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CHAPTER XXVII
THE NIGHT'S WORK

The fourteen long hours dragged themselves by. They seemed interminable, but somehow they passed and the appointed time drew near. Ste. Marie spent the greater part of the afternoon reading, but twice he lay down upon the bed and tried to sleep, and once he actually dozed off for a brief space. The old Michel brought his meals. He had thought it possible that Coira might manage to bring the dinner-tray, as she had already done on several occasions, and so make an opportunity for informing him as to young Arthur's state of mind. But she did not come and no word came from her. So evening drew on and the dusk gathered and deepened into darkness.

Ste. Marie walked his floor and prayed for the hours to pass. He had candles and matches, and there was even a lamp in the room so that he could have read if he chose, but he knew that the words would have been meaningless to him, that he was incapable of abstracting his thought from the night's stern work. He began to be anxious over not having heard from Mlle. O'Hara. She had said that she would talk with Arthur Benham during the afternoon, and then slip a note under Ste. Marie's door. Yet no word had come from her, and, to the man pacing his floor in the darkness, the fact took on proportions tremendous and fantastic. Something had happened. The boy had broken his promise, burst out upon O'Hara, or more probably upon his uncle, and the house was by the ears. Coira was watched – even locked in her room. Stewart had fled! A score of such terrible possibilities rushed through Ste. Marie's brain and tortured him. He was in a state of nervous tension that was almost unendurable, and the little noises of the night outside, a wind-stirred rustle of leaves, a bird's flutter among the branches, the sound of a cracking twig, made him start violently and catch his breath.

Then at his utmost need came reassurance and something like ease of mind. He heard a sound of voices at the front of the house, and sprang to his balconied window to listen. Captain Stewart and O'Hara were walking upon the brick-paved terrace and chatting calmly over their cigars. The man above, prone upon the floor, his head pressed against the ivy-masked grille of the balcony, listened, and though he could hear their words only at intervals when they passed beneath him, he knew that they spoke of trivial matters in voices free of strain or concern.

He drew back with a breath of relief, and at that moment a sound across the room arrested him: a soft scraping sound such as a mouse might make. He went where it was, and a little square of paper gleamed white through the darkness just within the door. Ste. Marie caught it up and took it to the far side of the room away from the window. He struck a match, opened the folded paper, and a single line of writing was there —

"He will go with you. Wait by the door in the wall."

The man nearly cried out with joy.

He struck another match and looked at his watch. It was a quarter to ten. Four hours left out of the fourteen.

Once more he lay down upon the bed and closed his eyes. He knew that he could not sleep, but he was tired from long tramping up and down the room and from the strain of over-tried nerves. From hour to hour he looked at his watch by match-light, but he did not leave the bed until half-past one. Then he rose and took a long breath, and the time was at hand.

He stood a little while gazing out into the night. An old moon was high overhead in a cloudless sky, and that would make the night's work both easier and more difficult, but, on the whole, he was glad of it. He looked to the east towards that wall where was the little wooden door, and the way was under cover of trees and shrubbery for the whole distance save a little space beside the house. He listened and the night was very still – no sound from the house below him – no sound anywhere save the barking of a dog from far away, and, after an instant, the whistle of a distant train.

Ste. Marie turned back into the room and pulled the sheets from his bed. He rolled them, corner-wise, into a sort of rope and knotted them together securely. Then he went to one of the east windows. There was no balcony there, but, as in all French upper windows, a wood and iron bar fixed into the stone casing at both ends, with a little grille below it. It crossed the window-space a third of the distance from bottom to top. He bent one end of the improvised rope to this, made it fast, and let the other end hang out. The east side of the house was in shadow, and the rolled sheet, a vague white line, disappeared into the darkness below, but Ste. Marie knew that it must reach nearly to the ground. He had made use of it because he was afraid there would be too much noise if he tried to climb down the ivy. The room directly underneath was the drawing-room, and he knew that it was closed and shuttered and unoccupied both by day and by night. The only danger, he decided, was from the sleeping-room behind his own, with its windows opening close by; but though he did not know it he was safe there also, for the room was Coira O'Hara's.

