MEDEA GOES OVER TO THE ENEMY
They were near the east end of the rond point, in a space where fir-trees stood and the ground underfoot was covered with dry needles.
"I was just on my way to--our bench beyond the fountain," said she.
And Ste. Marie nodded, looking upon her sombrely. It seemed to him that he looked with new eyes, and after a little time, when he did not speak, but only gazed in that strange manner, the girl said:
"What is it? Something has happened. Please tell me what it is."
Something like the pale foreshadow of fear came over her beautiful face and shrouded her golden voice as if it had been a veil.
"Your father," said Ste. Marie, heavily, "has just been telling me--that you are to marry young Arthur Benham. He has been telling me."
She drew a quick breath, looking at him, but after a moment she said:
"Yes, it is true. You knew it before, though, didn't you? Do you mean that you didn't know it before? I don't quite understand. You must have known that. What, in Heaven's name, did you think?" she cried, as if with a sort of anger at his dulness.
The man rubbed one hand wearily across his eyes.
"I--don't quite know," said he. "Yes, I suppose I had thought of it. I don't know. It came to me with such a--shock! Yes. Oh, I don't know. I expect I didn't think at all. I--just didn't think."
Abruptly his eyes sharpened upon her, and he moved a step forward.
"Tell me the truth!" he said. "Do you love this boy?"
The girl's cheeks burned with a swift crimson and she set her lips together. She was on the verge of extreme anger just then, but after a little the flush died down again and the dark fire went out of her eyes. She made an odd gesture with her two hands. It seemed to express fatigue as much as anything--a great weariness.
"I like him," she said. "I like him--enough, I suppose. He is good--and kind--and gentle. He will be good to me. And I shall try very, very hard, to make him happy."
Quite suddenly and without warning the fire of her anger burned up again. She flamed defiance in the man's face.
"How dare you question me?" she cried. "What right have you to ask me questions about such a thing? You--what you are!"
Ste. Marie bent his head.
"No right, Mademoiselle," said he, in a low voice. "I have no right to ask you anything--not even forgiveness. I think I am a little mad to-day. It--this news came to me suddenly. Yes, I think I am a little mad."
The girl stared at him and he looked back with sombre eyes. Once more he was stabbed with intolerable pain to think what she was. Yet in an inexplicable fashion it pleased him that she should carry out her trickery to the end with a high head. It was a little less base, done proudly. He could not have borne it otherwise.
"Who are you," the girl cried, in a bitter resentment, "that you should understand? What do you know of the sort of life I have led--we have led together, my father and I? Oh, I don't mean that I'm ashamed of it! We have nothing to feel shame for, but you simply do not know what such a life is."
Though he writhed with pain, the man nodded over her. He was so glad that she could carry it through proudly, with a high hand, an erect head.
She spread out her arms before him, a splendid and tragic figure.
"What chance have I ever had?" she demanded. "No, I am not blaming him. I am not blaming my father. I chose to follow him. I chose it. But what chance have I had? Think of the people I have lived among. Would you have me marry one of them--one of those men? I'd rather die. And yet I cannot go on--forever. I am twenty now. What if my father--You yourself said yesterday--Oh, I am afraid! I tell you I have lain awake at night a hundred times and shivered with cold, terrible fear of what would become of me if--if anything should happen--to my father. And so," she said, "when I met Arthur Benham last winter, and he--began to--he said--when he begged me to marry him.... Ah, can't you see? It meant safety--safety--safety! And I liked him. I like him now--very, very much. He is a sweet boy. I--shall be happy with him--in a peaceful fashion. And my father--Oh, I'll be honest with you," said she. "It was my father who decided me. He was--he is--so pathetically pleased with it. He so wants me to be safe. It's all he lives for now. I--couldn't fight against them both, Arthur and my father, so I gave in. And then when Arthur had to be hidden we came here with him--to wait."
She became aware that the man was staring at her with something strange and terrible in his gaze, and she broke off in wonder. The air of that warm summer morning turned all at once keen and sharp about them--charged with moment.
