She swayed for a moment, and fell over on her side.She swayed for a moment, and fell over on her side.
“It is horrible!” she shrieked. “It was you who fired the gun!—You!”
She swayed for a moment, and fell over on her side like a dead woman—her arms thrown out, her limbsinert, as though indeed it were death which had stricken her.
Rochester, with a shout of anger, sprang towards her, sending Saton reeling against the table. He fell on his knees by her side.
“Bring water, some of you idiots!” he cried out. “Ring the bell! And don’t let that cursed charlatan escape!”
Pauline took the card from the hand of her servant, and glanced at it at first with the idlest of curiosity—afterwards with a fixed and steadfast attention, as though she saw in those copperplate letters, elegantly traced upon a card of superfine quality, something symbolical, something of far greater significance than the unexpected name which confronted her.
“I told you, Martin,” she said, “that I was at home to nobody except those upon the special list.”
“I know it, your ladyship,” the man answered, “but this gentleman has called every day for a week, and I have refused even to bring his name in. To-day he was so very persistent that I thought perhaps it would be better to bring his card.”
Pauline was lying upon a couch. She had been unwell for the last two or three weeks. Nothing serious—nerves, she called it. A doctor would probably have prescribed for her with a smile. Pauline knew better than to send for one. She knew very well what was the matter. She was afraid! Fear had come upon her like a disease. The memory of that one night racked her still—the memory of that, and other things.
Meanwhile, the servant stood before her in an attitude of respectful attention.
“I will see Mr. Saton,” she decided at last. “You can show him in here, and remember that until he has gone, no one else is to be allowed to enter. Come yourself only if I ring the bell, or when you serve tea.”
The man bowed, and went back to where Saton was waiting in the hall.
“Her ladyship is at home, sir,” he announced. “Will you come this way?”
A certain drawn expression seemed suddenly to vanish from the young man’s face. He followed the servant almost blithely. In a few seconds he was alone with her in the firelit drawing-room. The door was closed behind him.
Pauline was sitting up on the couch. For a moment they neither of them spoke. She, too, had been suffering, then, he thought, recognising the signs of ill-health in her colorless cheeks and languid pose.
He came slowly across the room and held out his hand. She hesitated, and shook her head.
“No!” she said. “I do not think that I wish to shake hands with you, Mr. Saton. I do not understand why you have come here. I thought it best to see you, and hear what you have to say, once and for all.”
“Once and for all?” he repeated.
“Certainly,” she answered. “It does not interest me to fence with words. Between us I think that it is not necessary. What do you want with me?”
“You know,” he answered calmly.
She paused for a moment or two. She told herself that this was the most transcendental of follies. Yet it seemedas though there were something electrical in the atmosphere, as though something had come into the room unaccountable, stimulating, terrifying. All the languor of the last few days was gone.
“Am I to understand, then?” she said at last, speaking in a low tone, and with her face averted from him, “that you have come to offer me some explanation of the events of that night?”
“No!” he answered.
The seconds ticked on. She found his taciturnity maddening.
“Your visit had some purpose?” she asked.
“I came to see you,” he answered.
“I am not well,” she said, hurriedly. “I am not fit to see people or to talk at all. I thought that you must have some special purpose in coming, or I should not have received you.”
“You wish to talk then, about that night?” he asked.
“No!” she answered—“and yet, yes!”
She sat upright. She looked him in the eyes.
“I have not dared to ask even myself this,” she said, “but since you are here, since you have forced it upon me, I shall ask you and you will tell me. That night I had—what shall I call it?—a vision. I saw you shoot Henry Rochester. Now you are here you shall tell me if what I saw was the truth?”
“It was,” he answered.
She drew back, shuddering.
“But why?” she asked. “He has never done you any harm.”
“On the contrary,” Saton answered, “he is my enemy. With all my heart and soul I wish him dead!”
“It is terrible!” she murmured.
“It is the truth,” he answered. “The truth sometimes is terrible. That is why people so often evade it. Listen. I was only a boy, a sentimental boy, when I first knew Rochester. Perhaps he has posed to you as my benefactor. Certainly he lent me money. I tell you now, though, that upon every penny of that money was a curse. Whatever I did went wrong. However hard I fought, I was worsted. If I gambled, I lost. If I played for safety, something—even though it might be as unexpected as an earthquake—came to wreck my plans. It was like playing cards with the Devil himself. One by one I lost the tricks. When I was penniless, I had nothing left to think of but the only piece of advice your friend Henry Rochester gave me when he sent me out into the world. The sting of his voice was like a lash. Creatures of the gutter he called those who had failed, and who dared to live on. I tell you that until the time came when I looked down into the Thames, and hesitated whether or no I should take his cynical advice and make an end of myself, every action, every endeavor, and every effort I had made, had been honest. It was his words, and his words entirely, which drove me into the other paths.”
“You admit, then—” she began.
“I admit nothing,” he answered. “Yet I will tell you this. There are things in my life which I loathe, and they are there because of Rochester’s words. Yet bad though I am,” he continued, bitterly, “that man’s contemptis like a whip to me whenever I see him. What, in God’s name, is he? Because he has ancestors behind him, good blood in his veins, the tricks of a man of breeding, the carriage and voice of a gentleman, why, in Heaven’s name for these things should he look upon me as something crawling upon the face of the earth—something to be spurned aside whenever it should cross his path? I have lived and spoken falsehoods. The greatest men in the world have lived and spoken falsehoods. But I am not a charlatan. I have mastered the rudiments of a great and mighty new science. I am not a trickster. I have a claim to live, as he has. There is a place in the world for me, too, as well as for him. You know what he has told me? You know with what he has threatened me? He has told me that if he even sees you and me together, that if I even dare to find my way into your presence, that he will horse-whip me. This because he has muscles and I have none. Yet you ask me why I desire to kill him! I have had only one desire in my life stronger than that, one thing in my life more intense than my hatred of this man.”
“You are both in the wrong,” she said. “Henry Rochester is a straight-living, God-fearing man, a little narrow in his views, and a little violent in his prejudices. You are a person such as he would not understand, such as he never could understand. You and he could never possibly come into sympathy. He is wrong when he utters such threats. Yet you must remember that there is Lois. He has the right there to say what he will.”
