To desire death is to live, and to desire life is to die. It is the mockery of human existence, the experience of all. I had willed to die at that moment, without further speech or opportunity for thought, and death seemed to have turned his back upon me.
We drifted on, tossed high and low by the tall waves which rose around us like black shadows, threatening destruction at every moment. Often when we had seen one towering above us we had thought that the end had come, and I had felt my lover's arms tighten around me, and my lips had clung close to his. But again and again a reprieve was granted to us. Although every timber in our frail craft shivered, we survived the shock and drifted into smoother water.
A little before midnight the wind dropped, although there was a heavy sea still running. Through a dimly woven mist we could see the stars faintly shining between the masses of black clouds rolling across the wind-swept sky. But there was no moon; nothing to show us whither we were drifting upon the waste of waters. There was something inexpressibly weird in that darkness. It seemed less a blank darkness than a darkness of moving shapes and figures—a living darkness, somehow suggesting death. It will live in my memory forever.
"Do you mind dying, Lumley?" I asked him once.
"Yes," he answered solemnly, "I do. I am just learning how sweet it would be to live."
I held him tighter, for at that moment a great wave had broken over us. I dreaded nothing but separation.
"Supposing that, if we lived, something came between us?" I whispered. "Suppose there was something between us which nothing could alter, nothing could move—what then?"
"I cannot suppose it," he answered. "Nothing could come between us that I would not overcome—nothing in life."
"Still, if it were so?" I persisted.
"Then I would sooner die like this if we are to die. We are in God's hands."
I shuddered at that last sentence. If indeed we were on the threshold of eternity, what had I to hope from God? Alas! at that moment my earthly love was so strong that the fear of death was weak and faint.
We sat there silent and full of strange emotions, and expecting every moment the end to come. All of a sudden, we both of us gave a great cry, and my lover leaped up so that our boat rocked violently and nearly capsized. For my part, I sat still, gazing, with distended eyes and parted lips, upon the strangest sight which I had ever seen.
A great blaze of brilliant light seemed suddenly to flash into the horizon, and falling into one long level ray, to travel slowly across the surface of the water toward us. Everything which lay in its path was revealed to us with minute and wonderful distinctness. So vivid was the illumination that we could see the white foam on the top of the green waves, and the floating seaweed rising and falling. Outside that one level blaze, more brilliant even than the sunlight, the darkness seemed blacker and more impenetrable than ever. It was a sight so marvelous that I held my breath, awed and wondering. Then my lover gave a great cry.
"Margharita, my love, my love, we are saved!"
"What is it?" I whispered.
"The electric search light. I had it fitted to theStormy Petrelby the purest chance a few months ago. Here it comes. Put your hand before your eyes, sweetheart. Oh, God, that they may see us!"
Swiftly it passed across the great desert of waters, and reached us. We seemed suddenly bathed in a blinding glare of white light, and, notwithstanding our anxiety, were forced to cover our eyes. There was a moment's suspense. Then the sound of a cannon came booming across the sea, and a rocket sped up into the air.
"Thank God! thank God!" my lover cried, "they have seen us. Look up, Margharita! They are more than a mile away now, but they will be here in a quarter of an hour. We are saved!"
He was right. In less than that time a boat from theStormy Petrelhad picked us up, and we were standing in for land, firing rockets all the way to announce the news to Lord and Lady St. Maurice. So ended this, the most eventful day of my life.
And with its close has ended that sworn purpose which has brought me here. I, Margharita di Marioni, as one day I had hoped to call myself, am about to disgrace the traditions and honor of my race. I am going to break my faith with a suffering old man. I am going to tell my uncle that my hand can work no harm upon any of this family.
Before me here lies his answer to my letter—my confession to him. How he trusts me, when even now he never doubts.
"Margharita,—I have received your letter, and I have pondered over it. You are young to have such a sorrow, yet I do not doubt but that you will act as becomes your race. You can never think of marriage with this man; you a Marioni, he a St. Maurice! Yet I grieve that you have let such a feeling steal into your heart. Pluck it out, Margharita, I charge you; pluck it out by the roots! Think not of the wrong done to me, or, if you do, think of me not as a man and your uncle, but as Count Leonardo di Marioni, the head of my family, the head of your family. We have been the victims, but the day of our vengeance is at hand. There is no life without its sorrows, child! In the days to come, happiness will teach you to forget this one.
"Farewell, my child. I shall send you no more notes. Write or come to me the moment the deed is done! Come to me, if you can; I would hear your own lips tell me the news. Yet do as seems best to you. In sympathy and love,
"L. di M.
"One word more, child. Do not for a moment imagine that I blame you for what has happened. Old man though I am, I too know something of the marvels and the vagaries of this same love. Will can have little to do with its course. I, who have suffered so deeply, Margharita, can and do sympathize and feel for you."
This is the letter. I shall seal it up with the others, and this little record of my life, on the last page of which I am now writing. When I leave here they will go with me.
Yes, it is the dawn of a new day. Shall I ever see another, I wonder? I think not! For me, no longer will the sun rise and set, the breezes blow, and the earth be fair and sweet. All these things might have been so much to me, for I have held in my hand the key to an everlasting happiness—that deathless love which opens the gates to heaven; which sanctifies life and hallows death. Oh! forgive me that I leave you, my love! There was no other way. Only I pray that in that other world we may meet again in the days to come, and that the music of our love may ring once more through heart and soul. Farewell! Farewell!
"Margharita! You have come at last. It is done, then. Say that it is done!"
She stood quite still in the humble red-tiled sitting-room, and looked at him with a great compassion shining out of her dark, clear eyes. He was worn almost to a shadow, and his limbs were shaking with weakness, as he half rose to greet her. Only his eyes were still alight and burning. Save for them he might have been a corpse.
Something of the old passionate pity swept through her as she stood there, but its fierceness had died away. Her heart leaped no longer in quick response to the fire in those still undimmed eyes. She had been a girl then, a girl with all the fierce untrained nature of her mother's race; she was a woman now, a sad-faced, sorrowful woman. He was quick to see the change.
"Margharita, my child, you have been ill."
Still she did not answer. Silently she knelt down by the side of his armchair and took his withered, delicate hand in hers. A great bowl of white hyacinths stood on a table by the window, and the air was faint with their perfume.
"I am not ill," she said gently. "I was frightened on my way here, and had to run. There was a fire last night at the lunatic asylum at Fritton, and some of the mad people have escaped. I saw one of them in the distance, and the keepers after him. They wanted me to go back, but I would come."
He stooped down and kissed her forehead, with cold, dry lips.
"I knew that you would be here soon," he said. "My letters reached you safely?"
