“Dear Madam,“A letter addressed to you, and in the handwriting of a certain Major Charles Peyton, has come into our hands within the last few hours. It is dated from the Army and Navy Club, and its postmark is June 1st. The contents are probably well-known to you.“It is our wish to return same into your hands at once, but we may say that it was handed to us in trust by a gentleman who is indebted to us for a considerable sum of money and he spoke of this document, which we did not inspect at the time, as being a probable form of security.“Perhaps your ladyship can suggest some means by which we might be able to hand over the letter to you without breaking faith with our friend.“Sincerely yours,“Jacobson & Co.—Agents.“17, Charing Cross Road.”
“Dear Madam,
“A letter addressed to you, and in the handwriting of a certain Major Charles Peyton, has come into our hands within the last few hours. It is dated from the Army and Navy Club, and its postmark is June 1st. The contents are probably well-known to you.
“It is our wish to return same into your hands at once, but we may say that it was handed to us in trust by a gentleman who is indebted to us for a considerable sum of money and he spoke of this document, which we did not inspect at the time, as being a probable form of security.
“Perhaps your ladyship can suggest some means by which we might be able to hand over the letter to you without breaking faith with our friend.
“Sincerely yours,“Jacobson & Co.—Agents.
“17, Charing Cross Road.”
“A distinct attempt at blackmail!” Saton exclaimed, indignantly.
“Isn’t it wicked?” Lady Mary replied, looking at him appealingly. “But how am I to deal with it? What am I to do? I don’t wish to correspond with these people, and I daren’t tell Henry a thing about it.”
“Naturally,” he answered. “My dear Lady Mary, there are two courses open to you. First, you can take this letter to the police, when you will get your own letter back without paying a penny, and these rascals will be prosecuted. The only disadvantage attached to this course is that your name will appear in the papers, and the letter will be made public.”
“You must see,” she declared, “that that is an absolute impossibility. My husband would be furious with me, and so would Major Peyton. Please suggest something else.”
“Then, on the other hand,” he continued, “the onlyalternative course is to make the best bargain you can with the scoundrels who are responsible for this.”
“But how can I?” she asked plaintively. “I cannot go to see these people, nor can I have them come here. I don’t know how much money they want. You know I haven’t a penny of my own, and although my husband is generous enough, he likes to know what I want money for. I have spent my allowance for the whole of the year already. I believe I am even in debt.”
Saton hesitated for several moments. Lady Mary watched him all the time anxiously.
“If you will allow me,” he said, “I will take this letter away with me, and see these people on your behalf. I have no doubt that I can make much better terms with them than you could.”
She drew a little sigh of relief.
“That is just what I was hoping you would propose,” she declared, handing it over to him. “It is so good of you, Mr. Saton. I feel there are so few people I could trust in a matter like this. You will be very careful, won’t you?”
“I will be very careful,” he answered.
“And when you have the letter,” she continued, “you will bring it straight back to me?”
“Of course,” he promised, “only first I must find out what their terms are. They will probably begin by suggesting an extravagant sum. Tell me how far you are prepared to go?”
“You think I shall have to pay a great deal of money, then?” she asked, anxiously.
“That depends entirely,” he answered, “upon what you call a great deal of money.”
“I might manage two hundred pounds,” she said, doubtfully.
He smiled.
“I am afraid,” he said, “that Messrs. Jacobson & Co., or whatever their name is, will expect more than that.”
“It is so unlucky,” she murmured. “I have just paid a huge dressmaker’s bill, and I have lost at bridge every night for a week. Do the best you can for me, dear Mr. Saton.”
He leaned towards her, but he was too great an artist not to realize that her feeling for him was one of pure indifference. He was to be made use of, if possible—to be dazzled a little, perhaps, but nothing more.
“I will do the best I can,” he said, rising, as he saw her eyes travel towards the clock, “but I am afraid—I don’t want to frighten you—but I am afraid that you will have to find at least five hundred pounds.”
“If I must, I must,” she answered, with a sigh. “I shall have to owe money everywhere, or else tell Henry that I have lost it at bridge. This is so good of you, Mr. Saton.”
“If I can serve you,” he concluded, holding her hand for a moment in his, “it will be a pleasure, even though the circumstances are so unfortunate.”
“I shall esteem the service none the less,” she answered, smiling at him. “Come and see me directly you know anything. I shall be so anxious.”
Saton made his way to the café at the end of Regent Street. This time he had to wait a little longer, but in the end the man who had met him there before appeared. He came in smoking a huge cigar, and with his silk hat a little on one side.
“A splendid day!” he declared. “Nearly double yesterday’s receipts. The papers are all here.”
Saton nodded, taking them up and glancing them rapidly through.
“Do you know where I can find Dorrington?” he said. “I want that letter—the Peyton letter, you know.”
Huntley nodded.
“I’ve got it in my pocket,” he said. “I was keeping it until to-morrow.”
Saton held out his hand.
“I’ll take it,” he said. “I can arrange terms for this matter myself.”
Huntley looked at him in surprise.
“It isn’t often,” he remarked, “that you care to interfere with this side of the game. Sure you’re not running any risk? We can’t do without our professor, you know.”
Saton shivered a little.
“No! I am running no risk,” he said. “It happens that I have a chance of settling this fairly well.”
He had a few more instructions to give. Afterwards he left the place. The night outside was close, and he was conscious of a certain breathlessness, a certain impatient desire for air. He turned down toward the Embankment,and sat on one of the seats, looking out at the sky signs and colored advertisements on the other side of the river, and down lower, where the tall black buildings lost their outline in the growing dusk.
