“Some water, quick, and brandy,” Rochester cried. [Page 73“Some water, quick, and brandy,” Rochester cried.
“Be careful, judge,” he said.
“Be careful be d—d!” the judge answered. “Rochester, come here. God in Heaven!”
His left hand went suddenly to his throat. He almost tore away the collar and primly arranged tie. Rochester was by his side in a second, and saved him from falling. His face was white to the lips. A shriek from the women rang through the hall, and came echoing back again from the black rafters.
“Some water quick, and brandy,” Rochester cried, tearing open the shirt from the man he was supporting. “Send for a doctor, someone. Penarvon, you see to that. Let them take the motor. Keep those d—d women quiet!”
The judge opened his eyes.
“I remember him,” he faltered.
“Drink some of this, old fellow,” Rochester said. “You’ll be better in a moment.”
The judge’s eyes were closed again. He had suddenly become a dead weight on Rochester’s arm. Vandermere, who had done amateur doctoring at the war, brought a pillow for his head. They cut off more of his clothes. They tried by every means to keep a flicker of life in him until the doctor came. Only Rochester knew it was useless. He had seen the shadow of death pass across the gray, stricken face.
Lois opened the gate and stole into the lane with the air of a guilty child. She gave a little gasp as she came face to face with Saton, and picking up her skirts, seemed for a moment about to fly. He stood quite still—his face was sad—almost reproachful. She dropped her skirt and came slowly, doubtfully towards him.
“I have come,” she said. “I was forced to come. Oh, Mr. Saton! How could you?”
His features were wan. There were lines under his dark eyes. He was looking thin and nervous. His voice, too, had lost some of its pleasant qualities.
“My dear young lady,” he said, “my dear Lois, what do you mean? You don’t suppose—you can’t—that it was through me in any way that—that thing happened?”
“Oh, I don’t know!” she faltered, with white lips. “It was all so horrible. You pointed to him, and your eyes when you looked at him seemed to shine as though they were on fire. I saw him shrink away, and the color leave his cheeks. It was horrible!”
“But, Lois,” he protested, “you cannot imagine that by looking at a man I could help to kill him? I can’t explainwhat happened. As yet there are things in the world which no one can explain. This is one of them. I know a little more than most people. It is partly temperament, perhaps—partly study, but it is surely true that I can sometimes feel things coming. From the first moment I looked into Guerdon’s face at dinner-time, I knew what was going to happen. Out there in the hall I felt it. Once before in South America, I saw a man shoot himself. I tell you that I was certain of what he was going to do before I knew that he had even a revolver in his pocket. It comes to me, the knowledge of these things. I cannot be blamed for it. Some day I shall write the first text-book that has ever been written of a new science. I shall evolve the first few rudimentary laws, and after that the thing will go easily. Every generation will add to them. But, Lois, because I am the first, because I have seen a little further into the world than others, you are not going to look at me as though I were a murderer!”
She drew a little breath, a breath of relief. Her hand fell upon his arm.
“No!” she said. “I have been foolish. It is absurd to imagine that you could have brought that about by just wishing for it.”
“Why, even, should I have wished for it?” he asked. “Lord Guerdon was a stranger to me. As an acquaintance I found him pleasant enough. I had no grudge against him.”
She drew him a little way on down the lane.
“I must only stay for a few minutes,” she said. “Ifwe walk down here we shall meet nobody. Do you know what Mr. Rochester has suggested?”
“No!” Saton answered. “What?”
“He says that Lord Guerdon had always been uneasily conscious of having seen you somewhere before. He says that at the very moment when he was stricken down, he seemed to remember!”
“That does not seem to me to be important,” Saton remarked.
“Can’t you understand?” she continued. “Mr. Rochester seems to think that Lord Guerdon had seen you somewhere under disgraceful circumstances. There! I’ve got it out now,” she added, with a wan little smile. “That is why he feels sure that somehow or other you did your best to help him toward death.”
“And the others?” Saton asked.
“Oh, it hasn’t been talked about!” she answered. “Everyone has left the house, you know. I only knew this through Mary.”
Saton smiled scornfully.
“My dear girl,” he said, “I know for a fact that Lord Guerdon was suffering from acute heart disease. He went about always with a letter in his pocket giving directions as to what should become of him if he were to die suddenly.”
“Is that really true?” she asked. “Oh, I am glad! Lord Penarvon said so, but no one else seemed sure.”
“There is no need, even for an inquest,” Saton continued. “I went to see the doctor this morning, and he told me so. I am very, very sorry,” he went on, takingher hand in his, “that such a thing should happen to spoil the memory of these few days. They have been wonderful days, Lois.”
She drew her hand quietly away.
“Yes!” she admitted. “They have been wonderful in many ways.”
