Jason: A Romance

by Justus Miles Forman

When O'Hara, the next morning, went through the formality of looking in upon his patient, and after a taciturn nod was about to go away again, Ste. Marie called him back. He said, "Would you mind waiting a moment?" and the Irishman halted inside the door. "I made an experiment yesterday," said Ste. Marie, "and I find that, after a poor fashion, I can walk--that is to say, I can drag myself about a little without any great pain if I don't bend the left leg."

O'Hara returned to the bed and made a silent examination of the bullet wound, which, it was plain to see, was doing very well indeed. "You'll be all right in a few days," said he, "but you'll be lame for a week yet--maybe two. As a matter of fact, I've known men to march half a day with a hole in the leg worse than yours, though it probably was not quite pleasant."

"I'm afraid I couldn't march very far," said Ste. Marie, "but I can hobble a bit. The point is, I'm going mad from confinement in this room. Do you think I might be allowed to stagger about the garden for an hour, or sit there under one of the trees? I don't like to ask favors, but, so far as I can see, it could do no harm. I couldn't possibly escape, you see. I couldn't climb a fifteen-foot wall even if I had two good legs; as it is, with a leg and a half, I couldn't climb anything."

The Irishman looked at him sharply, and was silent for a time, as if considering. But at last he said: "Of course there is no reason whatever for granting you any favors here. You're on the footing of a spy--a captured spy--and you're very lucky not to have got what you deserved instead of a trumpery flesh wound." The man's face twisted into a heavy scowl. "Unfortunately," said he, "an accident has put me--put us in as unpleasant a position toward you as you had put yourself toward us. We seem to stand in the position of having tried to poison you, and--well, we owe you something for that. Still, I'd meant to keep you locked up in this room so long as it was necessary to have you at La Lierre." He scowled once more in an intimidating fashion at Ste. Marie, and it was evident that he found himself embarrassed. "And," he said, awkwardly, "I suppose I owe something to your father's son.... Look here! If you're to be allowed in the garden, you must understand that it's at fixed hours and not alone. Somebody will always be with you, and old Michel will be on hand to shoot you down if you try to run for it or if you try to communicate with Arthur Benham. Is that understood?"

"Quite," said Ste. Marie, gayly. "Quite understood and agreed to. And many thanks for your courtesy. I sha'n't forget it. We differ rather widely on some rather important subjects, you and I, but I must confess that you're very generous, and I thank you. The old Michel has my full permission to shoot at me if he sees me trying to fly over a fifteen-foot wall."

"He'll shoot without asking your permission," said the Irishman, grimly, "if you try that on, but I don't think you'll be apt to try it for the present--not with a crippled leg." He pulled out his watch and looked at it. "Nine o'clock," said he. "If you care to begin to-day you can go out at eleven for an hour. I'll see that old Michel is ready at that time."

"Eleven will suit me perfectly," said Ste. Marie. "You're very good. Thanks once more!" The Irishman did not seem to hear. He replaced the watch in his pocket and turned away in silence. But before he left the room he stood a moment beside one of the windows, staring out into the morning sunshine, and the other man could see that his face had once more settled into the still and melancholic gloom which was characteristic of it. Ste. Marie watched, and for the first time the man began to interest him as a human being. He had thought of O'Hara before merely as a rather shady adventurer of a not very rare type, but he looked at the adventurer's face now and he saw that it was the face of a man of unspeakable sorrows. When O'Hara looked at one, one saw only a pair of singularly keen and hard blue eyes set under a bony brow. When those eyes were turned away, the man's attention relaxed, the face became a battle-ground furrowed and scarred with wrecked pride and with bitterness and with shame and with agony. Most soldiers of fortune have faces like that, for the world has used them very ill, and they have lost one precious thing after another until all are gone, and they have tasted everything that there is in life, and the flavor which remains is a very bitter flavor--dry, like ashes.

It came to Ste. Marie, as he lay watching this man, that the story of the man's life, if he could be made to tell it, would doubtless be one of the most interesting stories in the world, as must be the tale of the adventurous career of any one who has slipped down the ladder of respectability, rung by rung, into that shadowy no-man's-land where the furtive birds of prey foregather and hatch their plots. It was plain enough that O'Hara had, as the phrase goes, seen better days. Without question he was a villain, but, after all, a generous villain. He had been very decent about making amends for that poisoning affair. A cheaper rascal would have behaved otherwise. Ste. Marie suddenly remembered what a friend of his had once said of this mysterious Irishman. The two had been sitting on the terrace of a café, and as O'Hara passed by Ste. Marie's friend pointed after him and said: "There goes some of the best blood that ever came out of Ireland. See what it has fallen to!"

Seemingly it had fallen pretty low. He would have liked very much to know about the downward stages, but he knew that he would never hear anything of them from the man himself, for O'Hara was clad, as it were, in an armor of taciturnity. He was incredibly silent. He wore mail that nothing could pierce.

The Irishman turned abruptly away and left the room, and Ste. Marie, with all the gay excitement of a little girl preparing for her first nursery party, began to get himself ready to go out. The old Michel had already been there to help him bathe and shave, so that he had only to dress himself and attend to his one conspicuous vanity--the painstaking arrangement of his hair, which he wore, according to the fashion of the day, parted a little at one side and brushed almost straight back, so that it looked rather like a close-fitting and incredibly glossy skullcap. Richard Hartley, who was inclined to joke at his friend's grave interest in the matter, said that it reminded him of patent-leather.