Justus Miles Forman
The Quest
A Romance
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4064066097905
Table of Contents
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Illustrations
"He fell on his knees at her feet" . . . Frontispiece (Page 312)
"It seemed to him that her eyes called him."
"'I fancy I know who the man was.'"
"'You're twenty-two. Have you ever fallen in love?'"
"He turned and went out of the room."
"'Don't refuse a helping hand!' said Captain Stewart, looking up once more. 'Don't be overproud!'"
"So for an hour or more he stood in the open window staring into the fragrant night."
"He saw Captain Stewart moving among them."
"Captain Stewart lay huddled and writhing upon the floor."
"There appeared two young people."
"'Michel is busy,' said Coira O'Hara, 'so I have brought your coffee.'"
"'Ste. Marie has disappeared? How very extraordinary!'"
"'What can we do, Richard? What can we do?'"
"'Tell me about him, this Ste. Marie! Do you know anything about him?'"
"Mlle. Coira O'Hara sat alone upon the stone bench."
"His hand went swiftly to his coat pocket."
"She did not move when he came before her."
"The girl fumbled desperately with the clumsy key."
"Walking there in the tender moonlight."
CHAPTER I
STE. MARIE HEARS OF A MYSTERY AND MEETS A DARK LADY
From Ste. Marie's little flat which overlooked the gardens they drove down the quiet Rue du Luxembourg, and, at the Place St. Sulpice, turned to the left. They crossed the Place St. Germain des Prés, where lines of homebound working people stood waiting for places in the electric trams, and groups of students from the Beaux Arts or from Julien's sat under the awnings of the Deux Magots, and so, beyond that busy square, they came into the long and peaceful stretch of the Boulevard St. Germain. The warm sweet dusk gathered round them as they went, and the evening air was fresh and aromatic in their faces. There had been a little gentle shower in the late afternoon, and roadway and pavement were still damp with it. It had wet the new-grown leaves of the chestnuts and acacias that bordered the street. The scent of that living green blended with the scent of laid dust and the fragrance of the last late-clinging chestnut blossoms: it caught up a fuller richer burden from the overflowing front of a florist's shop: it stole from open windows a savoury whiff of cooking, a salt tang of wood smoke, and the soft little breeze—the breeze of coming summer—mixed all together and tossed them and bore them down the long quiet street; and it was the breath of Paris, and it shall be in your nostrils and mine, a keen agony of sweetness, so long as we may live and so wide as we may wander—because we have known it and loved it: and in the end we shall go back to breathe it when we die.
The strong white horse jogged evenly along over the wooden pavement, its head down, the little bell at its neck jingling pleasantly as it went. The cocher, a torpid purplish lump of gross flesh, pyramidal, pear-like, sat immobile in his place. The protuberant back gave him an extraordinary effect of being buttoned into his fawn-coloured coat wrong-side-before. At intervals he jerked the reins like a large strange toy and his strident voice said—
"Hè!" to the stout white horse, which paid no attention whatever. Once the beast stumbled and the pear-like lump of flesh insulted it, saying—
"Hè! veux, tu, cochon!"
Before the War Office a little black slip of a milliner's girl dodged under the horse's head, saving herself and the huge box slung to her arm by a miracle of agility, and the cocher called her the most frightful names, without turning his head, and in a perfunctory tone quite free from passion.
Young Hartley laughed and turned to look at his companion, but Ste. Marie sat still in his place, his hat pulled a little down over his brows, and his handsome chin buried in the folds of the white silk muffler with which, for some obscure reason, he had swathed his neck.
"This is the first time in many years," said the Englishman, "that I have known you to be silent for ten whole minutes. Are you ill or are you making up little epigrams to say at the dinner party?"
Ste. Marie waved a despondent glove.
"I 'ave," said he, "w'at you call ze blue. Papillons noirs—clouds in my soul." It was a species of jest with Ste. Marie—and he seemed never to tire of it—to pretend that he spoke English very brokenly. As a matter of fact he spoke it quite as well as any Englishman and without the slightest trace of accent. He had discovered a long time before this—it may have been while the two were at Eton together—that it annoyed Hartley very much, particularly when it was done in company and before strangers. In consequence he became at such occasions a sort of comic-paper caricature of his race, and by dint of much practice, added to a naturally alert mind, he became astonishingly ingenious in the torture of that honest but unimaginative gentleman whom he considered his best friend. He achieved the most surprising expressions by the mere literal translation of French idiom, and he could at any time bring Hartley to a crimson agony by calling him "my dear" before other men, whereas at the equivalent "mon cher" the Englishman would doubtless never, as the phrase goes, have batted an eye.
"Ye—es," he continued sadly, "I 'ave ze blue. I weep. Weez ze tears full ze eyes. Yes." He descended into English. "I think something's going to happen to me. There's calamity—or something—in the air. Perhaps I'm going to die."
"Oh, I know what you are going to do, right enough," said the other man, "you're going to meet the most beautiful woman—girl—in the world at dinner, and of course you are going to fall in love with her."
"Ah, the Miss Benham!" said Ste. Marie with a faint show of interest. "I remember now, you said that she was to be there. I had forgotten. Yes, I shall be glad to meet her. One hears so much. But why am I of course going to fall in love with her?"
"Well, in the first place," said Hartley, "you always fall in love with all pretty women as a matter of habit, and, in the second place, everybody—well, I suppose you—no one could help falling in love with her, I should think."
"That's high praise