“For you,” he continued, walking a little more slowly, and with his hands clasped behind him, “they have been, perhaps, just a tiny little leaf out of the book of your life. To me I fancy they have been something different. You see I have been a wanderer all my days. I have had no home, and I have had few friends. All the time I have had to fight, and there seems to have been no time for the gentler things, for the things that really make for happiness. Perhaps,” he continued, reflectively, “that is why I find it sometimes a little difficult to talk to you. You are so young and fresh and wonderful. Your feet are scarcely yet upon the threshold of the life whose scars I am bearing.”
“I am not so very young,” Lois said, “nor are you so very old.”
“And yet,” he answered, looking into her face, “there is a great gulf between us, a gulf, perhaps, of more than years. Miss Lois, I am not going to ask you too much, but I would like to ask you one thing. Have these days meant just a little to you also?”
She raised her eyes and looked him frankly in the face. They were honest brown eyes, a little clouded just now with some reflection of the vague trouble which was stirring in her heart.
“I will answer you frankly,” she said, “Yes, they have meant something to me! And yet, listen. I am going to say something unkind. There is something—I don’t know what it is—between us, which troubles me. Oh, I know that you are much cleverer than other men, and I would not have you different! Yet there is something else. Would you be very angry, I wonder, if I told the truth?”
“No!” he assured her. “Go on, please.”
“I feel sometimes,” she continued, “as though I could not trust you. There, don’t be angry,” she went on, laying her fingers on his arm. “I know how horrid it sounds, but it is there in my heart, and it is because I would like to believe, it is because I want there to be nothing between us of distrust, that I have told you.”
They walked slowly on, side by side. His face was turned a little from hers. She was bending forward, as though anxious to catch a glimpse of his expression. Through the case hardening of years, her voice for a moment seemed to have found its way back into the heart of the boy, to have brought him at least a momentary twinge as he realized, with a passing regret, the abstract beauty of the more simple ways in life. Those few minutes were effective enough. They helped his pose. The regret passed. A shadow of pain took its place. He came to a standstill and took her hands in his.
“Dear little girl,” he said, “perhaps you are right. I am not altogether honest. I am not in the least like the sort of man who ought to look at you and feel towards you as I have looked and felt during these wonderfuldays. But all of us have our weak spots, you know. I think that you found mine. Good-bye, little girl!”
She would have called him back, but he had no idea of lending himself to anything so inartistic. With head thrown back, he left the footpath and climbed the hill round which they had been walking. Not once did he look behind. Not once did he turn his head till he stood on the top of the rock-strewn eminence, his figure clearly outlined against the blue sky. Then he straightened himself and turned round, thinking all the time how wonderfully effective his profile must seem in that deep, soft light, if she should have the sense to look.
She did look. She was standing very nearly where he had left her. She was waving her handkerchief, beckoning him to come down. He raised his hand above his head as though in farewell, and turned slowly away. As soon as he was quite sure that he was out of sight, he took his cigarette case from his pocket and began to smoke!
Saton left the country on the following afternoon, arrived at St. Pancras soon after five, and drove at once to a large, roomy house on the north side of Regent’s Park. He was admitted by a trim parlormaid—Parkins had been left behind to superintend the removal from Blackbird’s Nest—and he found himself asking his first question with a certain amount of temerity.
“Madame is in?” he inquired.
“Madame is in the drawing-room,” the maid answered.
“Alone?” Saton asked.
“Quite alone, sir.”
Saton ascended the stairs and entered the drawing-room, which was on the first floor, unannounced. At the further end of the apartment a woman was sitting, her hands folded in front of her, her eyes fixed upon the wall. Saton advanced with outstretched hands.
“At last!” he exclaimed.
The woman made no reply. Her silence while he crossed a considerable space of carpet, would have been embarrassing to a less accomplishedposeur. She was tall, dressed in a gown of plain black silk, and her brown, withered face seemed one of those which defy alike timeand its reckoning. Her white hair was drawn back from her forehead, and tied in a loose knot at the back of her head. Her mouth was cruel. Her eyes were hard and brilliant. There was not an atom of softness, or of human weakness of any sort, to be traced in any one of her features. Around her neck she wore a scarf of brilliant red, the ends of which were fastened with a great topaz.
Saton bent over her affectionately. He kissed her upon the forehead, and remained with his arm resting upon her shoulder. She did not return his embrace in any way.
“So you’ve come back,” she said, speaking with a sharpness which would have been unpleasant but for the slight foreign accent.
“As you see,” he answered. “I left this afternoon, and came straight here.”
“That woman Helga has been down there. What did she want?” she demanded.
Saton shrugged his shoulders slightly, and turning away, fetched a chair, which he brought close to her side.
“I am afraid,” he said bluntly, “that she came to see me.”
The woman’s eyes flashed.
“Ah!” she exclaimed. “Go on.”
Saton took her hand, and held it between his. It was dry and withered, but the nails were exquisitely manicured, and the fingers were aflame with jewels.
