The Quest: A Romance

by Justus Miles Forman

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 skull-cap. Richard Hartley, who was inclined to joke at his friend's grave interest in the matter, said that it reminded him of patent leather.

When he was dressed—and he found that putting on his left boot was no mean feat—Ste. Marie sat down in a chair by the window and lighted a cigarette. He had half an hour to wait, and so he picked up the volume of Bayard, which Coira O'Hara had not yet taken away from him, and began to read in it at random. He became so absorbed that the old Michel, come to summon him, took him by surprise. But it was a pleasant surprise and very welcome. He followed the old man out of the room with a heart that beat fast with eagerness.

The descent of the stairs offered difficulties, for the wounded leg protested sharply against being bent more than a very little at the knee. But, by aid of Michel's shoulder, he made the passage in safety, and so came to the lower story. At the foot of the stairs some one opened a door almost in their faces, but closed it again with great haste, and Ste. Marie gave a chuckle of laughter, for, though it was almost dark there, he thought he had recognised Captain Stewart.

"So old Charlie's with us to-day, is he?" he said aloud, and Michel queried: "Comment, monsieur?" because Ste. Marie had spoken in English.

They came out upon the terrace before the house, and the fresh sweet air bore against their faces, and little flecks of live gold danced and shivered about their feet upon the moss-stained tiles. The gardener stepped back for an instant into the doorway and reappeared, bearing across his arms the short carbine with which Ste. Marie had already made acquaintance. The victim looked at this weapon with a laugh, and the old Michel's gnome-like countenance distorted itself suddenly and a weird cackle came from it.

"It is my old friend?" demanded Ste. Marie, and the gardener cackled once more, stroking the barrel of the weapon as if it were a faithful dog.

"The same, monsieur," said he. "But she apologises for not doing better."

"Beg her for me," said the young man, "to cheer up. She may get another chance." Old Michel's face froze into an expression of anxious and rather frightened solicitude, but he waved his arm for the prisoner to precede him, and Ste. Marie began to limp down across the littered and unkempt sweep of turf. Behind him at the distance of a dozen paces he heard the shambling footfalls of his guard, but he had expected that, and it could not rob him of his swelling and exultant joy at treading once more upon green grass and looking up into blue sky. He was like a man newly released from a dungeon, rather than from a sunny and by no means uncomfortable upper chamber. He would have liked to dance and sing, to run at full speed like a child until he was breathless and red in the face. Instead of that he had to drag himself with slow pains and some discomfort, but his spirit ran ahead, dancing and singing, and he thought that it even halted now and then to roll on the grass.

As he had observed, a week before from the top of his wall, a double row of larches led straight down away from the front of the house, making a wide and long vista interrupted, halfway to its end, by a rond point, in the centre of which was a pool and a fountain. The double row of trees was sadly broken now, and the trees were untrimmed and uncared for. One of them had fallen, probably in a wind storm, and lay dead across the way. Ste. Marie turned aside towards the west and found himself presently among chestnuts, planted in close rows, whose tops grew in so thick a canopy above that but little sunshine came through, and there was no turf under foot, only black earth hard trodden, mossy here and there.

From beyond, in the direction he had chanced to take and a little towards the west, a soft morning breeze bore to him the scent of roses, so constant and so sweet despite its delicacy that to breathe it was like an intoxication. He felt it begin to take hold upon and to sway his senses like an exquisite, an insidious wine.