The Quest: A Romance

"Miss Benham," he cried. "Miss Benham is – " He hung poised so for a moment, searching, as it were, for words of sufficient splendour, but in the end he shook his head, and the gleam faded from his eyes. He sank back in his chair sighing.

"Miss Benham," said he, "is extremely beautiful." And again her uncle emitted his little gentle laugh which may have deceived Hartley into believing that he had heard the man mew. The sound was as much like mewing as it was like anything else.

"I am very glad," Captain Stewart said, "to see her come out once more into the world. She needs distraction. We – you may possibly have heard that the family is in great distress of mind over the disappearance of my young nephew. Helen has suffered particularly because she is convinced that the boy has met with foul play. I myself think it very unlikely, very unlikely indeed. The lack of motive, for one thing, and for another – Ah well, a score of reasons! But Helen refuses to be comforted. It seems to me much more like a boy's prank – his idea of revenge for what he considered unjust treatment at his grandfather's hands. He was always a headstrong youngster, and he has been a bit spoilt. Still, of course, the uncertainty is very trying for us all – very wearing."

"Of course," said Ste. Marie gravely. "It is most unfortunate. Ah, by the way!" He looked up with a sudden interest. "A rather odd thing happened," he said, "as Hartley and I were coming here this evening. We walked up the Champs Elysées from the Concorde, and on the way Hartley had been telling me of your nephew's disappearance. Near the Rond Point we came upon a motor-car which was drawn up at the side of the street – there had been an accident of no consequence, a boy tumbled over but not hurt. Well, one of the two occupants of the motor-car was a man whom I used to see about Maxim's and the Café de Paris and the Montmartre places too, some time ago – a rather shady character whose name I've forgotten. The odd part of it all was that at the last occasion or two on which I saw your nephew he was with this man. I think it was in Henry's Bar. Of course it means nothing at all. Your nephew doubtless knew scores of people, and this man is no more likely to have information about his present whereabouts than any of the others. Still, I should have liked to ask him. I didn't remember who he was till he had gone."

Captain Stewart shook his head sadly, frowning down upon the cigarette from which he had knocked the ash.

"I am afraid poor Arthur did not always choose his friends with the best of judgment," said he. "I am not squeamish, and I would not have boys kept in a glass case, but – Yes, I'm afraid Arthur was not always too careful." He replaced the cigarette neatly between his lips.

"This man now, this man whom you saw to-night, what sort of looking man will he have been?"

"Oh, a tall lean man," said Ste. Marie. "A tall man with blue eyes and a heavy old-fashioned moustache. I just can't remember the name."

The smoke stood still for an instant over Captain Stewart's cigarette, and it seemed to Ste. Marie that a little contortion of anger fled over the man's face and was gone again. He stirred slightly in his chair.

After a moment he said —

"I fancy – from your description I fancy I know who the man was. If it is the man I am thinking of, the name is – Powers. He is, as you have said, a rather shady character, and I more than once warned my nephew against him. Such people are not good companions for a boy. Yes, I warned him."

"Powers," said Ste. Marie, "doesn't sound right to me, you know. I can't say the fellow's name myself, but I'm sure – that is, I think – it's not Powers."

"Oh yes," said Captain Stewart with an elderly man's half-querulous certainty. "Yes, the name is Powers. I remember it well. And I remember – Yes, it was odd, was it not, your meeting him like that just as you were talking of Arthur. You – oh, you didn't speak to him, you say? No! no, to be sure. You didn't recognise him at once. Yes, it was odd. Of course, the man could have had nothing to do with poor Arthur's disappearance. His only interest in the boy at any time would have been for what money Arthur might have, and he carried none, or almost none, away with him when he vanished. Eh, poor lad! Where can he be to-night, I wonder? It's a sad business, M. Ste. Marie. A sad business."

Captain Stewart fell into a sort of brooding silence, frowning down at the table before him and twisting with his thin fingers the little liqueur glass and the coffee cup which were there. Once or twice, Ste. Marie thought, the frown deepened and twisted into a sort of scowl, and the man's fingers twitched on the cloth of the table, but when at last the group at the other end of the board rose and began to move towards the door, Captain Stewart rose also and followed them.

