Afternoon tea was being served in the hall at Beauleys on the day after Saton’s arrival. Saton himself was sitting with Lois Champneyes in a retired corner.
“I was going to ask you,” he remarked, as he handed her some cakes, “about Mr. Rochester’s marriage. He was a bachelor when I—first met him.”
“Were you very intimate in those days?” she asked.
“Not in the least,” he answered, with a faint reminiscent smile.
“Then you never heard about the romance of his life?” she asked.
Saton shook his head.
“Never,” he declared. “Nor should I ever have associated the word with Mr. Rochester.”
She sighed gently.
“I daresay he was very different in those days,” she said. “Before the Beauleys property came to him, he was quite poor, and he was very much in love with the dearest woman—Pauline Hambledon. It was impossible for them to marry—her people wouldn’t hear of it—so he went abroad, and she married Sir Walter Marrabel! Such a pig! Everyone hated him. Then old Mr. StephenRochester died suddenly, without a will, and all this property came to Henry!”
“And then he married, I suppose?” Saton remarked.
“I was going to tell you about that,” Lois continued. “Mary was a niece of Stephen Rochester, and a daughter of the Marquis of Haselton, who was absolutely bankrupt when he died. Stephen Rochester adopted her, and then died without leaving her a farthing! So there she was, poor dear, penniless, and Henry had everything. Of course, he had to marry her.”
“Why not?” Saton remarked. “She is quite charming.”
“Yes! But this is the tantalizing part of it,” Lois continued. “They hadn’t been married a year when Sir Walter Marrabel died. Pauline is a widow now. She is coming here in a few days. I do hope you will meet her.”
“This is quite interesting,” Saton murmured. “How do Lady Mary and her husband get on?”
Lois made a little grimace.
“They go different ways most of the time,” she answered. “I suppose they’re only what people call modern. Isn’t that a motor horn?” she cried out, springing to her feet. “I wonder if it’s Guerdie!”
“For a man who has been a great lawyer,” Lord Penarvon declared, “Guerdon is the most uncertain and unpunctual of men. One never knows when to expect him.”
“He was to have arrived yesterday,” Lady Mary remarked. “We sent to the station twice.”
“I suppose,” Rochester said, “that even to gratifythe impatience of an expectant house-party, it is not possible to quicken the slow process of the law. If you look at the morning papers, you will see that he was at the Central Criminal Court, trying some case or other, all day yesterday. The man who pleads ‘Not Guilty,’ and who pays for his defence, expects to be heard out to the bitter end. It is really only natural.”
Saton, who had been left alone in his corner, rose suddenly to his feet and came into the circle. He handed his cup to his hostess, and turned toward Rochester.
“You were speaking of judges?” he remarked.
Rochester nodded.
“In a few moments,” he said, “you will probably meet the cleverest one we have upon the English bench. Without his robe and wig, some people find him insignificant. Personally, I must confess that I never feel his eyes upon me without a shiver. They say that he never loses sight of a fact or forgets a face.”
“And what is the name of this wonderful person?” Saton asked.
“Lord Guerdon,” Rochester answered. “Even though you have spent so little time in England of late years, you must have heard of him.”
The curtains were suddenly thrown aside, and a footman entered announcing the newly-arrived guest. From the hall beyond came the sound of a departing motor, and the clatter of luggage being brought in. The footman stood on one side.
“Lord Guerdon!” he announced.
Lady Mary held out her hands across the tea-tray.Rochester came a few steps forward. Everyone ceased their conversation to look at the small, spare figure of the man who, clad in a suit of travelling clothes of gray tweed, and cut after a somewhat ancient pattern, insignificant-looking in figure and even in bearing, yet carried something in his clean-shaven, wrinkled face at once impressive and commanding. Everyone seemed to lean forward with a little air of interest, prepared to exchange greetings with him as soon as he had spoken to his host and hostess. Only Saton stood quite still, still as a figure turned suddenly into stone. No one appeared to notice him, to notice the twitching of his fingers, the almost ashen gray of his cheeks—no one except the girl with whom he had been talking, and whose eyes had scarcely left his. He recovered himself quickly. When Rochester turned towards him, a moment or so later, he was almost at his ease.
“You find us all old friends, Guerdon,” he said, “except that I have to present to you my friend Mr. Saton. Saton, this is Lord Guerdon, whose caricature you have doubtless admired in many papers, comic and otherwise, and who I am happy to assure you is not nearly so terrible a person as he might seem from behind that ominous iron bar.”
Saton held out his hand, but almost immediately withdrawing it, contented himself with a murmured word, and a somewhat low bow. For a second the judge’s eyebrows were upraised, his keen eyes seemed to narrow. He made no movement to shake hands.
“I am very glad to meet Mr. Saton,” he said slowly.“By the bye,” he continued, after a second’s pause, “is this our first meeting? I seem to have an idea—your face is somehow familiar to me.”
There were few men who could have faced the piercing gaze of those bright brown eyes, set deep in the withered face, without any sign of embarrassment. Yet Saton smiled back pleasantly enough. He was completely at his ease. His face showed only a reasonable amount of pleasure at this encounter with the famous man.
“I am afraid, Lord Guerdon,” he said, “that I cannot claim the privilege of any previous acquaintance. Although I am an Englishman, my own country has seen little of me during the last few years.”
“Come and have some tea at once,” Lady Mary insisted, looking up at the judge. “I want to hear all about this wonderful Clancorry case. Oh, I know you’re not supposed to talk about it, but that really doesn’t matter down here. You shall have a comfortable chair by my side, and some hot muffins.”