He felt in his pocket for the pistol and it was ready to hand. Then he buttoned his coat round him and swung himself out of the window. He held his body away from the wall with one knee, and went down, hand under hand. It was so quietly done that it did not even rouse the birds in the near-by trees. Before he realised that he had come to the lower windows his feet touched the earth and he was free.

He stood for a moment where he was, and then slipped rapidly across the open moonlit space into the inky gloom of the trees. He made a half-circle round before the house and looked up at it. It lay grey and black and still in the night. Where the moonlight was upon it it was grey, where there was shadow black as black velvet, and the windows were like open dead eyes. He looked towards Arthur Benham's room, and there was no light, but he knew that the boy was awake and waiting there, shivering probably in the dark. He wondered where Coira O'Hara was, and he pictured her lying in her bed fronting the gloom with sleepless open eyes looking into those to-morrows which she had said she saw so well. He wondered bitterly what the to-morrows were to bring her, but he caught himself up with a stern determination and put her out of his mind. He did not dare think of her in that hour.

He turned and began to make his way silently under the trees towards the appointed meeting place. Once he thought of the old Michel, and wondered where that gnarled and withered watch-dog had betaken himself. Somewhere, within or without the house, he was asleep, or pretended to sleep, and Ste. Marie knew that he could be trusted. The man's cupidity and his hatred of Captain Stewart together would make him faithful – or faithless, as one chose to look upon it.

He came to that place where a row of lilac shrubs stood against the wall and a half-dead cedar stretched gnarled branches above. He was a little before his time, and he settled himself to listen and wait, his sharp ears keenly on the alert, his eyes turned towards the dark and quiet house.

The little noises of the night broke upon him with exaggerated clamour. A crackling twig was a thunderous crash, a bird's sleepy stir was the sound of pursuit and disaster. A hundred times he heard the cautious approach of Richard Hartley's motor-car without the wall, and he fell into a panic of fear lest that machine prove unruly, break down, puncture a tyre, or burst into a series of ear-splitting explosions. But at last – it seemed to him that he had waited untold hours and that the dawn must be nigh – there came an unmistakable rustling from overhead and the sound of hard-drawn breath. The top of the wall, just at that point, was in moonlight, and a man's head appeared over it, then an arm and then a leg. Hartley called down to him in a whisper, and Ste. Marie, from the gloom beneath, whispered a reply. He said —

"The boy has promised to come with us. We shan't have to fight for it." Richard Hartley said —

"Thank God!" He spoke to some one outside and then, turning about, let himself down to arm's length and dropped to the ground.

"Thank God!" he said again. "The two men who were to have come with me didn't show up. I waited as long as I dared, and then came on with only the chauffeur. He's waiting outside by the car ready to crank up when I give the word. The car's just a few yards away headed out for the road. How are we to get back over the wall?"

Ste. Marie explained that Arthur Benham was to come out to join them at the wooden door, and doubtless would bring a key. If not, the three of them could scale fifteen feet easily enough in the way soldiers and firemen are trained to do it. He told his friend all that was necessary for the time, and they went together along the wall to the more open space beside the little door.

They waited there in silence for five minutes, and once Hartley, with his back towards the house, struck a match under his sheltering coat, looked to see what time it was, and it was three minutes past two.

"He ought to be here!" the man growled. "I don't like waiting. Good Lord, you don't think he's funked it, do you? Eh?" Ste. Marie did not answer, but he was breathing very fast and he could not keep his hands still.

The dog which he had heard from his window began barking again very far away in the night, and kept it up incessantly. Perhaps he was barking at the moon.

"I'm going a little way towards the house," said Ste. Marie at last. "We can't see the terrace from here." But before he had started they heard the sound of hurrying feet, and Richard Hartley began to curse under his breath. He said —

"Does the young idiot want to rouse the whole place? Why can't he come quietly?"