“There is Lois, yes!” Saton repeated.
“You wish to marry her, don’t you?” she asked.
The question seemed to madden him. Suddenly he threw aside the almost unnatural restraint with which he had spoken and acted since his entrance into the room. He rose to his feet. He stood before her couch with clenched hands, with features working spasmodically as the words poured from his lips.
“Listen,” he said. “I have no money. I have lived partly upon the woman who adopted me, and partly by nefarious means. Science is great, it is fascinating, it is the joy of my life, but one must live. I have tasted luxury. I cannot live as a workingman. The woman who adopted me is all the time at my elbow, telling me that I must marry Lois because of her money. The child is willing. I have been willing.”
“To marry her for her money—for her money only!” Pauline exclaimed, with scorn trembling in her tone.
“Absolutely for her money only!” Saton answered. “Now you know how poor a thing I am. Yet I tell you that all men have a bad spot in them. I tell you that I am dependent upon that woman for every penny I spend, and for the clothes I wear. When I tell her that I will not marry Lois Champneyes, she will very likely throw me into the street. What is there left for me to do? I have tried everything, and failed. I have no strength, I have a cursed taste for the easy ways of life. Yet this has come to me. I will not marry Lois Champneyes. I will break with this woman, notwithstanding all I owe to her, and I will go away and work once more,wherever I can earn enough to keep me. And I will tell you why. I haven’t a good quality that I know of. I am as selfish as a man can be. I am a murderer at heart, an actor most of the time, but in one thing I am honest. I love you, Pauline Marrabel! I can’t help it. It is the curse of my life, if you will, but it is the joy of it. Rochester knows it, and he hates me. I know that Rochester loves you, and I hate him. Listen. There is a man who believes in me—a great man. I’ll go to him. I’ll work, I’ll study, I’ll write. I’ll live the thoughts I want to live. I’ll shape my life along the firm straight lines. I’ll make a better thing of myself, if you’ll wait. Mind, I don’t ask you to touch me now. If you offered me your hands, I wouldn’t take them. I’m not fit. But there is just this one thing in me. I know myself and I know you. Give me the chance to climb!”
Time seemed to stand still while she looked at him. Yes, he had been honest! She saw him stripped of all the glamour of his unusual learning. She saw him as he was—small, false, a poor creature, who having failed on the mountains, had been content to crawl through the marshes. He seemed in those few moments to be stripped bare to her. He was not even a gentleman. He wore his manners as he wore his clothes. He belonged to her world no more than the servant who had announced him. She clenched her fingers. It was ignoble that her heart should be beating, that the breath should come sobbing through her parted lips. He was a creature to be despised!
She raised her head and told him so, fighting all thewhile with something greater and stronger which seemed to be tearing at her heart strings.
“If that is what you came here to say,” she said, “please go.”
He rose at once. She saw the anxious light with which his eyes had been filled, fade away. He turned almost humbly toward the door.
“You are quite right,” he said. “I should not have come. I do not often have impulses. It is a mistake to listen to them. Yet I came because it was the one honest desire which I have had since I looked down into the water and turned away.”
He walked toward the door. She stood with her finger pressing the bell. He seemed somehow to have lost what little presence he had ever possessed. His head was bowed; he walked as one feeling for his way in the dark. Never once did he look round. As he stood before the door, her lips were suddenly parted. A great wave of pity rose up from amongst those other things in her heart. She would have called out to him, but her butler was already there. The door had been opened.
She clenched her teeth, and resumed her place upon the sofa. She heard the front door closed, and she found herself watching him through the blind. She saw him cross the road very much as he had crossed the room—unseeing, stricken. She watched him until he crossed the corner of the square. Her eyes were misty with tears!
Captain Vandermere had a friend from the country, and was giving him supper at theSavoy. He was also pointing out the different people who were worthy of note.
“That,” he said, pointing to an adjoining table, “is really one of the most interesting men in London.”
“He looks like an actor,” his friend remarked.
“So he may be,” Vandermere answered grimly, “but his is not the Thespian stage. He is a lecturer and writer on occultism, and in his way, I suppose, he is amazingly clever.”
“Do you mean Bertrand Saton?” his friend asked, with interest.
Vandermere nodded.
“You have heard the fellow’s name, of course,” he said. “For the last month or so one seems to meet him everywhere, and in all sorts of society. The illustrated papers, and even the magazines, have been full of the fellow’s photograph. Women especially seem to regard him as something supernatural. Look at the way they are hanging upon his words now. That is the old Duchess of Ampthill on his left, and the others are all decent enough people of a sort.”
“I gather from your tone,” his friend remarked, “that the young man is not a favorite of yours.”
“He is not,” Vandermere answered. “I don’t understand the breed, and that’s a fact. Apart from that, he has had the confounded impertinence to make love to—to a very charming young lady of my acquaintance.”
“He isn’t particularly good-looking,” the friend remarked—“striking I suppose people would say.”
“He has a sort of unwholesome way of attracting women,” Vandermere remarked. “Look how they all manœuvre to walk out with him.”
Saton was exercising his rights as lion of the party, and leaving early. The Duchess whispered something in his ear, at which he only laughed. Half-a-dozen invitations were showered upon him, which he accepted conditionally.
“I never accept invitations,” he said, “except with a proviso. As a matter of fact, I never can tell exactly when I shall want to work, and when the feeling for work comes, everything else must go. It is not always that one is in the right mood.”
“How interesting!” one of the women sighed.
“Must be like writing poetry, only far more exciting,” another murmured.
“Tell me,” a girl asked him, as he stooped over her fingers to say good night, “is it really true, Mr. Saton, that if you liked you could make me do things even against my will—that you could put ideas into my head which I should be forced to carry out?”
“Certainly.”
“And you never make use of your power?”
“Very seldom,” he answered. “That is the chicanery of science. It is because people when they have discovered a little are so anxious to exploit their knowledge, that they never go any further. It is very easy indeed to dominate the will of certain individuals, but what we really want to understand before we use our power, is the law that governs it. Good night, once more!”
