Jason Part 28

"I don't know," she said, in her deep voice, "what my father would wish.

I did not know that you were coming into the garden this morning, or--"

"Or else," said Ste. Marie, with a little touch of bitterness in his tone--"or else you would not have been here. You would have remained in the house."

He made a bow.

"To-morrow, Mademoiselle," said he, "and for the remainder of the days that I may be at La Lierre, I shall stay in my room. You need have no fear of me."

All the man's life he had been spoiled. The girl's bearing hurt him absurdly, and a little of the hurt may have betrayed itself in his face as he turned away, for she came toward him with a swift movement, saying:

"No, no! Wait!--I have hurt you," she said, with a sort of wondering distress. "You have let me hurt you.... And yet surely you must see,...

you must realize on what terms.... Do you forget that you are not among your friends... outside?... This is so very different!"

"I had forgotten," said he. "Incredible as it sounds, I had for a moment forgotten. Will you grant me your pardon for that? And yet," he persisted, after a moment's pause--"yet, Mademoiselle, consider a little! It is likely that--circ.u.mstances have so fallen that it seems I shall be here within your walls for a time, perhaps a long time. I am able to walk a little now. Day by day I shall be stronger, better able to get about. Is there not some way--are there hot some terms under which we could meet without embarra.s.sment? Must we forever glare at each other and pa.s.s by warily, just because we--well, hold different views about--something?"

It was not a premeditated speech at all. It had never until this moment occurred to him to suggest any such arrangement with any member of the household at La Lierre. At another time he would doubtless have considered it undignified, if not downright unwise, to hold intercourse of any friendly sort with this band of contemptible adventurers. The sudden impulse may have been born of his long week of almost intolerable loneliness, or it may have come of the warm exhilaration of this first breath of sweet, outdoor air, or perhaps it needed neither of these things, for the girl was very beautiful--enchantment breathed from her, and, though he knew what she was, in what despicable plot she was engaged, he was too much Ste. Marie to be quite indifferent to her.

Though he looked upon her sorrowfully and with pain and vicarious shame, he could not have denied the spell she wielded. After all, he was Ste.

Marie.

Once more the girl looked up very gravely under her brows, and her eyes met the man's eyes. "I don't know," she said. "Truly, I don't know. I think I should have to ask my father about it.--I wish," she said, "that we might do that. I should like it. I should like to be able to talk to some one--about the things I like--and care for. I used to talk with my father about things; but not lately. There is no one now." Her eyes searched him. "Would it be possible, I wonder," said she. "Could we two put everything else aside--forget altogether who we are and why we are here. Is that possible?"

"We could only try, Mademoiselle," said Ste. Marie. "If we found it a failure we could give it up." He broke into a little laugh. "And besides," he said, "I can't help thinking that two people ought to be with me all the time I am in the garden here--for safety's sake. I might catch the old Michel napping one day, you know, throttle him, take his rifle away, and escape. If there were two, I couldn't do it."

For an instant she met his laugh with an answering smile, and the smile came upon her sombre beauty like a moment of golden light upon darkness.

But afterward she was grave again and thoughtful. "Is it not rather foolish," she asked, "to warn us--to warn me of possibilities like that?

You might quite easily do what you have said. You are putting us on our guard against you."

"I meant to, Mademoiselle," said Ste. Marie. "I meant to. Consider my reasons. Consider what I was pleading for!" And he gave a little laugh when the color began again to rise in the girl's cheeks.

She turned away from him, shaking her head, and he thought that he had said too much and that she was offended, but after a moment the girl looked up, and when she met his eyes she laughed outright.

"I cannot forever be scowling and snarling at you," said she. "It is quite too absurd. Will you sit down for a little while? I don't know whether or not my father would approve, but we have met here by accident, and there can be no harm, surely, in our exchanging a few civil words. If you try to bring up forbidden topics I can simply go away; and, besides, Michel stands ready to murder you if it should become necessary. I think his failure of a week ago is very heavy on his conscience."

Ste. Marie sat down in one corner of the long stone bench, and he was very glad to do it, for his leg was beginning to cause him some discomfort. It felt hot and as if there were a very tight band round it above the knee. The relief must have been apparent in his face, for Mlle. O'Hara looked at him in silence for a moment, and she gave a little, troubled, anxious frown. Men can be quite indifferent to suffering in each other if the suffering is not extreme, and women can be, too, but men are quite miserable in the presence of a woman who is in pain, and women, before a suffering man, while they are not miserable, are always full of a desire to do something that will help.

And that might be a small, additional proof--if any more proof were necessary--that they are much the more practical of the two s.e.xes.

The girl's sharp glance seemed to a.s.sure her that Ste. Marie was comfortable, now that he was sitting down, for the frown went from her brows, and she began to arrange the mysterious white garment in her lap in preparation to go on with her work.

Ste. Marie watched her for a while in a contented silence. The leaves overhead stirred under a puff of air, and a single yellow beam of sunlight came down and s.h.i.+vered upon the girl's dark head and played about the bundle of white over which her hands were busy. She moved aside to avoid it, but it followed her, and when she moved back it followed again and danced in her lap as if it were a live thing with a malicious sense of humor. It might have been Tinker Bell out of _Peter Pan_, only it did not jingle. Mlle. O'Hara uttered an exclamation of annoyance, and Ste. Marie laughed at her, but in a moment the leaves overhead were still again, and the sunbeam, with a sense of humor, was gone to torment some one else.