His thoughts travelled backwards. It seemed to him that once more he sat upon the hillside and built for himself dream houses, saw himself fighting a splendid battle, gathering into his life all the great joys, the mysterious emotions which one may wrest from fate. Once more he thrilled with the subtle pleasure of imagined triumphs. Then the note of reality had come. Rochester’s voice sounded in his ears. His dreams were to become true. The sword was to be put into his hand. The strength was to be given him. The treasure-houses of the world were to fly open at his touch. And then once more he seemed to hear Rochester’s voice, cold and penetrating. “Anything but failure! If you fail, swim out on a sunny day, and wait until the waves creep over your neck, over your head, and you sink! The men who fail are the creatures of the gutter!”
Saton gripped the sides of his seat. He felt himself suddenly choking. He rose and turned away.
“It would have been better! It would have been better!” he muttered to himself.
Saton threw down the letter which he had been reading, with a little exclamation of impatience. It was from a man whom, on the strength of an acquaintance which had certainly bordered upon friendship, he had asked to propose him at a certain well-known club.
“My dear Mr. Saton,” it ran, “I was sent for to-day by the Committee here upon the question of your candidature for the club. They asked me a good many questions, which I answered to the best of my ability, but you know they are a very old-fashioned lot, and I think it would perhaps be wisest if I were to withdraw your name for the present. This I propose to do unless I hear from you to the contrary.“Sincerely yours,“Gordon Chambers.”
“My dear Mr. Saton,” it ran, “I was sent for to-day by the Committee here upon the question of your candidature for the club. They asked me a good many questions, which I answered to the best of my ability, but you know they are a very old-fashioned lot, and I think it would perhaps be wisest if I were to withdraw your name for the present. This I propose to do unless I hear from you to the contrary.
“Sincerely yours,“Gordon Chambers.”
Saton felt his cheeks flush as he thrust the letter to the bottom of the little pile which stood in front of him. It was one more of the little annoyances to which somehow or other he seemed at regular intervals to be subjected. Latterly, things had begun to expand with him. He had persuaded Madame to give up the old-fashioned house in Regent’s Park, and they had moved into amaisonette in Mayfair—a little white-fronted house, with boxes full of scarlet geraniums, a second man-servant to open the door, and an electric brougham in place of the somewhat antiquated carriage, which the Countess had brought with her from abroad. His banking account was entirely satisfactory. There were many men and women who were only too pleased to welcome him at their houses. And yet he was at all times subject to such an occurrence as this.
His lips were twisted in an unpleasant smile as he frowned down upon the tablecloth.
“It is always like it!” he muttered. “One climbs a little, and then the stings come.”
Madame entered the room, and took her place at the other end of the breakfast table. She leaned upon her stick as she walked, and her face seemed more than ever lined in the early morning sunlight. She wore a dress of some soft black material, unrelieved by any patch of color, against which her cheeks were almost ghastly in their pallor.
“The stings, Bertrand? What are they?” she asked, pouring herself out some coffee.
Saton shrugged his shoulders.
“Nothing that you would understand,” he answered coldly. “I mean that you would not understand its significance. Nothing, perhaps, that I ought not to be prepared for.”
She looked across the table at him with cold expressionless eyes. To see these two together in their moments of intimacy, no one would ever imagine that her love forthis boy—he was nothing more when chance had thrown him in her way—had been the only real passion of her later days.
“You do not know,” she said, “what I understand or what I do not understand. Tell me what it is that worries you in that letter.”
He pushed it away from him impatiently.
“I asked a friend—a man named Chambers—to put me up for a club I wanted to join,” he said. “He promised to do his best. I have just received a letter advising me to withdraw. The committee would not elect me.”
“What club is it?” she asked.
“The ‘Wanderers’,” he answered. “The social qualification is not very stringent. I imagined that they would elect me.”
The woman looked at him as one seeking to understand some creature of an alien world.
“You attach importance,” she asked, “to such an incident as this? You?”
“Not real importance, perhaps,” he answered, “only you must remember that these are the small things that annoy. They amount to nothing really. I know that. And yet they sting!”
“Do not dwell upon the small things, then,” she said coldly. “It is well, for all our sakes, that you should occupy some position in the social world, but it is also well that you should remember that your position there is not worth a snap of the fingers as against the great things which you and I know of. What do these people matter,with their strange ideas of birth and position, their little social distinctions, which remind one of nothing so much as Swift’s famous satire? You are losing your sense of proportion, my dear Bertrand. Go into your study for an hour this morning, and think. Listen to the voices of the greater life. Remember that all these small happenings are of less account than the flight of a bird on a summer’s day.”
“You are right,” he answered, with a little sigh, “and yet you must remember that you and I can scarcely look at things from the same standpoint. They do not affect you in the slightest. They cannot fail to remind me that I am after all an outcast, rescued from shipwreck by one strange turn in the wheel of chance.”
She looked at him with penetrating eyes.
“Something is happening to you, Bertrand,” she said. “It may be that it is your sense of proportion which is at fault. It may be that your head is a little turned by the greatness of the task which it has fallen to your lot to carry out. It is true that you are a young man, and that I am an old woman. And yet, remember! We are both of us little live atoms in the great world. The only things which can appeal to us in a different manner are the everyday things which should not count, which should not count for a single moment,” she added, with a sudden tremor in her tone.
“You are right, of course,” he answered, “and yet, Rachael, you must remember this. You have finished with the world. I am compelled to live in it.”
“If you are,” she rejoined, “is that any reason,Bertrand, why you should pause to listen to the voices whose cry is meaningless? Think! Remember the blind folly of it all. A decade, a cycle of years, and the men who pass you in Pall Mall, and the women who smile at you from their carriages, will be dead and gone. You—you may become the Emperor of Time itself. Remember that!”
“And in the meantime, one has to live.”
“Keep your head in the clouds,” she said. “Make use of these people, but always remember that in the light of what may come, they are only the dirt beneath your feet. Remember that you may be the first of all the ages to solve the great secret—the secret of carrying your consciousness beyond the grave.”