"Mademoiselle!" cried Ste. Marie. "Mademoiselle, are you telling me the truth?"
For some obscure reason she was not angry. Again she spread out her hands in that gesture of weariness. She said, "Oh, why should I lie to you?" And the man began to tremble exceedingly. He stretched out an unsteady hand.
"You--knew Arthur Benham last winter?" he said. "Long before his--before he left his home? Before that?"
"He asked me to marry him last winter," said the girl. "For a long, long time I--wouldn't. But he never let me alone. He followed me everywhere. And my father--"
Ste. Marie clapped his two hands over his face, and a groan came to her through the straining fingers. He cried, in an agony: "Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle!"
He fell upon his knees at her feet, his head bent in what seemed to be an intolerable anguish, his hands over his hidden face. The girl heard hard-wrung, stumbling, incoherent words wrenched each with an effort out of extreme pain.
"Fool! Fool!" the man cried, groaning. "Oh, fool that I have been! Worm, animal! Oh, fool not to see--not to know! Madman, imbecile, thing without a name!"
She stood white-faced, smitten with great fear over this abasement. Not the least and faintest glimmer reached her of what it meant. She stretched down a hand of protest, and it touched the man's head. As if the touch were a stroke of magic, he sprang upright before her.
"Now at last, Mademoiselle," said he, "we two must speak plainly together. Now at last I think I see clear, but I must know beyond doubt or question. Oh, Mademoiselle, now I think I know you for what you are, and it seems to me that nothing in this world is of consequence beside that. I have been blind, blind, blind!... Tell me one thing. Why did Arthur Benham leave his home two months ago?"
"He had to leave it," she said, wondering. She did not understand yet, but she was aware that her heart was beating in loud and fast throbs, and she knew that some great mystery was to be made plain before her. Her face was very white. "He had to leave it," she said again. "You know as well as I. Why do you ask me that? He quarrelled with his grandfather. They had often quarrelled before--over money--always over money. His grandfather is a miser, almost a madman. He tried to make Arthur sign a paper releasing his inheritance--the fortune he is to inherit from his father--and when Arthur wouldn't he drove him away. Arthur went to his uncle--Captain Stewart--and Captain Stewart helped him to hide. He didn't dare go back because they're all against him, all his family. They'd make him give in."
Ste. Marie gave a loud exclamation of amazement. The thing was incredible--childish. It was beyond the maddest possibilities. But even as he said the words to himself a face came before him--Captain Stewart's smiling and benignant face--and he understood everything. As clearly as if he had been present, he saw the angry, bewildered boy, fresh from David Stewart's berating, mystified over some commonplace legal matter requiring a signature. He saw him appeal for sympathy and counsel to "old Charlie," and he heard "old Charlie's" reply. It was easy enough to understand now. It must have been easy enough to bring about. What absurdities could not such a man as Captain Stewart instil into the already prejudiced mind of that foolish lad?
His thoughts turned from Arthur Benham to the girl before him, and that part of the mystery was clear also. She would believe whatever she was told in the absence of any reason to doubt. What did she know of old David Stewart or of the Benham family? It seemed to Ste. Marie all at once incredible that he could ever have believed ill of her--ever have doubted her honesty. It seemed to him so incredible that he could have laughed aloud in bitterness and self-disdain. But as he looked at the girl's white face and her shadowy, wondering eyes, all laughter, all bitterness, all cruel misunderstandings were swallowed up in the golden light of his joy at knowing her, in the end, for what she was.
"Coira! Coira!" he cried, and neither of the two knew that he called her for the first time by her name. "Oh, child," said he, "how they have lied to you and tricked you! I might have known, I might have seen it, but I was a blind fool. I thought--intolerable things. I might have known. They have lied to you most damnably, Coira."
She stared at him in a breathless silence without movement of any sort. Only her face seemed to have turned a little whiter and her great eyes darker, so that they looked almost black and enormous in that still face.
