Jason Part 22

He thought of Captain Stewart, and he wondered if that gentleman was by any chance here in the house, or if he was still in bed in the rue du Faubourg St. Honore, recovering from his epileptic fit.

After that he fell once more to cursing himself and his incredible stupidity, and he could have wept for sheer bitterness of chagrin.

He was still engaged in this unpleasant occupation when the door of the room opened and the Irishman O'Hara entered, having finished his interview with Captain Stewart below. He came up beside the bed and looked down not unkindly upon the man who lay there, but Ste. Marie scowled back at him, for he was in a good deal of pain and a vile humor.

"How's the leg--_and_ the head?" asked the amateur surgeon. To do him justice, he was very skilful, indeed, through much experience.

"They hurt," said Ste. Marie, shortly. "My head aches like the devil, and my leg burns."

O'Hara made a sound which was rather like a gruff laugh, and nodded.

"Yes, and they'll go on doing it, too," said he. "At least the leg will.

Your head will be all right again in a day or so. Do you want anything to eat? It's near dinner-time. I suppose we can't let you starve--though you deserve it."

"Thanks; I want nothing," said Ste. Marie. "Pray don't trouble about me."

The other man nodded again indifferently and turned to go out of the room, but in the doorway he halted and looked back.

"As we're to have the pleasure of your company for some time to come,"

said he, "you might suggest a name to call you by. Of course I don't expect you to tell your own name--though I can learn that easily enough."

"Easily enough, to be sure," said the man on the bed. "Ask Stewart. He knows only too well."

The Irishman scowled. And after a moment he said:

"I don't know any Stewart."

But at that Ste. Marie gave a laugh, and a tinge of red came over the Irishman's cheeks.

"And so, to save Captain Stewart the trouble," continued the wounded man, "I'll tell you my name with pleasure. I don't know why I shouldn't.

It's Ste. Marie."

"What?" cried O'Hara, hoa.r.s.ely. "What? Say that again!"

He came forward a swift step or two into the room, and he stared at the man on the bed as if he were staring at a ghost.

"Ste. Marie?" he cried, in a whisper. "It's impossible! What are you,"

he demanded, "to Gilles, Comte de Ste. Marie de Mont-Perdu? What are you to him?"

"He was my father," said the younger man; "but he is dead. He has been dead for ten years."

He raised his head, with a little grimace of pain, to look curiously after the Irishman, who had all at once turned away across the room and stood still beside a window with bent head.

"Why?" he questioned. "What about my father? Why did you ask that?"

O'Hara did not answer at once, and he did not stir from his place by the window, but after a while he said:

"I knew him.... That's all."

And after another s.p.a.ce he came back beside the bed, and once more looked down upon the young man who lay there. His face was veiled, inscrutable. It betrayed nothing.

"You have a look of your father," said he. "That was what puzzled me a little. I was just saying to--I was just thinking that there was something familiar about you.... Ah, well, we've all come down in the world since then. The Ste. Marie blood, though. Who'd have thought it?"

The man shook his head a little sorrowfully, but Ste. Marie stared up at him in frowning incomprehension. The pain had dulled him somewhat. And presently O'Hara again moved toward the door. On the way he said:

"I'll bring or send you something to eat--not too much. And later on I'll give you a sleeping-powder. With that head of yours you may have trouble in getting to sleep. Understand, I'm doing this for your father's son, and not because you've any right yourself to consideration."

Ste. Marie raised himself with difficulty on one elbow.

"Wait!" said he. "Wait a moment!" and the other halted just inside the door. "You seem to have known my father," said Ste. Marie, "and to have respected him. For my father's sake, will you listen to me for five minutes?"

"No, I won't," said the Irishman, sharply. "So you may as well hold your tongue. Nothing you can say to me or to any one in this house will have the slightest effect. We know what you came spying here for. We know all about it."

"Yes," said Ste. Marie, with a little sigh, and he fell back upon the pillows. "Yes, I suppose you do. I was rather a fool to speak. You wouldn't all be doing what you're doing if words could affect you. I was a fool to speak."

The Irishman stared at him for another moment, and went out of the room, closing the door behind him.

So he was left once more alone to his pain and his bitter self-reproaches and his wild and futile plans for escape. But O'Hara returned in an hour or thereabout with food for him--a cup of broth and a slice of bread; and when Ste. Marie had eaten these the Irishman looked once more to his wounded leg, and gave him a sleeping-powder dissolved in water.