“Life is short,” he said, “and the task is great.”
“Too great for cowards,” she answered. “Yet look at me. Do I despair? I am seventy-one years old. I have no fear of death. I have learnt enough at least to help me into the grave. That will do, Bertrand. Go on with your breakfast, and burn that letter.”
He tore it in half, and went to the sideboard to help himself from one of the dishes. When he returned, Madame was drumming thoughtfully upon the tablecloth with her long fingers.
“Bertrand,” she said.
He looked toward her curiously. There was a new note, a new expression in the way she had pronounced his name.
“The girl, the little fair fool of a girl with money—Lois Champneyes you called her—where is she?”
“She is in London,” he answered.
“With the Rochesters?”
“Yes!”
Rachael frowned.
“You find it difficult to see her, then?” she remarked, thoughtfully.
“I can see her whenever I choose to,” he answered.
“You must marry her,” Rachael said. “The girl will serve your purpose as well as another. She is rich, and she is a fool.”
“She is not of age,” Saton said drily, “and Mr. Rochester is her guardian.”
“She will be of age very soon,” Rachael answered, “and the money is sure.”
“Do we need it?” he asked, a little impatiently. “We are making now far more than we can spend.”
“We need money all the time,” she answered. “At present, things prosper. Yet a change might come—a change in the laws, a campaign in the press—anything. Even the truth might leak out.”
Saton rose from his place, and going once more to the sideboard, took up and lit a long Russian cigarette. He returned with the box, and laid it before Rachael.
“If the truth should leak out,” he said, “that would be the end of us in this country. We have had one escape. I do not mean to find myself in the prisoner’s dock a second time.”
“There is no fear of that,” she answered. “The whole business is so arranged that neither you nor I would be connected with it. Besides, we have rearranged things.We are within the pale of the law now. To return to what I was saying about this girl.”
“There is no hurry,” he said. “Marriage does not interest me.”
“Marriage for its own sake, perhaps, no,” she answered, “and yet money you must have. No man has ever succeeded in any great work without it. If a pauper proclaims a theory, he is laughed to scorn. He is called a charlatan and an impostor. If a rich man speaks of the same thing, his words are listened to as one who stirs the world. There is a change in you, Bertrand,” she continued. “You have avoided this girl lately. You have avoided, even, your work. What is it?”
“Who knows?” he answered, lightly. “The weather, perhaps—the moon—one’s humor. I will walk this morning in Kensington Gardens. Perhaps I shall see Lois.”
He left the house half-an-hour later, after dictating some letters to a newly installed secretary. He accepted a carefully brushed hat from a well-trained and perfectly respectful servant, who placed also in his hands his stick and gloves. He descended a few immaculate steps and turned westward, frowning thoughtfully. The matter with him! He knew well enough. He had taken his fate into his hands, played his cards boldly enough, but Fate was beginning to get her own back.
He turned not toward Kensington Gardens, but towards Cadogan Street. He rang the bell at one of the most pretentious houses, and asked for Lady Marrabel. The butler was doubtful whether she would be inclinedto receive anyone at that hour. He was shown into a morning-room and kept waiting for some time. Then she came in, serene as usual, with a faint note of inquiry in her upraised eyebrows and the tone of her voice as she welcomed him.
“I must apologize,” he began, a little nervously. “I have no right to come at such an hour. I heard this morning that Max Naudheim will be in London before the end of the week, and I wondered whether you would care to meet him.”
“Of course I should,” she answered, “only I hope that he is more comprehensible than his book.”
“I have never met him myself,” Saton answered, “but I know that he has a letter to me. He will come to my house, I believe, and if he follows out his usual custom, he will scarcely leave it while he stays in England. I shall ask a few people to talk one night. I cannot attempt anything conventional. It does not seem to me to be an occasion for anything of the sort. If you will come, I will let you know the night and the time.”
She hesitated for a moment.
“And if you should come,” he continued, “even though it be the evening, please wear an old dress and hat. Naudheim himself seldom appears in a collar. Any social gathering of any sort is loathsome to him. He will talk only amongst those whom he believes are his friends.”
“I will come, of course,” Pauline answered. “It is good of you to think of me.”
“He may speak to you,” Saton continued. “He takescurious fancies sometimes to address a perfect stranger, and talk to them intimately. Remember that though he lives in Switzerland, and has a German name, he is really an Englishman. Nothing annoys him more than to be spoken to in any other language.”
“I will remember,” Pauline said.
There was a moment’s silence. Saton felt that he was expected to go. Yet there was something in her manner which he could not altogether understand, some nervousness, which seemed absolutely foreign to her usual demeanour. He took up his hat reluctantly.
“You are busy to-day?” he asked.
“I am always busy,” she answered. “Perhaps it is because I am so lazy. I never do anything, so there is always so much to do.”
He made the plunge, speaking without any of his usual confidence—hurriedly, almost indistinctly.
“Won’t you come and have some luncheon with me at the Berkeley, or anywhere you please? I feel like talking to-day. I feel that I am a little nearer the first law. I want to speak of it to someone.”
She hesitated, and he saw her fingers twitch.
“Thank you,” she said, “I am afraid I can’t. If you like, you can come and have luncheon here. I have one or two people coming in.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I shall be glad to come. About half-past one, I suppose?”
“From that to two,” she answered. “My friends drop in at any time.”
He passed out into the street, not altogether satisfiedwith his visit, and yet not dissatisfied. He had an instinctive feeling that in some degree her demeanour towards him was changed. What it meant he could not wholly tell. She no longer met his eyes with that look of careless, slightly contemptuous interest. Yet when he tried to find encouragement from the fact, he felt that he lacked all his usual confidence. He realized with a little impulse of annoyance that in the presence of this woman, whom he was more anxious to impress than anyone else in the world, he was subject to sudden lapses of self-confidence, to a certain self-depreciation, which irritated him. Was it, he wondered, because he was always fancying that she looked at him out of Rochester’s eyes?