“Dear Rachael,” he said, “you must remember that when I was alone in London waiting to hear from you,I naturally saw a good deal of Helga. She was kind to me, and she was the means by which your letters and messages reached me. I am afraid,” he continued, thoughtfully, “that I was so happy, in those days, to have found anyone who was kind and talked decently to me, that I may have misled her. There has been a little trouble once or twice since. I have tried to be pleasant and friendly with her. She seems—forgive me if it sounds conceited—she seems to want more.”
“Hussy!” the old lady declared. “She shall go.”
“Don’t send her away,” he begged, replacing her hand gently on her lap. “I daresay it was entirely my fault.”
The woman looked at him, and a cruel smile parted her lips.
“I have no doubt it was,” she said. “You are like that, you know, Bertrand. Still, one must have discipline. She asked for a day’s holiday to go into the country to see her relatives, and I find her going to see you behind my back. It cannot be permitted.”
“It will not happen again,” he assured her. “I feel myself so much to blame.”
“I have no doubt,” she said, “that you are entirely to blame, but that is not the question. Unfortunately, there are other things to be considered, or she would have been sent packing before now. Tell me, Bertrand, what kept you down in the country these last few days?”
“I wanted a rest,” he answered. “I have to read my paper to-night, you know, and I was tired.”
“You have been spending your time alone?”
“No!” he answered, with scarcely a second’s hesitation. “I have been once or twice to Beauleys.”
“To see your friend Henry Rochester, I suppose?” she asked.
Saton’s face darkened.
“No!” he answered. “I would not move a step to see him. I hate him, and I think he knows it.”
“Who were the ladies of the party?” the woman asked. “Their names one by one, mind. Begin with the eldest.”
“Lady Penarvon.”
“I know. Go on,” she said.
“Mrs. Hinckley.”
“Go on.”
“Miss Lois Champneyes.”
“Young?” the woman asked.
“Yes!”
“Pretty?”
“Yes!”
“A victim?”
Saton frowned.
“There was also,” he continued, “my hostess, Lady Mary Rochester.”
“A silly, fluffy little woman,” Madame declared. “Did she flirt?”
“Not with me, at any rate,” Saton answered.
“Too experienced,” Madame remarked. “Perhaps too good a judge of your sex. Who else?”
“Lady Marrabel.”
“A very beautiful woman, I have heard,” Madame remarked.“Also young, I believe. Also, I presume, a victim.”
“It is not kind of you,” Saton protested. “These women were staying in the house. One has to make oneself agreeable to them.”
“Someone else was staying in the house,” Madame continued, fixing her brilliant eyes upon his face. “Someone else, I see, died there.”
“You mean Lord Guerdon?” Saton muttered, softly.
“He died there,” she said, nodding. “Bertrand, did he—did he recognise you?”
“He would have done,” Saton said slowly, “if he had not died. He was just beginning to remember.”
She looked at him curiously for several minutes.
“Well,” she said, “I ask no questions. Perhaps it is wiser not. But remember this, Bertrand, I know something of the world, and the men and women who live in it. You are a born deceiver of women. It is the rôle which nature meant you to play. You can turn them, if you will, inside out. Perhaps you think you do the same with me. Let that go. And remember this. Have as little to do with men as possible. Your very strength with women would be your very weakness with men. Remember, I have warned you.”
“You don’t flatter me,” he said, a little unpleasantly.
“Bah!” she answered. “Why should you and I play with words? We know one another for what we are. Give me your hands.”
He held them out. She took them suddenly in hers and drew him towards her.
“Kiss me!” she commanded.
He obeyed at once. Then she thrust him away.
“I go with you to this conversazione to-night,” she said. “It is well that we should sometimes be seen together. I shall let it be known that you are my adopted son.”
“That is as you will,” he said, with secret satisfaction.
“Why not?” she declared. “I never had a son, but I’m foolish enough to care for you quite as much as I could for any child of my own. Go and get ready. We dine at seven.—No! come back.”
She placed her long, clawlike fingers upon his shoulders, and kissed him on both cheeks. She held him tightly by the arms, as though there was something else she would have said—her lips a little parted, her eyes brilliant.
“Go and get ready,” she said abruptly. “Look your prettiest. You have a chance to make friends to-night.”
The conversazione was, in its way, a brilliant gathering. There were present scientists, men of letters, artists, with a very fair sprinkling of society people, always anxious to absorb any new sensation. One saw there amongst the white-haired men, passing backwards and forwards, or talking together in little knots, professors whose names were famous throughout Europe.
A very great man indeed brought Saton up to Pauline with a little word of explanation.
“I am sure,” he said to her—she was one of his oldest friends—“that you will be glad to meet the gentleman whose brilliant paper has interested us all so much. This is Lady Marrabel, Saton, whose father was professor at Oxford before your day.”
The great man passed on. Pauline’s first impulse had been to hold out her hand, but she had immediately withdrawn it. Saton contented himself with a grave bow.
“I am afraid, Lady Marrabel,” he said, “that you are prejudiced against me.”
“I think not,” she answered. “Naturally, seeing you so suddenly brought into my mind the terrible occurrence of only a few days ago.”
