Jason Part 32

"I didn't hear you come," said she. "You don't drag your left leg any more. You walk almost as well as if you had never been wounded."

"I'm almost all right again," he answered. "I suppose I couldn't run or jump, but I certainly can walk very much like a human being. May I sit down?"

Mlle. O'Hara put out one hand and drew the book closer to make a place for him on the stone bench, and he settled himself comfortably there, turned a little so that he was facing toward her.

It was indicative of the state of intimacy into which the two had grown that they did not make polite conversation with each other, but indeed were silent for some little time after Ste. Marie had seated himself. It was he who spoke first. He said:

"You look vaguely cla.s.sical to-day. I have been trying to guess why, and I cannot. Perhaps it's because your--what does one say: frock, dress, gown?--because it is cut out square at the throat."

"If you mean by cla.s.sical, Greek," said she, "it wouldn't be square at the neck at all; it would be pointed--V-shaped. And it would be very different in other ways, too. You are not an observing person, after all."

"For all that," insisted Ste. Marie, "you look cla.s.sical. You look like some lady one reads about in Greek poems--Helen or Iphigenia or Medea or somebody."

"Helen had yellow hair, hadn't she?" objected Mlle. O'Hara. "I should think I probably look more like Medea--Medea in Colchis before Jason--"

She seemed suddenly to realize that she had hit upon an unfortunate example, for she stopped in the middle of her sentence and a wave of color swept up over her throat and face.

For a moment Ste. Marie did not understand, then he gave a low exclamation, for Medea certainly had been an unhappy name. He remembered something that Richard Hartley had said about that lady a long time before. He made another mistake, for to lessen the moment's embarra.s.sment he gave speech to the first thought which entered his mind. He said:

"Some one once remarked that you look like the young Juno--before marriage. I expect it's true, too."

She turned upon him swiftly.

"Who said that?" she demanded. "Who has ever talked to you about me?"

"I beg your pardon," he said. "I seem to be singularly stupid this morning. A mild lunacy. You must forgive me, if you can. To tell you what you ask would be to enter upon forbidden ground, and I mustn't do that."

"Still, I should like to know," said the girl, watching him with sombre eyes.

"Well, then," said he, "it was a little Jewish photographer in the Boulevard de la Madeleine."

And she said, "Oh!" in a rather disappointed tone and looked away.

"We seem to be making conversation chiefly about my personal appearance," she said, presently. "There must be other topics if one should try hard to find them. Tell me stories. You told me stories yesterday; tell me more. You seem to be in a cla.s.sical mood. You shall be Odysseus, and I will be Nausicaa, the interesting laundress. Tell me about wanderings and things. Have you any more islands for me?"

"Yes," said Ste. Marie, nodding at her slowly. "Yes, Nausicaa, I have more islands for you. The seas are full of islands. What kind do you want?"

"A warm one," said the girl. "Even on a hot day like this I choose a warm one, because I hate the cold."

She settled herself more comfortably, with a little sigh of content that was exactly like a child's happy sigh when stories are going to be told before the fire.

"I know an island," said Ste. Marie, "that I think you would like because it is warm and beautiful and very far away from troubles of all kinds. As well as I could make out, when I went there, n.o.body on the island had ever even heard of trouble. Oh yes, you'd like it. The people there are brown, and they're as beautiful as their own island. They wear hibiscus flowers stuck in their hair, and they very seldom do any work."

"I want to go there!" cried Mlle. Coira O'Hara. "I want to go there now, this afternoon, at once! Where is it?"

"It's in the South Pacific," said he, "not so very far from Samoa and Fiji and other groups that you will have heard about, and its name is Vavau. It's one of the Tongans. It's a high, volcanic island, not a flat, coral one like the southern Tongans. I came to it, one evening, sailing north from Nukualofa and Haapai, and it looked to me like a single big mountain jutting up out of the sea, black-green against the sunset. It was very impressive. But it isn't a single mountain, it's a lot of high, broken hills covered with a tangle of vegetation and set round a narrow bay, a sort of fjord, three or four miles long, and at the inner end of this are the village and the stores of the few white traders. I'm afraid," said Ste. Marie, shaking his head--"I'm afraid I can't tell you about it, after all. I can't seem to find the words. You can't put into language--at least, I can't--those slow, hot, island days that are never too hot because the trades blow fresh and strong, or the island nights that are more like black velvet with pearls sewed on it than anything else. You can't describe the smell of orange groves and the look of palm-trees against the sky. You can't tell about the sweet, simple, natural hospitality of the natives. They're like little, unsuspicious children. In short," said he, "I shall have to give it up, after all, just because it's too big for me. I can only say that it's beautiful and unspeakably remote from the world, and that I think I should like to go back to Vavau and stay a long time, and let the rest of the world go hang."

Mlle. O'Hara stared across the park of La Lierre with wide and shadowy eyes, and her lips trembled a little.