He told her, briefly, the truth: how young Arthur had had frequent quarrels with his grandfather over his waste of money, how after one of them, not at all unlike the others, he had disappeared, and how Captain Stewart, in desperate need, had set afoot his plot to get the lad's greater inheritance for himself. He described for her old David Stewart and the man's bitter grief, and he told her about the will, about how he had begun to suspect Captain Stewart, and of how he had traced the lost boy to La Lierre. He told her all that he knew of the whole matter, and he knew almost all there was to know, and he did not spare himself even his misconception of the part she had played, though he softened that as best he could.
Midway of his story Mlle. O'Hara bent her head and covered her face with her hands. She did not cry out or protest or speak at all. She made no more than that one movement, and after it she stood quite still, but the sight of her, bowed and shamed, stripped of pride, as it had been of garments, was more than the man could bear.
He cried her name, "Coira!" And when she did not look up, he called once more upon her. He said: "Coira, I cannot bear to see you stand so. Look at me. Ah, child, look at me! Can you realize," he cried--"can you even begin to think what a great joy it is to me to know at last that you have had no part in all this? Can't you see what it means to me? I can think of nothing else. Coira, look up!"
She raised her white face, and there were no tears upon it, but a still anguish too great to be told. It would seem never to have occurred to her to doubt the truth of his words. She said: "It is I who might have known. Knowing what you have told me now, it seems impossible that I could have believed. And Captain Stewart--I always hated him--loathed him--distrusted him. And yet," she cried, wringing her hands, "how could I know? How could I know?"
The girl's face writhed suddenly with her grief, and she stared up at Ste. Marie with terror in her eyes. She whispered: "My father! Oh, Ste. Marie, my father! It is not possible. I will not believe--he cannot have done this, knowing. My father, Ste. Marie!"
The man turned his eyes away, and she gave a sobbing cry.
"Has he," she said, slowly, "done even this for me? Has he given--his honor, also--when everything else was--gone? Has he given me his honor, too? Oh," she said, "why could I not have died when I was a little child? Why could I not have done that? To think that I should have lived to--bring my father to this! I wish I had died. Ste. Marie," she said, pleading with him. "Ste. Marie, do you think--my father--knew?"
"Let me think," said he. "Let me think! Is it possible that Stewart has lied to you all--to one as to another? Let me think!" His mind ran back over the matter, and he began to remember instances which had seemed to him odd, but to which he had attached no importance. He remembered O'Hara's puzzled and uncomprehending face when he, Ste. Marie, had spoken of Stewart's villany. He remembered the man's indignation over the affair of the poison, and his fairness in trying to make amends. He remembered other things, and his face grew lighter and he drew a great breath of relief. He said: "Coira, I do not believe he knew. Stewart has lied equally to you all--tricked each one of you." And at that the girl gave a cry of gladness and began to weep.
As long as men and women continue to stand upon opposite sides of a great gulf--and that will be as long as they exist together in this world--just so long will men continue to be unhappy and ill at ease in the face of women's tears, even though they know vaguely that tears may mean just anything at all, and by no means always grief.
Ste. Marie stood first upon one foot and then upon the other. He looked anxiously about him for succor. He said, "There! there!" or words to that effect, and once he touched the shoulder of the girl who stood weeping before him, and he was very miserable indeed.
But quite suddenly, in the midst of his discomfort, she looked up to him, and she was smiling and flushed, so that Ste. Marie stared at her in utter amazement.
"So now at last," said she, "I have back my Bayard. And I think the rest--doesn't matter very much."
"Bayard?" said he, wondering. "I don't understand," he said.
"Then," said she, "you must just go without understanding. For I shall never, never explain." The bright flush went from her face and she turned grave once more. "What is to be done?" she asked. "What must we do now, Ste. Marie--I mean about Arthur Benham? I suppose he must be told."