Saton went back to his seat by the side of Lois Champneyes, carrying his refilled teacup in his hand. She looked at him a little curiously.
“Tell me,” she said, “have you really never met Lord Guerdon before?”
“Never in my life,” he answered.
“Did he remind you of anyone?” she asked.
“It is curious that you should ask that,” Saton remarked. “In a way he did.”
“I thought so,” she declared, with a little breath of relief. “That was it, of course. Do you know how youlooked when you first heard his name—when he came into the room?”
“I have no idea,” he answered. “I only know that when I saw him enter, it gave me almost a shock. He reminded me most strangely of a man who has been dead for many years. I could scarcely take my eyes off him at first.”
“I will tell you,” she said, “what your look reminded me of. Many years before I was out—in my mother’s time—there was a man named Mallory who was tried for murder, the murder of a friend, who everyone knew was his rival. Well, he got off, but only after a long trial, and only by a little weakness in the chain of evidence, which even his friends at the time thought providential. He went abroad for a long time. Then he came into a title and returned to England. He was obliged to take up his position, and people were willing enough to forget the past. He opened his London house, and accepted every invitation which came. At the very first party he went to, he came face to face with the judge who had tried him. My mother was there. I remember she told me how he looked. It was foolish of me, but I thought of it when I saw you just then.”
Saton smiled sympathetically.
“And the end of the story?” he asked.
“The man had such a shock,” she continued, “that he shut up his house, gave up all his schemes for re-entering life, left England, and never set foot in the country again.”
Saton rose to his feet.
“I see that my host is beckoning me,” he said. “Will you excuse me for a moment?”
Rochester passed his arm through the younger man’s.
“Come into the gun-room for a few minutes,” he said. “I want to show you the salmon flies I was speaking of.”
Saton smiled a little curiously, and followed his host across the hall and down the long stone passage which led to the back quarters of the house. The gun-room was deserted and empty. Rochester closed the door.
“My young friend,” he said, “if you do not object, I should like to have a few minutes of plain speaking with you.”
“I should be delighted,” Saton answered, seating himself deliberately in a battered old easy-chair.
“Seven years ago,” Rochester continued, leaning his elbow against the mantelpiece, “we made a bargain. I sent you out into the world, an egotistical Don Quixote, and I provided you with the means with which you were to turn the windmills into castles. I made one condition—two, in fact. One that you came back. Well, you have kept that. The other was that you told me what it was like to build the castles of bricks and mortar, which in the days when I knew you, you built in fancy only.”
“Aren’t you a little allegorical?” Saton asked, calmly.
“I admit it,” Rochester answered. “I was very nearly, in fact, out of my depth. Tell me, in plain words, what have you done with yourself these seven years?”
“You want me,” Saton remarked, “to give an account of my stewardship.”
“Put it any way you please,” Rochester answered. “The fact remains that though you are a guest in my house, you are a complete stranger to me.”
Saton smiled.
“You might have thought of that,” he said, “before you asked me here.”
Rochester shrugged his shoulders.
“Perhaps,” he said, “I preferred to keep up my reputation as an eccentric person. At any rate, you must remember that it was open to me at any moment to ask you the question I have asked you now.”
Saton sat perfectly still in his chair, his eyes apparently fixed upon the ground. All the time Rochester was watching him. Was it seven years ago, seven years only, since he had stood by the side of that boy, whose longing eyes had been fixed with almost passionate intensity upon that world of shadows and unseen things? This was a different person. With the swiftness of inspiration itself, he recognised something of the change which had taken place. Saton had fought his battle twice over. He might esteem himself a winner. He might even say that he had proved it. Yet there was another side. This young man with the lined face, and the almost unnatural restraint of manner, might well have taken up the thread of life which the boy had laid down. But there was a difference. The thread might be the same, but it was no longer of gold.
Then Saton raised his eyes, and Rochester, who was watching him intensely, realized with a sudden convincing thrill something which he had felt from the momentwhen he had stepped into the library and welcomed this unexpected visitor. There was nothing left of gratitude or even kindly feeling in the heart of this young man. There was something else which looked out from his eyes, something else which he did not even trouble to conceal. Rochester knew, from that moment, that he had an enemy.
“There are just two things,” Saton said quietly, “of which I should like to remind you. The first is that from the day I left this house with five hundred pounds in bank-notes buttoned up in my pocket, I regarded that sum as a loan. I have always regarded it as a loan, and I have repaid it.”
“I do not consider your obligation to me lessened,” Rochester remarked coldly. “If it was a loan, it was a loan such as no sane man would have made. You had not a penny in the world, and I did not even know your name. The chances were fifty to one against my ever seeing a penny of my money again.”
“I admit that,” Saton answered. “Yet I will remind you of your own words—five hundred pounds were no more to you than a crown piece to me. You gave me the money. You gave me little else. You gave me no encouragement, no word of kindly advice. Go back that seven years, and remember what you said to me when you stood by my side, toying with your gun, and looking at me superciliously, as though I were some sort of curiosity which it amused you to turn inside out.—The one unforgivable thing in life, you said, was failure. Do you remember telling me that if I failed I was to swimout on a sunny day—to swim and swim until the end came? Do you remember telling me that death was sometimes a pleasant thing, but that life after failure was Hell itself?”
Rochester nodded.
“I always had such a clear insight into life,” he murmured. “I was perfectly right.”