He lay restless and wide-eyed for an hour, and then drifted away through intermediate mists into a sleep full of horrible dreams, but it was at least relief from bodily suffering, and when he awoke in the morning his headache was almost gone.

He awoke to suns.h.i.+ne and fresh, sweet odors and the twittering of birds.

By good chance O'Hara had been the last to enter the room on the evening before, and so no one had come to close the shutters or draw the blinds.

The windows were open wide, and the morning breeze, very soft and aromatic, blew in and out and filled the place with sweetness. The room was a corner room, with windows that looked south and east, and the early sun slanted in and lay in golden squares across the floor.

Ste. Marie opened his eyes with none of the dazed bewilderment that he might have expected. The events of the preceding day came back to him instantly and without shock. He put up an experimental hand, and found that his head was still very sore where he had struck it in falling, but the ache was almost gone. He tried to stir his leg, and a protesting pain shot through it. It burned dully, even when it was quiet, but the pain was not at all severe. He realized that he was to get off rather well, considering what might have happened, and he was so grateful for this that he almost forgot to be angry with himself over his monumental folly.

A small bird chased by another wheeled in through the southern window and back again into free air. Finally, the two settled down upon the parapet of the little shallow balcony which was there to have their disagreement out, and they talked it over with a great deal of noise and many threatening gestures and a complete loss of temper on both sides.

Ste. Marie, from his bed, cheered them on, but there came a commotion in the ivy which draped the wall below, and the two birds fled in ignominious haste, and just in the nick of time, for when the cause of the commotion shot into view it was a large black cat, of great bodily activity and an ardent single-heartedness of aim.

The black cat gazed for a moment resentfully after its vanished prey, and then composed its sleek body upon the iron rail, tail and paws tucked neatly under. Ste. Marie chirruped, and the cat turned yellow eyes upon him in mild astonishment, as one who should say, "Who the deuce are you, and what the deuce are you doing here?" He chirruped again, and the cat, after an ostentatious yawn and stretch, came to him--beating up to windward, as it were, and making the bed in three tacks. When O'Hara entered the room some time later he found his patient in a very cheerful frame of mind, and the black cat sitting on his chest purring like a dynamo and kneading like an industrious baker.

"Ho," said the Irishman, "you seem to have found a friend!"

"Well, I need one friend here," argued Ste. Marie. "I'm in the enemy's stronghold. You needn't be alarmed; the cat can't tell me anything, and it can't help me to escape. It can only sit on me and purr. That's harmless enough."

O'Hara began one of his gruff laughs, but he seemed to remember himself in the middle of it and a.s.sumed an intimidating scowl instead.

"How's the leg?" he demanded, shortly. "Let me see it." He took off the bandages and cleansed and sprayed the wound with some antiseptic liquid that he had brought in a bottle. "There's a little fever," said he, "but that can't be avoided. You're going on very well--a good deal better than you'd any right to expect." He had to inflict not a little pain in his examination and redressing of the wound. He knew that, and once or twice he glanced up at Ste. Marie's face with a sort of reluctant admiration for the man who could bear so much without any sign whatever.

In the end he put together his things and nodded with professional satisfaction. "You'll do well enough now for the rest of the day," he said. "I'll send up old Michel to valet you. He's the gardener who shot you yesterday, and he may take it into his head to finish the job this morning. If he does I sha'n't try to stop him."

"Nor I," said Ste. Marie. "Thanks very much for your trouble. An excellent surgeon was lost in you."

O'Hara left the room, and presently the old caretaker, one-eyed, gnomelike, shambling like a bear, sidled in and proceeded to set things to rights. He looked, Ste. Marie said to himself, like something in an old German drawing, or in those imitations of old drawings that one sometimes sees nowadays in _Fliegende Blatter_. He tried to make the strange creature talk, but Michel went about his task with an air half-frightened, half-stolid, and refused to speak more than an occasional "oui" or a "bien, Monsieur," in answer to orders. Ste. Marie asked if he might have some coffee and bread, and the old Michel nodded and slipped from the room as silently as he had entered it.

Thereafter Ste. Marie trifled with the cat and got one hand well scratched for his trouble, but in five minutes there came a knocking at the door. He laughed a little. "Michel grows ceremonious when it's a question of food," he said. "Entrez, mon vieux!"

The door opened, and Ste. Marie caught his breath.