A cab drove past him, and stopped before the house which he had just left. He looked behind, with a sudden feeling of almost passionate jealousy. It was Rochester, who had driven by him unseen, and who was now mounting the steps to her house.
Rochester accepted his wife’s offer of a lift in her victoria after the luncheon party in Cadogan Street.
“Mary,” he said, as soon as the horses had started, “I cannot imagine why you were so civil to that insufferable bounder Saton.”
She looked at him thoughtfully.
“Is he an insufferable bounder?” she asked.
“I find him so,” Rochester answered, deliberately. “He dresses like other men, he walks and moves like other men, he speaks like other men, and all the time I know that he is acting. He plays the game well, but it is a game. The man is a bounder, and you will all of you find it out some day.”
“Don’t you think, perhaps,” his wife remarked, “that you are prejudiced because you have some knowledge of his antecedents?”
“Not in the least,” Rochester answered. “The fetish of birth has never appealed to me. I find as many gentlefolk amongst my tenants and servants, as at the parties to which I have the honor of escorting you. It isn’t that at all. It’s a matter of insight. Some day you will all of you find it out.”
“All of us, I presume,” Lady Mary said, “includes Pauline.”
Rochester nodded.
“Pauline has disappointed me,” he said. “Never before have I known her instinct at fault. She must know—in her heart she must know that there is something wrong about the fellow. And yet she receives him at her house, and treats him with a consideration which, frankly, shall we say, annoys me?”
“One might remind you,” Lady Mary remarked, “that it is you who are responsible for this young man’s introduction amongst our friends.”
“It is true,” Rochester answered. “I regret it bitterly. I regret it more than ever to-day.”
“Because of Pauline?” Lady Mary asked.
“Because of Pauline, and for one other reason,” Rochester answered, lowering his voice, and turning a little in his seat towards his wife. “Mary, I was unfortunate enough to hear a sentence which passed between you and this person in the hall. I would have shut my ears if I could, but it was not possible. Am I to understand that you have made use of him in some way?”
Lady Mary gasped. This was a thunderbolt to descend at her feet without a second’s warning!
“As a matter of fact,” she said slowly, “he has done me a service.”
Rochester’s face darkened.
“I should be interested,” he said, “to know the circumstances.”
Lady Mary was not a coward, and she realized thatthere was nothing for it but the absolute truth. Her husband’s eyes were fixed upon her, filled with an expression which she very seldom saw in them. After all, she had little enough to fear. Their relations were scarcely such that he could assume the position of a jealous husband.
“I suppose that you will laugh at me, Henry,” she said. “Perhaps you will be angry. However, one must amuse oneself. Frankly, I think that all this talk that is going on about occultism, and being able to read the future, and to find new laws for the government of the will, has perhaps turned my brain a little. Anyhow, I went to one of those Bond Street people, and asked them a few questions.”
“You mean to one of these crystal-gazers or fortune-tellers?” he asked.
“Precisely,” she answered. “No doubt you think that I am mad, but if you had any idea of the women in our own set who have done the same thing, I think you would be astonished. Well, whilst I was there I chanced to drop, or leave behind—it scarcely concerns you to know which—a letter written to me by a very dear friend. One of my perfectly harmless love affairs, you know, Henry, but men do make such idiots of themselves when they have pen and paper to do it with.”
Rochester moved a little uneasily in his place.
“May I inquire——” he began.
“No, I shouldn’t!” she interrupted. “You know very well, my dear Henry, the exact terms upon which we have both found married life endurable. If I choose toreceive foolish letters from foolish men, it concerns you no more than your silent adoration of Pauline Marrabel does me. You understand?”
“I understand,” he answered quietly. “Go on.”
“Well,” she continued, “a few days afterwards I had just about as terrifying a specimen of a blackmailing letter as you can possibly imagine.”
“From these people?” Rochester asked.
“No! From a firm who called themselves agents, and said that the letter had come into their possession, had been deposited with them, in fact, by someone who owed them some money,” Lady Mary answered. “Of course, I was frightened to death. I don’t know what made me think of Bertrand Saton as the best person to consult, but anyhow I did. He took the matter up for me, paid over some money on my account, and recovered the letter.”
“The sum of money being?”
“Five hundred pounds,” Lady Mary answered, with a sigh. “It was a great deal, but the letter—well, the letter was certainly very foolish.”
Rochester was silent for several moments.
“Do you know,” he asked at length, “what the natural inference to me seems—the inference, I mean, of what you have just told me?”
“You are not going to say anything disagreeable?” she asked, looking at him through the lace fringe of her parasol.
“Not in the least,” he answered. “I was not thinking of the personal side of the affair—so far as you andI are concerned, I have accepted your declaration. I claim no jurisdiction over your correspondence. I mean as regards Saton.”
“No! What?” she asked.
“It seems to me highly possible,” he declared, “that Saton was in league with these blackmailers, whoever they may have been. Any ordinary man whom you had consulted would have settled the matter in a very different way.”
“I was quite satisfied,” Lady Mary answered. “I thought it was really very kind of him to take the trouble.”
“Indeed!” Rochester remarked drily. “I must say, Mary, that I gave you credit for greater perspicuity. The man is an intriguer. Naturally, he was only too anxious to be of service to so charming a lady.”
Lady Mary raised her eyebrows, but did not answer.
“I might add,” Rochester continued, “that however satisfactory our present relations may seem to you, I still claim the privilege of being able to assist my wife in any difficulty in which she may find herself.”
“You are very kind,” she murmured.
“Further,” Rochester said, “I resent the interference of any third party in such a matter. You will remember this?”