"Yes."
She shuddered at the gathering strength in his tone, and the fierce light which had swept into his face.
"It is done, child. Say that it is done!"
"No."
Something in her sad tone and subdued manner seemed to strike a note of fear in his heart. He leaned forward, grasping the sides of his chair with nervous, quivering fingers, and looked hurriedly into her face.
"No; you have had no chance, then? But you will have soon? Is it not so? Soon, very soon?"
She threw her arms around his neck. He made no response, nor did he thrust her away. He remained quite passive.
"It is not that, uncle. Oh, listen to me. Do not thrust me away. I cannot do this thing."
He sat as still as marble. There was no change, no emotion in his face. Yet her heart sank within her.
"Oh, listen to me," she pleaded passionately. "You do not know her as she is now. She is good and kind—a gentle-hearted woman. It was so long ago; and it was not out of malice to you, but to save the man she loved. You hear me, do you not? You are listening. She has not forgotten you. Often she sorrows for you. It was cruel—I know that it was cruel—but she was a woman, and she loved him. Let us steal away together and bury these dark dreams of the past. I will never leave you; I will wait upon you always; I will be your slave. Forgiveness is more sweet than vengeance. Oh, tell me that it shall be so. Why do you not speak to me?"
He sat quite still, like a man who is stunned by some sudden and unexpected blow. He seemed dazed. She wondered, even, whether he had heard her.
"Uncle, shall it not be so?" she whispered. "Let us go away from here and leave her. I am not thinking about him. I will not see him again. I will never dream of marrying him. Let us go this very day, this very hour!"
Then he turned slowly toward her, thrust her hand from around his neck, and stood up.
"You have been false to me, Margharita," he said, in a slow, quiet tone. "After all, it is only natural. When you first came to me, I thought I saw your mother's spirit blazing in your dark eyes, and I trusted you. I was to blame. I forgot the tradesman's blood. I do not curse you. You do not understand, that is all. Learn now that the oath of a Marioni is as deathless and unchangeable as the hills of his native land. Will you go away at once, please? I do not wish to see you again."
His speech so quiet, so self-contained, bewildered her. There was not a single trace of passion or bitterness in it. She stretched out her hands toward him, but she felt chilled.
"Uncle, you——"
"Will you go away, please?" he interrupted coldly.
She turned toward the door, weeping. She had not meant to go far—only out on to the garden-seat, where she might sit and think. But he saw another purpose in her departure, and a sudden passion fired him. She heard his step as he rose hastily, and she felt his cold fingers upon her wrist.
"You would go to warn her!" he cried, his voice trembling with anger; "I read it in your face. You are as false as sin, but you shall not rob me of the crown of my life! No one shall rob me of it! Vengeance belongs to me, and by this symbol of my oath I will have it!"
He snatched a handful of white blossoms from the bowl, and crushed them in his fingers. Then he threw them upon the ground and trampled upon them.
"Thus did she betray the sacred bonds of our Order when, for her lover's sake, she added treachery to cunning, and wrecked my life, made Leonardo, Count of the Marionis, the lonely inmate of prison walls, the scorn and pity of all men. Thus did she write her own fate upon a far future page of the tablets of time. Talk to me not of forgiveness or mercy, girl! My hate lives in me as the breath of my body, and with my body alone will it die!"
His withered figure seemed to have gathered strength and dignity, and his appearance and tone, as he gazed scornfully down at the girl at his feet, was full of a strange dramatic force. Her heart sank as she listened to him. This was no idle, vulgar passion, no morbid craving for evil, which animated him. It was a purpose which had become hallowed to him; something which he had come to look upon as his sacred right. She understood how her drawing back must seem to him. As though a flash of light had laid bare his mind, she saw how weak, how pitifully weak, any words of hers must sound, so she was silent.
He had commenced walking up and down the room; and, watching him fearfully, she saw that his manner was gradually changing. The unnatural calm into which he had momentarily relapsed was leaving him, and he was becoming every moment more and more excited. Fire flashed in his eyes, and he was muttering broken words and sentences to himself. Once he raised his clasped hands to the roof in a threatening gesture, and in the act of doing so she saw the blue flash of a stiletto in his breast pocket. It frightened her, and she moved toward the door.
It seemed almost as though he read her purpose in her terror-stricken face, and it maddened him. He caught her by the wrist and thrust her back.
"You shall not leave this room, girl!" he cried. "Wait, and soon I will bring you news!"
She stood, still panting, overcome for a moment by the strength of his grip. Before she could recover herself, he had caught up his hat and was gone. Outside, she heard the sound of a key in the lock. She was a prisoner!
Her first thought was the window. Alas! it was too small even for her to get her head through. She cried out. No one answered; there was no one to answer. She was alone in the cottage, and helpless, and away over the cliffs, toward Mallory Grange, she could see a small, dark figure walking steadily along, with bent head and swift steps. The cottage stood by itself, a mile from the village, and was approached only by a cliff path. She turned away from the window in despair. It seemed to her then that the time for her final sacrifice had indeed come.
It was a warm, drowsy morning, and the air which floated in through the open lattice window was heavy with the perfume of flowers, mingled with the faint ozone of the sea. Outside, the placid silence was broken only by the murmurous buzzing of insects and the soft lapping of the tide upon the shingly sands. Within the room, a pale-faced girl knelt upon the floor, with her long, slim fingers stretched upward, and the passionate despair of death in her cold, white features. The sunshine laughed upon her hair, and glanced around her, bathing her beautiful face in its fresh, bright glory. Was it an answer to her prayer, she wondered—her prayer for peace and forgiveness? Oh, that it might be so! God grant it!
There was no fear in her face, though only a moment before she had taken out and swallowed the contents of that little packet of poison which had burned in her bosom for those last few days. But there had been just one passing shade of bitterness. Her life had been so short, so joyless, until there had come to her that brief taste of wonderful, amazing happiness. She was young to die—to die with the delirium of that passionate joy still burning in her veins.
"Yet, after all, it is best!" she whispered softly, at the end of that unspoken prayer; and with those words of calm resignation, a change crept softly in upon her face. It seemed almost as though, while yet on earth, there had come to her a touch of that exquisite spiritual beauty which follows only upon the extinction of all earthly passion, and the uplifting into a purer, sweeter life. And her eyes closed upon the sunlight, and darkness stole in upon her senses. She lay quite still upon the floor; but the smile still lingered upon her lips, making her face more lovely even in its cold repose than when the glow of youth and life had shone in her dark, clear eyes, and lent expression to her features. Saints like St. Francis of Assisi may die thus, but seldom women.
"Help! For God's sake, help!"
