincial towns. It was as if the three mourned
together over the remains of some dear one who lay dead among them.
Hartley bowed low, with an uncontrollable shiver, and turned to the
tea-table, where Miss Benham sat in the seat of authority, flanked by a
young American lady whom he had met before, and by Baron de Vries, whom
he had not seen since the evening of the De Saulnes' dinner-party.

Miss Benham greeted him with evident pleasure, and to his great delight
remembered just how he liked his tea--three pieces of sugar and no milk.
It always flatters a man when his little tastes of this sort are
remembered. The four fell at once into conversation together, and the
young American lady asked Hartley why Ste. Marie was not with him.

"I thought you two always went about together," she said--"were never
seen apart and all that--a sort of modern Damon and Phidias."

Hartley caught Baron de Vries' eye, and looked away again hastily.

"My--ah, Phidias," said he, resisting an irritable desire to correct the
lady, "got mislaid to-day. It sha'n't happen again, I promise you. He's
a very busy person just now, though. He hasn't time for social
dissipation. I'm the butterfly of the pair."

The lady gave a sudden laugh.

"He was busy enough the last time I saw him," she said, crinkling her
eyelids. She turned to Miss Benham. "Do you remember that evening we
were going home from the Madrid and motored round by Montmartre to see
the fête?"

"Yes," said Miss Benham, unsmiling, "I remember."

"Your friend Ste. Marie," said the American lady to Hartley, "was
distinctly the lion of the fête--at the moment we arrived, anyhow. He
was riding a galloping pig and throwing those paper streamer
things--what do you call them?--with both hands, and a genial lady in a
blue hat was riding the same pig and helping him out. It was just like
the _Vie de Bohème_ and the other books. I found it charming."

Baron de Vries emitted an amused chuckle.

"That was very like Ste. Marie," he said. "Ste. Marie is a very
exceptional young man. He can be an angel one moment, a child playing
with toys the next, and--well, a rather commonplace social favorite the
third. It all comes of being romantic--imaginative. Ste. Marie--I know
nothing about this evening of which you speak, but Ste. Marie is quite
capable of stopping on his way to a funeral to ride a galloping pig--or
on his way to his own wedding. And the pleasant part of it is," said
Baron de Vries, "that the lad would turn up at either of these two
ceremonies not a bit the worse, outside or in, for his ride."

"Ah, now, that's an oddly close shot," said Hartley. He paused a moment,
looking toward Miss Benham, and said: "I beg pardon! Were you going to
speak?"

"No," said Miss Benham, moving the things about on the tea-table before
her, and looking down at them. "No, not at all!"

"You came oddly close to the truth," the man went on, turning back to
Baron de Vries.

He was speaking for Helen Benham's ears, and he knew she would
understand that, but he did not wish to seem to be watching her.

"I was with Ste. Marie on that evening," he said. "No, I wasn't riding a
pig, but I was standing down in the crowd throwing serpentines at the
people who were. And I happen to know that he--that Ste. Marie was on
that day, that evening, more deeply concerned about something, more
absolutely wrapped up in it, devoted to it, than I have ever known him
to be about anything since I first knew him. The galloping pig was an
incident that made, except for the moment, no impression whatever upon
him." Hartley nodded his head. "Yes," said he, "Ste. Marie can be an
angel one moment and a child playing with toys the next. When he sees
toys he always plays with them, and he plays hard, but when he drops
them they go completely out of his mind."

The American lady laughed.

"Gracious me!" she cried. "You two are emphatic enough about him, aren't
you?"

"We know him," said Baron de Vries.

Hartley rose to replace his empty cup on the tea-table. Miss Benham did
not meet his eyes, and as he moved away again she spoke to her friend
about something they were going to do on the next day, so Hartley went
across to where Baron de Vries sat at a little distance, and took a
place beside him on the chaise lounge. The Belgian greeted him with
raised eyebrows and the little, half-sad, half-humorous smile which was
characteristic of him in his gentler moments.