“I will remember it,” Lady Mary said. “Still, the circumstances being as they are, you can scarcely blame me for having been civil to him to-day. Besides, you must admit that he is clever.”
“Clever! Oh! I’ve no doubt that he is clever enough,”Rochester answered, impatiently. “Nowadays, all you women seem as though you can only be attracted by something freakish—brains, or peculiar gifts of some sort.”
Lady Mary laughed lightly.
“My dear Henry,” she said, “you are not exactly a fool yourself, are you? And then you must remember this. Bertrand Saton’s cleverness is the sort of cleverness which appeals to women. We can’t help our natures, I suppose, and we are always attracted by the mysterious. We are always wanting to know something which other people don’t know, something of what lies behind the curtain.”
“It is a very dangerous curiosity,” Rochester said. “You are liable to become the prey of any adventurer with a plausible manner, who has learned to talk glibly about the things which he doesn’t understand. I’ll get out here, if I may,” he added, “and take a short cut across the Park to my club. Mary, if you want to oblige me, for Heaven’s sake don’t run this fellow! He gets on my nerves. I hate the sight of him.”
Lady Mary turned towards her husband with a faint, curious smile as the carriage drew up.
“You had better talk to Pauline,” she said. “He is more in her line than mine.”
Rochester walked across the Park a little gloomily. His wife’s last words were ringing in his ears. For the first time since he could remember, a little cloud had loomed over his few short hours with Pauline. She had resented some contemptuous speech of his, and as thoughto mark her sense of his lack of generosity, she had encouraged Saton to talk, encouraged him to talk until the other conversation had died away, and the whole room had listened to this exponent of what he declared to be a new science. The fellow was aposeurand an impostor, Rochester told himself vigorously. He knew, he was absolutely convinced that he was not honest.
He sat down on a seat for a few minutes, and his thoughts somehow wandered back to that night when he had strolled over the hills and found a lonely boy gazing downward through the tree tops to the fading landscape. He remembered his own whimsical generosity, the feelings with which he had made his offer. He remembered, too, the conditions which he had made. With a sudden swift anger, he realized that those conditions had not been kept. Saton had told him little or nothing of his doings out in the world, of his struggles and his failures, of the growth of this new enthusiasm, if indeed it was an enthusiasm. He had hinted at strange adventures, but he had spoken of nothing definite. He had not kept his word.
Rochester rose to his feet with a little exclamation.
“He shall tell me!” he muttered to himself, “or I will expose him, if I have to turn detective and follow him round the world.”
He swung round again across the Park toward Mayfair, and rang the bell at Saton’s new house. Mr. Saton was not at home, he was informed, but was expected back at any moment. Rochester accepted an invitation to wait, and was shown into a room which at first hethought empty. Then someone rose from an old-fashioned easy-chair, set back amongst the shadows. Rachael peered forward, leaning upon her stick, and shading her eyes as though from the sun.
“Who is that?” she asked. “Who are you?”
Rochester bowed, and introduced himself. As yet he could see very little of the person who had spoken. The blinds, and even the curtains of the room, were close drawn. It was one of Rachael’s strange fancies on certain days to sit in the darkness. Suddenly, however, she leaned forward and touched the knob of the electric light.
“My name is Rochester,” he said. “I called to see Mr. Saton for a few minutes. They asked me to wait.”
“I am the Comtesse de Vestignes,” Rachael said slowly, “and Bertrand Saton is my adopted son. He will be back in a few moments. Draw your chair up close to me. I should like to talk, if you do not mind this light. I have been resting, and my eyes are tired.”
Rochester obeyed, and seated himself by her side with a curious little thrill of interest. It seemed to him that she was like the mummy of some ancient goddess, the shadowy presentment of days long past. She had the withered appearance of great age, and yet the dignity which refuses to yield to time.
“Come nearer,” she said. “I am no longer a young woman, and I am a little deaf.”
“You must tell me if you do not hear me,” Rochester said. “My voice is generally thought to be a clear one. I am very much interested in this young man. Suppose,while we wait, you tell me a few things about him. You have no objection?”
Rachael laughed softly.
“I wonder,” she said, “what it is that you expect to hear from me.”
From the depths of her chair, Rachael for several moments sat and subjected her visitor to a close and merciless scrutiny.
“So you,” she said at last, “were the fairy godfather. You were the man who trusted a nameless boy with five hundred pounds, because his vaporings amused you. You pushed him out into the world, you bade him go and seek his fortune.”
“I was that infernal fool!” Rochester muttered.
The woman nodded.
“Yes, a fool!” she said. “No one but a fool would do such a thing. And yet great things have come of it.”
Rochester shrugged his shoulders. He was not prepared to admit that Bertrand Saton was in any sense great.
“My adopted son,” she continued, “is very wonderful. Egypt had its soothsayers thousands of years ago. This century, too, may have its prophet. Bertrand gains power every day. He is beginning to understand.”
“You, too,” Rochester asked politely, “are perhaps a student of the occult?”
“Whatever I am,” she answered scornfully, “I am not one of those who because their two feet are plantedupon the earth, and their head reaches six feet towards the sky, are prepared to declare that there is no universe save the earth upon which they stand, no sky save the sky toward which they look—nothing in life which their eyes will not show them, or which their hands may not touch.”
Rochester smiled faintly.
“Materialism is an easy faith and a safe one,” he said. “Imagination is very distorting.”
“For you who feel like that,” she answered, “the way through life is simple enough. We others can only pity.”
“Comtesse,” Rochester said, “such an attitude is perfectly reasonable. It is only when you attempt to convert that we are obliged to fall back upon our readiest weapons.”
“You are one of those,” she said, looking at him keenly, “who do not wish to understand more than you understand at present, who have no desire to gain the knowledge of hidden things.”
“You are right, Comtesse,” Rochester answered, with a smile. “I am one of those pig-headed individuals.”