“A wonderful man!” they sighed one to another as he passed out.
“I am one of the few,” the Duchess remarked complacently, “who has seen a real manifestation of his powers. It is true,” she added, with a little shudder, “there was a mistake toward the end. The experiment wasn’t wholly successful, but it was wonderful, all the same—wonderful!”
Saton left the restaurant, and entered the small electric brougham which was waiting for him. He lit a cigarette and leaned back amongst the cushions, musing over the events of the evening with a complacent smile. The last few weeks seemed to have wrought some subtle change in the man. His face was at once stronger and weaker, more determined, and yet in a sense less trustworthy. His manner had gained in assertion, his bearing in confidence. There was an air of resolve about him, as though he knew exactly where he was going—how far, and in what direction. And with it all he had aged. There were lines under his eyes, and his face was worn—at times almost haggard.
He let himself into the little house in Berkeley Square with his latchkey, and turned at once into Rachael’s room. She was sitting over the fire in a brilliant red dressing-gown, her head elaborately coiffured, her fingers and neck brilliant with jewels. Yet when she turned her head one saw a change. Age had laid its grip upon her at last. Her voice had lost its decision. Her hands trembled in her lap.
“You are late, Bertrand,” she said—“very late.”
“Not so very,” he answered. “I have been supping at theSavoywith the Duchess of Ampthill and some friends.”
She looked at him searchingly, looked at him from head to foot, noted the trim exactness of his evening attire, and his enamel links and waistcoat buttons, the air of confidence with which he crossed the room to mix himself a whiskey and soda. It was she who had been like that a few months ago, and he the timid one. They seemed to have changed places.
“Bertrand,” she said, “you frighten me. You go so far, nowadays.”
“Why not?” he answered.
“Huntley has been here to-night,” she went on. “He tells me that you have opened even another place, and that all the old ones are going. He tells me that the offices are hard at work, too.”
“Business is good,” remarked Saton, drily.
“I thought that we were going quietly for a time,” she said. “It was you who were so terrified at the risk. Do you imagine that the danger is over?”
“My dear Rachael,” he answered, coming over to her, “I have come to the conclusion that I was over-timid. There is no success in life to be won without daring. Money we must have, and these places are like a gold mine to us. If things go wrong, we must take our chance. I am content. In the meantime, for all our sakes, it suits me to be in evidence everywhere. The papers publish my portrait, the Society journals record my name, people point me out at the theatres and at the restaurants. This is not vanity—this is business. I am giving a lecture the week after next, and every seat is already taken. I am going to say some daring things. Afterwards, I am going to Naudheim for a month. When I come back, I shall give another lecture. After that, perhaps these places will not be necessary any more. But who can tell? Money we must have, money all the time. Science is great, but men and women must live.”
She looked at him with a grim smile.
“You amuse me,” she said. “Are you really the half-starved boy who flung himself at my horses’ heads in the Bois?”
“I am what the Fates have made of that boy.”
She shook her head.
“You are going too fast,” she said. “You terrify me. What about Lois?”
“Lois is of age in six weeks,” he replied. “On the day she is of age, I shall go to Rochester and demand her hand. He will refuse, of course. I shall marry her at once.”
“Why not now?” Rachael asked. “Why wait a day? The money will come later.”
“I will tell you why,” Saton answered. “Because I have ambitions, and because it would do them harm if people believed that I had exercised any sort of influence to make that girl marry me against her guardian’s wishes. I do use my influence as it is, although,” he added, frowning, “I find it harder every day. She walked with me in the Park this morning; she came to tea with me the day before.”
“What do you mean when you say that you find it harder?” Rachael asked.
“I mean that I have lost some of my hold over her,” he answered. “It is the sort of thing which is likely to happen at any time. She has very weak receptive currents. It is like trying to drive water with a sieve.”
“You must not fail,” she muttered. “I am nervous these days. I would rather you were married to Lois, and her money was in the bank, and that these places were closed. I start when the bell rings. Huntley himself said that you were rash.”
“Huntley is a fool,” Saton answered. “Let me help you upstairs, Rachael.”
He passed his arm around her affectionately, and kissed her when they parted for the night. Then he came down to his little room, and sat for a time at his desk, piled with books and works of reference. He brooded gloomily for several moments over what Rachael had been saying. A knock at the door made him start. It was only a servant, come to see to the fire, but his hand haddarted out toward a certain drawer of his desk. When the servant had retired, he opened it for a minute and looked in. A small shining revolver lay there, and a box of cartridges.
“Your idea, my friend Rochester!” he muttered to himself.
The Duchess of Ampthill was giving a great dinner-party at her house in Grosvenor Square. She had found several new prodigies, and one of them was performing in a most satisfactory manner. He sat at her left hand, and though, unlike Saton, he had at first been shy, the continual encouragement of his hostess had eventually produced the desired result. His name was Chalmers, and he was the nephew of a bishop. He had taken a double first at Oxford, and now announced his intention of embracing literature as a profession. He wore glasses, and he was still very young.
“There is no doubt at all,” he said, in answer to a remark from the Duchess, “that London has reached just that stage in her development as a city of human beings, which was so fatal to some of her predecessors in pre-eminence, some of those ancient cities of which there exists to-day only the name. The blood in her arteries is no longer robust. Already the signs of decay are plentiful.”
“I wonder,” Rochester inquired, “what you consider your evidences are for such a statement. To a poor outsider like myself, for instance, London seems to have all the outward signs of an amazingly prosperous—one might almost say a splendidly progressive city.”
Chalmers smiled. It was a smile he had cultivated when contradicted at the Union, and he knew its weight.