“From your point of view you doubtless were,” Saton answered. “You were a cynic and a pessimist, and I find you now unchanged. I went away with your words ringing in my brain. It was the first poisonous thought which had ever entered there, and I never lost it. I said to myself that whatever price I paid for success, success of some sort I would gain. When things went against me, I seemed to hear always those bitter, supercilious words. I could even see the curl of your lips as you looked down upon me, and figured to yourself the only possible result of trusting me, an unfledged, imaginative boy, with the means to carve his way a little further into the world. Failure! I wrote the word out of the dictionary of my life. Sin, crime, ill-doing of any sort if they became necessary—I kept them there. But failure—no! And this was your doing. Now you come to ask me questions. You want to know if I am a fit and proper person to receive in your house. Perhaps I have sinned. Perhaps I have robbed. Perhaps I have proved myself a master in every form of ill-doing. But I have not failed! I have paid you back your five hundred pounds.”
“The question of ethics,” Rochester remarked, “interests me very little if at all. The only point is thatwhereas on the hillside you were simply a stray unit of humanity, and the things which we said to one another concerned ourselves only, here matters are a little different. In a thoughtless moment, I asked you to become a guest under my roof. It was, I frankly admit, a mistake. I trust that I need not say more.”
“If you will have my things removed to the Inn,” Saton said slowly—
“No such extreme measures are necessary,” Rochester answered. “You will stay with us until to-morrow morning. After luncheon you will probably find it convenient to terminate your visit as soon as possible.”
“I shall be gone,” Saton answered, “before any of your guests are up. In case I do not see you again alone, let me ask you a question, or rather a favor.”
Rochester bowed slightly.
“There is a house below the Convalescent Home—Blackbird’s Nest, they call it,” Saton said. “It is empty now—too large for your keepers, too small for a country seat. Will you let it to me?”
Rochester looked at him with uplifted eyebrows.
“Let it to you?” he repeated. “Do you mean to say that after an adventurous career such as I imagine you have had, you think of settling down, at your age, in a neighborhood like this?”
“Scarcely that,” Saton answered. “I shall be here only for a few days at a time, at different periods in the year. The one taste which I share in common with the boy whom you knew, is a love for the country, especially this part of it.”
“You wish to live there alone?” Rochester asked.
“There is one—other person,” Saton answered with some hesitation.
Rochester sighed gently.
“Alas!” he said. “Instinct tells me that that person will turn out to be of the other sex. If only you knew, my young friend, what the morals of this neighborhood are, you would understand how fatal your proposal is.”
Something that was almost malign gleamed for a moment in Saton’s eyes.
“It is true,” he said, “that the person I spoke of is a woman, but as she is at least sixty years old, and can only walk with the help of a stick, I do not think that she would be apt to disturb the moral prejudices of your friends.”
“What has she to do with you?” Rochester asked, a little shortly. “Have you found relatives out in the world, or are you married?”
Saton smiled.
“I am not married,” he answered, “and as the lady in question is a foreigner, there is no question of any relationship between us. I am, as a matter of fact, her adopted son.”
“You can go and see my agent,” Rochester answered. “Personally, I shall not interfere. I am to take it for granted, then, I presume, that you have nothing more to tell me concerning yourself?”
“At present, nothing,” Saton answered. “Some day, perhaps,” he added, rising, “I may tell you everything.You see,” he added, “I feel that my life, such as it is, is in some respects dedicated to you, and that you therefore have a certain right to know something of it. But that time has not come yet.”
Once more there was a short and somewhat inexplicable pause, and once more Rochester knew that he was in the presence of an enemy. He shrugged his shoulders and turned toward the door.
“Well,” he said, “we had better be getting off. Guerdon is a decent fellow, but he always needs looking after. If he is bored for five minutes, he gets sulky. If he is bored for a quarter of an hour, he goes home. You never met Lord Guerdon before, I suppose?” he asked, as he threw open the door.
They were men of nerve, both of them. Neither flinched. Rochester’s question had been asked in an absolutely matter-of-fact tone, and Saton’s reply was entirely casual. Yet he knew very well that it was only since the coming of the great judge that Rochester had suddenly realized that amongst the guests staying in his house, there was one who might have been any sort of criminal.
“I have seen him in court,” Saton remarked, with a slight smile, “and of course I have seen pictures of him everywhere. Do not let me keep you, please. I have some letters to write in my room.”
Rochester went back to his guests. His brows were knitted. He was unusually thoughtful. His wife, who was watching him, called him across to the bridge table, where she was dummy.
“Well?” she asked. “What is it?”
Rochester looked down at her. The corners of his mouth slowly unbent.
“Have you ever heard,” he whispered in her ear, “of the legend of the Frankenstein?”
“
My dear Henry,” Lady Mary said, a few days later, swinging round in her chair from the writing-table, “whatever in this world induced you to encourage that extraordinary person Bertrand Saton to settle down in this part of the world?”
Rochester continued for a moment to gaze out of the window across the Park, with expressionless face.
“My dear Mary,” he said, “I did not encourage him to do anything of the sort.”
“You let him Blackbird’s Nest,” she reminded him.
“I had scarcely a reasonable excuse for refusing to let it,” Rochester answered. “I did not suggest that he should take it. I merely referred him to my agents. He went to see old Bland the very next morning, and the thing was arranged.”
“I think,” Lady Mary said deliberately, “that it is one of those cases where you should have exercised a little more discrimination. This is a small neighborhood, and I find it irritating to be continually running up against people whom I dislike.”
“You dislike Saton?” Rochester remarked, nonchalantly.
“Dislike is perhaps a strong word,” his wife answered. “I distrust him. I disbelieve in him. And I dislike exceedingly the friendship between him and Lois.”
Rochester shrugged his shoulders.
“Does it amount to a friendship?” he asked.
“What else?” his wife answered. “It was obvious that she was interested in him when he was staying here, and twice since I have met them walking together. I hate mysterious people. They tell me that he has made Blackbird’s Nest look like a museum inside, and there is the most awful old woman, with white hair and black eyes, who never leaves his side, they say, when he is at home.”