Ste. Marie began to run forward, slipping the pistol out of his pocket and holding it ready in his hand, for his quick ears told him that there was more than one pair of feet coming through the night. He went to where he could command the approach from the house and halted there, but all at once he gave a low cry and started forward again, for he saw that Arthur Benham and Coira O'Hara were running together, and that they were in desperate haste. He called out to them and the girl cried —

"Go to the door in the wall! The door in the wall! Oh, be quick!" He fell into step beside her, and, as they ran, he said —

"You're going with him? You're coming with us?" The girl answered him —

"No! no!" and she sprang to the little low door and began to fit the iron key into the lock. The three men stood about her, and young Arthur Benham drew his breath in great shivering gasps that were like sobs.

"They heard us!" he cried in a whisper. "They're after us. They heard us on the stairs. I – stumbled and fell. For God's sake, Coira, be quick!"

The girl fumbled desperately with the clumsy key, and dropped upon her knees to see the better. Once she said in a whisper: "I can't turn it. It won't turn," and at that Richard Hartley pushed her out of the way and lent his greater strength to the task.

A sudden loud cry came from the house, a hoarse screeching cry in a voice which might have been either man's or woman's, but was as mad and as desperate and as horrible in that still night as the screech of a tortured animal – or of a maniac. It came again and again and it was nearer.

"Oh, hurry! hurry!" said the girl. "Can't you be quick? They're coming." And, as she spoke, the little group about the wall heard the engine of the motor-car outside start up with a staccato roar, and knew that the faithful chauffeur was ready for them.

"I'm getting it, I think!" said Richard Hartley between his teeth. "I'm getting it. Turn, you beast! Turn!"

There was a sound of hurrying feet, and Ste. Marie spun about. He cried —

"Don't wait for me! Jump into the car and go! Don't wait anywhere. Come back after you've left Benham at home!" He began to run forward toward those running feet, and he did not know that the girl followed after him. A short distance away there was a little open space of moonlight, and in its midst, at full career, he met the Irishman O'Hara, a gaunt and grotesque figure in his sleeping suit, barefooted, with empty hands. Beyond him still, some one else ran stumbling, and sobbed and uttered mad cries.

Ste. Marie dropped his pistol to the ground and sprang upon the Irishman. He caught him about the body and arms, and the two swayed and staggered under the tremendous impact. At just that moment, from behind, came the crash of the opened door and triumphant shouts. Ste. Marie gave a little gasp of triumph too, and clung the harder to the man with whom he fought. He drove his head into the Irishman's shoulder, and set his muscles with a grip which was like iron. He knew that it could not endure long, for the Irishman was stronger than he; but the grip of a nervous man who is keyed up to a high tension is incredibly powerful for a little while. Trained strength is nothing beside it.

It seemed to Ste. Marie in this desperate moment – it cannot have been more than a minute or two at the most – that a strange and uncanny miracle befel him. It was as if he became two. Soul and body, spirit and straining flesh, seemed to him to separate, to stand apart each from the other. There was a thing of iron flesh and thews which had locked itself about an enemy, and clung there madly with but one purpose, one single thought – to grip and grip and never loosen until flesh should be torn from bones. But apart, the spirit looked on with a complete detachment. It looked beyond – he must have raised his head to glance over O'Hara's shoulder – saw a mad figure staggering forward in the moonlight, and knew the figure for Captain Stewart. It saw an upraised arm and was not afraid, for the work was almost done now. It listened and was glad, hearing the motor-car without the walls leap forward into the night, and its puffing grow fainter and fainter with distance. It knew that the thing of strained sinews received a crashing blow upon back-flung head, and that the iron muscles were slipping away from their grip, but it was still glad, for the work was done.

Only at the last, before red and whirling lights had obscured the view, before consciousness was dissolved in unconsciousness, came horror and agony, for the eyes saw Captain Stewart back away and raise the thing he had struck with, a large revolver, saw Coira O'Hara, a swift and flashing figure in the moonlight, throw herself upon him, before he could fire, heard together a woman's scream and the roar of the pistol's explosion, and so knew no more.

CHAPTER XXVIII
COIRA'S LITTLE HOUR

When Coira O'Hara came to herself from the moment's swoon into which she had fallen she rose to her knees and stared wildly about her. She seemed to be alone in the place, and her first thought was to wonder how long she had lain there. Captain Stewart had disappeared. She remembered her struggle with him to prevent him from firing at Ste. Marie, and she remembered her desperate agony when she realised that she could not hold him much longer. She remembered the accidental discharge of the revolver into the air, she remembered being thrown violently to the ground – and that was all.