"You were defending our friend with a purpose," he said, in a low voice.
"Good! I am afraid he needs it--here."

The younger man hesitated a moment. Then he said:

"I came on purpose to do that. Ste. Marie knows that she saw him on that
confounded pig. He was half wild with distress over it, because--well,
the meeting was singularly unfortunate just then. I can't explain--"

"You needn't explain," said the Belgian, gravely. "I know. Helen told me
some days ago, though she did not mention this encounter. Yes, defend
him with all your power, if you will. Stay after we others have gone
and--have it out with her. The Phidias lady (I must remember that mot,
by-the-way) is preparing to take her leave now, and I will follow her at
once. She shall believe that I am enamoured, that I sigh for her. Eh!"
said he, shaking his head--and the lines in the kindly old face seemed
to deepen, but in a sort of grave tenderness--"eh, so love has come to
the dear lad at last! Ah, of course, the hundred other affairs! Yes,
yes. But they were light. No seriousness in them. The ladies may have
loved. He didn't--very much. This time, I'm afraid--"

Baron de Vries paused as if he did not mean to finish his sentence, and
Hartley said:

"You say 'afraid'! Why afraid?"

The Belgian looked up at him reflectively.

"Did I say 'afraid'?" he asked. "Well, perhaps it was the word I wanted.
I wonder if these two are fitted for each other. I am fond of them both.
I think you know that, but--she's not very flexible, this child. And she
hasn't much humor. I love her, but I know those things are true. I
wonder if one ought to marry Ste. Marie without flexibility and without
humor."

"If they love each other," said Richard Hartley, "I expect the other
things don't count. Do they?"

Baron de Vries rose to his feet, for he saw that the Phidias lady was
going.

"Perhaps not," said he; "I hope not. In any case, do your best for him
with Helen. Make her comprehend if you can. I am afraid she is unhappy
over the affair."

He made his adieus, and went away with the American lady, to that young
person's obvious excitement. And after a moment the three ladies across
the room departed also, Mrs. Benham explaining that she was taking her
two friends up to her own sitting-room, to show them something vaguely
related to the heathen. So Hartley was left alone with Helen Benham.

It was not his way to beat about the bush, and he gave battle at once.
He said, standing, to say it more easily:

"You know why I came here to-day? It was the first chance I've had since
that--unfortunate evening. I came on Ste. Marie's account."

Miss Benham said a weak "Oh!" And because she was nervous and
overwrought, and because the thing meant so much to her, she said,
cheaply: "He owes me no apologies. He has a perfect right to act as he
pleases, you know."

The Englishman frowned across at her. "I didn't come to make apologies,"
said he. "I came to explain. Well, I have explained--Baron de Vries and
I together. That's just how it happened. And that's just how Ste. Marie
takes things. The point is that you've got to understand it. I've got to
make you."

The girl smiled up at him dolefully. "You look," she said, "as if you
were going to beat me if necessary. You look very warlike."

"I feel warlike," the man said, nodding. He said: "I'm fighting for a
friend to whom you are doing, in your mind, an injustice. I know him
better than you do, and I tell you you're doing him a grave injustice.
You're failing altogether to understand him."

"I wonder," the girl said, looking very thoughtfully down at the table
before her.

"I know," said he.

Quite suddenly she gave a little overwrought cry, and she put up her
hands over her face. "Oh, Richard!" she said, "that day when he was
here! He left me--oh, I cannot tell you at what a height he left me! It
was something new and beautiful. He swept me to the clouds with him. And
I might--perhaps I might have lived on there. Who knows? But then that
hideous evening! Ah, it was too sickening: the fall back to common earth
again!"

"I know," said the man, gently--"I know. And _he_ knew, too. Directly
he'd seen you he knew how you would feel about it. I'm not pretending
that it was of no consequence. It was unfortunate, of course. But the
point is, it did not mean in him any slackening, any stooping, any
letting go. It was a moment's incident. We went to the wretched place by
accident after dinner. Ste. Marie saw those childish lunatics at play,
and for about two minutes he played with them. The lady in the blue hat
made it appear a little more extreme, and that's all."

