*CHAPTER XXX*
*JOURNEY'S END*
In the hall below Ste. Marie came violently into contact with and nearlyoverturned Richard Hartley, who was just giving his hat and stick to theman who had admitted him. Hartley seized upon him with an exclamationof pleasure, and wheeled him round to face the light. He said--
"I've been pursuing you all day. You're almost as difficult of accesshere in Paris as you were at La Lierre. How's the head?"
Ste. Marie put up an experimental hand. He had forgotten his injury.
"Oh, that's all right," said he. "At least I think so. Anderson fixedme up this afternoon. But I haven't time to talk to you. I'm in ahurry. To-morrow we'll have a long chin. Oh, how about Stewart?" Helowered his voice, and Hartley answered him in the same tone.
"The man is in a delirium. Heaven knows how it'll end. He may die, andhe may pull through. I hope he pulls through--except for the sake of thefamily--because then we can make him pay for what he's done. I don'twant him to go scot free by dying."
"Nor I!" said Ste. Marie fiercely. "Nor I! I want him to pay too--longand slowly and hard, and, if he lives, I shall see that he does it,family or no family. Now I must be off." Ste. Marie's face was shiningand uplifted. The other man looked at it with a little envious sigh.
"I see everything is all right," said he. "And I congratulate you. Youdeserve it if ever any one did."
Ste. Marie stared for an instant uncomprehending. Then he saw.
"Yes," he said gently. "Everything is all right." It was plain thatthe Englishman did not know of Miss Benham's decision. He was incapableof deceit. Ste. Marie threw an arm over his friend's shoulder, and wentwith him a little way towards the drawing-room.
"Go in there," he said. "You'll find some one glad to see you, I think.And remember that I said everything is all right." He came back afterhe had turned away, and met Hartley's puzzled frown with a smile.
"If you've that motor here, may I use it?" he asked. "I want to gosomewhere in a hurry."
"Of course!" the other man said. "Of course! I'll go home in a cab."
So they parted, and Ste. Marie went out to the waiting car.
On the left bank the streets are nearly empty of traffic at night, andone can make excellent time over them. Ste. Marie reached the Porte deVersailles, at the city's limits, in twenty minutes, and dashed throughIssy five minutes later. In less than half an hour from the time he hadleft the Rue de l'Universite he was under the walls of La Lierre. Helooked at his watch, and it was not quite half-past eleven.
He tried the little door in the wall, and it was unlocked, so he passedin and closed the door behind him. Inside he found that he was running,and he gave a little laugh, but of eagerness and excitement, not ofmirth. There were dim lights in one or two of the upper windows, butnone below, and there was no one about. He pulled at the door bell,and, after a few impatient moments, pulled again and still again. Thenhe noticed that the heavy door was ajar, and since no one answered hisringing he pushed the door open and went in.
The lower hall was quite dark, but a very faint light came down fromabove through the well of the staircase. He heard dragging feet in theupper hall and then upon one of the upper flights, for the stairs, broadbelow, divided at a half way landing and continued upward, in anopposite direction, in two narrower flights. A voice, very faint andweary, called--
"Who is there? Who is ringing, please?" And Coira O'Hara, holding acandle in her hand, came upon the stair landing, and stood gazing downinto the darkness. She wore a sort of dressing gown, a heavy whitegarment which hung in straight long folds to her feet, and fell awayfrom the arm that held the candle on high. The yellow beams of lightstruck down across her head and face, and, even at the distance, the mancould see how white she was, and hollow-eyed and worn--a pale wraith ofthe splendid beauty that had walked in the garden at La Lierre.
"Who is there, please?" she asked again. "I can't see. What is it?"
"It is I, Coira!" said Ste. Marie, and she gave a sharp cry. The armwhich was holding the candle overhead shook and fell beside her, as ifthe strength had gone out of it. The candle dropped to the floor,spluttered there for an instant, and went out, but there was still alittle light from the hall above.
Ste. Marie sprang up the stairs to where the girl stood, and caught herin his arms, for she was on the verge of faintness. Her head fell backaway from him, and he saw her eyes through half-closed lids, her whiteteeth through parted lips. She was trembling, but, for that matter, sowas he, at the touch of her, the heavy and sweet burden in his arms.She tried to speak, and he heard a whisper--
"Why? Why? Why?"
"Because it is my place, Coira!" said he. "Because I cannot live awayfrom you. Because we belong together."
The girl struggled weakly and pushed against him. Once more he heardwhispering words, and made out that she tried to say--
"Go back to her! Go back to her! You belong there." But at that helaughed aloud.