At the door he seemed to think of something, and touched Ste. Marie upon the arm.

"This, ah, Powers," he said in a low tone, "this man whom you saw to-night. You said he was one of two occupants of a motor-car. Yes? Did you by any chance recognise the other?"

"Oh, the other was a young woman," said Ste. Marie. "No, I never saw her before. She was very handsome."

Captain Stewart said something under his breath and turned abruptly away. But an instant later he faced about once more, smiling. He said, in a man-of-the-world manner which sat rather oddly upon him —

"Ah well, we all have our little love affairs. I dare say this shady fellow has his." And for some obscure reason Ste. Marie found the speech peculiarly offensive.

In the drawing-room he had opportunity for no more than a word with Miss Benham, for Hartley, enraged over his previous ill success, cut in ahead of him and manoeuvred that young lady into a corner, where he sat before her turning a square and determined back to the world. Ste. Marie listlessly played bridge for a time, but his attention was not upon it, and he was glad when the others at the table settled their accounts and departed to look in at a dance somewhere. After that he talked for a little with Marian de Saulnes, whom he liked and who made no secret of adoring him. She complained loudly that he was in a vile temper, which was not true: he was only restless and distrait and wanted to be alone; and so, at last, he took his leave without waiting for Hartley.

Outside in the street he stood for a moment hesitating, and an expectant fiacre drew up before the house, the cocher raising an interrogative whip. In the end Ste. Marie shook his head and turned away on foot. It was a still sweet night of soft airs and a moonless starlit sky, and the man was very fond of walking in the dark. From the Etoile he walked down the Champs Elysées, but presently turned towards the river. His eyes were upon the mellow stars, his feet upon the ladder thereunto. He found himself crossing the Pont des Invalides, and halted midway to rest and look. He laid his arms upon the bridge's parapet and turned his face outwards. Against it bore a little gentle breeze that smelt of the purifying water below and of the night and of green things growing. Beneath him the river ran black as flowing ink, and across its troubled surface the coloured lights of the many bridges glittered very beautifully – swirling arabesques of gold and crimson. The noises of the city – beat of hoofs upon wooden pavements, horn of tram or motor-car, jingle of bell upon cab horse – came here faintly and as if from a great distance. Above the dark trees of the Cours la Reine the sky glowed softly golden, reflecting the million lights of Paris.

Ste. Marie closed his eyes and, against darkness, he saw the beautiful head of Helen Benham, the clear-cut exquisite modelling of feature and contour, the perfection of form and colour. Her eyes met his eyes, and they were very serene and calm and confident. She smiled at him, and the new contours into which her face fell with the smile were more perfect than before. He watched the turn of her head, and the grace of the movement was the uttermost effortless grace one dreams that a queen should have. The heart of Ste. Marie quickened in him and he would have gone down upon his knees.

He was well aware that with the coming of this girl something unprecedented, wholly new to his experience had befallen him – an awakening to a new life. He had been in love a very great many times. He was usually in love. And each time his heart had gone through the same sweet and bitter anguish, the same sleepless nights had come and gone upon him, the eternal and ever-new miracle had wakened spring in his soul, had passed its summer solstice, had faded through autumnal regrets to winter's death; but through it all something within him had waited asleep.

He found himself wondering dully what it was, wherein lay the great difference, and he could not answer the question he asked. He knew only that whereas before he had loved, he now went down upon prayerful knees to worship. In a sudden poignant thrill the knightly fervour of his forefathers came upon him, and he saw a sweet and golden lady set far above him upon a throne. Her clear eyes gazed afar, serene and untroubled. She sat wrapped in a sort of virginal austerity, unaware of the base passions of men. The other women whom Ste. Marie had, as he was pleased to term it, loved, had certainly come at least halfway to meet him, and some of them had come a good deal farther than that. He could not, by the wildest flight of imagination, conceive this girl doing anything of that sort. She was to be won by trial and high endeavour, by prayer and self-purification, not captured by a warm eye glance, a whispered word, a laughing kiss. In fancy he looked from the crowding cohorts of these others to that still sweet figure set on high, wrapt in virginal pride, calm in her serene perfection, and his soul abased itself before her. He knelt in an awed and worshipful adoration.