Miss Benham rose to her feet and moved restlessly back and forth. "Oh,
Richard," she said, "the golden spell is broken--the enchantment he laid
upon me that day. I'm not like him, you know. Oh, I wish I were! I wish
I were! I can't change from hour to hour. I can't rise to the clouds
again after my fall to earth. It has all--become something different.
Don't misunderstand me!" she cried. "I don't mean that I've ceased to
care for him. No, far from that! But I was in such an exalted heaven,
and now I'm not there any more. Perhaps he can lift me to it again. Oh
yes, I'm sure he can, when I see him once more; but I wanted to go on
living there so happily while he was away! Do you understand at all?"

"I think I do," the man said, but he looked at her very curiously and a
little sadly, for it was the first time he had ever seen her swept from
her superb poise by any emotion, and he hardly recognized her. It was
very bitter to him to realize that he could never have stirred her to
this--never, under any conceivable circumstances.

The girl came to him where he stood, and touched his arm with her hand.
"He is waiting to hear how I feel about it all, isn't he?" she said. "He
is waiting to know that I understand. Will you tell him a little lie for
me, Richard? No, you needn't tell a lie. I will tell it. Tell him that I
said I understood perfectly. Tell him that I was shocked for a moment,
but that afterward I understood and thought no more about it. Will you
tell him I said that? It won't be a lie from you, because I did say it.
Oh, I will not grieve him or hamper him now while he is working in my
cause! I'll tell him a lie rather than have him grieve."

"Need it be a lie?" said Richard Hartley. "Can't you truly believe what
you've said?"

She shook her head slowly.

"I'll try," said she, "but--my golden spell is broken and I can't mend
it alone. I'm sorry."

He turned with a little sigh to leave her, but Miss Benham followed him
toward the door of the drawing-room.

"You're a good friend, Richard," she said, when she had come
near--"you're a good friend to him."

"He deserves good friends," said the young man, stoutly. "And besides,"
said he, "we're brothers in arms nowadays. We've enlisted together to
fight for the same cause." The girl fell back with a little cry.

"Do you mean," she said, after a moment--"do you mean that _you_ are
working with him--to find Arthur?"

Hartley nodded.

"But--" said she, stammering. "But, Richard--"

The man checked her.

"Oh, I know what I'm doing," said he. "My eyes are open. I know that I'm
not--well, in the running. I work for no reward except a desire to help
you and Ste. Marie. That's all. It pleases me to be useful."

He went away with that, not waiting for an answer, and the girl stood
where he had left her, staring after him.

       *       *       *       *       *




X

CAPTAIN STEWART ENTERTAINS


Ste. Marie returned, after three days, from Dinard in a depressed and
somewhat puzzled frame of mind. He had found no trace whatever of Arthur
Benham, either at Dinard or at Deauville, and, what was more, he was
unable to discover that any one even remotely resembling that youth had
been seen at either place. The matter of identification, it seemed to
him, should be a rather simple one. In the first place, the boy's
appearance was not at all French, nor, for that matter, English; it was
very American. Also, he spoke French--so Ste. Marie had been told--very
badly, having for the language that scornful contempt peculiar to
Anglo-Saxons of a certain type. His speech, it seemed, was, like his
appearance, ultra-American--full of strange idioms and oddly pronounced.
In short, such a youth would be rather sure to be remembered by any
hotel management and staff with which he might have come in contact.

At first Ste. Marie pursued his investigations quietly and, as it were,
casually; but after his initial failure he went to the managements of
the various hotels and lodging-houses, and to the cafés and bathing
establishments, and told them, with all frankness, a part of the
truth--that he was searching for a young man whose disappearance had
caused great distress to his family. He was not long in discovering that
no such young man could have been either in Dinard or Deauville.

