Читать книгу The Quest: A Romance - Forman Justus Miles - Страница 5

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 Monsieur 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 towards 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 towards 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 were 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 towards. 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 – almost it 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 towards you. You have laid a spell upon me, Ste. Marie. You enchant us all somehow, don't you? I suppose I'm not as 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 for ever?

"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 towards 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 last 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 for 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 learnt 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 can 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 armour 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 fervour upon it. It was as if it shone. The girl stared at him dumbly. She began to realise 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 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 leant 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.