“From a similar point of view,” he said, “as yours, Mr. Rochester, Rome and Athens, Nineveh, and those more ancient cities, presented the same appearance of prosperity. Yet if you ask for signs, there are surely many to be seen. I am anxious,” he continued, gazing around him with an air of bland enjoyment, “to avoid anything in the nature of an epigram. There is nothing so unconvincing, so stultifying to one’s statements, as to express them epigrammatically. People at once give you credit for an attempt at intellectual gymnastics which takes no regard to the truth. I will not, therefore, weary you with a diatribe upon the condition of that heterogeneous mass which is known to-day as Society. I will simply point out to you one of the portents which has inevitably heralded disaster. I mean the restless searching everywhere for new things and new emotions. Our friend opposite,” he said, bowing to Saton, “will forgive me if I instance the almost passionate interest in this new science which he is making brave efforts to give to the world. A lecture to-day from Mr. Bertrand Saton would fill any hall in London. And why? Simply because the people know that he will speak to them of new things. Look at this man Father Cresswell. There is no building in this great city which would hold the crowds who flock to his meetings. And why? Simply because he has adopted a new tone—because in place of the old methods, he stands in his pulpit with a lash, and wields it like a Russian executioner.”
Lady Mary interrupted him suddenly from her place a little way down the table.
“Oh, I don’t agree with you!” she said. “Indeed, I think you are wrong. The reason why people go to hear Father Cresswell is not because he has anything new to say, or any new way of saying it. The real reason is because he has the gift of showing them the truth. You can be told things very often, and receive a great many warnings, but you take no notice. There is something wrong about the method of delivering them. It is not the lash which Father Cresswell uses, but it is his extraordinary gift of impressing one with the truth of what he says, that has had such an effect upon everyone.”
Rochester looked across at his wife curiously. It was almost the first time that he had ever heard her speak upon a serious subject. Now he came to think of it, he remembered that she had been spending much of her time lately listening to this wonderful enthusiast. Was he really great enough to have influenced so light a creature, he wondered? Certainly there was something changed in her. He had noticed it during the last few days—an odd sort of nervousness, a greater kindness of speech, an unaccustomed gravity. Her remark set him thinking.
Chalmers leaned forward and bowed to Lady Mary. Again the shadow of a tolerant smile rested upon his lips.
“Very well, Lady Mary,” he said, “I will accept the truth of what you say. Yet a few decades ago, who cared about religion, or hearing the truth? It is simply because the men and women of Society have exhaustedevery means of self-gratification, that in a sort of unwholesome reaction they turn towards the things as far as possible removed from those with which they are surfeited. But I will leave Father Cresswell alone. I will ask you whether it is not the bizarre, the grotesque in art, which to-day wins most favor. I will turn to the making of books—I avoid the term literature—and I will ask you whether it is not the extravagant, the impossible, the deformed, in style and matter, which is most eagerly read. The simplest things in life should convince one. The novelist’s hero is no longer the fine, handsome young fellow of twenty years ago. He is something between forty and fifty, if not deformed, at least decrepit with dissipations, and with the gift of fascination, whatever that may mean, in place of the simpler attributes of a few decades ago. And the heroine!—There is no more book-muslin and innocence. She has, as a rule, green eyes; she is middle-aged, and if she has not been married before, she has had her affairs. Everything obvious in life, from politics to mutton-chops, is absolutely barred by anyone with any pretensions to intellect to-day.”
“One wonders,” Rochester murmured, “how in the course of your long life, Mr. Chalmers, you have been able to see so far and truthfully into the heart of things!”
Chalmers bowed.
“Mr. Rochester,” he said, “it is the newcomer in life, as in many other things, who sees most of the game.”
The conversation drifted away. Rochester was reminded of it only when driving home that night with hiswife. Again, as they took their places in the electric brougham, he was conscious of something changed, not only in the woman herself, but in her demeanor towards him.
“Do you mind,” he asked, soon after they started, “just dropping me at the club? It is scarcely out of your way, and I feel that I need a whiskey and soda, and a game of billiards, to take the taste of that young man’s talk out of my mouth. What a sickly brood of chickens the Duchess does encourage, to be sure!”
“I wonder if you’d mind not going to the club to-night, Henry?” Lady Mary asked quietly.
He turned toward her in surprise.
“Why, certainly not,” he answered. “Have we to go on anywhere?”
She shook her head.
“No!” she said. “Only I feel I’d like to talk to you for a little time, if you don’t mind. It’s nothing very much,” she continued, nervously twisting her handkerchief between her fingers.
“I’ll come home with pleasure,” Rochester interrupted. “Don’t look so scared,” he added, patting the back of her hand gently. “You know very well, if there is any little trouble, I shall be delighted to help you out.”
She did not remove her hand, but she looked out of the window. What she wanted to say seemed harder than ever. And after all, was it worth while? It would mean giving up a very agreeable side to life. It would mean—Her thoughts suddenly changed their course. Once more she was sitting upon that very uncomfortablebench in the great city hall. Once more she felt that curious new sensation, some answering vibration in her heart to the wonderful, passionate words which were bringing tears to the eyes not only of the women, but of the men, by whom she was surrounded. No, it was not an art, this—a trick! No acting was great enough to have touched the hearts of all this time and sin-hardened multitude. It was the truth—simply the truth.
“It isn’t exactly a little thing, Henry. I’ll tell you about it when we get home.”
No, it was no little thing, Rochester thought to himself, as he stood upon the hearthrug of her boudoir, and listened to the woman who sat on the end of the sofa a few feet away as she talked to him. Sometimes her eyes were raised to his—eyes whose color seemed more beautiful because of the tears in them. Sometimes her head was almost buried in her hands. But she talked all the time—an odd, disconnected sort of monologue, half confession, half appeal. There was little in it which seemed of any great moment, and yet to Rochester it was as though he were face to face with a tragedy. This woman was asking him much!
“I know so well,” she said, “what a useless, frivolous, miserable sort of life mine has been, and I know so well that I haven’t made the least attempt, Henry, to be a good wife to you. That wasn’t altogether my fault, was it?” she asked pleadingly. “Do tell me that.”
“It was not your fault at all,” he answered gravely. “It was part of our arrangement.”
“I am afraid,” she said, “that it was a very unholy, a very wicked arrangement, only you see I was badly brought up, and it seemed to me so natural, such an excellent way of providing a good time for myself, to marry you, and to owe you nothing except one thing. Henry, you will believe this, I know. I have flirted very badly, and I have had many of those little love-affairs which every woman I know indulges in—silly little affairs just to pass away the time, and to make one believe that one is living. But I have never really cared for anybody, and these little follies, although I suppose they are such a waste of emotion and truthfulness and real feeling, haven’t amounted to very much, Henry. You know what I mean. It is so difficult to say. But you believe that?”