“She is,” Rochester remarked, “I presume, of an age to disarm scandal?”
“She looks as old as Methuselah,” his wife answered, “but what does the man want with such a creature at all?”
“She may be an elderly relative,” Rochester suggested.
“Relative? Why, she calls herself the Comtesse somebody!” Lady Mary declared. “I do wish you would tell me, Henry, exactly what you know and what you do not know about this young man.”
“What I do know is simple enough,” he answered. “What I do not know would, I begin to believe, fill a volume.”
“Then you had better go and see him, and readjust matters,” she declared, a little sharply. “I want Lois to marry well, and she mustn’t have her head turned by this young man.”
Rochester strolled through the open French-window into the flower-garden. He pulled a low basket chair out into the sun, close to a bed of pink and white hyacinths. A man-servant, seeing him, brought out the morning papers, which had just arrived, but Rochester waved them away.
“Fancy reading the newspapers on a morning like this!” he murmured, half to himself. “The person who would welcome the intrusion of a world of vulgar facts into an æsthetically perfect half-hour, deserves—well, deserves to be the sort of person he must be. Take the papers away, Groves,” he added, as the man stood by, a little embarrassed. “Take them to Lord Penarvon or Mr. Hinckley.”
The man bowed and withdrew. Rochester half closed his eyes, but opened them again almost immediately. A white clad figure was passing down the path on the other side of the lawn. He roused himself to a sitting posture.
“Lois!” he called out. “Lois!”
She waved her hand, but did not stop. He rose to his feet and called again. She paused with a reluctance which was indifferently concealed.
“I am going down to the village,” she said.
He crossed the lawn towards her.
“I will be a model host,” he said, “and come with you. It is always the function of the model host, is it not, to neglect the whole of the rest of the guests, and attach himself to the one most charming?”
She shook her head at him.
“I dare not risk being so unpopular,” she declared.“Really, don’t bother to come. It is such a very short distance.”
“That decides me,” he answered, falling into step with her. “A short walk is exactly what I want. For the last few days I have been oppressed with a horrible fear. I am afraid of growing fat!”
She looked at his long slim figure, and laughed derisively.
“You will have to find another reason for this sudden desire for exercise,” she remarked.
“Do I need to find one?” he answered, laughing down into her pretty face.
She shook her head.
“This is all very well,” she said, “but I quite understand that it is my last morning. I know what will happen this afternoon, and I really do not think that I shall allow you to come past that gate.”
“Why not?” he asked earnestly.
“You know very well that Pauline is coming,” she answered.
The change in his face was too slight for her to notice it, but there was a change. His lips moved as though he were repeating the name to himself.
“And why should Pauline’s coming affect the situation?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“You say nice things to me,” she declared, looking at him reproachfully, “but only when Pauline isn’t here. We all know that directly she comes we are no longer any of us human beings. I wish I were intelligent.”
“Don’t!” he begged. “Don’t wish anything so foolish. Intelligence is the greatest curse of the day. Few people possess it, it is true, but those few spend most of their time wishing they were fools.”
“Am I a fool?” she asked.
“Of course,” he answered. “All pretty and charming people are fools.”
“And Pauline?” she asked.
“Pauline, unfortunately, is amongst the cursed,” he answered.
“That, I suppose,” she remarked, “is what brings you so close together.”
“It is a bond of common suffering,” he declared. “By the bye, who is this ferocious-looking person?”
It was Saton who had suddenly turned the corner, and whose expression had certainly darkened for a moment as he came face to face with the two. He was correctly enough dressed in gray tweeds and thick walking boots, but somehow or other his sallow face and dark, plentiful hair, seemed to go oddly with his country clothes.
Rochester glanced at his companion, and he distinctly saw a little grimace. Saton would have passed on, for Rochester’s nod was of the slightest, but Lois insisted upon stopping.
“Mr. Saton,” she said, “I have been hearing all sorts of wonderful things about your house. When are you going to ask us all to tea to see your curiosities?”
Saton looked into Rochester’s immovable face.
“Whenever you choose to come,” he answered calmly. “I am nearly always at home in the afternoon, or ratherI shall be after next Thursday,” he added, as an afterthought. “I am going to town this evening.”
“Going away?” she asked, a little blankly.
“I have to go up to London,” he answered, “but it is only for two days.”
There was a short, uneasy silence. Rochester purposely avoided speech. He understood the situation exactly. They had something to say to one another, and wished him away.
“You won’t be able to send me that book, then?” she asked.
“I will leave it at the house this afternoon, if I may,” he answered, half looking toward Rochester.
Rochester made no sign. Saton raised his cap and passed on.
“Wonderful syringa bush, that,” Rochester remarked, pointing with his stick.
“Wonderful!” Lois answered.
“Quite an ideal village, mine,” he continued. “You see there are crocuses growing out even in the roadway.”
“Very pretty!” she answered.
“You are not by any chance annoyed with me?”
“I did not think you were very civil to that poor young man.”
“Naturally,” he answered. “I didn’t mean to be civil. I am one of those simple folk who are always annoyed by the incomprehensible. I do not understand Mr. Bertrand Saton. I do not quite understand, either, why you should find him an interesting companion for your morning walks.”
“You are a hateful person!” she declared, as he held open the gate which led back to the Park.
“I intend to remain so,” he answered drily.
The sound of footsteps coming along the path which they had just quitted, attracted his attention momentarily. He turned round. Lois, too, hesitated.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” the newcomer said, “but can you tell me whereabouts in this neighborhood I can find a house called Blackbird’s Nest? A Mr. Bertrand Saton lives there, I believe.”