Still neither of the two spoke, and Ste. Marie continued to watch the girl bent above her sewing. He Was thinking of what she had said to him when he asked her if she read Spanish--that her mother had been Spanish.

That would account, then, for her dark eyes. It would account for the darkness of her skin, too, but not for its extraordinary clearness and delicacy, for Spanish women are apt to have dull skins of an opaque texture. This was, he said to himself, an Irish skin with a darker stain, and he was quite sure that he had never before seen anything at all like it.

Apart from coloring, she was all Irish, of the type which has become famous the world over, and which in the opinion of men who have seen women in all countries, and have studied them, is the most beautiful type that exists in our time.

Ste. Marie was dark himself, and in the ordinary nature of things he should have preferred a fair type in women. In theory, for that matter, he did prefer it, but it was impossible for him to sit near Coira O'Hara and watch her bent head and busy, hovering hands, and remain unstirred by her splendid beauty. He found himself wondering why one kind of loveliness more than another should exert a potent and mysterious spell by virtue of mere proximity, and when the woman who bore it was entirely pa.s.sive. If this girl had been looking at him the matter would have been easy to understand, for an eye-glance is often downright hypnotic; but she was looking at the work in her hands, and, so far as could be judged, she had altogether forgotten his presence; yet the mysterious spell, the potent enchantment, breathed from her like a vapor, and he could not be insensible to it. It was like sorcery.

The girl looked up so suddenly that Ste. Marie jumped. She said:

"You are not a very talkative person. Are you always as silent as this?"

"No," said he, "I am not. I offer my humblest apologies. It seems as if I were not properly grateful for being allowed to sit here with you, but, to tell the truth, I was buried in thought."

They had begun to talk in French, but midway of Ste. Marie's speech the girl glanced toward the old Michel, who stood a short distance away, and so he changed to English.

"In that case," she said, regarding her work with her head on one side like a bird--"in that case you might at least tell me what your thoughts were. They might be interesting."

Ste. Marie gave a little embarra.s.sed laugh.

"I'm sorry," said he, "but I'm afraid they were too personal. I'm afraid if I told you you'd get up and go away and be frigidly polite to me when next we pa.s.sed each other in the garden here. But there's no harm," he said, "in telling you one thing that occurred to me. It occurred to me that, as far as a young girl can be said to resemble an elderly woman, you bear a most remarkable resemblance to a very dear old friend of mine who lives near Dublin--Lady Margaret Craith. She's a widow, and almost all of her family are dead, I believe--I didn't know any of them--and she lives there in a huge old house with a park, quite alone with her army of servants. I go to see her whenever I'm in Ireland, because she is one of the sweetest souls I have ever known."

He became aware suddenly that Mlle. O'Hara's head was bent very low over her sewing and that her face, or as much of it as he could see, was crimson.

"Oh, I--I beg your pardon!" cried Ste. Marie. "I've done something dreadful. I don't know what it is, but I'm very, very sorry. Please forgive me if you can!"

"It is nothing," she said, in a low voice, and after a moment she looked up for the swiftest possible glance and down again. "That is my--aunt,"

she said. "Only--please let us talk about something else! Of course you couldn't possibly have known."

"No," said Ste. Marie, gravely. "No, of course. You are very good to forgive me."

He was silent a little while, for what the girl had told him surprised him very much indeed, and touched him, too. He remembered again the remark of his friend when O'Hara had pa.s.sed them on the boulevard:

"There goes some of the best blood that ever came out of Ireland. See what it has fallen to!"

"It is a curious fact," said he, "that you and I are very close compatriots in the matter of blood--if 'compatriots' is the word. You are Irish and Spanish. My mother was Irish and my people were Bearnais, which is about as much Spanish as French; and, indeed, there was a great deal of blood from across the mountains in them, for they often married Spanish wives."

He pulled the _Bayard_ out of his pocket.

"The Ste. Marie in here married a Spanish lady, didn't he?"

The girl looked up to him once more.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, I remember. He was a brave man, Monsieur. He had a great soul. And he died n.o.bly."

"Well, as for that," he said, flus.h.i.+ng a little, "the Ste. Maries have all died rather well."

He gave a short laugh.

"Though I must admit," said he, "that the last of them came precious near falling below the family standard a week ago. I should think that probably none of my respected forefathers was killed in climbing over a garden-wall. Autres temps, autres moeurs."

He burst out laughing again at what seemed to him rather comic, but Mlle. O'Hara did not smile. She looked very gravely into his eyes, and there seemed to be something like sorrow in her look. Ste. Marie wondered at it, but after a moment it occurred to him that he was very near forbidden ground, and that doubtless the girl was trying to give him a silent warning of it. He began to turn over the leaves of the book in his hand.

"You have marked a great many pages here," said he.

And she said: "It is my best of all books. I read in it very often. I am so thankful for it that there are no words to say how thankful I am--how glad I am that I have such a world as that to--take refuge in sometimes when this world is a little too unbearable. It does for me now what the fairy stories did when I was little. And to think that it's true, true!

To think that once there truly were men like that--sans peur et sans reproche! It makes life worth while to think that those men lived even if it was long ago."

Ste. Marie bent his head over the little book, for he could not look at Mlle. O'Hara just then. It seemed to him well-nigh the most pathetic speech that he had ever heard. His heart bled for her. Out of what mean shadows had the girl to turn her weary eyes upward to this sunlight of ancient heroism!