Where was her father and where was Ste. Marie? The first question answered itself, for, as she turned her eyes towards the west, she saw O'Hara's tall ungainly figure disappearing in the direction of the house. She called his name twice, but it may be that the man did not hear for he went on without pausing and was lost to sight.

The girl became aware of something which lay on the ground near her, half in and half out of the patch of silver moonlight. For some moments she stared at it uncomprehending. Then she gave a sharp scream and struggled to her feet. She ran to the thing which lay there motionless and fell upon her knees beside it. It was Ste. Marie, his face upturned to the sky, one side of his head black and damp. Stewart had not shot him, but that crashing blow with the clubbed revolver had struck him full and fair and he was very still.

For an instant the girl's strength went out of her and she dropped lax across the body, her face upon Ste. Marie's breast. But after that she tore open coat and waistcoat and felt for a heartbeat. It seemed to her that she found life, and she began to believe that the man had only been stunned.

Once more she rose to her feet and looked about her. There was no one to lend her aid. She bent over the unconscious man and slipped her arms about him. Though Ste. Marie was tall he was slightly built, by no means heavy, and the girl was very strong. She found that she could carry him a little way, dragging his feet after her. When she could go no farther she laid him down, and crouched over him, waiting until her strength should return. And this she did for a score of times; but each time the distance she went was shorter, and her breathing came with deeper gasps, and the trembling in her limbs grew more terrible. At the last she moved in a sort of fever, an evil dream of tortured body and reeling brain. But she had got Ste. Marie up through the park to the terrace and into the house, and, with a last desperate effort, she had laid him upon a couch in a certain little room which opened from the lower hall. Then she fell down before him and lay still for a long time.

When she came to herself again the man was stirring feebly and muttering to himself under his breath. With slow and painful steps she got across the room, and pulled the bell cord. She remained there ringing until the old Justine, blinking and half dressed, appeared with a candle in the doorway. Coira told the woman to make lights and then to bring water and a certain little bottle of aromatic salts which was in her room upstairs. The old Justine exclaimed and cried out, but the girl flew at her in a white fury, and she tottered away as fast as old legs could move, once she had set alight the row of candles on the mantel shelf. Then Coira O'Hara went back to the man who lay outstretched on the low couch, and knelt beside him looking into his face. The man stirred and moved his head slowly. Half articulate words came from his lips and she made out that he was saying her name in a dull monotone – only her name, over and over again. She gave a little cry of grief and gladness, and hid her face against him as she had done once before, out in the night.

The old woman returned with a jug of water, towels and the bottle of aromatic salts. The two of them washed that red stain from Ste. Marie's head and found that he had received a severe bruise, and that the flesh had been cut before and above the ear.

"Thank God!" the girl said, "it is only a flesh wound. If it were a fracture he would be breathing in that horrible loud way they always do. He's breathing naturally. He has only been stunned.

"You may go now!" she said. "Only, bring a glass and some drinking water – cold."

So the old woman went away to do her errand, returned and went away again, and the two were left together. Coira held the salts bottle to Ste. Marie's nostrils, and he gasped and sneezed and tried to turn his head away from it, but it brought him to his senses – and doubtless to a good deal of pain. Once when he could not escape the thing he broke into a fit of weak cursing, and the girl laughed over him tenderly and let him be.

Very slowly Ste. Marie opened his eyes and, in the soft half light, the girl's face was bent above him, dark and sweet and beautiful – near, so near that her breath was warm upon his lips. He said her name again in an incredulous whisper —

"Coira! Coira!" And she said —

"I am here." But the man was in a strange borderland of half consciousness, and his ears were deaf.

He said, gazing up at her —

"Is it – another dream?" And he tried to raise one hand from where it lay beside him, but the hand wavered and fell aslant across his body. It had not the strength yet to obey him.

He said, still in his weak whisper —

"Oh, beautiful – and sweet – and true!"

The girl gave a little sob and hid her face.