“It is the Saxon race,” she muttered, “who have kept back the progress of the world for centuries.”
“We have kept it backward, perhaps,” he answered, “but wholesome.”
“You think always of your bodies,” she said.
“They were entrusted to us, madam, to look after,” he answered.
She smiled grimly.
“You are not such a fool,” she said, “as my adoptedson would have me believe. You have spared me at least that hideous Latin quotation which has done so much harm to your race.”
“Out of respect to you,” he declared, “I avoided it. It was really a little too obvious.”
“Come,” she said, “you are a type of man I have not met with for years. You are strong and vigorous and healthy. You have color upon your cheeks, and strength in your tone and movements. In any show of your kind, you should certainly be entitled to a prize.”
Rochester laughed, at first softly, and then heartily.
“My dear lady,” he said, “forgive me. I can assure you that although my inclinations do not prompt me to sit at your son’s feet and accept his mythical sayings as the words of a god, I am really not a fool. I will even go so far as this. I will even admit the possibility that a serious and religious study of occultism might result in benefit to all of us. The chief point where you and I differ is with regard to your adopted son. You believe in him, apparently. I don’t!”
“Then why are you here?” she asked. “What do you want with him? Do you come as an enemy?”
Rochester was spared the necessity of making any answer. He heard the door open, and the woman’s eyes glittered as they turned toward it.
“Bertrand is here himself,” she said. “You can settle your business with him.”
Rochester rose to his feet. Saton had just entered, closing the door behind him. Prepared for Rochester’s presence by the servants, he greeted him calmly enough.
“This is an unexpected honor,” he said, bowing. “I did not imagine that we should meet again so soon.”
“Nor I,” Rochester answered. “Where can we talk?”
“Here as well as anywhere,” Saton answered, going up to Rachael, and lifting her hand for a moment to his lips. “From this lady, whose acquaintance I presume you have made, I have no secrets.”
Rochester glanced from one to the other—the woman, sitting erect and severe in her chair, the young man bending affectionately over her. Yes, he was right! There was something about the two hard to explain, yet apparent to him as he sat there, which seemed in some way to remove them out of direct kinship with the ordinary people of the world. Was it, he wondered, with a sudden swift intuition, a touch of insularity, a sign of narrowness, that he should find himself so utterly repelled by this foreign note in their temperaments? Was his disapproval, after all, but a mark of snobbishness, the snobbishness which, to use a mundane parallel, takes objection to the shape of an unfashionable collar, or the cut of a country-made coat? There were other races upon the world beside the race of aristocrats. There was an aristocracy of brains, of genius, of character. Yet he reasoned against his inspiration. Nothing could make him believe that the boy who had held out his hands so eagerly toward the fire of life, had not ended by gathering to himself experiences and a cult of living from which any ordinary mortal would have shrunk.
“I am quite content,” Rochester said, “to say what I have to say before this lady, especially if she knowsyour history. I have come here to tell you this. I have been your sponsor, perhaps your unwilling sponsor, into the society and to the friends amongst whom you spend your time. I am not satisfied with my sponsorship. That you came of humble parentage, although you never allude to the fact, goes for nothing. That you may be forgiven. But there are seven years of your past the knowledge of which is a pledge to me. I have come to insist upon your fulfilment of it. For seven years you disappeared. Where were you? How did you blossom into prosperity? How is it that you, the professor of a new cult, whose first work is as yet unpublished, find yourself enabled to live in luxury like this? You had no godmother then. Who is this lady? Why do you call her your godmother? She is nothing of the sort. You and I know that—you and I and she. There are things about you, Saton, which I find it hard to understand. I want to understand them for the sake of my friends.”
“And if you do not?” Saton asked calmly.
“Well, it must be open war,” Rochester declared.
“I should say that it amounted to that now,” Saton answered.
“Scarcely,” Rochester declared, “for if it had been open war I should have asked you before now to tell me where it was that you and Lord Guerdon had met. Remember I heard the words trembling upon his lips, and I saw your face!”
Saton did not move, nor did he speak for a moment. His cheeks were a little pale, but he gave no sign of being moved. The woman’s face was like the face of asphinx, withered and emotionless. Her eyes were fixed upon Saton’s.
“You have spoken to me before somewhat in this strain, sir,” Saton said. “What I said to you then, I repeat. The account between us is ruled out. You lent or gave me a sum of money, and I returned it. As to gratitude,” he went on, “that I may or may not feel. I leave you to judge. You can ask yourself, if you will, whether that action of yours came from an impulse of generosity, or was merely the gratification of a cynical whim.”
“My motives are beside the question,” Rochester answered. “Do I understand that you decline to give me any account of yourself?”
“I see no reason,” Saton said coldly, “why I should gratify your curiosity.”
“There is no reason,” Rochester admitted. “It is simply a matter of policy. Frankly, I mistrust you. There are points about your behaviour, ever since in a foolish moment I asked you to stay at Beauleys, which I do not understand. I do not understand Lord Guerdon’s sudden recognition of you, and even suddener death. I do not understand why it has amused you to fill the head of my young ward, Lois Champneyes, with foolish thoughts. I do not understand why you should stand between my wife and the writers of a blackmailing letter. I do not ask you for any explanation. I simply tell you that these things present themselves as enigmas to me. You have declared your position. I declare mine. What you will not tell me I shall make it my business to discover.”
The Comtesse leaned a little forward. Her face was still unchanged, her tone scornful.