A woman's cry of agony rang out upon the sweet morning stillness. Count Marioni, who had been hurrying on with downcast head, stood still in the cliff path and lifted his head. It was the woman whose memory he had cursed who stood before him—the woman on whom his vengeance was to fall.
Her face was as white as his own, and in the swiftness of her flight her hat had fallen away and her hair was streaming in the breeze. Yet in that moment of her awful fear she recognized him, and shrank back trembling, as though some unseen hand had palsied her tongue, and laid a cold weight upon her heart They stood face to face, breathless and speechless. A host of forgotten sensations, kindled by her appearance, had leaped up within the Sicilian's heart. He had indeed loved this woman.
"Merciful God! to meet you here," she faltered. "You will help me? Oh, you will help me? My husband is being murdered there on the cliff by an escaped lunatic. Oh! Leonardo, save him, and you may strike me dead at your feet. It is I whom you should hate, not him. Oh, come! Come, or it will be too late!"
He stood quite still, looking at her curiously.
"And it is I to whom you dare to come for help—I whom you ask to save him—your husband? Adrienne, do you remember my words on the sands at Palermo?"
She wrung her hands, frantically imploring.
"How can I remember anything—think of anything, now? For the love of God, help him," she begged, seizing his hand. "That was all so long ago. You would not have him killed here before my eyes? Come! Oh, do come!"
"Lead the way," he answered sternly. "Call your loudest for other help. I make no promise, but I will see this tragedy."
She ran back along the path, and he followed her. They turned suddenly an abrupt corner, and came upon two men locked in one another's arms, and swaying backward and forward upon the short green turf. The lunatic, an immense fellow, more than six feet high, was clutching his opponent's throat with his left hand, while with his right he brandished a long table-knife with keenly-sharpened edge. The struggle was virtually over. The madman's strength was more than human, and desperately though he had struggled, Lord St. Maurice was lying exhausted and overcome in his arms.
With a final effort he turned his head at the sound of footsteps, and saw them come—his wife and this shrunken little old man. But close at hand though they were, nothing could help him now. He saw the steel flashing in the sunlight, and he closed his eyes.
The knife descended, but Lord St. Maurice remained unhurt. With a swiftness which seemed almost incredible, the Sicilian had sprung between them, and the knife was quivering in his side. Behind, the lunatic was struggling helplessly in the grasp of three keepers.
There was a wild cry of horror from Lady St. Maurice, a choking gasp of relief from her husband, and a horrid chuckle of triumph from the madman as he gazed upon his handiwork. But after that there was silence—a deep, awe-stricken silence—the silence of those who stand in the presence of death.
Count Marioni lay on the turf where he had sunk, very white and very still, with the blood dropping slowly from his wound upon the grass, and his eyes closed. At first they thought that he was already dead; but, as though aroused by Lady St. Maurice's broken sobs, he opened his eyes and looked up. His lips moved, and she stooped low down to catch the sound.
"Will you tell Margharita that this was best?" he faltered. "I have heard a whisper from over the sea, and—and the White Hyacinth forgives. I forgive. She will understand."
"Leonardo," she sobbed, "your vengeance——"
He interrupted her.
"This is my vengeance!" he said. "I have kept my oath!"
Then he closed his eyes, and a gray shade stole into his pallid face. A breeze sprung up from the sea, and the tall, blood-red poppies, which stood up all around him like a regiment of soldiers, bent their quivering heads till one or two of them actually touched his cheek. He did not move; he was dead.
Lord and Lady Lumley had lingered long in Rome, and now, on the eve of their departure, they had spent nearly the whole of a bright November afternoon buying curios of a wizened old dealer, whose shop they had found in one of the dark narrow streets at the back of the Piazza Angelo. Lady Lumley had taken up a curious old ring, and was examining it with a vague sense of familiarity.
"Ten pounds for that ring, my lady," the curio dealer remarked, "and it has a history. You will see that it bears the arms and motto of the Marionis, once the most powerful family in Sicily. I had it from the late Count himself."
Lady Lumley sank into the little chair by the counter, holding the ring tightly in her hand.
"Will you tell us the history?" she asked in a low tone.
The man hesitated.
"If I do so," he said doubtfully, "will you promise to keep it absolutely secret?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, I have told it to no one yet, but I will tell it to you. Many years ago I was a chemist, and among my customers was Count Leonardo di Marioni. His history was a very sad one, as doubtless you may have heard. When he was quite a young man he was arrested on some political charge, and imprisoned for five-and-twenty years—a cruel time. Well, scarcely more than twelve months ago he came to me here, so altered that I found it hard indeed to recognize him. Poor old gentleman, when he had talked for a while, I felt quite sure that his long confinement had affected his mind, and his errand with me made me sure of it. He came to buy a celebrated poison which I used at one time to be secretly noted for, and I could tell from his manner that he wanted it for some fatal use. Well, I thought at first of refusing it altogether, but what was the use of that? Some one else would have sold him an equally powerful poison, and the mischief would be done all the same. So, after a little consideration, I made up quite an innocent powder, which might cause a little momentary faintness, but which could do no further harm, and I gave it to him as the real thing. I couldn't take money for doing a thing like that, so he pressed this ring upon me. You see, it really has a history."
Lord Lumley took his wife's hand and pressed it tenderly. In the deep gloom of the shop the curio dealer could not see the tears which glistened in her dark eyes.
"We will have the ring!" Lord Lumley said, taking a note from his pocket-book and handing it across the counter.
The man held it up to the light.
"One hundred pounds," he remarked. "I shall owe your lordship ninety."
Lord Lumley shook his head.
"No, Signor Paschuli, you owe me nothing; it is I who owe you a wife. Come, Margharita, let us get out into the sunshine again."
And Signor Paschuli kept the note. But he has come to the conclusion that all Englishmen traveling on their honeymoon are mad.
Sir Powers Fiske, though far from being a sybarite, possessed a fundamental but crudely developed love of the beautiful. Before all things with him came his devotion to science and scientific investigation. But for his unexpected accession to the title and estates he would, without doubt, have become a denizen of Harley Street, and made his way without difficulty into the front ranks of his profession. With the passing away of all necessity for work came a curious era of half-doubtful dilettanteism, a time during which he read hugely, traveled a good deal, and finally returned to England with the seeds of a great unrest sown in his mind.