“I believe it from my soul,” he answered.
“You see,” she went on, “it seemed to me all right, because there was no one to point out how foolish and silly it was to play one’s way through life as though it were a nursery, and we children, and to forget that we were grown-up, and that we were getting older with the years. You have been quite content without me, Henry?” she asked, looking up at him wistfully.
“Yes, I have been content!” he admitted, looking away from her, looking out of the room. “I have been content, after a fashion.”
“Ours was such a marriage of convenience,” she went on, “and you were so very plain-spoken about it, Henry. I feel somehow as though I were breaking a compact when I turn round and ask you whether it is not possiblethat we might be, perhaps, some day, a little more to one another. You know why I am almost afraid to say this. It has not been with you as it has been with me. I have always felt that she has been there—Pauline.”
She was tearing little bits from the lace of her handkerchief. Her eyes sought his fearfully.
“Don’t think, when I say that,” she continued, “that I say it with any idea of blaming you. You told me that you loved Pauline when we were engaged, and of course she was married then, and one did not expect—it never seemed likely that she might be free. And now she is free,” Lady Mary went on, with a little break in her voice, “and I am here, your wife, and I am afraid that you love her still so much that what I am saying to you must sound very, very unwelcome. Tell me, Henry. Is that so?”
Rochester was touched. It was impossible not to feel the sincerity of her words. He sank on one knee, and took her hands in his.
“Mary,” he said, “this is all so surprising. I did not expect it. We have lived so long and gone our own ways, and you have seemed until just lately so utterly content, that I quite forgot that anywhere in this butterfly little body there might be such a thing as a soul. Will you give me time, dear?”
“All the time you ask for,” she answered. “Oh! I know that I am asking a great deal, but you see I am not a very strong person, and if I give up everything else, I do want someone to lean on just a little. You are very strong, Henry,” she added, softly.
He took her face between his hands, and he kissed her, without passion, yet kindly, even tenderly.
“My dear,” he said, “I must think this thing out. At any rate, we might start by seeing a little more of one another?”
“Yes!” she answered shyly. “I should like that.”
“I will drive you down to Ranelagh to-morrow,” he said, “alone, and we will have lunch there.”
“I shall love it,” she answered. “Good night!”
She kissed him timidly, and flitted away into her room with a little backward glance and a wave of the hand. Rochester stood where she had left him, watching the place where she had disappeared, with the look in his eyes of a man who sees a ghost.
Rochester’s hansom set him down in Cadogan Street just as a new and very handsome motor-car moved slowly away from the door. His face darkened as he recognised Saton leaning back inside, and he ignored the other’s somewhat exaggerated and half ironical greeting.
“Lady Marrabel is ‘at home’?” he asked the butler, who knew him well.
The man hesitated.
“She will see you, no doubt, sir,” he remarked. “We had our orders that she was not ‘at home’ this afternoon.”
“The gentleman who has just left—” Rochester began.
“Mr. Saton,” the butler interrupted. “He has been with Lady Marrabel for some time.”
Rochester found himself face to face with Pauline, but it was a somewhat grim smile with which he welcomed her.
“Still fascinated, I see, by the new science, my dear Pauline,” he said. “I met your professor outside. He has a fine new motor-car. I imagine that after all he has discovered the way to extract money from science.”
Pauline shrugged her shoulders.
“Those are matters which do not concern me,” she said—“I might add, do not interest me. You are the only man I know who disputes Mr. Saton’s position, and you are wrong. He is wonderfully, marvelously gifted.”
Rochester bowed slightly.
“Perhaps,” he said, “I judge the man, and not his attainments.”
“You are very provincial,” she declared. “But come, don’t let us quarrel. You did not come here to talk about Mr. Saton.”
“No!” Rochester answered. “I had something else to say to you.”
His tone excited her curiosity. She looked at him more closely, and realized that he had indeed come upon some mission.
“Well,” she said, “what has happened? Is it——”
She broke off in her sentence. Rochester stood quite still, as though passionately anxious to understand the meaning of that interrupted thought.
“It is about Mary,” he said.
“Yes?” Pauline whispered. “Go on. Go on, please.”
“It is something quite unexpected,” Rochester said slowly—“something which I can assure you that her conduct has never at any time in any way suggested.”
“She wants to leave you?” Pauline asked, breathlessly.
“On the contrary,” Rochester said, “she wants what she has never asked for or expected—something, in fact, which was not in our marriage bond. She has been going to this man Father Cresswell’s meetings. She istalking about our duty, about making the best of one another.”
Pauline was amazed. Certainly no thought of this kind had ever entered into her head.
“Do you mean,” she said, “that Mary wants to give up her silly little flirtations, and turn serious?”
“That is exactly what she says,” Rochester answered. “I don’t believe she has the least idea that what she proposes comes so near to tragedy.”
“What have you answered?” Pauline asked.
“We have established a probationary period,” he said. “We have agreed to see a little more of one another. I drove her down to Ranelagh yesterday afternoon, and we are going to dine together to-night. What am I to do, Pauline? I have come to ask you. We must decide it together, you and I.”
She leaned a little forward in her chair. Her hands were clasped together. Her eyes were fixed on vacancy.
“It is a thunderbolt,” she murmured.
“It is amazing.”
“You must go back to her.”
Rochester drew a little breath between his teeth.
“Do you know what this means?” he asked.
“Yes, I know!” she answered. “And yet it is inevitable. What have you and I to look forward to? Sometimes I think that it is weakness to see so much of one another.”
“I am afraid,” Rochester said slowly, “that I would sooner have you for my dear friend, than be married to any woman who ever lived.”
“I wonder,” she said softly. “I wonder. You yourself,” she continued, “have always held that there is a certain vulgarity, a certain loss of fine feeling in the consummation of any attachment. The very barrier between us makes our intercourse seem sweeter and more desirable.”
“And yet,” he declared, leaning a little toward her, “there are times when nature will be heard—when one realizes the great call.”