"Oh, I want to go there!" she cried again. "I want to go there--and rest--and forget everything!" She turned upon him with a sudden bitter resentment. "Why do you tell me things like that?" she cried. "Oh yes, I know. I asked you, but--can't you see? To hide one's self away in a place like that!" she said. "To let the sun warm you and the trade-winds blow away--all that had ever tortured you! Just to rest and be at peace!" She turned her eyes to him once more. "You needn't be afraid that you have failed to make me see your island! I see it. I feel it. It doesn't need many words. I can shut my eyes and I am there. But it was a little cruel. Oh, I know, I asked for it. It's like the garden of the Hesperides, isn't it?"

"Very like it," said Ste. Marie, "because there are oranges--groves of them. (And they were the golden apples, I take it.) Also, it is very far away from the world, and the people live in complete and careless ignorance of how the world goes on. Emperors and kings die, wars come and go, but they hear only a little faint echo of it all, long afterward, and even that doesn't interest them."

"I know," she said. "I understand. Didn't you know I'd understand?"

"Yes," said he, nodding. "I suppose I did. We--feel things rather alike, I suppose. We don't have to say them all out."

"I wonder," she said, in a low voice, "if I'm glad or sorry." She stared under her brows at the man beside her. "For it is very probable that when we have left La Lierre you and I will never meet again. I wonder if I'm--"

For some obscure reason she broke off there and turned her eyes away, and she remained without speaking for a long time. Her mind, as she sat there, seemed to go back to that southern island, and to its peace and loveliness, for Ste. Marie, who watched her, saw a little smile come to her lips, and he saw her eyes half close and grow soft and tender as if what they saw were very sweet to her. He watched many different expressions come upon the girl's face and go again, but at last he seemed to see the old bitterness return there and struggle with something wistful and eager.

"I envy you your wide wanderings," she said, presently. "Oh, I envy you more than I can find any words for. Your will is the wind's will. You go where your fancy leads you, and you're free--free. We have wandered, you know," said she, "my father and I. I can't remember when we ever had a home to live in. But that is--that is different--a different kind of wandering."

"Yes," said Ste. Marie. "Yes, perhaps." And within himself he said, with sorrow and pity, "Different, indeed!"

As if at some sudden thought the girl looked up at him quickly. "Did that sound regretful?" she asked. "Did what I say sound--disloyal to my father? I didn't mean it to. I don't want you to think that I regret it.

I don't. It has meant being with my father. Wherever he has gone I have gone with him, and if anything ever has been--unpleasant, I was willing, oh, I was glad, glad to put up with it for his sake and because I could be with him. If I have made his life a little happier by sharing it, I am glad of everything. I don't regret."

"And yet," said Ste. Marie, gently, "it must have been hard sometimes."

He pictured to himself that roving existence lived among such people as O'Hara must have known, and it sent a hot wave of anger and distress over him from head to foot.

But the girl said: "I had my father. The rest of it didn't matter in the face of that." After a little silence she said, "M. Ste. Marie!"

And the man said, "What is it, Mademoiselle?"

"You spoke the other day," she said, hesitating over her words, "about my aunt, Lady Margaret Craith. I suppose I ought not to ask you more about her, for my father quarrelled with his people very long ago and he broke with them altogether. But--surely, it can do no harm--just for a moment--just a very little! Could you tell me a little about her, M.

Ste. Marie--what she is like and--and how she lives--and things like that?"

So Ste. Marie told her all that he could of the old Irishwoman who lived alone in her great house, and ruled with a slack Irish hand, a sweet Irish heart, over tenants and dependants. And when he had come to an end the girl drew a little sigh and said:

"Thank you. I am so glad to hear of her. I--wish everything were different, so that--I think I should love her very much if I might."

"Mademoiselle," said Ste. Marie, "will you promise me something?"

She looked at him with her sombre eyes, and after a little she said: "I am afraid you must tell me first what it is. I cannot promise blindly."

He said: "I want you to promise me that if anything ever should happen--any difficulty--trouble--anything to put you in the position of needing care or help or sympathy--"

But she broke in upon him with a swift alarm, crying: "What do you mean?

You're trying to hint at something that I don't know. What difficulty or trouble could happen to me? Please tell me just what you mean."

"I'm not hinting at any mystery," said Ste. Marie. "I don't know of anything that is going to happen to you, but--will you forgive me for saying it?--your father is, I take it, often exposed to--danger of various sorts. I'm afraid I can't quite express myself, only, if any trouble should come to you, Mademoiselle, will you promise me to go to Lady Margaret, your aunt, and tell her who you are and let her care for you?"

"There was an absolute break," she said. "Complete."

But the man shook his head, saying:

"Lady Margaret won't think of that. She'll think only of you--that she can mother you, perhaps save you grief--and of herself, that in her old age she has a daughter. It would make a lonely old woman very happy, Mademoiselle."