Mysticism and psychology, which he had dabbled in at first half-contemptuously, had become serious studies to him. Dimly he felt the fascination of that unending effort which from the days of the Chaldeans had swayed the lives of a long succession of the world's masters, the effort to establish some sort of communication, however faint, however speculative, between the world of known things and the world beyond. At times he found himself moved to the most profound self-ridicule. He would ask himself how it was possible for a man of science seriously to investigate problems whose very foundation must be an assumption. He looked at his walls lined with books, and he smiled grimly as he realized how little, after all, they had taught him. The sum of all that he had learned from them amounted to nothing. Yet he remembered what Spencer Trowse, a fellow student, had said to him. A sudden flush had lightened his thin cheeks, pallid with the ceaseless energy of their student life.
"After all, Powers, I think that we are wasting our days," he exclaimed. "Those ancients saw no farther behind the veil than we. I am tired of all this musty lore, this delving among cobwebs."
"What then?" Powers had asked. "Modern scholarship has taught us little enough."
"Let us have done with all scholarship," Trowse answered. "It is the laws of humanity we want to understand. Let us study them at first hand. Let us go down among the people."
"What can this rabble teach us?" Powers had asked himself, full of the intellectual contempt of the young student for the whole pleasure-loving world. "Whether their wings be soiled or pure, they are only butterflies!"
Trowse smiled grimly.
"They are the living evidences," he said, "of laws which are worth studying. If we would understand humanity we must not start by despising any part of it."
With characteristic impetuosity the two young men had thrown themselves heart and soul into their new enterprise. They haunted police courts and places of entertainment. They lived for a while in a great industrial center; they listened to the hoarse, tragic undernote of the millions underneath. They made their bow at the reception of a duchess, and spent a whole Bank Holiday dancing upon Hampstead Heath. These and many other phases of life they had encountered with an amusement, in Powers' case partly genuine, in Trowse's wholly tolerant. For all the time they kept strenuously in view their real end. They wanted to understand the causes of all that they saw; they wanted to discover laws.
The end of their enterprise came suddenly. A disaster in his family left Trowse unexpectedly poor. It was necessary for him to take at once some wage-earning position. The two young men parted, curiously enough, without regret. Powers, though no sentimentalist, possessed his due share of the affections, had an innate love for the beautiful, and a longing for a catholic and universal understanding of his fellows. Where Trowse would gaze with unmoved face, and pursue his calm calculations, Powers could only peer with barely veiled horror. They held together through those three years of unorthodox study, but toward the end of it they had drawn wide apart. Trowse entered the ranks of his profession a man of steel, without nerves or sentiment or pity. Powers, with his fuller understanding of life, had no longer any desire for a regular career. Possessed of ample means, the necessity for it had never existed. He left England almost at once, and entered upon a somewhat restless but comprehensive scheme of travel.
At last, shortly after his return home, one afternoon fate cast into his way on the Edgware Road the very subject that he sought. It was in the fringe of a city fog; the sky was heavy with clouds, the pavements were sloppy with recent rains; the broad thoroughfare was almost deserted when there glided by him the figure of a woman who held herself with a distinction oddly at variance with her shabby clothes. There was in her eyes the look of one in extremity—of a woman who had none of the ordinary fear of death and who would dare great things to pass from the evil place in which fate had set her to even a momentary draft from the cup of life.
Sir Powers Fiske approached her. His eyes held hers—they were bright with a certain steely radiance. She felt her heart beating fast, the noise of the traffic beyond seemed to her to come from some distance. He spoke to her, and her eyes which mirrored dark months lost resentment after a moment and seemed to understand.
They gazed steadfastly at one another—something greater than their surroundings, greater even than themselves seemed to pass between them. With swift intelligence, she felt him to be no more a boulevardier than she was light. He murmured a few conventionalities and when he asked her to have tea with him she accepted. Inside the warm little tea-room, he told her of his work and of himself, and once secure in the knowledge of the mere unit of humanity she represented to him, she told him of herself. The human note was strong in all she said, and he declared in all her talk the marks of a cultured intellect that must have rendered beyond endurance the shoddy environment of a draper's establishment where she passed her days. He offered her the means of escape from her present slavery by becoming his subject for experiment and she did not shrink. On her own testimony she stood alone in the world and upon her sudden removal from her present life there would be no one with even the right to search for her. He looked into her frail beautiful face marveling at the depth of misery which produced this brave despair and rising held out his hand.
"I must thank you very much for your society—and for your confidence," he said, "I have your address and I will write to you."
To-night he was in a curiously disturbed mood. All the evening Eleanor Surtoes had figured in his thoughts. He had seen her several times since that first meeting on the Edgware Road. She was one of the more tragic figures in that world which he had spent so much strenuous effort seeking to understand. The possibilities in connection with her loomed large in his imagination. He was oppressed with fears which were altogether new to him. Fortune could never have provided him with a human creature modeled more exactly according to his requirements. He knew her life and the ways of it. The confidence which he felt as to her ultimate decision was not exaggerated. She would come to him for an explanation of his words, and she would accept his proposition. Yet never since his idea had first begun to loom large in his thoughts did he look upon it with less enthusiasm than at this moment. A few hours ago he had written to her—asked her to spend a day upon the river with him. He knew that she would come. The crisis was close at hand. He hoped to be able to delay it.
The door was quietly opened. His servant stood upon the threshold.
"There is a young lady asking for you, Sir Powers—the name, I believe, is Surtoes."
"Show her in at once."
The man bowed. A moment later he ushered Eleanor in. Her hat was beaten about with wind and rain, even her hair was disordered. She was breathless with rapid walking, her cheeks were wet, and the raindrops hung about her clothes. Powers held out his hand and drew her toward the fire.
"So you have come to see me," he said, in a tone as nearly matter-of-fact as he could make it. "I am delighted! I was just looking forward to a lonely and a particularly dull evening."
He wheeled an easy chair to the fire, and placed her in it. He saw that she was nervous and embarrassed, and he continued to talk.
"To-night," he said, "is one of the most horrible instances of our marvelous climate. I had just written to ask you to have a day upon the river with me. Imagine it."
She smiled, and the color began to reappear in her cheeks.
"I want you, please, to tell me the exact truth," she said. "My coming here, I know, is very foolish. I want to know whether it inconveniences you in any way—whether your mother or any one else might think it strange?"
He laughed reassuringly.
"Mine is entirely a bachelor establishment," he declared. "My mother and sister live in Berkeley Square. There is no one here to whom your visit would be even a subject of remark."
She gave a little sigh of relief, and leaned back in her chair. The warmth and comfort of the room after that dreary walk through the rain and hail outside were like a strong, sweet sedative. A curious sense of rest, of finality, took possession of her. With the closing of the front door, with the first breath of that air of indefinable luxury which everywhere pervaded her new surroundings, she seemed to pass into a new order of things. There had been a single moment of breathless excitement, of trembling speculation as to the nature of his greeting, but his welcome had been so easy and natural that her fears had been all dispelled by his first few words.