“You are right,” she answered softly. “That is the terrible part of it all. You and I may never listen to it. We have to close our ears, to beat our hands and hide, when the time comes.”
“And is it worth while, I wonder?” he asked. “What do we gain——”
She held out her hand.
“Don’t, Henry,” she said—“don’t, especially now. Be thankful, rather, that there has been nothing in our great friendship which need keep you from your duty.”
“You mean that?” he asked hoarsely.
“You know that I mean it,” she answered. “You know that it must be.”
He rose to his feet and walked to the window. He remained there standing alone, for several minutes. When he came back, something had gone from his face. He moved heavily. He had the air of an older man.
“Pauline,” he said, “you send me away easily. Let me tell you one of the hard thoughts I have in my mind—one of the things that has tortured me. I have fancied—I may be wrong—but I have fancied that duringthe last few months you have been slipping away from me. I have felt it, somehow. There has been nothing tangible, and yet I have felt it. Answer me, honestly. Is this true? Is what I have told you, after all, something of a relief?”
She answered him volubly, almost hysterically. Her manner was absolutely foreign. He listened to her protestations almost in bewilderment.
“It is not true, Henry. You cannot mean what you are saying. I have always been the same. I am the same now. What could alter me? You don’t believe that anything could alter me?”
“Or any person?” he asked.
“Or any person,” she repeated, hastily. “Go through the list of our acquaintances, if you will. Have I ever shown any partiality for anyone? You cannot honestly believe that I have not been faithful to our unwritten compact?”
“Sometimes,” he said slowly, “I have had a horrible fear. Pauline, I want you to be kind to me. This has been a blow. I cannot easily get over it. Let me tell you this. One of the reasons—the great reason—why I fear and dread this coming change, is because it may leave you more susceptible to the influence of that person.”
“You mean Mr. Saton?” she said.
“I do,” Rochester answered. “Perhaps I ought not to have mentioned his name. Perhaps I ought not to have said anything about it. But there the whole thing is. If I thought that any part of your interest in theman’s scientific attainments had become diverted to the man himself, I should feel inclined to take him by the neck and throw him into the Serpentine.”
She said nothing. Her face had become very still, almost expressionless. Rochester felt his heart turn cold.
“Pauline,” he said, “before I go you will have to tell me that what I fear could not come to pass. Perhaps you think that I insult you in suggesting it. This young man may be clever, but he is not of our world—yours and mine. He is aposeurwith borrowed manners,flamboyant, a quack medicine man of the market place. He isn’t a gentleman, or anything like one. I am not really afraid, Pauline, and yet I need reassurance.”
“You have nothing to fear,” she answered quietly. “I am sorry, Henry, but I cannot discuss Mr. Saton with you. Yet don’t think I am blind. I know that there is truth in all you say. Sometimes little things about him set my very teeth on edge.”
Rochester drew a sigh of relief.
“So long as you realize this,” he said, “so long as you understand, I have no fear.”
Pauline looked away, with a queer little smile upon her lips. How little a man understood even the woman whom he cared for!
“Henry,” she said, “I can only do this. I can give you my hands, and I can wish you happiness. Go on with your experiment—I gather that for the moment it is only an experiment?”
“That is all,” he answered.
“When it is decided one way or the other,” she continued,“you must come and tell me. Please go away now. I want to be alone.”
Rochester kissed her hands, and passed out into the street. He had a curious and depressing conviction that he was about to commence a new chapter of his life.
Naudheim’s disapproval was very marked and evident. He scoffed at the great bowl of pink roses which stood upon the writing-table. He pushed scornfully on one side the elegantly shaped inkstand, with its burden of pens; the blotting-pad, with its silver edges; the piles of cream-laid foolscap. Most of all he looked with scornful disapprobation at his young host.
Saton was attired for his morning walk in the Park. During the last few weeks—or months, perhaps—a touch of foppishness had crept into his dress—a fondness for gray silk ties, a flower in his buttonhole, white linen gaiters drawn carefully over his patent boots. Certainly the contrast between this scrupulously dressed young man and Naudheim, bordered upon the absurd. Naudheim was shabby, unbrushed, unkempt. His collar was frayed, he wore no tie. The seams of his long black frock-coat had been parted and inked over and parted again. He wore carpet slippers and untidy socks. There were stains upon his waistcoat.
From underneath his shaggy gray eyebrows he shot a contemptuous glance at his host.
“My young friend,” he said, “you are growing too fine. I cannot work here.”
“Nonsense!” Saton answered, a little uneasily. “You can sweep all those things off the writing-table, if they seem too elaborate for you, and pitch the flowers out of the window if you like.”
“Bah!” Naudheim answered. “It is the atmosphere. I smell it everywhere. This is not the house for thoughts. This is not the house wherein one can build. My young friend, you have fallen away. You are like all the others. You listen to the tin music.”
“I think,” Saton answered, “that the work which I have done should be my answer to you. We are not all made alike. If I find it easier to breathe in an atmosphere such as this, then that is the atmosphere which I should choose. We do our best work amidst congenial surroundings. You in your den, and I in my library, can give of our best.”
Naudheim shook his head.
“You are a fool,” he said. “As for your work, it is clever, fatally clever. When I read what you sent me last month, and saw how clever it was, I knew that you were falling away. That is why I came. Now I have come, I understand. Listen! The secrets of science are won only by those who seek them, like children who in the time of trouble flee to their mother’s arms. Never a mistress in the world’s history has asked more from man than she has asked or has had more to give. She asks your life, your thoughts, your passions—every breath of your body must be a breath of desire for her and her alone. You think that you can strut about the world, a talking doll, pay court to women, listen to the voicesthat praise you, smirk your way through the days, and all the time climb. My young friend, no! I tell you no! Don’t interrupt me. I am going to speak my say and go.”
“Go?” Saton repeated. “Impossible! I am willing to work. I will work now. I simply thought that as the morning was so fine we might walk for a little time in the sunshine. But that is nothing.”
Naudheim shook his head.