“It is I who will answer you,” she said. “My adopted son—for he is my adopted son if I choose to make him so—will explain nothing. He has, in fact, nothing more to say to you. You and he are quits so far as regards obligations. Your paths in life lie apart. You are one of the self-centred, sedentary loiterers by the way. For him,” she added, throwing out suddenly her brown, withered hand, aflame with jewels, “there lie different things. Something he knows; something he has learned; much there is yet for him to learn. He will go on his way, undisturbed by you or any friends of yours. As for his means, your question is an impertinence. Ask at Rothschilds concerning the Comtesse de Vestignes, and remember that what belongs to me belongs to him. Measure your wits against his, to-day, to-morrow, or any time you choose, and the end is certain. Show your patron out, Bertrand. He has amused me for a little time, but I am tired.”
Rochester rose to his feet.
“Madam,” he said, “I am sorry to have fatigued you. For the rest,” he added, with a note of irony in his tone, “I suppose I must accept your challenge. I feel that I am measuring myself and my poor powers against all sorts of nameless gifts. And yet,” he added, as he followed Saton towards the door, “the world goes round, and the things which happened yesterday repeat themselves to-morrow. Your new science should teach you, at least, not to gamble against certainties.”
He passed out of the room, and Saton returned slowly to where Rachael was sitting. Her eyes sought his inquiringly. They read the anguish in his face.
“You are afraid,” she muttered.
“I am afraid,” he admitted. “Given an inversion of their relative positions, I feel like Faust befriended by Mephistopheles. I felt it when he stood by my side on the hilltop, seven years ago. I felt it when he thrust that money into my hand, and bade me go and see what I could make of life, bade me go, without a word of kindness, without a touch of his fingers, without a sentence of encouragement, with no admonitory words save that one single diatribe against failure. You know what he told me? ‘Go out,’ he said,‘and try your luck. Go out along the road which your eyes have watched fading into the mists. But remember this. For men there is no such thing as failure. One may swim too far out to sea on a sunny day. One may trifle with a loaded revolver, or drink in one’s sleep the draught from which one does not awake. But for men, there is no failure.’”
The woman nodded.
“Well,” she said harshly, “you remembered that. You did not fail. Who dares to say that you have failed!”
Saton threw himself into the easy-chair drawn apart from hers. His head fell forward into his hands. The woman rested her head upon her fingers, and watched him through the shadows.
Naudheim had finished his address, and stood talking with his host.
“Do you mind,” Saton asked, “if I introduce some of these people to you? You know many of them by name.”
Naudheim shook his head. He was a tall man, with gray, unkempt hair, and long, wizened face. He wore a black suit of clothes, of ancient cut, and a stock which had literally belonged to his grandfather.
“No!” he said vigorously. “I will be introduced to no one. Why should I? I have spoken to them of the things which make life for us. I have told them my thoughts. What need is there of introduction? I shake hands with no one. I leave that, and silly speeches, and banquets, to my enemies, the professors. These are not my ways.”
“It shall be as you wish, of course,” Saton replied. “You are very fortunate to be able to live and work alone. Here we have to adapt ourself in some way to the customs of the people with whom we are forced to come into daily contact.”
Naudheim suddenly abandoned that far-away look of his, his habit of seeing through the person with whomhe was talking. He looked into Saton’s face steadily, almost fiercely.
“Young man,” he said, “you talk like a fool. Now listen to me. These are my parting words! There is stuff in you. You know a little. You could be taught much more. And above all, you have the temperament. Temperament is a wonderful thing,” he added. “And yet, with all these gifts, you make me feel as though I would like to take you by the collar and lift you up in my arms—yes, I am strong though I am thin—and throw you out of that window, and see you lie there, because you are a fool!”
“Go on,” Saton said, his face growing a little pale.
“Oh, you know it!” Naudheim declared. “You feel it in your blood. You know it in your heart. You truckle to these people, you play at living their life, and you forget, if ever you knew, that our great mistress has never yet opened her arms save to those who have sought her single-hearted and with a single purpose. You are a dallier, philanderer. You will end your days wearing your fashionable clothes. They may make you a professor here. You will talk learnedly. You will write a book. And when you die, people will say a great man has gone. Listen! You listen to me now with only half your ears, but listen once more. The time may come. The light may burn in your heart, the truth may fill your soul. Then come to me. Come to me, young man, and I will make bone and sinew of your flabby limbs. I will take you in my hands and I will teach you the way to the stars.”
Silently, and without a glance on either side of him, Naudheim left the room, amidst a silence which was almost an instinctive thing—the realization, perhaps, of the strange nature of this man, who from a stern sense of duty had left his hermit’s life for a few days, to speak with his fellow-workers.
It had been in some respects a very curious function, this. It was neither meeting nor reception. There was neither host nor hostess, except that Saton had shaken hands with a few, and from his place by the side of Naudheim had indicated the turn of those who wished to speak. Their visitor’s peculiarities were well-known to all of them. He had left them abruptly, not from any sense of discourtesy, but because he had not the slightest idea of, or sympathy with, the manners of civilized people. He had given them something to think about. He had no desire to hear their criticisms. After he had gone, the doors were held open. There was no one to bid them stay, and so they went, in little groups of twos and threes, a curious, heterogeneous crowd, with the stamp upon their features or clothes or bearing, which somehow or other is always found upon those who are seekers for new things. Sallow, dissatisfied-looking men; women whose faces spoke, many of them, of a joyless life; people of overtrained minds; and here and there a strong, zealous, brilliant student of the last of the sciences left for solution.
Pauline would have gone with the others, but Saton touched her hand. Half unwillingly she lingered behind until they were alone in the darkened room. He went tothe window and threw it wide open. The scent of the flowers in the window-boxes and a little wave of the soft west wind came stealing in. She threw her head back with an exclamation of relief.
“Ah!” she said. “This is good.”
“You found the room close?” he asked.
Pauline sank into the window-seat. She rested her delicate oval face upon her fingers, and looked away toward the deep green foliage of the trees outside.
“I did not notice it,” she said, “and yet, somehow or other the whole atmosphere seemed stifling. Naudheim is great,” she went on. “Oh, he is a great man, of course. He said wonderful things in a convincing way. He made one gasp.”