“An occurrence,” he declared, “which no one couldregret so greatly as myself. But apart from that, Lady Marrabel, I am afraid that you are not prepared to do me justice. You look at me through Rochester’s eyes, and I am quite sure that all his days Rochester will believe that I am more or less of a charlatan.”
“Your paper was very wonderful, Mr. Saton,” she said slowly. “I am convinced that Mr. Rochester would have admitted that himself if he had been here.”
“He might,” Saton said. “He might have admitted that much, with a supercilious smile and a little shrug of the shoulders. Rochester is a clever man, I believe, but he is absolutely insular. There is a belt of prejudice around him, to the hardening of which centuries have come and gone. You are not, you cannot be like that,” he continued with conviction. “There is truth in these things. I am not an ignorant mountebank, posing as a Messiah of science. Look at the men and women who are here to-night. They know a little. They understand a little. They are only eager to see a little further through the shadows. I do not ask you to become a convert. I ask you only to believe that I speak of the things in which I have faith.”
“I am quite sure that you do,” she answered, with a marked access of cordiality in her tone. “Believe me, it was not from any distrust of that sort that I perhaps looked strangely at you when you came up. You must remember that it is a very short time since our last meeting. One does not often come face to face with a tragedy like that.”
“You are right,” he answered. “It was awful. Yetyou saw how they drove me on. I spoke what I felt and knew. It is not often that those things come to one, but that there was death in the room that night I knew as surely as I am sitting with you here now. They goaded me on to speak of it. I could not help it.”
“It was very terrible and very wonderful,” she said, looking at him with troubled eyes. “They say that Lady Mary is still suffering from the shock.”
“It might have happened at any moment,” he reminded her. “The man had heart disease. He had had his warning. He knew very well that the end might come at any moment.”
“That is true, I suppose,” she admitted. “The medical examination seemed to account easily enough for his death. Yet there was something uncanny about it.”
“The party broke up the next day, I suppose,” he continued. “I have been down in the country, but I have heard nothing.”
“We left before the funeral, of course,” she answered.
“Fortunately for me,” he remarked, “I had important things to think of. I had to prepare this paper. The invitation to read it came quite unexpectedly. I have been in London for so short a time, indeed, that I scarcely expected the honor of being asked to take any share in a meeting so important as this.”
“I do not see why you should be surprised,” she said.
“You certainly seem to have gone as far in the study of occultism as any of those others.”
He looked at her thoughtfully.
“You yourself should read a little about thesethings,” he said—“read a little and think a little. You would find very much to interest you.”
“I am sure of it,” she answered, almost humbly. “Will you come and see me one day, and talk about it? I live at Number 17, Cadogan Street.”
“I will come with pleasure,” he answered, rising. “Will you forgive me if I leave you now? There is a man just leaving with whom I must speak.”
He passed away, and left the room with a little thrill of satisfaction. He had contrived to impress the one woman whom he was anxious to impress! Children like little Lois Champneyes and those others, were easy. This woman he knew at once was something different. Besides, she was a friend of Rochester’s, and that meant something to him.
He walked along Regent Street to the end, and crossing the road, entered a large café. Here he sat before one of the marble-topped tables, and ordered some coffee. In a few minutes he was joined by another man, who handed his coat and hat to the waiter, and sat down with the air of one who was expected. Saton nodded, a little curtly.
“Will you take anything?” he asked.
“A bottle of beer and a cigar,” the newcomer ordered. “A shilling cigar, I think, to-night. It will run to it.”
“Anything special?” Saton asked.
“Things in general are about the same as usual,” his companion answered. “They did a little better in Oxford Street and Regent Street, but Violet had a dullday in Bond Street. I have closed up the Egyptian place in the Arcade—‘Ayesha’ we called it. The police are always suspicious of a woman’s name, and I had a hint from a detective I know.”
Saton nodded.
“You have something else to tell me, haven’t you?” he asked.
“Yes!” the other answered. “We had a very important client in Bond Street this afternoon, one of those whose names you gave me.”
Saton leaned across the table.
“Who was it?” he asked.
“Lady Mary Rochester of Beauleys,” the other answered—“got a town house, and a big country place down in Mechestershire.”
Something flashed for a moment in Saton’s eyes, but he said nothing. His companion commenced to draw leisurely a sheet of paper from his breast coat pocket. He was fair and middle-aged, respectably dressed, and with the air of a prosperous city merchant. His eyes were a little small, and his cheeks inclined to be fat, or he would have been reasonably good-looking.
“Lady Mary called without giving her name,” he continued, “but we knew her, of course, by our picture gallery. She called professedly to amuse herself. She was told the usual sorts of things, with a few additions thrown in from our knowledge of her. She seemed very much impressed, and in the end she came to a specific inquiry.”
“Go on,” said Saton.
“The specific inquiry was briefly this,” the man continued. “She gave herself away the moment she opened her mouth. She behaved, in fact, like a farmer’s daughter asking questions of a gipsy girl. She showed us the photograph of a man, whom we also recognised, and wanted to know the usual sort of rubbish—whether he was really fond of her, whether he would be true to her if she married him.”