Rochester hesitated for a few seconds. He looked at the woman, summing her up with swift comprehension. Lois, by his side, stared at her in surprise. She was inclined to be stout, and her face was flushed with walking, notwithstanding an obviously recent use of the powder-puff. A mass of copper-colored hair was untidily arranged underneath a large black hat. Her clothes were fashionable in cut, but cheap in quality. She wore openwork stockings and high-heeled shoes, which had already suffered from walking along the dusty roads. While she waited for an answer to her question, she drew a handkerchief from her pocket, and the perfume of the violet scented hedge by the side of which they stood, was no longer a thing apparent.
Rochester, whose hatred of perfumes was one of his few weaknesses, drew back a step involuntarily.
“If you pass through the village,” he said, “Blackbird’s Nest is the second house upon the right-hand side. It lies a little way back from the road, but you cannot miss it.”
“I am sure I am very much obliged,” the lady answered. “If I had known it was as far as this, I’d have waited till I could have found a carriage. The porter at the station told me that it was just a step.”
Rochester raised his cap and turned away. Lois walked soberly by his side for several moments.
“I wonder,” she said softly, “what a person like that could want with Mr. Saton.”
Rochester shrugged his shoulders.
“We know nothing of Saton or his life,” he answered. “He has wandered up and down the world, and I daresay he has made some queer acquaintances.”
“But his taste,” Lois persisted, “is so perfect. I cannot understand his permitting a creature like that to even come near him.”
Rochester smiled.
“One does strange things under compulsion,” he remarked. “I see that they have been rolling the putting greens. Shall we go and challenge Penarvon and Mrs. Hinckley to a round at golf?”
She glanced once more over her shoulder toward the village—perhaps beyond.
“If you like,” she answered, resignedly.
The words which passed between Pauline Marrabel and her host at the railway station were words which the whole world might have heard and remained unedified. The first part of their drive homeward, even, passed in complete silence. Yet if their faces told the story, Rochester was with the woman he loved. He had driven a small pony-cart to the station. There was no room, even, for a groom behind. They sat side by side, jogging on through the green country lanes, until they came to the long hill which led to the higher country. The luggage cart and the omnibus, with her maid and the groom who had driven down with Rochester, passed them soon after they had left the station. They were alone in the country lane, alone behind a fat pony, who had ideas of his own as to what was the proper pace to travel on a warm spring afternoon.
More than once he looked at her. Her oval face was almost devoid of color. There were rings underneath her large soft eyes. Her dark hair was brushed simply back from her forehead. Her travelling clothes were of the plainest. Yet she was always beautiful—more so than ever just now, perhaps, when the slight hardnesshad gone from her mouth, and the strain had passed from her features.
Rochester, too, was curiously altered by the change in the curve of his lips. There was a new smile there, a new light in his eyes as they jogged on between the honeysuckle-wreathed hedges. Their silence was even curiously protracted, but underneath the holland apron his left hand was clasping hers.
“How are things with you?” she asked softly.
“About the same,” he answered. “We make the best of it, you know. Mary amuses herself easily enough. She has what she wanted—a home, and I have someone to entertain my guests. I believe that we are considered quite a model couple.”
Pauline sighed.
“Henry,” she said, “it is beautiful to be here, to be here with you. The days will not seem long enough.”
Rochester, so apt of speech, seemed curiously tongue-tied. His fingers pressed hers. He made no answer. She leaned a little forward and looked into his face.
“Wonderful person!” she declared. “Never a line or a wrinkle!”
He smiled.
“I live quietly,” he said. “I am out of doors all day. Excitement of any sort has not touched my life for many years. Sometimes I feel that this perfect health is a torture. Sometimes I am afraid of never growing old.”
She laughed very softly—a dear, familiar sound it was to him. He turned his head to watch the curve ofthe lips that he loved, the faint contraction of her eyebrows as the smile spread.
“You dear man!” she murmured. “To look at you makes me feel quitepassée.”
“TheDaily Telegraphshould reassure you,” he answered. “I read this morning that the most beautiful woman at the Opera last night was Lady Marrabel.”
“TheDaily Telegraphman is such a delightful creature,” she answered. “I do not like reporters, but I fancy that I must once have been civil to this one by mistake. Henry, you have had the road shortened. I am perfectly certain of it. We cannot be there.”
“I am afraid it is the sad truth,” he answered. “You see they are all having tea upon the lawn.”
He touched the pony with his whip, and turning off the main avenue, drew up at the bottom of one of the lawns, before a sunk fence. A servant came hurrying down to the pony’s head, and together Pauline and he made their way across the short green turf to where Lady Mary was dispensing tea. Rochester’s face suddenly darkened. Seated next to his wife, with Lois on the other side of him, was Saton!
Lady Mary rose to welcome her guest, and Rochester exchanged greetings with some callers who had just arrived. To Saton he merely nodded, but when a little later Lois rose, and announced that she was going to show Mr. Saton the orchid houses, he intervened lazily.
“We will all go,” he said. “Lady Penarvon is interested in orchids, and I am sure that Pauline would like to see the houses.”
“I am interested in everything belonging to this delightful place,” she declared, rising.
Lois frowned slightly. Saton’s face remained inscrutable. In the general exodus Rochester found himself for a moment behind with his wife.
“Did you encourage that young man to stay to tea?” he asked. “I thought you disliked him so much.”
Lady Mary sighed. She was a gentle, fluffy little creature, who had a new whim every few minutes.