“Not one word do I speak of those things that are precious to me, in this house,” he declared. “I tell you that its atmosphere would choke the life out of every thought that was ever conceived. You may blind others, even yourself, young man,” he went on, “but I know. You are a renegade. You would serve two mistresses. I am going.”
“You shall not,” Saton declared. “This is absurd. Come,” he added, trying to draw his arm through his visitor’s, “we will go into another room if this one annoys you.”
Naudheim stepped back. He thrust Saton away contemptuously. He was the taller of the two by some inches, and his eyes flashed with scorn as he turned toward the door.
“I leave this house at once,” he said. “I was a fool to come, but I am not such a fool as you, Bertrand Saton. Don’t write or come near me again until your sham house and your sham life are in ruins, and you yourself in the wilderness. I may take you to my heart again then. I cannot tell. But to-day I loathe you. Youare a creature of no account—a foolish, dazzled moth. Don’t dare to ring your bells. I need no flunkeys to show me the way to the door.”
Naudheim strode out, as a prophet of sterner days might have cast the dust of a pagan dancing hall from his feet. Saton for a moment was staggered. His composure left him. He walked aimlessly up and down the room, swinging his gloves in his hand, and muttering to himself.
Then Rachael came in. She walked with the help of two sticks. She seemed gaunter and thinner than ever, yet her eyes had lost little of their fire, although they seemed set deeper in the caverns of her face.
“Naudheim has gone,” she said. “What is wrong, Bertrand?”
“Naudheim is impossible,” Saton answered. “He came in here to work this morning, looked around the room, and began to storm. He objected to the flowers, to the writing-table, to me. He has shaken the dust of us off his feet, and gone back to his wretched cabin in Switzerland.”
She leaned on her sticks and looked at him.
“On the face of the earth,” she said, “there does not breathe a fool like you.”
Saton’s expression hardened.
“You, too!” he exclaimed. “Well, go on.”
“Can’t you understand,” the woman exclaimed, her voice shaking, “that we are on the verge of a precipice? Do you read the papers? There were questions asked last night in the House about what they called these fortune-tellingestablishments. Yet everything goes on without a change—by your orders, I am told. Oh, you fool! Huntley knows that he is being spied upon. In Bond Street, yesterday alone, three detectives called at different times. The thing can’t go on. The money that we should save ready to escape at the end, you spend, living like this. And the girl Lois—you are letting her slip out of your fingers.”
“My dear Rachael,” he answered, “in the first place, there is not a thread of evidence to connect you or me with any one of these places, or with Huntley’s office. In the second place, I am not letting Lois slip out of my fingers. She will be of age in three weeks’ time, and on her birthday I am going to take her away from Rochester, whatever means I have to use, and I am going to marry her at once. You think that I am reckless. Well, one must live. Remember that I am young and you are old. I have no place in the world except the place I make for myself. I cannot live in a pig-sty amongst the snows like Naudheim. I cannot find the whole elixir of life in thoughts and solitude as he does. There are other things—other things for men of my age.”
“You sail too near the wind. You are reckless.”
“Perhaps I am,” he answered. “Life in ten years’ time may very well become a stranger place to those who are alive and who have been taught the truth. But life, even as we know it to-day, is strange enough. Rachael, have you ever loved anyone?”
The woman seemed to become nerveless. She sank into a chair.
“Of the past I do not speak,” she said—“I choose never to speak.”
He took up his hat.
“No!” he remarked. “One sees easily enough that there are things in your past, Rachael. Sometimes the memory may burn. You see, I am living through those days now. The fire has hold of me, and not all the knowledge I have won, not all the dim coming secrets, from before the face of which some day I will tear aside the veil, not all the experiences through which I and I alone have passed, can help me to-day. So perhaps,” he added, turning toward the door, “I am a little reckless.”
Rachael let him depart without uttering a word. She turned in her chair to watch him cross the square. He was drawing on his light kid gloves. His silk hat was a mirror of elegance. His gold-headed stick was thrust at exactly the right angle under his arm. He swaggered a little—a new accomplishment, and he had the air of one who is well aware that he graces the ground he treads upon.
The woman looked away from him, and with a slow, painful movement her head drooped a little until it reached her hands. A slight shiver seemed to pass through her body. Then she was still, very still indeed. It seemed to her that she could see the end!
Saton deliberately turned into the Park, and sauntered along under the trees in the wake of a throng of fashionable promenaders. He exchanged greetings with many acquaintances, and here and there he stopped to say a few words. He noted, as usual, and with a recurrence of his constant discontent, the extraordinary difference in the demeanor of the women and the men of his acquaintance. The former, gracious and smiling, accepted him without reservation. Their murmured words and smiles were even more than gracious. On the other hand, there was scarcely a man whose manner did not denote a certain tolerance, not unmixed with contempt, as though, indeed, they were willing to accept the fact that he was of their acquaintance, but desired at the same time to emphasize the fact that he was outside the freemasonry of their class—a freak, whom they acknowledged on sufferance, as they might have done a wonderful lion-tamer, or a music-hall singer, or a steeplejack. He knew very well that there was not one of them who accepted his qualifications, notwithstanding the approval of their womankind, and the knowledge stung him bitterly.
Presently he came face to face with Lois, walking withVandermere. His face darkened for a moment. He had expressed his desire that she should see as little of this young man as possible, and here they were, not only walking together, but laughing and talking with all the easy naturalness of old acquaintanceship.
Saton drew a little breath of anger through his teeth as he paused and waited for them. He recognised the terms of intimacy upon which they were. He recognised that between them there was something which had never existed between Lois and himself, something which made their friendship a natural and significant thing. It was the freemasonry of class again, the magic ring against which he had torn his fingers in vain.
They saw him. The whole expression of the girl’s face changed. All the animation seemed to leave her manner. For a moment she clung instinctively to her companion. Afterwards she looked at him no more. She came to Saton at once, and held out her hand without any show of reluctance, yet wholly without spontaneity. It was as though she was obeying orders from a superior.
“Only this morning,” he said, “the Comtesse was speaking of you, Lois. She was so sorry that you had not been to see her lately.”
“I will come this afternoon,” Lois said quietly.