“Married him?” Saton repeated.
“She posed as a widow,” the other man reminded him.
“What was the reply?”
“Violet was clever,” the man remarked, with a slow smile. “She saw at once that this was a case where something might be done. She asked for three days, and for a letter from the man. She said that it was a case in which a sight of his handwriting, and a close study of it, would help them to give an absolutely truthful answer.”
“She agreed?” Saton asked.
The other nodded, and produced a letter from his pocket.
“She handed one over at once,” he said. “It isn’t particularly compromising, perhaps, but it’s full of the usual sort of rot. She’s coming for it on Tuesday.”
Saton smiled as he thrust it into his pocketbook.
“I will put this into Dorrington’s hands at once,” he said. “This has been very well managed, Huntley. I will have a liqueur, and you shall have some more beer.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Mr. Huntley assented cheerfully. “It’s thirsty weather.”
They summoned a waiter, and Saton lit a cigarette.
“You’ve been amongst the big pots to-night,” Huntley remarked, looking at him.
Saton nodded.
“I have been keeping our end up,” he said, “in the legitimate branch of our profession. You needn’t grin like that,” he added, a little irritably. “There is a legitimate side, and a very wonderful side, only a brain like yours is not capable of assimilating it. You should have heard my paper to-night upon self-directed mesmeric waves.”
The man shook his head, and laughed complacently.
“It’s not in my way,” he answered. “Our business is good enough as it is.”
“You are a fool,” Saton said, a little contemptuously. “You can’t see that but for the legitimate side there would be no business at all. Unless there was a glimmer of truth at the bottom of the well, unless there existed somewhere a prototype, Madame Helga, and Omega, and Naomi might sit in their empty temples from morning till night. People know, or are beginning to know, that there are forces abroad beyond the control of the ordinary commonplace mortal. They are willing to take it for granted that those who declare themselves able to do so, are able to govern them.”
He broke off a little abruptly. Huntley’s unsympathetic face, with the big cigar in the corner of his mouth, choked the flow of his words.
“Never mind,” he said. “This isn’t interesting to you, of course. As you say, the business side is the more important. I will see you at the hotel to-morrow night.Considering where I have been this evening, it is scarcely wise for us to be seen together.”
Huntley took the hint, finished his drink, and departed. Saton sat for a few more minutes alone. Then he too went out into the street, and walked slowly homewards. He let himself into the house in Regent’s Park with his latchkey, and went thoughtfully upstairs. The room was still brilliantly illuminated, and the woman who was sitting over the fire, turned round to greet him.
“Well?” she asked.
Saton divested himself of his hat and coat. Madame’s black eyes were still fixed upon him. He came slowly across towards her.
“Well?” she repeated.
“You were there,” he reminded her. “I saw you sitting almost in the front row. What did you think of it?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“What does it matter what I think of it? Tell me about the others.”
“My paper was pronounced everywhere to be a great success,” he declared. “Many of the cleverest men in London were there. They listened to every syllable.”
Madame nodded.
“Why trouble to teach them?” she asked, a little scornfully. “What of Huntley? Have you seen him? How have they done to-day?”
“It goes well,” he answered. “It always goes well.”
She moved her head slowly.
“Yet to-night you are not thinking of it,” she said.“For many nights you have not counted your earnings. You are thinking of other things,” she declared harshly. “Don’t look away from me. Look into my eyes.”
“It is true,” he answered. “To-night I have been with clever men. I have measured my wits against theirs. I have pushed into their consciousness things which they were unwilling to believe. I have made them believe. There were many people there who felt, I believe, for the first time, that they were ignorant.”
The woman looked at him scornfully. There was no softening in her face, and yet she had taken his hand in hers and held it.
“What do we gain by that?” she asked harshly. “What we want is gold, gold all the time. You ought to know that, you, who have been so near to starvation. Are you a fool that you don’t realize it?”
“I am not a fool,” Saton answered calmly, “but there is another side to the whole matter. A meeting such as to-night’s gives an immense fillip on the part of society to what they are pleased to call the supernatural. It is only the fear of ridicule which keeps half the people in the world from flooding our branches, every one of them eager to have their fortunes told. A night like to-night is a great help. Clever men, men who are believed in, have accepted the principle that there are laws which govern the future so surely as the past in its turn has been governed. One needs only to apprehend those laws, to reduce them to intelligible formulæ. It is an exact study, an exact science. This is the doctrine which I have preached. When people once believe it, what is to keep them fromcoming in their thousands to those who know more than they do?”
The woman shook her head derisively.
“No need to wait for those days,” she answered. “The world is packed full of fools now. No need to wrestle with nature, to wear oneself inside out to give them truth. Give them any rubbish. Give them what they seem to want. It is enough so long as they bring the gold. How much was taken to-day altogether?”
Saton passed on to her the papers which the man Huntley had given him in the café.