The thing which puzzled him was that, apart from finding no trace of the
missing boy, he also found no trace of Captain Stewart's agent--the man
who had been first on the ground. No one seemed able to recollect that
such a person had been making inquiries, and Ste. Marie began to suspect
that his friend was being imposed upon. He determined to warn Stewart
that his agents were earning their fees too easily.

So he returned to Paris more than a little dejected, and sore over this
waste of time and effort. He arrived by a noon train, and drove across
the city in a fiacre to the rue d'Assas. But as he was in the midst of
unpacking his portmanteau--for he kept no servant; a woman came in once
a day to "do" the rooms--the door-bell rang. It was Baron de Vries, and
Ste. Marie admitted him with an exclamation of surprise and pleasure.

"You passed me in the street just now," explained the Belgian, "and as I
was a few minutes early for a lunch engagement I followed you up." He
pointed with his stick at the open bag. "Ah, you have been on a journey!
Detective work?"

Ste. Marie pushed his guest into a chair, gave him cigarettes, and told
him about the fruitless expedition to Dinard. He spoke, also, of his
belief that Captain Stewart's agent had never really found a clew at
all; and at that Baron de Vries nodded his gray head and said, "Ah!" in
a tone of some significance. Afterward he smoked a little while in
silence, but presently he said, as if with some hesitation: "May I be
permitted to offer a word of advice?"

"But surely!" cried Ste. Marie, kicking away the half-empty portmanteau.
"Why not?"

"Do whatever you are going to do in this matter according to your own
judgment," said the elder man, "or according to Mr. Hartley's and your
combined judgments. Make your investigations without reference to our
friend Captain Stewart." He halted there as if that were all he had
meant to say, but when he saw Ste. Marie's raised eyebrows he frowned
and went on, slowly, as if picking his words with some care. "I should
be sorry," he said, "to have Captain Stewart at the head of any
investigation of this nature in which I was deeply interested--just now,
at any rate. I am afraid--it is difficult to say; I do not wish to say
too much--I am afraid he is not quite the man for the position."

Ste. Marie nodded his head with great emphasis. "Ah," he cried, "that's
just what I have felt, you know, all along! And it's what Hartley felt,
too, I'm sure. No, Stewart is not the sort for a detective. He's too
cocksure. He won't admit that he might possibly be wrong now and then.
He's too--"

"He is too much occupied with other matters," said Baron de Vries.

Ste. Marie sat down on the edge of a chair. "Other matters?" he
demanded. "That sounds mysterious. What other matters?"

"Oh, there is nothing very mysterious about it," said the elder man. He
frowned down at his cigarette, and brushed some fallen ash neatly from
his knees. "Captain Stewart," said he, "is badly worried, and has been
for the past year or so--badly worried over money matters and other
things. He has lost enormous sums at play, as I happen to know, and he
has lost still more enormous sums at Auteuil and at Longchamps. Also,
the ladies are not without their demands."

Ste. Marie gave a shout of laughter. "Comment donc!" he cried. "Ce
vieillard?"

"Ah, well," deprecated the other man. "Vieillard is putting it rather
high. He can't be more than fifty, I should think. To be sure, he looks
older; but then, in his day, he lived a great deal in a short time. Do
you happen to remember Olga Nilssen?"

"I do," said Ste. Marie. "I remember her very well, indeed. I was a sort
of go-between in settling up that affair with Morrison. Morrison's
people asked me to do what I could. Yes, I remember her well, and with
some pleasure. I felt sorry for her, you know. People didn't quite know
the truth of that affair. Morrison behaved very badly to her."

"Yes," said Baron de Vries, "and Captain Stewart has behaved very badly
to her also. She is furious with rage or jealousy--or both. She goes
about, I am told, threatening to kill him, and it would be rather like
her to do it one day. Well, I have dragged in all this scandal by way of
showing you that Stewart has his hands full of his own affairs just now,
and so cannot give the attention he ought to give to hunting out his
nephew. As you suggest, his agents may be deceiving him. I don't know. I
suppose they could do it easily enough. If I were you I should set to
work quite independently of him."