"It is perhaps very foolish of me to come here," she said, "but I have never quite forgotten what you said to me in the tea-room. It was probably nonsense. If so, please tell me, and let me go."
His brows went up in vague surprise; then ignoring her words, he lighted a cigarette, and stood thoughtfully puffing it, his elbow resting on the broad oaken mantelpiece.
"I must tell you something more about myself," he said, presently. "It chanced that when I was at Calcutta several years ago, I met a native Indian doctor to whom I was fortunate enough to be of some service. My meeting with this man was the most wonderful thing which has ever happened to me. I shall never cease to be grateful to him. If the world knew his name and what he has made possible to science, he would be the most famous man of this or any generation. He reawakened all my old interest in my profession."
His pale face had become fervid, the bright light of the enthusiast was burning in his dark eyes. Eleanor felt that she had become once more only a unit in his eyes, a mere atom of humanity, whose interest to him was purely scientific and impersonal. She found herself trembling. What had these things to do with her? She was afraid of what might come. She remembered that he had spoken of death.
"Oh, that wonderful East," he continued, in a low tone. "How puny it makes us feel with our new civilization, our shoddiness, our materialism, which is only another name for hopeless ignorance. What treasures of art lie buried there, what strange secrets sleep forever in the tombs of their wise men. Halkar told me that he was but the disciple of one immeasurably greater, who had died, indeed, with many of the primal secrets of existence locked in his bosom because there was no one left behind with whom he dared to trust them."
"Tell me about these secrets," Eleanor said. "Were they of the past, or of the future? And what have you or I to do with them?"
"We are children of the ages," he answered, "and it is our heritage to learn. Halkar taught me much. He set me down at the gate of that wonderful inner world. He placed in my hands the key. With your aid, it is possible that I may pass inside."
"With my aid!" Eleanor exclaimed breathlessly. "How can that be? What could I do?"
He smiled at her, and Eleanor felt again that vague fear stirring in her heart.
"One day Halkar took me to a native village. We went to the house of a rich man. We found him at home, just returned from hunting. He was handsome, hospitable, and, it seemed to me, intelligent. But just before we left Halkar asked him a question about the great storm which laid waste the village and the whole countryside only a year before. He looked puzzled, answered us courteously, but vaguely. He remembered nothing."
He paused.
"There was an English nurse-girl," he continued. "Halkar took me to see her. She was plump, rosy, and good-natured. She was engaged to be married to a gentleman's servant, and she chattered away gaily, and told me all about it. A year before a mad fakir had run amuck, had killed a soldier to whom she was to have been married the next day, and both the children who had been in her charge. The shock had nearly sent her mad. Yet when Halkar spoke to her of these things she looked puzzled. She remembered nothing."
"Well?" Eleanor asked.
"Their memory," he said slowly, "was gone. Their reason was saved. Halkar was the physician."
She shivered, and sat looking into the fire with eyes full of fear.
"Halkar," he said, "had learned much, but there was more still. It has taken me many years, but at last I believe that I have learned the secret which baffled him all his days. All that I need is a subject."
There was a short, tense silence. Eleanor sat quite still, nervously clasping and unclasping her hands, her eyes steadfastly fixed upon the fire. He watched her covertly.
"You know so little of me," she murmured, "I am almost a stranger to you. How can you tell whether I should be suitable—even if I were willing?"
"You will remember the two cases which I have mentioned to you," he answered. "The man was chosen by Halkar because in the great storm he had lost wife, and friends, and children, and in his grief he prayed for forgetfulness. The girl was chosen because the tragedy which she had witnessed had driven her far along the road to madness, and this merciful loss of memory was her salvation, also. The reason you have been chosen is because I looked into your eyes, and it seemed to me that I saw there more than the ordinary weariness of life. Then I heard you speak, and in your tone, too, was more than the ordinary bitterness of misfortune. Listen, I will tell you more. I will tell you what as yet I have not breathed to a living soul."
She caught his enthusiasm—a fierce, compelling thing.
"You are a Christian?" he asked.
"I have tried to be," she faltered.
"You believe, at least, in the eternity of human life? You must believe in it. In nature there is no death, no annihilation. All that takes place is transmutation! That is obvious," he declared.
"Well?"
"So in human life! The body rots; the spirit passes—where?"
He continued with scarcely a moment's pause:
"Down the broad avenues of time, to appear in a thousand different forms and shapes. A king in one age is a serf in another, a savage this century is a scholar in the next. Has there never been a moment in your life when a sense of unreality has seized you? You doubt for a moment your own identity, you are haunted by miragelike thoughts, beautiful, or sad; you are strangely out of touch with your surroundings. Watch a great concourse of people. It is the most fascinating thing in the world.
"You will see a beggar who has now and then some trick of carriage or gesture or speech which has survived his body's degradation, and which reminds you of a king. Or you will see one of the great ones of the earth, if you watch closely enough, do some small thing, or speak some chance word which has crept out unheeded, very likely repeated, yet which could have no kinship with his present state.
"There are people who have visited a strange country for the first time in their lives, and found there a street-corner, a shop, or byway which has awakened a peculiar and inexplicable sense of familiarity. They have never been there before, never read of the place, yet the sense of familiarity is there. I have seen a boy fall asleep, and heard him croon an old Mexican war-song, a song of the time of Cortez and the Incas, in an almost forgotten language—a boy who awake is a messenger at a draper's, unimaginative, ignorant, stupid. The secret of these things will one day be yielded up to science. You and I together may become immortal."
He ended with a little laugh. The fierce eagerness had burned itself out. Of the two, Eleanor was now the more disturbed.
"I should like to know how it feels," she said thoughtfully, "to be without a memory, to start life at twenty-two."
"The things outside your own personal experiences are never lost to you," he said. "They come back in a perfectly effortless manner. You will find yourself accepting them as a matter of course."
"How do you know that?" she asked. "One might have to learn to read and write again. Life without any background at all would become a gigantic embarrassment."
"There is no fear of anything of the sort," he assured her. "Halkar's friend and the girl related to me their own experiences. They were precisely similar. It was of events and persons alone that their mind was swept bare. Their stock of acquired knowledge remained unimpaired. Sometimes they even dimly remembered people."
"But there are also many other considerations," she said. "What will become of me afterward?"
"My dear young lady," he said, "I do not ask you to risk your life, however remotely, for nothing. I would give half my fortune, were it necessary, to win your consent. As it is, I promise you freedom and independence. You shall live the life which seems good to you. You will be removed into another sphere altogether, and it is possible that you may take with you a somewhat cloudy recollection of this portion of your life. Your reward will be an established position in the world and an honorable one. Beyond this I cannot say a single word. In fact, you must consider the whole thing as only a possibility.