“There is the account,” he said. “You see it grows larger every day.”
“What becomes of the money?” she asked.
“It is paid into the bank, and the banker’s receipt comes to me each morning. There is no chance for fraud. I must make some more investments soon. Our balance grows and grows.”
The woman’s eyes glittered.
“Bring me some money to-morrow,” she begged, grasping his other hand. “I like to have it here in my hands. Money and you, Bertrand, my son—they are all I care for. Banks and investments are well enough. I like money. Kiss me, Bertrand.”
He laughed tolerantly, and kissed her cheek.
“My dear Rachael,” he said, “you have already bagsful of gold about the place.”
“They are safe,” she assured him, “absolutely safe. They never leave my person. I feel them as I sit. I sleep with them at night. I am going to bed now. Bertrand!”
“Well?” he asked.
She pointed to him with long forefinger, a forefinger aflame with jewels.
“Look! We play with no fortune-telling here. What is there in your face? What is there in your life you are not telling me of? Is it a woman?”
“There are many women in my life,” he answered. “You know that.”
“I do,” she answered. “Poor fools! Play with them all you will, but remember—the one whom you choose must have gold!”
He nodded.
“I am not likely to forget,” he said.
She left the room with a farewell caress. There was something almost tigress-like about the way in which her arms wound themselves around him—some gleam of the terrified victim in his eyes, as he felt her touch. Then she left the room. Saton sank back into an easy-chair, and gazed steadfastly into the fire through half-closed eyes.
Saton, after the reading of his paper before the members of the London Psychical Society, established a certain vogue of which he was not slow to avail himself. His picture appeared in several illustrated papers. His name was freely mentioned as being one of the most brilliant apostles of the younger school of occultism. He subscribed to a newspaper cutting agency, and he read every word that was written about himself. Whenever he got a chance, he made friends with the press. Everything that he could possibly do to obtain a certain position in a certain place, he sedulously attempted. He was always carefully dressed, and he was quite conscious of the fact that his clothes were of correct pattern and cut. His ties were properly subdued in tone. His gloves and hat were immaculate.
Yet all the time he lacked confidence in himself. The word charlatan clung to him like a pestilential memory. His hair was cropped close to his head. He had shaved off his moustache. He imitated almost slavishly the attire and bearing of those young men of fashion with whom he was brought into contact. Yet he was somehow conscious of a difference. The women seemed never to notice it—the men always. Was it jealousy, he wondered,which made them, even the most unintelligent, treat him with a certain tolerance, as though he were a person not quite of themselves, whom they scarcely understood, but were willing to make the best of?
With women it was different always. His encounter with Pauline Marrabel at the conversazione had given him the keenest pleasure. He had at once fixed a day sometime ahead upon which he would take to her the books he had spoken of. The day had arrived at last, but he had first another engagement. Early in the afternoon he turned into Kensington Gardens, and walked up and down the broad path, glancing every now and then toward one of the entrances. He saw at last the person for whom he was waiting.
Lois, in a plain white muslin gown, and a big hat gay with flowers, came blithely towards him, a little Pomeranian under one arm, and a parasol in the other hand.
“I do hope I’m not too dreadfully late!” she exclaimed, setting the dog down, and taking his hand a little shyly. “It seems such an age since I saw you last. Where can we go and talk?”
“You are not frightened at me any more, then?”
“Of course not,” she answered. “We spoke about that at Beauleys. I do not want to think any more of that evening. It is over and done with. What a clever person you are becoming!” she went on. “I saw your name one day last week in theMorning Post. You read a paper before no end of clever men. And do you know that your photograph is in two or three of the illustrated papers this week?”
His cheeks flushed with pleasure. He was unreasonably glad that she appreciated these things. His vanity, which had been a trifle ruffled by some incident earlier in the day, was effectually soothed.
“These things,” he said, “are absolutely valueless to me except so far as they testify to the importance of my work. Before long,” he went on, “I think that there will be many other people like you, Miss Lois. They will believe that there is a little more in life than their dull eyes can see. You were one of those who understood from the first. But there are not many.”
She sighed.
“I don’t think I am a bit clever,” she admitted.
“Cleverness,” he answered, “is not a matter of erudition. It is a matter of instinct, of capacity for grasping new truths. You have that capacity, dear Lois, and I am glad that you are here. It is good to be with you again.”
“You really are the most wonderful person,” she declared, poking at her little dog with the end of her fluffy parasol. “You make me feel as though I were something quite important, and you know I am really a very unformed, very unintelligent young person. That is what my last governess said.”
“Cat!” he answered laughing. “I can see her now. She wore apince-nezand a bicycling skirt. I am sure of it. Come and sit down here, and I will prove to you how much cleverer I am than that ancient relic.” ...
They parted at the gates, an hour or so later. Saton resented a little her evident desire to leave him there, andher half frightened refusal of his invitation to lunch, but he consoled himself by taking his mid-day meal alone atPrince’s, where several people pointed him out to others, and he was aware that he was the object of a good deal of respectful interest.