"Yes," said Ste. Marie, in an absent tone. "Oh yes, I shall do that, you
may be sure." He gave a sudden smile. "He's a queer type, this Captain
Stewart. He begins to interest me very much. I had never suspected this
side of him, though I remember now that I once saw him coming out of a
milliner's shop. He looks rather an ascetic--rather donnish, don't you
think? I remember that he talked to me one day quite pathetically about
feeling his age and about liking young people round him. He's an odd
character. Fancy him mixed up in an affair with Olga Nilssen! Or,
rather, fancy her involved in an affair with him! What can she have seen
in him? She's not mercenary, you know--at least, she used not to be."

"Ah! there," said Baron de Vries, "you enter upon a terra incognita. No
one can say what a woman sees in this man or in that. It's beyond our
ken."

He rose to take his leave, and Ste. Marie went with him to the door.

"I've been asked to a sort of party at Stewart's rooms this week," Ste.
Marie said. "I don't know whether I shall go or not. Probably not. I
suppose I shouldn't find Olga Nilssen there?"

"Well, no," said the Belgian, laughing. "No, I hardly think so.
Good-bye! Think over what I've told you. Good-bye!"

He went away down the stair, and Ste. Marie returned to his unpacking.

Nothing more of consequence occurred in the next few days. Hartley had
unearthed a somewhat shabby adventurer who swore to having seen the
Irishman O'Hara in Paris within a month, but it was by no means certain
that this being did not merely affirm what he believed to be desired of
him, and in any case the information was of no especial value, since it
was O'Hara's present whereabouts that was the point at issue. So it came
to Thursday evening. Ste. Marie received a note from Captain Stewart
during the day, reminding him that he was to come to the rue du Faubourg
St. Honoré that evening, and asking him to come early, at ten or
thereabouts, so that the two could have a comfortable chat before any
one else turned up. Ste. Marie had about decided not to go at all, but
the courtesy of this special invitation from Miss Benham's uncle made it
rather impossible for him to stay away. He tried to persuade Hartley to
follow him on later in the evening, but that gentleman flatly refused
and went away to dine with some English friends at Armenonville.

So Ste. Marie, in a vile temper, dined quite alone at Lavenue's, beside
the Gare Montparnasse, and toward ten o'clock drove across the river to
the rue du Faubourg. Captain Stewart's flat was up five stories, at the
top of the building in which it was located, and so, well above the
noises of the street. Ste. Marie went up in the automatic lift, and at
the door above his host met him in person, saying that the one servant
he kept was busy making preparations in the kitchen beyond. They entered
a large room, long but comparatively shallow, in shape not unlike the
sitting-room in the rue d'Assas, but very much bigger, and Ste. Marie
uttered an exclamation of surprise and pleasure, for he had never before
seen an interior anything like this. The room was decorated and
furnished entirely in Chinese and Japanese articles of great age and
remarkable beauty. Ste. Marie knew little of the hieratic art of these
two countries, but he fancied that the place must be an endless delight
to the expert.

The general tone of the room was gold, dulled and softened by great age
until it had ceased to glitter, and relieved by the dusty Chinese blue
and by old red faded to rose and by warm ivory tints. The great expanse
of the walls was covered by a brownish-yellow cloth, coarse like burlap,
and against it, round the room, hung sixteen large panels representing
the sixteen Rakan. They were early copies--fifteenth century, Captain
Stewart said--of those famous originals by the Chinese Sung master
Ririomin, which have been for six hundred years or more the treasures of
Japan. They were mounted upon Japanese brocade of blue and dull gold,
framed in keyaki wood, and out of their brown, time-stained shadows the
great Rakan scowled or grinned or placidly gazed, grotesquely graceful
masterpieces of a perished art.