"I consent," she said simply.
There was a momentary flash in his gray eyes—otherwise he showed no emotion. He had long since taken her consent as a matter of course.
"There is one thing more which is necessary," he said. "You must tell me who you are, and if you have any friends who would be likely to make inquiries for you. I take it for granted that you have no closer ties. It is imperative that I have this knowledge."
She looked up at him with white face. "Do you mean that?"
"You can surely see the necessity for it yourself," he answered. "You are virtually going to change your identity. The Eleanor Surtoes of a month hence will know nothing of your past. Some one must be entrusted with that knowledge."
"It is a great pain to me," she said wearily, "to speak of it at all. But to-night nothing seems to matter. My name is Eleanor Surtoes Marston. My father was Sir Robert Marston. He was a banker at Hull—Ellifield, Marston and Ellifield. You read the papers. I dare say you remember."
He inclined his head slowly.
"My mother was dead. I had neither brother nor sister, nor any friends save those whom my father's prodigality had brought together. When exposure came, my father killed himself. He left a letter telling me where to find a large sum of money which he had put on one side. He had meant to leave England secretly. I returned the money to the bank. They heard afterward that I was destitute, and they sent me ten pounds. I came to London, and did my best to get a situation, but I was ignorant, ill brought up, and uselessly educated. I could do a great many things in a small way, but nothing well enough to teach. With only a few shillings left, I wrote to a large firm of drapers in Hull with whom I had dealt. They sent me an introduction to Bearmain's, and I entered their employ as a shop girl ten months ago. I have done my best, but I left to-night, knowing that whatever happened I should never return."
"There is no one, then," he asked, "who is likely to make inquiries about you? No one who could trace you here?"
"There is no one," she answered bitterly.
Powers looked at his watch.
"I am going to leave you alone for a quarter of an hour," he said. "I do not think that it will make any difference, but I should like you to have that time for unbiased reflection."
"As you like," she answered. "I shall not change my mind. I am ready."
She sat before the fire, her eyes fixed upon the burning coals. She heard muffled voices in the hall, she heard Powers enter an adjoining room, and close the door behind him. Her fingers clutched the sides of her chair, her eyeballs were hot. For the first time a spasm of physical fear seized her. He had gone to make ready. What if it should be death? She had spoken boldly of it but a moment before. Yet she was young, for good or evil her life was as yet unlived. Then with a rush came back the memory of the last ten months. The hopeless weariness of those days behind the counter, the miserable humiliation of it, the web of bitter despair drawn so closely and inevitably around her. All the petty tyrannies to which she had been subject, all the fettering restrictions which had gone to turn servitude into slavery were suddenly fresh in her mind. A hideous vista of dreary days and lonely nights—nowhere a ray of hope; the same, yesterday, to-day, and all other days. The fear passed away from her. Death might have its terrors, but a return to Bearmain's would be a living hell. She heard the door open without a single tremor. She even smiled as she saw Powers standing upon the threshold.
"You have not changed your mind?" he asked.
"There was never any fear of that," she answered. "I am quite ready."
He held open the door. "Will you come this way?" he said.
She rose at once, without reluctance or fear—even gladly. He was beckoning her into a new life.
Sir Powers Fiske permitted himself the luxury of a rare emotion. His patient had come back to life. The faint flush of recovery was upon her cheeks, the light of a dawning intelligence was in her eyes. The first stage of his great experiment had been successfully reached.
"So you are better, I see!" he remarked, standing by her bedside.
She answered him a little weakly, but distinctly enough.
"I suppose I am. I feel quite well enough to get up. Only——"
"Well?"
There was trouble in her eyes as she looked up at him.
"It seems as though I must be dreaming. I can't remember what has happened to me—why I am here!"
He smiled at her reassuringly.
"I wouldn't bother about it," he said. "You are with friends, and you must try to get well quickly. I dare say when you are stronger that it will all come back to you."
She looked at him reflectively.
"You are a stranger to me," she said slowly. "Is there no one here whom I have ever seen before?"
He felt a sudden chill. Yet, after all, it was what he had expected.
"I do not suppose that there is," he answered. "You see, you are in London now. I thought, perhaps, that you might have remembered me. I was in India, and came to see you when you were a little girl."
"In India!" she repeated vaguely. "Why, what can have happened to me? I do not remember anything about India."
She raised her hand to her temples. Her eyes were full of an undefined fear. The words came from her lips in a broken stream.
"You are my doctor, they say, and this is your house. Tell me what it means—tell me. I try to think, and there is nothing. Something has happened to my head. Have I been ill for long? Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here?"
"I will answer all your questions," he said quietly, "but you must please not excite yourself. Your name is Eleanor Hardinge, and you were shipwrecked on your way from India here. Your father is an old friend of mine, and you were coming to England to visit my mother. You met with a very unusual accident. You will notice that your head is still bound up, and, no doubt, it will affect your memory for some little time. You must try to make the best of it. You are among friends, and we shall all do our best to look after you."
She felt the bandage around her head.
"I can't even remember the accident," she said. "I suppose it will all come back some day."
"There is no doubt about it," he answered. "All that you have to do now is to keep as quiet as you can. The less you try to think the better."
The nurse entered with a tray. Eleanor sat up and smiled with the satisfaction of a child.
"You are hungry!" he remarked.
"I think so," she answered. "I should like some chicken, please. No more beef tea."
"You remember what chicken tastes like, then," he said. "That is a proof, you see, that your memory still lives. Let me ask you another question. Who is your favorite author?"
"Shakespeare!" she answered promptly.
He nodded approvingly.
"You see that you need have no fear," he said. "Your loss of memory is only partial. Now, I am going to leave you to have your dinner. Do not talk too much, and try to sleep as much as you can."
Her eyes sought his fixedly, pathetically. She seemed suddenly moved by a new fear. Her large eyes, a little sunken now, were dilated.
"I—I have forgotten my name again," she cried. "It is horrible. What is it. Tell me quickly."
"You are Eleanor Hardinge," he said. "You are perfectly safe, and you will soon be quite well."
"But I am afraid," she cried, with a sudden shrill note of terror. "My head is going round. I cannot think clearly."
He took her hand in his. There was something soothing in the touch of his firm, cool fingers.
"You have no cause for fear," he said reassuringly—"none whatever. You are getting better and stronger every hour."
She raised herself a little from among the pillows. Her eyes sought his eagerly. Her hands refused to let his go.