“I am so changeable,” she declared. “I detested him yesterday. He wore such an ugly tie, and he would monopolize Lois. This afternoon I found him most interesting. I believe he knows all about the future, if one could only get him to tell us things.”
“Really!” Rochester remarked politely.
“He has been talking in a most interesting fashion,” continued Lady Mary.
“Has he been telling you all your fortunes?”
“You put it so crudely, my dear Henry,” his wife declared. “Of course he doesn’t tell fortunes! Only he’s the sort of person that if one really wanted to know anything, I believe his advice would be better than most peoples’. Perhaps he will talk to us about it after dinner.”
“What, is he dining here?” Rochester asked.
“I have asked him to,” Lady Mary answered, complacently. “We are short of young men, as you know, and really this afternoon he quite fascinated us all. The dear Duchess is so difficult and heavy to entertain, but she quite woke up when he began to talk. Lady Penarvon just told me that she thought he was wonderful.”
“He seems to have the knack of interesting women,” Rochester remarked.
“And therefore, I suppose,” Lady Mary said, “you men will all hate him. Never mind, I have changed my opinion entirely. I think that he is going to be an acquisition to the neighborhood, and I am going to study occultism.”
Rochester turned away with a barely concealed grimace. He went up to Lois, calmly usurping Saton’s place.
“My dear Lois,” he said, as they fell behind a few paces, “so your latest young man has been charming everybody.”
“He is nice, isn’t he?” she answered, turning to him a little impulsively.
“Marvelously!” Rochester answered. “Hatefully so! Has he told you anything, by the bye, about himself?”
She shook her head.
“Nothing that I can remember,” she answered. “He is so clever,” she added, enthusiastically, “and he has explained all sorts of wonderful things to me. If one had only brains,” she continued, with a little sigh, “there is so much to learn.”
Rochester picked a great red rose and handed it to her.
“My dear child,” he said, “there is nothing in knowledge so beautiful as that flower. By the bye,” he added, raising his voice to Saton, who was just ahead, “I thought you were going to London to-day.”
“I have put off my visit until to-morrow,” Saton answered. “Your wife has been kind enough to ask me to dine.”
Rochester nodded. He carefully avoided endorsing the invitation.
“By the bye,” he remarked, “we had the pleasure of directing a lady in distress to your house this morning.”
Saton paused for a moment before he answered.
“I am very much obliged to you,” he said.
He offered no explanation. Rochester, with a little shrug of the shoulders, rejoined Pauline. Lady Mary was called away to receive some visitors, and for the first time Lois and Saton were alone.
“Mr. Rochester has taken a dislike to me,” he said quietly.
Lois was distressed.
“I wonder why,” she said. “As a rule he is so indifferent to people.”
Saton shook his head a little sadly.
“I cannot tell,” he answered. “Certainly I cannot think of anything I have done to offend him. But I am nearly always unfortunate. The people whom I would like to have care about me, as a rule don’t.”
“There are exceptions,” she murmured.
She met his eyes, and looked away. He smiled softly to himself. Women had looked away from him before like that!
“Fortunately,” he continued, “Lady Mary seems to be a little more gracious. It was very kind of her to ask me to dine to-night.”
“She is always so interested,” Lois said, “in things which she does not understand. You talked so well this afternoon, Mr. Saton. I am afraid I could not follow you, but it sounded very brilliant and very wonderful.”
“One speaks convincingly,” he said, “when one really feels. Some day, remember,” he continued, “we are going to have a long, long talk. We are going to begin at the beginning, and you are going to let me help you to understand how many wonderful things there are in life which scarcely any of us ever even think about. I wonder——”
“Well?” she asked, looking up at him.
“Will they let me take you down to dinner?”
She shook her head doubtfully.
“I am afraid not,” she said. “I am almost certain to go in with Captain Vandermere.”
He sighed.
“After all,” he said, “perhaps I had better have taken that train to town.”
Saton was only a few minutes being whirled down the avenue of Beauleys and up along the narrow country lane, wreathed with honeysuckle and wild roses, to Blackbird’s Nest. He leaned back in the great car, his unseeing eyes travelling over the quiet landscape. There was something out of keeping, a little uncanny, even, in the flight of the motor-car with its solitary passenger along the country lane, past the hay carts, and the villagers resting after their long day’s toil. The man who leaned back amongst the cushions, with his pale, drawn face, and dark, melancholy eyes, seemed to them like a creature from another world, even as the vehicle in which he travelled, so swift and luxurious, filled them with wonder. Saton heard nothing of their respectful good-nights. He saw nothing of their doffed hats and curious, wondering glances. He was thinking with a considerable amount of uneasiness of the interview which probably lay before him.
The car turned in at the rude gates, and climbed the rough road which led to Saton’s temporary abode. A servant met him at the door as he descended, a gray-haired, elderly man, irreproachably attired, whose manner denoted at once the well-trained servant.
“There is a lady here, sir,” he said—“she arrived some hours ago—who has been waiting to see you. You will find her in the morning-room.”
Saton took off his hat, and moved slowly down the little hall.
“I trust that I did not make a mistake, sir, in allowing her to wait?” the man asked. “She assured me that she was intimately known to you.”
“You were quite right, Parkins,” Saton answered. “I think I know who she is, but I was scarcely expecting her to-day.”
He opened the door of the morning-room and closed it quickly. The woman rose up from the couch, where she had apparently been asleep, and looked at him.
“At last!” she exclaimed. “Bertrand, do you know that I have been here since the morning?”
“How was I to know?” he answered. “You sent no word that you were coming. I certainly did not expect you.”
“Are you glad?” she asked, a little abruptly.
