The Quest: A Romance. Forman Justus Miles
in a half whisper.
"What did my grandfather say to you?" she asked after a silence.
Ste. Marie looked away.
"I cannot tell you," he said. "He – was not quite sympathetic."
The girl gave a little cry.
"Tell me what he said!" she demanded. "I must know what he said." The man's eyes pleaded with her, but she held him with her gaze and in the end he gave in.
"He said I was a damned fool," said Ste. Marie. And the girl, after an instant of staring, broke into a little fit of nervous overwrought laughter, and covered her face with her hands.
He threw himself upon his knees before her, and her laughter died away. An Englishman or an American cannot do that. Richard Hartley, for example, would have looked like an idiot upon his knees and he would have felt it. But it did not seem extravagant with Ste. Marie. It became him.
"Listen! listen!" he cried to her, but the girl checked him before he could go on. She dropped her hands from her face and she bent a little forward over the man as he knelt there. She put out her hands and took his head for a swift instant between them, looking down into his eyes. At the touch a sudden wave of tenderness swept her – almost an engulfing wave – almost it overwhelmed her and bore her away from the land she knew. And so when she spoke her voice was not quite steady. She said —
"Ah, dear Ste. Marie! I cannot pretend to be cold towards you. You have laid a spell upon me, Ste. Marie. You enchant us all somehow, don't you? I suppose I'm not as different from the others as I thought I was.
"And yet," she said, "he was right, you know. My grandfather was right. No, let me talk, now! I must talk for a little. I must try to tell you how it is with me – try somehow to find a way. He was right. He meant that you and I were utterly unsuited to each other, and so, in calm moments, I know we are. I know that well enough. When you're not with me I feel very sure about it. I think of a thousand excellent reasons why you and I ought to be no more to each other than friends. Do you know, I think my grandfather is a little uncanny. I think he has prophetic powers. They say very old people often have. He and I talked about you when I came home from that dinner party at the de Saulnes' a month ago – the dinner party where you and I first met. I told him that I had met a man whom I liked very much – a man with great charm – and, though I must have said the same sort of thing to him before about other men, he was quite oddly disturbed, and talked for a long time about it, about the sort of man I ought to marry and the sort I ought not to marry. It was unusual for him. He seldom says anything of that kind. Yes, he is right. You see, I'm ambitious in a particular way. If I marry at all I ought to marry a man who is working hard in politics or in something of that kind. I could help him. We could do a great deal together."
"I could go into politics!" cried Ste. Marie, but she shook her head, smiling down upon him.
"No, not you, my dear. Politics least of all. You could be a soldier, if you chose. You could fight as your father and your grandfather and the others of your house have done. You could lead a forlorn hope in the field. You could suffer and starve and go on fighting. You could die splendidly but – politics, no! That wants a tougher shell than you have.
"And a soldier's wife! Of what use to him is she?"
Ste. Marie's face was very grave. He looked up to her smiling.
"Do you set ambition before love, my queen?" he asked, and she did not answer him at once. She looked into his eyes, and she was as grave as he.
"Is love all?" she said at last. "Is love all? Ought one to think of nothing but love when one is settling one's life for ever?
"I wonder?
"I look about me, Ste. Marie," she said, "and in the lives of my friends – the people who seem to me to be most worth while – the people who are making the world's history for good or ill, and it seems to me that in their lives love has the second place – or the third. I wonder if one has the right to set it first.
"There is, of course," she said, "the merely domestic type of woman – the woman who has no thought and no interest beyond her home. I am not that type of woman. Perhaps I wish I were. Certainly they are the happiest. But I was brought up among – well, among important people – men of my grandfather's kind. All my training has been towards that life. Have I the right, I wonder, to give it all up?"
The man stirred at her feet and she put out her hands to him quickly.
"Do I seem brutal?" she cried. "Oh, I don't want to be! Do I seem very ungenerous and wrapped up in my own side of the thing? I don't mean to be that but – I'm not sure. I expect it's that. I'm not sure, and I think I'm a little frightened." She gave him a brief anxious smile that was not without its tenderness.
"I'm so sure," she said, "when I'm away from you. But when you're here – oh, I forget all I've thought of.
"You lay your spell upon me."
Ste. Marie gave a little wordless cry of joy. He caught her two hands in his and held them against his lips. Again that great wave of tenderness swept her – almost engulfing. But when it had ebbed she sank back once more in her chair, and she withdrew her hands from his clasp.
"You make me forget too much," she said. "I think you make me forget everything that I ought to remember. Oh, Ste. Marie, have I any right to think of love and happiness while this terrible mystery is upon us? While we don't know whether poor Arthur is alive or dead? You've seen what it has brought my grandfather to. It is killing him. He has been much worse in the last fortnight. And my mother is hardly a ghost of herself in these days. Ah, it is brutal of me to think of my own affairs – to dream of happiness at such a time." She smiled across at him very sadly.
"You see what you have brought me to!" she said.
Ste. Marie rose to his feet. If Miss Benham, absorbed in that warfare which raged within her, had momentarily forgotten the cloud of sorrow under which her household lay, so much the more had he, to whom the sorrow was less intimate, forgotten it. But he was ever swift to sympathy, Ste. Marie, as quick as a woman and as tender. He could not thrust his love upon the girl at such a time as this. He turned a little away from her and so remained for a moment. When he faced about again the flush had gone from his cheeks and the fire from his eyes. Only tenderness was left there.
"There has been no news at all this week?" he asked, and the girl shook her head.
"None! None! Shall we ever have news of him, I wonder? Must we go on always and never know? It seems to me almost incredible that any one could disappear so completely. And yet, I dare say, many people have done it before and have been as carefully sought for. If only I could believe that he is alive! If only I could believe that!"
"I believe it," said Ste. Marie.
"Ah," she said, "you say that to cheer me. You have no reason to offer."
"Dead bodies very seldom disappear completely," said he. "If your brother died anywhere there would be a record of the death. If he were accidentally killed there would be a record of that too, and, of course, you are having all such records constantly searched?"
"Oh yes," she said. "Yes, of course. At least, I suppose so. My uncle has been directing the search. Of course he would take an obvious precaution like that."
"Naturally," said Ste. Marie. "Your uncle, I should say, is an unusually careful man." He paused a moment to smile.
"He makes his little mistakes, though. I told you about that man O'Hara and about how sure Captain Stewart was that the name was Powers. Do you know – " Ste. Marie had been walking up and down the room, but he halted to face her.
"Do you know, I have a very strong feeling that if one could find this man O'Hara one would learn something about what became of your brother? I have no reason for thinking that, but I feel it."
"Oh," said the girl doubtfully, "I hardly think that could be so. What motive could the man have for harming my brother?"
"None," said Ste. Marie; "but he might have an excellent motive for hiding him away – kidnapping him. Is that the word? Yes, I know, you're going to say that no demand has been made for money, and that is where my argument – if I