"I am afraid," she moaned. "There are shadows everywhere among my thoughts. Tell me. Have I been mad? Am I going to be mad?"
His fingers strayed to her pulse. He smiled upon her as one smiles upon a child.
"Nonsense! Look at me."
His eyes held her.
"You are not going to be mad. You are merely suffering from a great shock. By and by everything will be clear to you. You must not be impatient. I promise you that you will soon be well."
Outside the door on the landing he stood and wiped the dampness from his forehead. He knew that she had been on the verge of brain fever, that even now she was scarcely safe. The impulse which had taken him into her room was an irresistible one. He felt that he must see her. He had looked into her opened eyes, he had heard her speak. The change, which he alone could understand, which he alone was responsible for, appalled him. He was bewildered by a feeling of personal loss. The soul of Eleanor Surtoes seemed to have passed away with her sense of personal consciousness. It was another woman who lay there in his guest-chamber.
Afterward she slept. He dined mechanically, and without the ghost of an appetite. The rest of the night he spent with a pile of medical books and a note-book kept during his stay in India open before him. In the early morning he looked out upon the gray dawn-lit streets, haggard, and with a gnawing fear at his heart. He was unnerved. The ordinary sounds of the waking household, the street cries outside, the rattling of carts, jarred upon him. He glanced in the looking-glass, and was startled at his own reflection. Softly he opened the door and made his way into the room where Eleanor lay.
Her deep-brown hair lay about the pillow in some confusion. One long white arm, thin but graceful, hung over the coverlet. Her face, notwithstanding its pallor, was like the face of a little child. A certain, almost pathetic, sharpness of outline, which in the days of his first acquaintance with her had been only too noticeable, seemed to him to have faded away. Her closed eyes were no longer windows through which shone the tragical misery of her bitter life. The lines about her mouth and forehead had all been smoothed away. And with these things—something else. He found himself struggling with a sense of unfamiliarity. After all, it was still Eleanor. If only he could persuade himself of it.
He looked at her long and steadily. Then he left the room and entered the library. For a time he sat at his desk, irresolute. More than once he drew note-paper toward him and dipped his pen in the ink. He was wholly unaccustomed to this indecision. Yet the way before him, which had seemed so clear only a short while back, seemed now beset with anxieties. It was not technical skill or knowledge that he needed. So far as these were concerned, his self-confidence was unimpaired. Only a new sense of responsibility, a strange new web of fears, seemed suddenly to have paralyzed his enthusiasm.
For the first time in his life he felt the need for advice—the stimulus of sympathy. Yet for hours that note remained unwritten. He was unable to account for his hesitation. The man whom he was about to summon would approve of all that he had done. He was sure of that. Yet he was oppressed by the shadow of some nameless fear, some instinct that seemed to be doing its utmost to warn him against this course which, from any ordinary point of view, was both natural and advisable. Afterward those hours of hesitation ranked as history with him. At the time he was ashamed of them.
The note was written at last, and despatched by an urgent messenger. He bathed, changed his clothes, and ate some breakfast. Just as he had finished, a small brougham stopped at the door. Doctor Trowse was announced. It was the man for whom he had sent. Even at the moment of his entrance, Powers found himself struggling with an insane desire to abandon his purpose, to invent some trifling excuse and to keep silence.
The two men shook hands silently.
Trowse looked ten years younger than his age, which was forty-five, and he was now the greatest known authority upon diseases of the brain. He eyed Powers curiously.
"What is wrong with you?" he asked.
"Nothing," replied the other.
"You sent for me," Trowse reminded him, "and if you waste my time you'll have to pay for it. These are my busiest hours."
Powers came back to the present. It was too late to hesitate. He smiled grimly.
"You won't want payment," he said, "when you have heard why I sent for you."
A light like the flashing of fire upon polished steel lit up for a moment those strange-colored eyes. Yet in other respects the man was unmoved. Not a muscle of his face twitched.
"You have found a subject?" he said.
"I have."
"You are going to attempt the operation, or you want me to?"
"It is done."
Trowse set down his hat, and deliberately selected a chair.
"You've pluck!" he remarked. "Dead or alive?"
"Alive."
The absence of any sentiment of triumph in Powers' face or tone made its impression upon the older man. He decided at once that the thing had gone wrong.
"Alive! In what condition is he?"
"It's a she," Powers answered.
"Better subject perhaps. Go on."
"She has recovered consciousness. So far everything has gone according to calculation."
"You administered your Indian drug?"
"Yes. I was going to tell you. She is conscious, and physically unhurt"
"The memory?"
"Gone!"
Trowse rose briskly.
"Let me see her," he insisted. "Then we will talk."
Silently they made their way to the bedroom. She had made a somewhat fastidious toilet, and wore, with the air of one who has been used to such things all her life, a dressing-jacket trimmed with lace, which was among the things which Marian Fiske had sent. Her hair was tied up with ribbon, and skilfully arranged to hide the bandages on her head. The delicacy of her face and hands seemed heightened by the faint spot of color which flushed her cheeks as the two men entered the room.
"I have brought a friend of mine," Powers said after a few words to Eleanor and the nurse, "to congratulate me upon my case. This is Doctor Trowse, nurse. I know that he considers me a dangerous amateur, and I want to convince him that I am nothing of the sort."
Trowse moved a little forward, and Eleanor turned her head to meet his earnest gaze. Almost immediately there was a change in her expression. The color faded from her cheeks, she shrank a little away, a curious, troubled light filled her eyes. Trowse, if he noticed her agitation, ignored it. He bent over the bedside, and touched her fingers, asked a few apparently careless questions, and let his hand rest for a moment upon her head. Then he turned away and addressed the nurse.
"Sir Powers has justified himself," he said, with a faint smile. "Your patient is going to have the good sense to get well very quickly."
Eleanor drew a little breath, as though immensely relieved. She turned her head a little, so as to leave him altogether out of her range of vision. Powers, who, to some extent, misunderstood her action, exchanged quick glances with Trowse. The desire for life was there once more, then.
"I am glad to hear it, sir," the nurse answered quietly. "She seems to be going on very nicely."
Without turning her head toward him, Eleanor addressed Trowse.
"Will you please tell me something?"
"If I can."
"When shall I remember things?"
He looked at her thoughtfully. She kept her eyes averted, but she seemed to be shivering a little.
"Perhaps to-morrow," he answered. "Perhaps not for a year. It is one of those things which science is powerless to determine."
"But I shall—remember—some day?"
"Some day—certainly. Let me ask you a question."
"Well?"
"Are you very anxious to remember?"
"It is so puzzling," she answered. "Sometimes I want to very much, sometimes I am content."