"I thought so too," said he. "But she thinks otherwise. She'll havenone of me, Coira. It's Richard Hartley now. Coira, can you love ajilted man? I've been jilted--thrown over--dismissed."
Her head came up in a flash, and she stared at him, suddenly rigid andtense in his arms.
"Is that true?" she demanded.
"Yes, my love!" said he, and she began to weep, with long, comfortablesobs, her face hidden in the hollow of his shoulder. On one otheroccasion she had wept before him, and he had been horribly embarrassed,but he bore this present tempest without, as it were, winking. Hegloried in it. He tried to say so. He tried to whisper to her, his lipspressed close to the ear that was nearest them, but he found that he hadno speech. Words would not come to his tongue; it trembled andfaltered, and was still for sheer inadequacy.
Rather oddly, in that his thoughts were chaos, swallowed up in the surgeof feeling, a memory struck through to him of that other exaltationwhich had swept him to the stars. He looked upon it and was amazedbecause now he saw it, in clear light, for the thing it had been. Hesaw it for a fantasy, a self-evoked wraith of the imagination, a dizzyflight of the spirit through spirit space. He saw that it had not beenlove at all, and he realised how little a part Helen Benham had everreally played in it. A cold and still-eyed figure for him to wrap theveil of his imagination round, that was what she had been. There weretimes when the sweep of his upward flight had stirred her a little,wakened in her some vague response, but for the most part she had stoodaside and looked on, wondering.
The mist was rent away from that rainbow-painted cobweb, and at last theman saw and understood. He gave an exclamation of wonder, and the girlwho loved him raised her head once more, and the two looked each intothe other's eyes for a long time. They fell into hushed and brokenspeech.
"I have loved you so long, so long!" she said, "and so hopelessly. Inever thought--I never believed.--To think that in the end you have cometo me! I cannot believe it!"
"Wait and see!" cried the man. "Wait and see!" She shivered a little.
"If it is not true I should like to die before I find out. I shouldlike to die now, Bayard, with your arms holding me up, and your eyesclose, close."
Ste. Marie's arms tightened round her with a sudden fierceness. He hurther, and she smiled up at him. Their two hearts beat one against theother, and they beat very fast.
"Don't you understand," he cried, "that life's only justbeginning--day's just dawning, Coira? We've been lost in the dark.Day's coming now. This is only the sunrise."
"I can believe it at last," she said, "because you hold me close, andyou hurt me a little, and I'm glad to be hurt. And I can feel yourheart beating. Ah, never let me go, Bayard! I should be lost in thedark again, if you let me go." A sudden thought came to her, and shebent back her head to see the better.
"Did you speak with Arthur?" And he said--
"Yes. He asked me to read your note, so I read
it. That poor lad! Icame straight to you then. Straight and fast!"
"You knew why I did it?" she said, and Ste. Marie said--
"Now I know."
"I could not have married him," said she. "I could not. I neverthought I should see you again, but I loved you and I could not havemarried him.--Ah, impossible! And he'll be glad, later on. You knowthat. It will save him any more trouble with his family, andbesides--he's so very young! Already, I think, he was beginning to chafea little. I thought so more than once.
"Oh, I'm trying to justify myself!" she cried. "I'm trying to findreasons, but you know the true reason. You know it."
"I thank God for it!" he said.
So they stood clinging together in that dim place, and broken whisperingspeech passed between them or long silences when speech was done. Butat last they went down the stairs and out upon the open terrace wherethe moonlight lay.
"It was in the open sweet air," the girl said, "that we came to knoweach other. Let us walk in it now. The house smothers me." She lookedup when they had passed the west corner of the facade, and drew a littlesigh.
"I am worried about my father," said she. "He will not answer me when Icall to him, and he has eaten nothing all day long. Bayard, I think hisheart is broken. Ah! but to-morrow we shall mend it again. In themorning I shall make him let me in, and I shall tell him--what I have totell."
They turned down under the trees, where the moonlight made silversplashes about their feet, and the sweet night air bore soft againsttheir faces. Coira went a half step in advance, her head laid back uponthe shoulder of the man she loved, and his arm held her up from falling.
So at last we leave them, walking there in the tender moonlight, withthe breath of roses about them, and their eyes turned to the coming day.It is still night, and there is yet one cloud of sorrow to shadow themsomewhat, for upstairs in his locked room a man lies dead across thefloor with an empty pistol beside him--heart-broken, as the girl hadfeared. But where a great love is shadows cannot last very long, noteven such shadows as this. The morning must dawn--and joy cometh of amorning.
"Walking there in the tender moonlight."]
So we leave them walking together in the moonlight, their faces turnedtowards the coming day.
Butler & Tanner. The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.
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The Quest: A Romance Page 30