“I am always glad to see you, Violet,” he said, putting his arm around her waist and kissing her. “All the same, I am not sure that your coming here is altogether wise.”
“I waited as long as I could,” she answered. “You didn’t come to me. You scarcely even answered my letters. I couldn’t bear it any longer. I had to come and see you. Bertrand, you haven’t forgotten? Tell me that you haven’t forgotten.”
He sat down by her side. She was a young woman,and though her face was a little hardened by the constant use of cosmetics, she was still well enough looking.
“My dear Violet,” he said, “of course I have not forgotten. Only don’t you see how unwise it is of you to come down here? If she were to know——”
“She will not know,” the girl interrupted. “She is safe in London, and will be there for a week.”
“The servants here might tell her that you have been,” he suggested.
“You will have to see to it that they don’t,” she said. “Bertrand, I am so unhappy. When are you coming back?”
“Very soon,” he answered.
“We can spend the evening together, can’t we?” she asked, looking at him anxiously. “My train doesn’t go back until nine.”
“That is just what we cannot do,” he answered. “You did not tell me that you were coming, and I have to go out to dinner to-night.”
“To dinner? Here?” she repeated. “You have soon made friends.” And her face darkened.
“I stayed here when I was a boy,” he answered. “There is someone living here who knew me then.”
“Can’t you put it off, Bertrand?” she begged. “It is five weeks since I have seen you. Every day I have hoped that you would run up, if it was only for an hour. Bertrand dear, don’t go to this dinner. Can’t we have something here, and go for a walk in the country before my train goes, or sit in your study and talk? There are so many things I want to ask you about our future.”
He took her hand and leaned towards her.
“My dear Violet,” he said, “you must be reasonable. I dare not offend these people with whom I have promised to dine, and apart from that, I think it is very unwise that I should spend any time at all here with you. You know what sort of a person it is whom we both have to consider. She would turn us both into the street and treat it all as a jest, if it pleased her. I tell you frankly, Violet, I have been too near starvation once to care about facing it again. I am going to send you back to the station in the car now. You can catch a train to London almost at once.”
Her face grew suddenly hard. She looked older. The light which had flashed into her face at his coming, was gone. One saw now the irregularities of her complexion, the over-red lips.
“You dismiss me,” she said, in a low tone. “I have come all this way, have waited all this time, and you throw me a kiss out of pity, and you tell me to go home as fast as I can. Bertrand, you did not talk like this a few months ago. You did not talk like this when you asked me to marry you!”
“Nor shall I talk like it,” he answered, “when we meet once more in London, and have another of our cosy little dinners. But frankly, you are doing an absolutely unwise thing in staying here. These people are not my servants. They are hers. They are beyond my bribing. Violet,” he added, dropping his voice a little, and drawing her into his arms, “don’t be foolish, dear. Don’t run the risk of bringing disaster upon both of us. Youwouldn’t care to have to do without her now. Nor should I. It was a little thoughtless of you to come, dear. Do follow my advice now, and I will try and make it up to you very soon. I shall certainly be in London next week.”
She rested in his arms for a moment with half closed eyes, as though content with his words and his embrace. Yet, as she disengaged herself, she sighed a little. She was willing to deceive herself—she was anxious to do so—but always the doubt remained!
“Very well, Bertrand,” she said, “I will go.”
“You will just catch a fast train to London,” he said, more cheerfully. “You will change at Mechester, and you will find a dining-car there. Have you plenty of money?”
“Plenty, thank you,” she answered.
He walked with her out into the hall.
“Madame will be so sorry,” he said, “to have missed you. The telegram must have been a complete misunderstanding. Till next week, then.”
He handed her into the car, and raising her fingers to his lips, kissed them gallantly.
“To the station, William,” he ordered the chauffeur, “and then get back for me as quickly as you can.”
The car swung off. Saton stood watching it with darkening face. There was some pity in his heart for this somewhatpasséeyoung person, who had been kind to him during those first few weeks of his re-entering into life. He recognised the fact that his swift progress was unfortunate for her. He even sat for a moment ortwo smoking a cigarette in his very luxurious dressing-room, fingering the gold-topped bottles of his dressing-case, and wondering what would be the most effectual and least painful means of coming to an understanding with her!
The guests at Beauleys were all grouped together in the hall after dinner, the men, and some of the women, smoking cigarettes. Coffee and liqueurs were being served from the great oak sideboard. Lord Guerdon and his host had drawn a little apart from the others, at the former’s instigation.
“Your friend Saton—extraordinary name, by the bye—seems to have struck upon an interesting theme of conversation,” the judge remarked, a little drily, glancing across to where Saton stood, surrounded by most of the other guests.
“He has travelled a great deal,” Rochester said, “and he seems to be one of that extravagant sort of persons who imbibe more or less the ideas of every country. Chiefly froth, I should imagine, but it gives him plenty to talk about.”
The judge nodded thoughtfully.
“His face,” he declared, “still puzzles me a little. Sometimes I am sure that I have seen it before. At others, I find it quite unfamiliar.”
Rochester, who was watching Pauline, shrugged his shoulders.
“We may as well hear what the fellow is talkingabout,” he remarked. “Let us join the adoring throng.” ...
“I will tell you one thing which I have realized in the course of my travels,” Saton was saying as they drew near. “Amongst all the nations of the world, we English are at once the most ignorant, and the slowest to receive a new thing. In the exact sciences, we are perhaps just able to hold our own, but when it comes to the great unexplored fields, the average English person turns away with a shrug of the shoulders. ‘I do not believe!’ he says stolidly, and that is sufficient. He does not believe! Since the birth of Time there has been no more pitiful cry than that.”