"A goddess!" he whispered. "'A queen among goddesses!' That's – what the little Jew said. 'A queen among goddesses. – The young Juno, before – '" He stirred restlessly where he lay, and he complained —

"My head hurts! What's the matter with my head? It hurts."

She dipped one of the towels in the basin of cold water and held it to the man's brow. The chill of it must have been grateful for his eyes closed and he breathed a little satisfied. "Ah!

"It mustn't hurt to-night," said he. "To-night at two – by the little door in the garden wall. And he's coming with us. The young fool is coming with us… So she and I go out of each other's lives…

"Coira!" he cried with a sudden sharpness. "Coira, I won't have it! Am I going to lose you … like this? Am I going to lose you after all … now that we know?" He put up his hand once more – a weak and uncertain hand. It touched the girl's warm cheek and a sudden violent shiver wrung the man on the couch. His eyes sharpened and stared with something like fear.

"Real!" he cried, whispering. "Real? … Not a dream?"

"Oh, very real, my Bayard!" said she. A thought came to her and she drew away from the couch, and sat back upon her heels, looking at the man with grave and sombre eyes. In that moment she fought within herself a battle of right and wrong.

"He doesn't remember," she said. "He doesn't know. He is like a little child. He knows nothing but that we two – are here together. Nothing else. Nothing!"

His state was plain to see. He dwelt still in that vague borderland between worlds. He had brought with him no memories, and no memories followed him save those her face had wakened. Within the girl a great and tender passion of love fought for possession of this little hour.

"It will be all I shall ever have!" she cried piteously. "And it cannot harm him. He won't remember it when he comes to his senses. He'll sleep again and – forget. He'll go back to her and never know. And I shall never even see him again. Why can't I have my little sweet hour?"

Once more the man cried her name, and she knelt forward and bent above him.

"Oh, at last, Coira!" said he. "After so long! … And I thought it was another dream."

"Do you dream of me, Bayard?" she asked. And he said —

"From the very first. From that evening in the Champs Elysées. Your eyes, they've haunted me from the very first.

"There was a dream of you," he said, "that I had so often – but I cannot quite remember because my head hurts. What is the matter with my head? I was – going somewhere. It was so very important that I should go, but I have forgotten where it was and why I had to go there. I remember only that you called to me – called me back – and I saw your eyes – and I couldn't go. You needed me."

"Ah, sorely, Bayard! Sorely!" cried the girl above him.

"And now," said he, whispering.

"Now?" she said.

"Coira, I love you," said the man on the couch. And Coira O'Hara gave a single dry sob. She said —

"Oh, my dear love! now I wish that I might die after hearing you say that. My life, Bayard, is full now. It's full of joy and gratefulness and everything that is sweet. I wish I might die before other things come to spoil it."

Ste. Marie – or that part of him which lay at La Lierre, laughed with a fine scorn, albeit very weakly.

"Why not live instead?" said he. "And what can come to spoil our life for us?

"Our life!" he said again in a whisper. A flash of remembrance seemed to come to him for he smiled, and said —

"Coira, we'll go to Vavau."

"Anywhere!" said she. "Anywhere!"

"So that we go together."

"Yes," she said gently, "so that we two go together." She tried with a desperate fierceness to make herself like the man before her, to put away, by sheer power of will, all memory, the knowledge of everything save what was in this little room, but it was the vainest of all vain efforts. She saw herself for a thief and a cheat – stealing, for love's sake, the mere body of the man she loved while mind and soul were absent. In her agony she almost cried out aloud as the words said themselves within her. And she denied them. She said —

"His mind may be absent but his soul is here. He loves me. It is I, not that other. Can I not have my poor little hour of pretence? A little hour out of all a lifetime! Shall I have nothing at all?"

But the voice which had accused her said —

"If he knew, would he say he loves you?" And she hid her face, for she knew that he would not – even if it were true.

"Coira!" whispered the man on the couch, and she raised her head. In the half darkness he could not have seen how she was suffering. Her face was only a warm blur to him, vague and sweet and beautiful, with tender eyes. He said —

"I think – I'm falling asleep. My head is so very, very queer! What is the matter with my head? Coira, do you think I might be kissed before I go to sleep?"