Later in the day, with several books under his arm, he rang the bell at 17, Cadogan Street. He was committed now to the enterprise, which had never been out of his thoughts since the night of the conversazione.
Pauline kept him waiting for nearly a quarter of an hour. When at last she entered, he found himself lost in admiration of the marvelous simplicity of her muslin gown and her perfect figure. There was about her some sort of exquisite perfection, a delicacy of outline and detail almost cameolike, and impossible of reproduction.
She welcomed him kindly, but without any enthusiasm. He felt from the first that he still had prejudices to conquer. He sat down by her side and commenced his task. Very wisely, he eliminated altogether the personal note from his talk. He showed her the books which he had brought, and he talked of them fluently and well. She became more and more interested. It was scarcely possible that she could refrain from showing it, for he spoke of the things which he knew, and things which the citizens of the world in every age have found fascinating. He seemed to her to have gone a little further into the great mysterious shadowland than anyone else—to have come a little nearer reading the great riddle. She was a good listener, and she interrupted him only once.
“But tell me this,” she asked, towards the close of oneof his arguments. “This apprehension which you say one must cultivate, to be able—how is it you put it?—to throw out feelers for the things which our ordinary senses cannot grasp—isn’t it a matter largely of temperament?”
“One finds it difficult or easy to acquire,” he answered, “according to one’s temperament. A nervous, magnetic person, who is not afraid of solitude, of solitary thought, of taking the truth to his heart and wrestling with it—that person is, of course, always nearer the truth than the person of phlegmatic temperament, who has to struggle ever so hard to be conscious of anything not actually within the sphere of his physical apprehension. These things in our generation will have a great effect. In centuries to come, they will become less and less apparent. We move rapidly,” he went on, “and I am still a young man. Before I die, it is my ambition to leave behind me the first text-book on this new science, the first real and logical attempt to enunciate absolute laws.”
“It is all very wonderful,” she said, sighing gently. “Do you think that I shall understand any more about it when I have read these books?”
“I am sure that you will,” he answered. “You have intelligence. You have sensibility. You are not afraid to believe—that is the trouble with most people.”
“Answer me one question,” she begged. “All these fortune-telling people who have sprung up round Bond Street—I mean the palmists and crystal-gazers, and people like that—do they proceed upon any knowledge whatever, or are they all absolute humbugs?”
“To the best of my belief,” he answered fervently, “every one of them. Personally, I haven’t very much information, but it has not come under my notice that there is a single one of these people who even attempts to probe the future scientifically or even intelligently, according to the demands made upon them. They impose as much as they can upon the credulity of their clients. I consider that their existence is absolutely the worst possible thing for us who are endeavouring to gain a foothold in the scientific world. Your friend Mr. Rochester, you know, called me a charlatan.”
“Mr. Rochester is never unjust,” she answered quietly. “Some day, perhaps, he will take that word back.”
He tried to give their conversation a more personal note, but he found her elusive. She accepted an invitation, however, to be present at a lecture which he was giving before another learned society during the following week. With that he felt that he ought to be content. Nevertheless, he left her a little dissatisfied. He was perfectly well aware that the magnetism which he was usually able to exert over her sex had so far availed him nothing with her. Her eyes met his freely, but without any response to the things which he was striving to express. She had seemed interested all the time, but she had dismissed him without regret. He walked homewards a little thoughtfully. If only she were a little like Lois!
As he passed the entrance to the Park, an electric brougham was suddenly pulled up, and a lady leaned forward towards him. He stepped up to her side, hat inhand. It was Lady Mary Rochester. She was exquisitely gowned and hatted, with a great white veil which floated gracefully around her picture-hat, and she welcomed him with a brilliant smile.
“My dear Mr. Saton,” she exclaimed, “what a fortunate meeting! Only a few minutes ago I was thinking of you.”
“I am very much flattered,” he answered.
“I mean it,” she declared. “I wonder whether you could spare me a few minutes. I don’t mean here,” she added. “One can scarcely talk, driving. Come in after dinner, if you have nothing to do, just for half-an-hour. My husband is down in the country, and I am not going out until eleven.”
“I shall be very pleased,” he answered, a little mechanically, for he found the situation not altogether an easy one to grasp.
“Don’t forget,” she said. “Number 10, Berkeley Square,” with a look of relief.
The electric brougham rolled on, and Saton crossed the road thoughtfully. Then a sudden smile lightened his features. He realized all at once what it was that Lady Mary wanted from him.
Rachael was waiting for him when he returned. She was seated before the table, her head resting upon her hands, her eyes fixed upon the little piles of gold and notes which she had arranged in front of her. She watched him come in and take off his hat and coat, in silence.
“Well?” she asked. “How do things go to-day?”
“I have not the reports yet,” he answered. “It is too early. I shall have them later.”
“What have you been doing?” she asked.