"Either he must be told," said the man, "or he must be taken back to his home by force." He told her about the four letters which in four days he had thrown over the wall into the Clamart road. "It was on the chance," he said, "that some one would pick one of them up and post it, thinking it had been dropped there by accident. What has become of them I don't know. I know only that they never reached Hartley."
The girl nodded thoughtfully. "Yes," said she, "that was the best thing you could have done. It ought to have succeeded. Of course--" She paused a moment and then nodded again. "Of course," said she, "I can manage to get a letter in the post now. We'll send it to-day if you like. But I was wondering--would it be better or not to tell Arthur the truth? It all depends upon how he may take it--whether or not he will believe you. He's very stubborn, and he's frightened about this break with his family, and he is quite sure that he has been badly treated. Will he believe you? Of course, if he does believe he could escape from here quite easily at any time, and there'd be no necessity for a rescue. What do you think?"
"I think he ought to be told," said Ste. Marie. "If we try to carry him away by force there'll be a fight, of course, and--who knows what might happen? That we must leave for a last resort--a last desperate resort. First we must tell the boy." Abruptly he gave a cry of dismay, and the girl looked up to him, staring. "But--but you, Coira!" said he, stammering. "But you! I hadn't realized--I hadn't thought--it never occurred to me what this means to you." The full enormity of the thing came upon him slowly. He was asking this girl to help him in robbing her of her lover.
She shook her head with a little wry smile. "Do you think," said she, "that knowing what I know now I would go on with that until he has made his peace with his family? Before, it was different. I thought him alone and ill-treated and hunted down. I could help him then, comfort him. Now I should be--all you ever thought me if I did not send him to his grandfather." She smiled again a little mirthlessly. "If his love for me is worth anything," she said, "he will come back--but openly this time, not in hiding. Then I shall know that he is--what I would have him be. Otherwise--"
"But you must remember, Coira," said he, "that the lad is very young and that his family--they may try--it may be hard for him. They may say that he is too young to know--Ah, child, I should have thought of this!"
"Ste. Marie," said the girl, and after a moment he turned to face her. "What shall you say to Arthur's family, Ste. Marie," she demanded, very soberly, "when they ask you if I--if Arthur should be allowed to--come back to me?"
A wave of color flooded the man's face and his eyes shone. He cried:
"I shall tell them, Coira, that if that wretched, half-baked lad should search this wide world round, from Paris on to Paris again, and if he should spend a lifetime searching, he would never find the beauty and the sweetness and the tenderness and the true faith that he left behind at La Lierre--nor the hundredth part of them. I should say that you are so much above him that he ought to creep to you on his knees from the rue de l'Université to this garden, thanking God that you were here at the journey's end, and kissing the ground that he dragged himself over for sheer joy and gratitude. I should tell them--Oh, I have no words! I could tell them so pitifully little of you! I think I should only say, 'Go to her and see!' I think I should just say that."
The girl turned her head away with a little sob. But afterward she faced him once more, and she looked up to him with sweet, half-shut eyes for a long time. At last she said:
"For love of whom, Ste. Marie, did you undertake this quest--this search for Arthur Benham? It was not in idleness or by way of a whim. It was for love. For love of whom?"
For some strange and inexplicable reason the words struck him like a blow and he stared whitely.
"I came," he said, at last, and his voice was oddly flat, "for his sister's sake. For love of her."
Coira O'Hara dropped her eyes. But presently she looked up again with a smile. She said, "God make you happy, my friend."
And she turned and moved away from him up among the trees. At a little distance she turned, saying:
"Wait where you are. I will fetch Arthur or send him to you. He must be told at once."
Then she went on and was lost to sight.
Ste. Marie followed a few steps after her and halted. His face was turned by chance toward the east wall, and suddenly he gave a great cry and smothered it with his hands over his mouth. His knees bent under him, and he was weak and trembling. Then he began to run. He ran with awkward steps, for his leg was not yet entirely recovered, but he ran fast, and his heart beat within him until he thought it must burst.
He was making for that spot which was overhung by the half-dead cedar-tree.