Vandermere, who had frowned heavily at the sound of her Christian name upon Saton’s lips, could scarcely conceal his anger at her promise.
“I have never had the pleasure,” he said, “of meeting the Comtesse. Perhaps I might be permitted to accompany Miss Champneyes?”
“You are very kind,” Saton answered. “I am sorry, but the Comtesse is beginning to feel her age, and she receives scarcely anyone. I am afraid that the days are past when she would care to make new acquaintances.”
“In any case,” Vandermere said, turning to his companion, “weren’t we going to Hurlingham this afternoon?”
“We were,” she said doubtfully, “but I think——”
She looked towards Saton. His face was inexpressive, but she seemed to read there something which prompted her words.
“I think that we must put off Hurlingham, if you do not mind,” she said to Vandermere. “I ought to go and see the Comtesse.”
“It is very kind of you,” Saton said slowly. “She will, I am sure, be glad to see you.”
Vandermere turned aside for a moment to exchange greetings with some acquaintances.
“Lois,” Saton said in a low tone, “you know I have told you that I do not like to see you so much with Captain Vandermere.”
“I cannot help it,” she answered. “He is always at the house. He is a great friend of Mr. Rochester’s. Besides,” she added, raising her eyes to his, “I like being with him.”
“You must consider also my likes and dislikes,” Saton said. “Think how hard it is for me to see you so very little.”
“Oh, you don’t care!” Lois exclaimed tremulously. “You know very well that you don’t care. It is all pretence,this. Why do you do it? Why do you make me so unhappy?”
“No, Lois,” he answered, “it is not pretence. I do care for you, and in a very few weeks I am coming to fetch you away to make you my wife. You will be glad, then,” he went on. “You will be quite happy.”
Vandermere turned back towards them. He had heard nothing of their conversation, but he saw that Lois was white, and he had hard work to speak calmly.
“Come,” he said to Lois, “I think we had better go on. Good morning, Mr. Saton!”
Saton stood aside to let them pass. He knew very well that Lois would have stayed with him, had he bidden it, but he made no attempt to induce her to do so.
“Till this afternoon,” he said, taking off his hat with a little flourish.
“Hang that fellow!” Vandermere muttered, as he looked at Lois, and saw the change in her. “Why do you let him talk to you, dear? You don’t like him. I am sure that you do not. Why do you allow him to worry you?”
“I think,” Lois answered, “that I do like him. Oh, I must like him, Maurice!”
“Yes?” he answered.
“Don’t let us talk about him. He has gone away now. Come with me to the other end of the Park. Let us hurry....”
Saton walked on until he saw a certain mauve parasol raised a little over one of the seats. A moment afterwards, hat in hand, he was standing before Pauline.
“Has he come?” she asked, as he bent over her fingers.
Saton’s face clouded.
“Yes!” he answered. “He came last night. To tell you the truth, he has just gone away in a temper. I do not know whether he will return to the house or not.”
“Why?” she asked quickly.
Saton laughed to cover his annoyance.
“He does not approve of the luxury of my surroundings,” he answered. “He declined to write at my desk, or to sit in my room.”
“I don’t wonder at it,” she answered. “You know how he worships simplicity.”
“Simplicity!” Saton exclaimed. “You should see the place where he writes himself. There is no carpet upon the floor, a block of wood for a writing-table, a penny bottle of ink, and a gnawed and bitten penholder only an inch or two long.”
Pauline nodded.
“I can understand it,” she said. “I can understand, too, how your rooms would affect him. You should have thought of that. If he has gone away altogether, how will you be able to finish your work?”
“I must do without him,” Saton answered.
Pauline looked at him critically, dispassionately.
“I do not believe that you can do without him,” she said. “You are losing your hold upon your work. I have noticed it for weeks. Don’t you think that you are frittering away a great deal of your time and thoughts? Don’t you think that the very small things of life, thingsthat are not worth counting, have absorbed a good deal of your attention lately?”
He was annoyed, and yet flattered that she should speak to him so intimately.
“It may be so,” he admitted. “And yet, do you know why I have chosen to mix a little more with my fellows?”
“No!” she answered. “I do not know why.”
“It is because I must,” he said, lowering his tone. “It is because I must see something of you.”
The lace of her parasol drooped a little. Her face was hidden now, and her voice seemed to come from a long way off.
“That is very foolish,” she said. “In the first place, if my opinion of you is worth anything, I tell you frankly that I would rather see you with ink-stained fingers and worn clothes, climbing your way up toward the truth, working and thinking in an atmosphere which was not befouled with all the small and petty things of life. It seems to me that since it amused you to play the young man of fashion, you have lost your touch—some portion of it, at any rate—upon the greater things.”
Saton was very angry now. He was only indifferently successful in his attempt to conceal the fact.
“You, too,” he muttered. “Well, we shall see. Naudheim has brains, and he has worked for many years. He had worked, indeed, for many years when the glimmerings of this thing first came to me. He could help me if he would, but if he will not, I can do it alone.”
“I wonder.”
“You do not believe in me,” he declared.
“No,” she answered, “I do not believe in you—not altogether!”
Rochester and his wife drove down the Park. Saton followed her eyes, noticing her slight start, and gazed after them with brooding face.
“Rochester is becoming quite a devoted husband,” he remarked, with a sneer.
“Quite,” she answered. “They spend most of their time together now.”
“And Lady Mary, I understand,” he went on, “has reformed. Yesterday she was opening the new wing of a hospital, and the day before she was speaking at a Girls’ Friendly Society meeting. It’s an odd little place, the world, or rather this one particular corner of it.”
She rose, with a little shrug of the shoulders, and held out her hand.
“I must go,” she said. “I am lunching early.”
“May I walk a little way with you?” he begged.
She hesitated. After all, perhaps, it was a phase of snobbery to dislike being seen with him—something of that same feeling which she had never failed to remark in him.
“If you please,” she answered. “I am going to take a taximeter at the Park gates.”
“I will walk with you as far as there,” he said.
He tried to talk to her on ordinary topics, but he felt at once a disadvantage. He knew so little of the people, the little round of life in which she lived. Before they reached the gates they had relapsed into silence.