“One might easily be convinced that the fellow is in earnest,” Rochester whispered.
The judge laid his hand upon his host’s shoulder. There was a curious gleam in those deep-set eyes.
“Let him go on,” he said. “This is interesting. I begin to remember.”
“We all have a hobby, I suppose,” Saton continued. “Mine has always been the study of the least understood of the sciences—I mean occultism. I, too, was prejudiced at first. I saw wonderful things in India, and my British instincts rose up like a wall. I did not believe. I refused to believe my eyes. In Egypt, and on the west coast of Africa, I had the chance of learning new things, and again I refused. But there came a time when even I was impressed. Then I began to study. I began to see that some of those things which we accept as being wonderful, and from which we turn away witha shrug of the shoulders, are capable of explanation—are submissive, in fact, to natural laws. There is not a doubt that in the generations to come, people will smile upon us, and pity us for our colossal stupidity.”
“No wise person, my dear Mr. Saton,” Mrs. Hinckley remarked, “would deny that there is yet a great deal to learn in life. But tell us exactly to what you refer?”
Saton raised his dark eyes and looked steadfastly at her.
“I mean, madam,” he said, “the apprehension of things happening in the present in other parts, the apprehension of things about to happen in the future. Our brain we realize, and our muscles, but there is a subtler part of ourselves, of which we are as ignorant to-day as our forefathers were of electricity.”
Lady Mary drew a little sigh.
“This is so fascinating,” she said. “Do you really believe, then, that it is possible to foretell the future?”
“Why not?” Saton answered quietly. “The world is governed by laws just as inevitable as the physical laws which govern the seasons. It is only a matter of apprehension, a deliberate schooling of ourselves into the necessary temperament.”
“Then all these people in Bond Street—these crystal gazers and fortune-tellers—” Lois began eagerly.
“They are charlatans, and stand in the way of progress,” Saton declared, fiercely. “They have not the faintest glimmering of the truth, and they turn what should be the greatest of the sciences into buffoonery. To the real student it is never possible to answer questionsto foretell specific things. On the other hand, it is as sure as the coming of night itself that there are times when a person who has studied these matters even so slightly as I myself, can feel the coming of events.”
“Give us an instance,” Lady Mary begged. “Tell us of something that is going to happen.”
Saton moved a little back. His face was unnaturally pale.
“No!” he answered. “Don’t ask me that. Remember, this is not a game. It might even happen that I should tell you something terrifying. I am sorry that I’ve talked like this,” he went on, a little wildly. “I am sorry that I came here to-night. Before I came I felt it coming. If you will excuse me, Lady Mary——”
She held out her hands and refused to accept his adieux.
“You shall not go!” she declared. “There is something in your mind. You could tell us something if you would.”
Saton looked around, as one genuinely anxious to escape. On the outskirts of the circle he saw Rochester, smiling faintly, half amused, half contemptuous, and by his side the parchment-like face of Lord Guerdon, whose eyes seemed riveted upon his.
“My dear Saton,” Rochester said, “pray don’t disappoint us of our thrill, after all this most effective preliminary. You believe that you possess a gift which we none of us share. Give us a proof of it. No one here is afraid to hear the truth. Is it one specific thing you could tell?”
“One specific thing,” Saton answered quickly, “about to happen to one person, and one person only.”
“Is it a man or a woman?” Rochester asked.
“A man!” was the quick reply.
Rochester glanced carelessly around the little circle.
“Come,” he said, “the women can have their thrill. There is nothing to fear. Penarvon here has all the pluck in the world. Hinckley is a V.C. Captain Vandermere is a soldier, and I will answer for it that he has no nerves. Guerdon and I, I am sure, are safe. Let us hear your gruesome prophecy, my dear Saton, and if it comes true, we will form a little society, and you shall be our apostle. We will study occultism in place of bridge. We will be the founders of a new cult.”
Saton pushed them away from him. His face was almost ghastly.
“It is not fair, this,” he cried. “You do not know what you are asking. Can’t you feel it, any of you others, as I do?” he exclaimed, looking a little wildly around. “There is something else in the room, something else besides you warm and living people. Be still, all of you.”
There was a moment’s breathless silence. Some papers on the table rustled. A picture on the wall shook. Lady Mary sat down in a chair. Lois gave a little scream.
“There is a slight draught,” Rochester remarked, calmly.
“It is no draught,” Saton answered. “You want the truth and you shall have it. See, there are five men present.”—He counted rapidly with his forefinger. “One of them will be dead before we leave this room.”
Rochester strolled over to the sideboard, and helped himself to a cigarette.
“Come,” he said, “this is going a little too far! Look at the cheeks of these ladies, Saton. A little melodrama is all very well, but you are too good an actor. Hinckley, and all of you,” he said, looking around, “I propose that we end the strain. Let us go into the billiard-room and have a pool. I presume that the spell will then be broken.”
Lady Mary shrieked.
“Don’t move, any of you!” she cried. “I am afraid!”
Rochester laughed softly, and crossed the floor with firm footsteps. He stood on the threshold of the door leading to the billiard-room.
“Come,” he said, “I am indeed between life and death, for I have one foot in one room and one in the other. Come, you others, and seek safety too.”
The women also rose. There was a rush for the door, a swish of draperies, a little sob from Lois, who was terrified. Saton remained standing alone. He had not moved. His eyes were fixed upon the figure of the judge, who also lingered. They two were left in the centre of the hall.
“Come, Guerdon,” Rochester cried. “You and I will take the lot on.”
Guerdon did not move. He motioned to Saton slightly.
“Young man,” he said, “we have met before. I said so when you first came in. My memory is improving.”
Saton leaned forward.