At the far end of the room, under a gilded canopy of intricate
wood-carving, stood upon his pedestal of many-petalled lotus a great
statue of Amida Buddha in the yogi attitude of contemplation, and at
intervals against the other walls other smaller images stood or sat:
Buddha, in many incarnations; Kwannon, goddess of mercy; Jizo Bosatzu
Hotei, pot-bellied, god of contentment; Jingo-Kano, god of war. In the
centre of the place was a Buddhist temple table, and priests' chairs,
lacquered and inlaid, stood about the room. The floor was covered with
Chinese rugs, dull yellow with blue flowers, and over a doorway which
led into another room was fixed a huge rama of Chinese pierced carving,
gilded, in which there were trees and rocks and little grouped figures
of the hundred immortals.

It, was, indeed an extraordinary room. Ste. Marie looked about its
mellow glow with a half-comprehending wonder, and he looked at the man
beside him curiously, for here was another side to this many-sided
character. Captain Stewart smiled.

"You like my museum?" he asked. "Few people care much for it except, of
course, those who go in for the Oriental arts. Most of my friends think
it bizarre--too grotesque and unusual. I have tried to satisfy them by
including those comfortable low divan-couches (they refuse altogether to
sit in the priests' chairs), but still they are unhappy."

He called his servant, who came to take Ste. Marie's hat and coat and
returned with smoking things.

"It seems entirely wonderful to me," said the younger man. "I'm not an
expert at all--I don't know who the gentlemen in those sixteen panels
are, for example--but it is very beautiful. I have never seen anything
like it at all." He gave a little laugh. "Will it sound very impertinent
in me, I wonder, if I express surprise--not surprise at finding this
magnificent room, but at discovering that this sort of thing is a taste
and, very evidently, a serious study of yours? You--I remember your
saying once with some feeling that it was youth and beauty and--well,
freshness that you liked best to be surrounded by. This," said Ste.
Marie, waving an inclusive hand, "was young so many centuries ago! It
fairly breathes antiquity and death."

"Yes," said Captain Stewart, thoughtfully. "Yes, that is quite true."

The two had seated themselves upon one of the broad, low benches which
had been built into the place to satisfy the Philistine.

"I find it hard to explain," he said, "because both things are passions
of mine. Youth--I could not exist without it. Since I have it no longer
in my own body, I wish to see it about me. It gives me life. It keeps my
heart beating. I must have it near. And then this--antiquity and death,
beautiful things made by hands dead centuries ago in an alien country! I
love this, too. I didn't speak too strongly; it is a sort of passion
with me--something quite beyond the collector's mania--quite beyond
that. Sometimes, do you know, I stay at home in the evening, and I sit
here quite alone, with the lights half on, and for hours together I
smoke and watch these things--the quiet, sure, patient smile of that
Buddha, for example. Think how long he has been smiling like that, and
waiting! Waiting for what? There is something mysterious beyond all
words in that smile of his, that fixed, crudely carved wooden smile--no,
I'll be hanged if it's crude! It is beyond our modern art. The dead men
carved better than we do. We couldn't manage that with such simple
means. We can only reproduce what is before us. We can't carve
questions--mysteries--everlasting riddles."

Through the pale-blue, wreathing smoke of his cigarette Captain Stewart
gazed down the room to where eternal Buddha stood and smiled eternally.
And from there the man's eyes moved with slow enjoyment along the
opposite wall over those who sat or stood there, over the panels of the
ancient Rakan, over carved lotus, and gilt contorted dragon forever in
pursuit of the holy pearl. He drew a short breath which seemed to
bespeak extreme contentment, the keenest height of pleasure, and he
stirred a little where he sat and settled himself among the cushions.
Ste. Marie watched him, and the expression of the man's face began to be
oddly revolting. It was the face of a voluptuary in the presence of his
desire. He was uncomfortable, and wished to say something to break the
silence, but, as often occurs at such a time, he could think of nothing
to say. So there was a brief silence between them. But presently Captain
Stewart roused himself with an obvious effort.