So, before quest or tournament or battle, must those elder Ste. Maries – Ste. Maries of Mont-les-Roses – have knelt, each knight at the feet of his lady, each knightly soul aglow with the chaste ardour of chivalry.

The man's hands tightened upon the parapet of the bridge, he lifted his face again to the shining stars whereamong, as his fancy had it, she sat enthroned. Exultingly he felt under his feet the rungs of the ladder, and in the darkness he swore a great oath to have done for ever with blindness and grovelling, to climb and climb, forever to climb, until at last he should stand where she was – cleansed and made worthy by long endeavour – at last meet her eyes and touch her hand.

It was a fine and chivalric frenzy, and Ste. Marie was passionately in earnest about it, but his guardian angel, indeed Fate herself, must have laughed a little in the dark, knowing what manner of man he was in less exalted hours.

It was an odd freak of memory that at last recalled him to earth. Every man knows that when a strong and, for the moment, unavailing effort has been made to recall something lost to mind, the memory, in some mysterious fashion, goes on working long after the attention has been elsewhere diverted, and sometimes hours afterwards, or even days, produces quite suddenly and inappropriately the lost article. Ste. Marie had turned with a little sigh to take up once more his walk across the Pont des Invalides, when seemingly from nowhere, and certainly by no conscious effort, a name flashed into his mind. He said it aloud —

"O'Hara! O'Hara. That tall thin chap's name was O'Hara, by Jove! It wasn't Powers at all." He laughed a little as he remembered how very positive Captain Stewart had been. And then he frowned, thinking that the mistake was an odd one since Stewart had evidently known a good deal about this adventurer. Captain Stewart though, Ste. Marie reflected, was exactly the sort to be very sure he was right about things. He had just the neat and precise and semi-scholarly personality of the man who always knows. So Ste. Marie dismissed the matter with another brief laugh, but a cognate matter was less easy to dismiss. The name brought with it a face, a dark and splendid face with tragic eyes that called. He walked a long way thinking about them, and wondering. The eyes haunted him. It will have been reasonably evident that Ste. Marie was a fanciful and imaginative soul. He needed but a chance word, the sight of a face in a crowd, the glance of an eye, to begin story building, and he would go on for hours about it and work himself up to quite a passion with his imaginings. He should have been a writer of fiction.

He began forthwith to construct romances about this lady of the motor-car. He wondered why she should have been with the shady Irishman – if Irishman he was – O'Hara, and with some anxiety he wondered what the two were to each other. Captain Stewart's little cynical jest came to his mind, and he was conscious of a sudden desire to kick Miss Benham's middle-aged uncle.

The eyes haunted him. What was it they suffered? Out of what misery did they call? – and for what? He walked all the long way home to his little flat overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens, haunted by those eyes. As he climbed his stair it suddenly occurred to him that they had quite driven out of his mind the image of his beautiful lady who sat amongst the stars, and the realisation came to him with a shock.

CHAPTER IV

OLD DAVID STEWART

It was Miss Benham's custom upon returning home at night from dinner parties or other entertainments to look in for a few minutes on her grandfather before going to bed. The old gentleman, like most elderly people, slept lightly, and often sat up in bed very late into the night reading or playing piquet with his valet. He suffered hideously at times from the malady which was killing him by degrees, but when he was free from pain the enormous recuperative power, which he had preserved to his eighty-six years, left him almost as vigorous and clear-minded as if he had never been ill at all. Hartley's description of him had not been altogether a bad one – "a quaint old beggar … a great quantity of white hair and an enormous square white beard and the fiercest eyes I ever saw – " He was a rather "quaint old beggar" indeed! He had let his thick white hair grow long, and it hung down over his brows in unparted locks as the ancient Greeks wore their hair. He had very shaggy eyebrows, and the deep-set eyes under them gleamed from the shadow with a fierceness which was rather deceptive but none the less intimidating. He had a great beak of a nose, but the mouth below could not be seen. It was hidden by the moustache and the enormous square beard. His face was colourless, almost as white as hair and beard: there seemed to be no shadow or tint anywhere except the cavernous recesses from which the man's eyes gleamed and sparkled. Altogether he was certainly "a quaint old beggar."