“I walked with a girl, Lois Champneyes, in Kensington Gardens most of the morning, and I called upon a woman—Lady Marrabel—this afternoon,” he answered.
Rachael nodded.
“Safe companions for you,” she muttered. “Remember what I always tell you. You are of the breed that can make fools of women. A man might find you out.”
He turned an angry face upon her.
“What is there to find out?” he demanded. “I am not an impostor. I am a man of science. I have proved it. Your fortune-telling temples are all very well, and the money they bring is welcome enough. But nevertheless, I am not the vulgar adventurer that you sometimes suggest.”
The woman laughed, laughed silently and yet heartily, but she never spoke. She looked away from him presently, and drawing the pile of gold and notes nearer to her, began to recount them with her left hand. Her right she held out to him, slowly drawing him towards her.
Lady Mary’s boudoir was certainly the most luxurious apartment of its sort into which Saton had ever been admitted. There were great bowls of red roses upon the small ormolu table and on the mantelpiece. Several exquisite etchings hung upon the lavender walls. The furniture was all French. Every available space seemed occupied with costly knick-knacks and curios. Photographs of beautiful women, men in court dress and uniform, nearly all of them signed, were scattered about on every available inch of space, and there was also that subtle air of femininity about the apartment, to which he was unaccustomed, and which went to his head like wine. It was evident that only privileged visitors were received there, for apart from the air of intimacy which seemed somehow to pervade the place, there were several articles of apparel, and a pair of slippers lying upon the hearthrug.
Lady Mary herself came rustling in to him a few minutes after his arrival, gorgeous in a wonderful shimmering gown, which seemed to hang straight from her shoulders—the very latest creation in the way of tea-gowns.
“I know you will forgive my receiving you like this,” she said, holding out her hand. “To tell you the truth,I dined here absolutely alone, and I thought that I would not dress till afterwards. I am going on to the ball at Huntingford House, and it is always less trouble to go straight from one’s maid. You have had coffee? Yes? Then sit down at the end of this couch, please, and tell me whether you think you can help me.”
Saton was not altogether at his ease. The brilliancy of his surroundings, the easy charm of the woman, were a little disconcerting. And she was Rochester’s wife, the wife of the man whom he hated! That in itself was a thing to be always kept in mind. Never before had she seemed so desirable.
“If you will tell me in what way I can be of service, Lady Mary,” he began——
She turned towards him pathetically.
“Really,” she said, “I scarcely know why I asked for your help, except that you seem to me so much cleverer than most of the men I know.”
“I am afraid you over-rate my abilities,” he said, with a slight deprecating smile. “But at any rate, please be sure of one thing. You could not have asked the advice of anyone more anxious to serve you.”
“How kind you are!” she murmured. “I am going to make a confession, and you will see, after all, that the trouble I am in has something to do with you. You remember that night at Beauleys?”
“Yes!” he answered.
“We won’t talk about it,” she continued. “We mustn’t talk about it. Only it gave me foolish thoughts. From being utterly incredulous or indifferent, I went tothe other extreme. I became, I suppose, absolutely foolish. I went to one of those stupid women in Bond Street.”
“You went to have your fortune told?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Oh, I suppose so!” she said. “I asked her a lot of things, and she looked into a crystal globe and told me what she saw. It was quite interesting, but unfortunately I went a little further than I meant to. I asked her some ridiculous questions about—a friend of mine.”
He smiled sympathetically.
“Well,” he said, “this all seems rather like a waste of time, but I scarcely see how it would be likely to land you in a difficulty.”
“But it has,” she answered. “That is what I want to explain to you. The woman insisted upon having a letter in the handwriting of the person I asked questions about, and I foolishly gave her one that was in my pocket. When I asked for it back again, the day afterwards, she said she had mislaid it.”
“But was the letter of any importance?” he asked.
“There wasn’t much in it, of course,” she answered, “but it was a private letter.”
“It is infamous!” he declared. “I should give information to the police at once.”
She held out her hands—tiny little white hands, ringless and soft.
“My dear man,” she exclaimed, “how can I? Give information to the police, indeed! What, go and admit beforea magistrate that I had been to a fortune-teller, especially,” she added, looking down, “on such an errand?”
He drew a little nearer to her.
“I beg your pardon,” he answered. “I was thoughtless. That, of course, is not possible. Tell me the name and the address of the person to whom you went.”
“The woman’s name was Helga,” she answered, “and it was in the upper end of Bond Street. Daisy Knowles told me about the place. Heaps of people I know have been.”
“And the letter?” he asked. “Tell me, if you can, what is its precise significance?”
“It was a letter from Charlie Peyton,” she answered—“Major Peyton, in the Guards, you know. There wasn’t anything in it that mattered really, but I shall not have a moment’s peace until it is returned to me.”
“Have you told me everything?” he asked.
“No!” she admitted.
“Perhaps it would be as well,” he murmured.
She produced a letter from the bosom of her gown.
“I received this last night,” she said.
He glanced it rapidly through. The form of it was well-known to him.