“This afternoon,” Saton declared slowly, “marks an epoch. What Naudheim said was remarkable because of what he left unsaid. Couldn’t you feel that? Didn’t you understand? If that man had ambitions, he could startle even this matter-of-fact world of ours. He could shake it to its very base.”
She shivered a little. Her fingers were idly tapping the window-sill. Her thoughtful eyes were clouded with trouble. He stood over her, absorbed in the charm of her presence, the sensuous charm of watching her slim, exquisite figure, the poise of her head, the delicate coloring of her cheeks, the tremulous human lips, which seemed somehow to humanize the spirituality of her expression. They had talked so much that day of a new science. Saton felt his heart sink as he realized that he was the victim of a greater thing than science could teach. Itwas madness!—sheer, irredeemable madness! But it was in his blood. It was there to be reckoned with.
“It is all very wonderful,” she continued thoughtfully. “And yet, can you understand what I mean when I say that it makes me feel a trifle hysterical? It is as though something had been poured into one which was too great, too much for our capacity. It is all true, I believe, but I don’t want it to come.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Oh! It seems somehow,” she answered, “as though the whole balance of life would be disturbed. Of course, I know that it is feasible enough. For thousands of years men and women lived upon the earth, and never dreamed that all around them existed a great force which only needed a little humoring, a little understanding, to do the work of all the world. Oh, it is easy to understand that we too carry with us some psychical force corresponding to this! One feels it so often. Premonitions come and go. We can’t tell why, but they are there, and they are true. One feels that sense at work at strange times. Experiments have already shown us that it exists. But I wonder what sort of a place the world will be when once it has yielded itself to law.”
“There has never been a time,” Saton said thoughtfully, “when knowledge has not been for the good of man.”
She shook her head.
“I wonder,” she said, “whether we realize what is for our good. Knowledge, development, culture, may reach their zenith and pass beyond. We may become debauchedwith the surfeit of these things. The end and aim of life is happiness.”
“The end and aim of life,” he contradicted her, “is knowledge.”
She laughed.
“I am a woman, you see,” she said thoughtfully.
“And am I not a man?” he whispered.
She turned her head and looked at him. The trouble in her eyes deepened. She felt the color coming and going in her cheeks. His eyes seemed to stir things in her against which her whole physical self rebelled. She rose abruptly to her feet.
“I must go,” she said. “I have a thousand things to do this evening.”
“To play at, you mean,” he corrected her. “You don’t really do very much, do you? The women don’t in your world.”
“You are polite,” she answered lightly. “Please to show me the way out.”
“In a moment,” he said.
She was inclined to rebel. They had moved a little from the window, and were standing in a darker part of the room. She felt his fingers upon her wrist. She would have given the world to have been able to wrench it away, but she could not. She stood there submissively, her breath coming quickly, her eyes compelled to meet his.
“Stay for a moment longer,” he begged. “I want to talk to you for a little while about this.”
“There is no time now,” she said hurriedly. “It is an inexhaustible subject.”
“Inexhaustible indeed,” he answered, with an enigmatic laugh.
She read his thoughts. She knew very well what was in his mind, what was almost on his lips, and she struggled to be free of him.
“Mr. Saton,” she said, “I am sorry—but you must really let me go.”
He did not move.
“It is very hard to let you go,” he murmured. “Can’t you—don’t you realize a little that it is always hard for me to see you go—to see you leave the world where we have at least interests in common, to go back to a life of which I know so little, a life in which I have so small a part, a life which is scarcely worthy of you, Pauline?”
Again she felt a sort of physical impotence. She struggled desperately against the loss of nerve power which kept her there. She would have given anything in the world to have left him, to have run out of the room with a little shriek, out into the streets and squares she knew so well, to breathe the air she had known all her life, to escape from this unknown emotion. She told herself that she hated the man whose will kept her there. She was sure of it. And yet—!
“I do not understand you,” she said, “and I must, I really must go. Can’t you see that just now, at any rate, I don’t want to understand?” she added, fighting all the time for her words. “I want to go. Please do not keep me here against my will. Do you understand? Let me go, and I will be grateful to you.”
Somehow the strain seemed suddenly lightened. Hewas only a very ordinary, rather doubtful sort of person—a harmless but necessary part of interesting things. He had moved toward the door, which he was holding open for her to pass through.
“Thank you so much,” she said, with genuine relief in her tone. “I have stayed an unconscionable time, and I found your Master delightful.”
“You will come again?” he said softly. “I want to explain a little further what Naudheim was saying. I can take you a little further, even, than he did to-day.”
“You must come and see me,” she answered lightly. “Remember that after all the world has conventions.”
He stepped back on to the doorstep after he had handed her into her carriage. She threw herself back amongst the cushions with something that was like a sob of relief. She had sensations which she could not analyze—a curious feeling of having escaped, and yet coupled with it a sense of something new and strange in her life, something of which she was a little afraid, and yet from which she would not willingly have parted. She told herself that she detested the house which she had left, detested the thought of that darkened room. Nevertheless, she was forced to look back. He was standing in the open doorway, from which the butler had discreetly retired, and meeting her eyes he bowed once more. She tried to smile unconcernedly, but failed. She looked away with scarcely a return of his greeting.
“Home!” she told the man. “Drive quickly.”
Almost before her own door she met Rochester. The sight of him was somehow or other an immense reliefto her. She fell back again in the world which she knew. She stopped the carriage and called to him.
“Come and drive with me a little way,” she begged. “I am stifled. I want some fresh air. I want to talk to you. Oh, come, please!”
Rochester took the vacant seat by her side at once.
“What is it?” he asked gravely. “Tell me. You have had bad news?”
She shook her head.
“No!” she said. “I am afraid—that is all!”