"Here, this won't do!" said he, in a tone of whimsical apology. "This
won't do, you know. I'm floating off on my hobby (and there's a mixed
metaphor that would do credit to your own Milesian blood!). I'm boring
you to extinction, and I don't want to do that, for I'm anxious that you
should come here again--and often. I should like to have you form the
habit. What was it I had in mind to ask you about? Ah, yes! The journey
to Dinard and Deauville. I am afraid it turned out to be fruitless or
you would have let me know."

"Entirely fruitless," said Ste. Marie.

He went on to tell the elder man of his investigation, and of his
certainty that no one resembling Arthur Benham had been at either of the
two places.

"It's no affair of mine, to be sure," he said, "but I rather suspect
that your agent was deceiving you--pretending to have accomplished
something by way of making you think he was busy."

Ste. Marie was so sure the other would immediately disclaim this that he
waited for the word, and gave a little smothered laugh when Captain
Stewart said, promptly:

"Oh no! No! That is impossible. I have every confidence in that man. He
is one of my best. No, you are mistaken there. I am more disappointed
than you could possibly be over the failure of your efforts, but I am
quite sure my man thought he had something worth working upon.
By-the-way, I have received another rather curious communication--from
Ostend this time. I will show you the letter, and you may try your luck
there if you would care to." He felt in his pockets and then rose. "I've
left the thing in another coat," said he; "if you will allow me, I'll
fetch it." But before he had turned away the door-bell rang and he
paused. "Ah, well," he said, "another time. Here are some of my guests.
They have come earlier than I had expected."

The new arrivals were three very perfectly dressed ladies, one of them
an operatic light, who chanced not to be singing that evening and whom
Ste. Marie had met before. The two others were rather difficult of
classification, but probably, he thought, ornaments of that mysterious
border-land between the two worlds which seems to give shelter to so
many people against whose characters nothing definite is known, but
whose antecedents and connections are not made topics of conversation.
The three ladies seemed to be on very friendly terms with Captain
Stewart, and greeted him with much noisy delight. One of the
unclassified two, when her host, with a glance toward Ste. Marie,
addressed her formally, seemed inordinately amused, and laughed for a
long time.

Within the next hour ten or a dozen other guests had arrived, and they
all seemed to know one another very well, and proceeded to make
themselves quite at home. Ste. Marie regarded them with a reflective and
not over-enthusiastic eye, and he wondered a good deal why he had been
asked here to meet them. He was as far from a prig or a snob as any man
could very well be, and he often went to very Bohemian parties which
were given by his painter or musician friends, but these people seemed
to him quite different. The men, with the exception of two eminent
opera-singers, who quite obviously had been asked because of their
voices, were the sort of men who abound at such places as Ostend and
Monte Carlo, and Baden-Baden in the race week. That is not to say that
they were ordinary racing touts or the cheaper kind of adventurers
(there was a count among them, and a marquis who had recently been
divorced by his American wife), but adventurers of a sort they
undoubtedly were. There was not one of them, so far as Ste. Marie was
aware, who was received anywhere in good society, and he resented very
much being compelled to meet them.

Naturally enough, he felt much less concern on the score of the ladies.
It is an undoubted and well-nigh universal truth that men who would
refuse outright to meet certain classes of their own sex show no
reluctance whatever over meeting the women of a corresponding
circle--that is, if the women are attractive. It is a depressing fact
and inclines one to sighs and head-shakes, and some moral indignation,
until the reverse truth is brought to light--namely, that women have
identically the same point of view; that, while they cast looks of
loathing and horror upon certain of their sisters, they will meet with
pleasure any presentable man whatever his crimes or vices.