She gave a little cry of intolerable anguish. It seemed to her that she was being tortured beyond all reason or endurance. She felt suddenly very weak and she was afraid that she was going to faint away. She laid her face down upon the couch where Ste. Marie's head lay. Her cheek was against his and her hair across his eyes.

The man gave a little contented sigh and fell asleep.

Later, she rose stiffly and wearily to her feet. She stood for a little while looking down upon him. It was as if she looked upon the dead body of a lover. She seemed to say a still and white and tearless farewell to him. Her little hour was done, and it had been, instead of joy, bitterness unspeakable: ashes in the mouth. Then she went out of the room and closed the door.

In the hall outside she stood a moment considering, and finally mounted the stairs and went to her father's door. She knocked and thought she heard a slight stirring inside, but there was no answer. She knocked twice again and called out her father's name, saying that she wished to speak to him, but still he made no reply, and, after waiting a little longer, she turned away. She went downstairs again and out upon the terrace. The terrace and the lawn before it were still chequered with silver and deep black, but the moon was an hour lower in the west. A little cool breeze had sprung up and it was sweet and grateful to her. She sat down upon one of the stone benches and leant her head back against the trunk of a tree which stood beside, and she remained there for a long time, still and relaxed in a sort of bodily and mental languor – an exhaustion of flesh and spirit.

There came shambling footsteps upon the turf and the old Michel advanced into the moonlight from the gloom of the trees, emitting mechanical and not very realistic groans. He had been hard put to it to find any one before whom he could pour out his tale of heroism and suffering. Coira O'Hara looked upon him coldly, and the gnome groaned with renewed and somewhat frightened energy.

"What is the matter with you?" she asked. "Why are you about at this hour?" The old Michel told his piteous tale with tears and passion, protesting that he had succumbed only before the combined attack of twenty armed men, and exhibiting his wounds. But the girl gave a brief and mirthless laugh.

"You were bribed to tell that, I suppose," said she. "By M. Ste. Marie? Yes, probably. Well, tell it to my father to-morrow! You'd better go to bed now." The old man stared at her with open mouth for a breathless moment, and then shambled hastily away, looking over his shoulder, at intervals, until he was out of sight.

But after that the girl still remained in her place from sheer weariness and lack of impulse to move. She fell to wondering about Captain Stewart and what had become of him, but she did not greatly care. She had a feeling that her world had come to its end, and she was quite indifferent about those who still peopled its ashes – or about all of them save her father.

She heard the distant sound of a motor-car, and at that sat up quickly, for it might be Ste. Marie's friend Mr. Hartley returning from Paris. The sound came nearer and ceased, but she waited for ten minutes before rapid steps approached from the east wall and Hartley was before her.

He cried at once —

"Where's Ste. Marie? Where is he? He hasn't tried to walk into the city?"

"He is asleep in the house," said the girl. "He was struck on the head and stunned. I got him into the house and he is asleep now.

"Of course," she said, "we could wake him, but it would probably be better to let him sleep as long as he will if it is possible. It will save him a great deal of pain I think. He'll have a frightful headache if he's wakened now. Could you come for him or send for him to-morrow – towards noon?"

"Why – yes, I suppose so," said Richard Hartley. "Yes, of course, if you think that's better. Could I just see him for a moment?" He stared at the girl a bit suspiciously and Coira looked back at him with a little tired smile, for she read his thought.

"You want to make sure," said she. "Of course! Yes, come in. He's sleeping very soundly." She led the man into that dim room where Ste. Marie lay, and Hartley's quick eye noted the basin of water and the stained towels and the little bottle of aromatic salts. He bent over his friend to see the bruise at the side of the head, and listened to the sleeper's breathing. Then the two went out again to the moonlit terrace.

"You must forgive me," said he when they had come there. "You must forgive me for seeming suspicious, but – all this wretched business – and he is my closest friend. – I've come to suspect everybody. I was unjust, for you helped us to get away. I beg your pardon!"

The girl smiled at him again, her little white tired smile, and she said —

"There is nothing I would not do to make amends – now that I know – the truth."

"Yes," said Hartley. "I understand. Arthur Benham told me how Stewart lied to you all. Was it he who struck Ste. Marie?" She nodded.