He had, during the day and evening, a good many visitors, for the old gentleman's mind was as alert as it ever had been, and important men thought him worth consulting. The names which the admirable valet, Peters, announced from time to time were names which meant a great deal in the official and diplomatic world of the day. But if old David felt flattered over the unusual fashion in which the great of the earth continued to come to him he never betrayed it. Indeed it is quite probable that this view of the situation never once occurred to him. He had been thrown with the great of the earth for more than half a century, and he had learnt to take it as a matter of course.

On her return from the Marquise de Saulnes' dinner party Miss Benham went at once to her grandfather's wing of the house, which had its own street entrance, and knocked lightly at his door. She asked the admirable Peters, who opened to her —

"Is he awake?" And being assured that he was, went into the vast chamber, dropping her cloak on a chair as she entered. David Stewart was sitting up in his monumental bed behind a sort of invalid's table which stretched across his knees without touching them. He wore over his night-clothes a Chinese Mandarin's jacket of old red satin, wadded with down, and very gorgeously embroidered with the cloud and bat designs and with large round panels of the Imperial five-clawed dragon in gold. He had a number of these jackets, they seemed to be his one vanity in things external, and they were so made that they could be slipped about him without disturbing him in his bed, since they hung down only to the waist or thereabouts. They kept the upper part of his body, which was not covered by the bedclothes, warm, and they certainly made him a very impressive figure.

He said —

"Ah, Helen! Come in! Come in! Sit down on the bed there and tell me what you have been doing!" He pushed aside the pack of cards which was spread out on the invalid's table before him, and with great care counted a sum of money in francs and half-francs and nickel twenty-five centime pieces.

"I've won seven francs fifty from Peters to-night," he said, chuckling gently. "That is a very good evening indeed. Very good. Where have you been, and who were there?"

"A dinner party at the de Saulnes'," said Miss Benham, making herself comfortable on the side of the great bed. "It's a very pleasant place. Marian is, of course, a dear, and they're quite English and unceremonious. You can talk to your neighbour at dinner instead of addressing the house from a platform, as it were. French dinner parties make me nervous."

Old David gave a little growling laugh.

"French dinner parties at least keep people up to the mark in the art of conversation," said he. "But that is a lost art anyhow, nowadays, so I suppose one might as well be quite informal and have done with it. Who were there?"

"Oh, well – " she considered, "no one, I should think, who would interest you. Rather an indifferent set. Pleasant people but not inspiring. The Marquis had some young relative or connexion who was quite odious and made the most surprising noises over his food. I met a new man whom I think I am going to like very much indeed. He wouldn't interest you because he doesn't mean anything in particular – and, of course, he oughtn't to interest me for the same reason. He's just an idle pleasant young man, but – he has great charm. Very great charm. His name is Ste. Marie. Baron de Vries seems very fond of him, which surprised me rather."

"Ste. Marie!" exclaimed the old gentleman in obvious astonishment. "Ste. Marie de Mont Perdu?"

"Yes," she said. "Yes, that is the name, I believe. You know him then? I wonder he didn't mention it."

"I knew his father," said old David. "And his grandfather, for that matter. They're Gascon, I think, or Bearnais, but this boy's mother will have been Irish, unless his father married again.

"So you've been meeting a Ste. Marie, have you? And finding that he has great charm?" The old gentleman broke into one of his growling laughs, and reached for a long black cigar which he lighted, eyeing his granddaughter the while over the flaring match.

"Well," he said, when the cigar was drawing, "they all have had charm. I should think there has never been a Ste. Marie without it. They're a sort of embodiment of romance, that family. This boy's great-grandfather lost his life defending a castle against a horde of peasants in 1799. His grandfather was killed in the French campaign in Mexico in '39 – at Vera Cruz, it was, I think; and his father died in a filibustering expedition ten years ago. I wonder what will become of the last Ste. Marie?" Old David's eyes suddenly sharpened.

"You're not going to fall in love with Ste. Marie and marry him, are you?" he demanded.