The Maids of Paradise Part 71

His heightened color and excitement, his nervous impetuosity, were not characteristic of this quiet and rather indifferent young countryman of mine.

I looked at him keenly but pleasantly.

"You are going to load my revolver, and go over to Paradise and take that balloon from these bandits?" I asked, smiling.

"An order is all right, but it is the more formal when backed by a bullet," he said.

"Do you mean to tell me that you were preparing to go over into that hornet's nest alone?"

He shrugged his shoulders with a reckless laugh.

"Give me my revolver," I said, coldly.

His face fell. "Let me take it, Mr. Scarlett," he pleaded; but I refused, and made him hand me the weapon.

"Now," I said, sternly, "I want to know what the devil you mean by attempting suicide? Do you suppose that those ruffians care a straw for you and your order? Kelly, what's the matter with you? Is life as unattractive as all that?"

His flushed and sullen face darkened.

"If you want to risk your life," I said, "you have plenty of chances in your profession. Did you ever hear of an aged aeronaut? Kelly, go back to America and break your neck like a gentleman."

He darted a menacing glance at me, but there was nothing of irony in my sober visage.

"You appear here," I said, "after the others have sailed from Lorient. Why? To do Speed this generous favor? Yes--and to do yourself the pleasure of ending an embittered life under the eyes of the woman who ruined you."

The boy flinched as though I had struck him in the face. For a moment I expected a blow; his hands clinched convulsively, and he focussed me with blazing eyes.

"Don't," I said, quietly. "I am trying to be your friend; I am trying to save you from yourself, Kelly. Don't throw away your life--as I have done. Life is a good thing, Kelly, a good thing. Can we not be friends though I tell you the truth?"

The color throbbed and throbbed in his face. There was a chair near him; he groped for it, and sat down heavily.

"Life is a good thing," I said again, "but, Kelly, truth is better.

And I must tell you the--well, something of the truth--as much as you need know ... now. My friend, _she is not worth it_."

"Do you think that makes any difference?" he said, harshly. "Let me alone, Scarlett. I know!... _I know_, I tell you!"

"Do you mean to tell me that you know she deliberately betrayed you?"

I demanded.

"Yes, I know it--I tell you I know it!"

"And ... you love her?"

"Yes." He dropped his haggard face on his arms a moment, then sat bolt upright. "Truth is better than life," he said, slowly. "I lied to you and to myself when I came back. I did come to get Speed's balloon, but I came ... for her sake,... to be near her,... to see her once more before I--"

"Yes, I understand, Kelly."

He winced and leaned wearily back.

"You are right," he said; "I wanted to end it,... I am tired."

I sat thinking for a moment; the light in the room faded to a glimmer on the panes.

"Kelly," I said, "there remains another way to risk your neck, and, I think, a n.o.bler way. There is in this house a woman who is running a terrible risk--a German spy whose operations have been discovered.

This woman believes that she has in her pay the communist leader of the revolt, a man called Buckhurst. She is in error. And she must leave this house to-night."

Eyre's face had paled. He bent forward, clasped hands between his knees, eyes fastened on me.

"There will be trouble here to-night--or, in all probability, within the next twenty-four hours. I expect to see Buckhurst a prisoner. And when that happens it will go hard with Mademoiselle Elven, for he will turn on her to save himself.... And you know what that means;... a blank wall, Kelly, and a firing-squad. There is but one s.e.x for spies."

A deadly fear was stamped on his bloodless face. I saw it, tense and quivering, in the gray light of the window.

"She must leave to-night, Kelly. She must try to cross into Spain.

Will you help her?"

He nodded, striving to say "yes."

"You know your own risk?"

"Yes."

"Her company is death for you both if you are taken."

He stood up very straight. In what strange forms comes happiness to man!

XXI

LIKE HER ANCESTORS

A sense of insecurity, of impending trouble, seemed to weigh upon us all that evening--a physical depression, which the sea-wind brought with its flying scud, wetting the window-panes like fine rain.

At intervals from across the moors came the deadened rolling of insurgent drums, and in the sky a ruddy reflection of a fire brightened and waned as the fog thickened or blew inland--an ominous sign of disorder, possibly even a reflection from that unseen war raging somewhere beyond the obscured horizon.

It may have been this indefinable foreboding that drew our little company into a temporary intimacy; it may have been the immense loneliness of the sea, thundering in thickening darkness, that stilled our voices to whispers.

Eyre, ill at ease, walked from window to window, looking at the luminous tints on the ragged edges of the clouds; Sylvia, over her heavy embroidery, lifted her head gravely at moments, to glance after him when he halted listless, preoccupied, staring at Speed and Jacqueline, who were drawing pictures of Arthur and his knights by the lamp-lit table.

I leaned in the embrasure of the southern window, gazing at my lighted lanterns, which dangled from the halyards at Saint-Yssel. The soldier Rolland had so far kept his word--three red lamps glimmered through a driving mist; the white lanterns hung above, faintly s.h.i.+ning.

Full in the firelight of the room sat the young Countess, lost in reverie, hands clasping the gilt arms of her chair. At her feet dozed Ange Pitou.

The dignity of a parvenu cat admitted for the first time to unknown luxury is a lesson. I said this to the young Countess, who smiled dreamily, watching the play of color over the drift-wood fire. A s.h.i.+p's plank was burning there, tufted with golden-green flames.

Presently a blaze of purest carmine threw a deeper light into the room.

"I wonder," she said, "what people sailed in that s.h.i.+p--and when?