Ste. Marie was very much puzzled over all this. It seemed to him so
unnecessary that a man who really had some footing in the newer society
of Paris should choose to surround himself with people of this type; but
as he looked on and wondered he became aware of a curious and, in the
light of a past conversation, significant fact: all of the people in the
room were young; all of them in their varying fashions and degrees very
attractive to look upon; all full to overflowing of life and spirits and
the determination to have a good time. He saw Captain Stewart moving
among them, playing very gracefully his rôle of host, and the man seemed
to have dropped twenty years from his shoulders. A miracle of
rejuvenation seemed to have come upon him: his eyes were bright and
eager, the color was high in his cheeks, and the dry, pedantic tone had
gone from his voice. Ste. Marie watched him, and at last he thought he
understood. It was half revolting, half pathetic, he thought, but it
certainly was interesting to see.

Duval, the great basso of the Opéra, accompanied at the piano by one of
the unclassified ladies, was just finishing Mephistopheles' drinking
song out of _Faust_ when the door-bell rang.

       *       *       *       *       *




XI

A GOLDEN LADY ENTERS--THE EYES AGAIN


The music of voice and piano was very loud just then, so that the
little, soft, whirring sound of the electric bell reached only one or
two pairs of ears in the big room. It did not reach the host certainly,
and neither he nor most of the others observed the servant make his way
among the groups of seated or standing people and go to the outer door,
which opened upon a tiny hallway. The song came to an end, and everybody
was cheering and applauding and crying "Bravo!" or "Bis!" or one of the
other things that people shout at such times, when, as if in unexpected
answer to the outburst, a lady appeared between the yellow portières and
came forward a little way into the room. She was a tall lady of an
extraordinary and immediately noticeable grace of movement--a lady with
rather fair hair; but her eyebrows and eyelashes had been stained darker
than it was their nature to be. She had the classic Greek type of
face--and figure, too--all but the eyes, which were long and
narrow--narrow, perhaps, from a habit of going half closed; and when
they were a little more than half closed they made a straight black line
that turned up very slightly at the outer end with an Oriental effect
which went oddly in that classic face. There is a popular piece of
sculpture now in the Luxembourg Gallery for which this lady "sat" as
model to a great artist. Sculptors from all over the world go there to
dream over its perfect line and contour, and little schoolgirls pretend
not to see it, and middle-aged maiden tourists, with red Baedekers in
their hands, regard it furtively and pass on, and after a while come
back to look again.

The lady was dressed in some very close-clinging material which was not
cloth of gold, but something very like it, only much duller--something
which gleamed when she stirred, but did not glitter--and over her
splendid shoulders was hung an Oriental scarf heavily worked with
metallic gold. She made an amazing and dramatic picture in that golden
room. It was as if she had known just what her surroundings would be and
had dressed expressly for them.

The applause ceased as suddenly as if it had been trained to break off
at a signal, and the lady came forward a little way, smiling a quiet,
assured smile. At each step her knee threw out the golden stuff of her
gown an inch or two, and it flashed suddenly--a dull, subdued flash in
the overhead light--and died and flashed again. A few of the people in
the room knew who the lady was, and they looked at one another with
raised eyebrows and startled faces; but the others stared at her with an
eager admiration, thinking that they had seldom seen anything so
beautiful or so effective. Ste. Marie sat forward on the edge of his
chair. His eyes sparkled, and he gave a little quick sigh of pleasurable
excitement. This was drama, and very good drama, too, and he suspected
that it might at any moment turn into a tragedy.

He saw Captain Stewart, who had been among a group of people half-way
across the room, turn his head to look when the cries and the applause
ceased so suddenly, and he saw the man's face stiffen by swift degrees,
all the joyous, buoyant life gone out of it, until it was yellow and
rigid like a dead man's face; and Ste. Marie, out of his knowledge of
the relations between these two people, nodded, en connaisseur, for he
knew that the man was very badly frightened.

So the host of the evening hung back, staring for what must have seemed
to him a long and terrible time, though in reality it was but an
instant; then he came forward quickly to greet the new-comer, and if his
face was still yellow-white there was nothing in his manner but the
courtesy habitual with him. He took the lady's hand, and she smiled at
him, but

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