There was a moment's silence. As though against her will, she turned her head and looked up at him standing over her bedside. Again there was the faint shrinking away, again her troubled eyes seemed held by his against her will.
"I will give you some advice, young lady," he said. "Let things go. You have made a marvelous recovery. The completion of it is in your own hands. Accept the present. If the past eludes you—let it. You will remember this?"
Eleanor remained speechless, though her lips seemed to move. Every word, though easily spoken, seemed to come to her charged with a precise and serious meaning. His tone was unemotional, his manner was not even earnest. Yet she never forgot. The two men left the room. By common consent, they turned into the study. Trowse eyed his friend curiously.
"I wonder," he said, "what the devil made you send for me?"
Sir Powers Fiske did not immediately reply. The two men stood side by side upon the hearthrug. Trowse, who seemed to have forgotten his hurry, lit a cigarette and threw the match into the fire.
"I scarcely see," he said, "where I come in. You have your chance, you have taken it, and you have succeeded. Very well! What do you want with me? If it had been before the risk was over, I could have understood it. At present I must admit that I cannot."
Powers answered as one who makes a confession.
"I have lost my nerve," he said.
Trowse looked at him oddly.
"I might believe that of some men," he said, "not of you. Besides, the risk is over. The girl will live. You know that as well as I do."
"She will live," Powers answered, "yes! That is certain. And yet, since she opened her eyes, since I heard her speak, I have felt myself nothing less than a murderer. That is what I am. A murderer, Trowse."
Trowse stared at his friend for several moments without speaking—a cold, deliberate inspection. Then he sighed.
"You are not the man you were, Powers," he said, speaking softly, and as though to himself. "It isn't drink, and you don't smoke much. What has happened to your nerves?"
Powers looked steadfastly and gloomily out of the window.
"I cannot tell you," he answered. "You know me better than most men, Trowse. You have never seen me turn a hair at any operation yet. Together we have watched death come to strong men and to beautiful women. These things have never troubled me. I have never felt anything more than curiosity. Yet there is a weak spot somewhere. I have learned what fear is."
Trowse eyed his friend with interest.
"If the girl were dead," he remarked meditatively, "it might have turned out awkwardly for you. As it is, you seem to have stumbled across a very nearly perfect physical creature. She is less likely to die than you or I. In a fortnight she will be recovered."
Powers frowned impatiently.
"You have not made a study of this thing as I have, Trowse," he said. "Yours is the purely scientific point of view. You do not see—what lies beyond."
Trowse shook his head.
"I do not understand you," he said simply.
"I want you to understand," Powers declared. "We have talked of this thing many times, until it has grown to seem a simple thing. We forgot!"
"Forgot what?"
"Forgot that the continuity of life, after all, is purely physical. Behind—there is a woman slain—up there a woman created."
Trowse, for a moment, was bewildered. A searching glance into the other's face showed him that Powers was in earnest. He became contemplative.
"I am not sure that I understand you, Powers," he said slowly. "In fact, I am sure that I do not. We have watched operations together, when, to our certain knowledge, the knife has gone a little deeper, has gone a little more to the left or right, in order that some addition might be made to the sum of human knowledge. You have never blenched. We have seen men die whose lives might have been prolonged, if not altogether spared, that the race to come might benefit. Tacitly, you and I have always recognized the principle that the individual must be the servant of humanity. Therefore, as I say, I do not understand your present attitude."
"I am not sure, Trowse, that I can make you understand," Powers answered. "Only remember this: Our point of view is probably not the same. You are a materialist pure and simple. I am not!"
"Proceed!"
"In the cases which you have mentioned it is the body only which has suffered. In this case, the body has survived, but something else—has been destroyed. You know the danger which still exists."
Trowse nodded.
"Lunacy! That, of course, is a possibility."
Powers shivered slightly.
"It is a possibility," he admitted. "Even if she remains sane, will you tell me this? What connection can there be between the mind of the girl of a month ago and the woman of a month to come?"
"It is an interesting psychological problem," Trowse answered, "which we shall know more about shortly. I must admit, though, that your position is inexplicable to me. Fortune has given you a marvelous opportunity. I cannot conceive how you could have acted differently. I cannot understand your present hesitation. If you wish for any sort of cooperation on my part, tell me how you first met this young woman, and under what circumstances you persuaded her to become your patient."
In a few words Powers told him.
There was a short silence. Trowse was regarding his friend with cold surprise.
"All that you tell me," he said, "makes your present hesitation the more extraordinary. Your scruples are unworthy of you. They would be unworthy of you even if you belonged to that sickly order of sentimentalists who would shrink from killing a poisonous snake because the reptile had been given life. According to your own showing, the girl was in an intolerable position. She enters upon her new life with every prospect of happiness. Believe me, Powers, the hand which struck away the bridge between her past and future was the hand of a benefactor."
"I suppose you must be right," Powers murmured.
"Right! It is hopelessly obvious," Trowse answered. "If this hesitation is anything more than a passing mood with you, I shall be amazed. You probably saved the girl from moral shipwreck—you have transported her into a life which she could certainly never have reached by any other means!"
In his tone and in his face were signs of a rare and intense enthusiasm. The eyes of the two men met. Trowse continued, with a gesture stiff, but almost dramatic:
"Man, it is wonderful! I could kill you as you stand there, for envy. It is among the possibilities that you, a dilettante, a dabbler, may solve the secret of all the ages past and to come. It may be that she will sing to you the songs that Pocahontas sang to the great god of the Indians or you may wake in the night to hear the wail of one of those daughters of Judah led captive into Egypt. Perhaps she was a priestess in the time-forgotten cities of Africa, gone before our history crept into being, swept who knows where off the face of the earth!"
Powers was shaking with excitement. This sudden eloquence from the one man on earth whose cold self-restraint had become a byword moved him strangely.
"Well," he said, "for good or for evil, the thing must go through as it has been arranged. I am glad that you are interested, Trowse. It may be that I shall need your help."
"Likely enough," Trowse answered shortly. "It seems to me that you have let go some of the old ideas. Believe me, they were the safest. The man who has work to do in the world has no greater enemy than this shifting sentimentalism. May I come and see your patient to-morrow?"
"You may see her as often as you like," Powers answered, "so long as you let me know beforehand that you are coming."
"I thank you," Trowse answered, with a cold smile. "You need have no fear that I shall attempt any single-handed experiments. Only, if you want my advice, don't give her over to society, no matter what your promise was. Why on earth don't you keep her quietly to yourself here instead of sending her to her mother? What do you want to go publishing her to the world at all for? A thousand things may happen if you carry out this hairbrained scheme of yours. She may even want to marry. She is good-looking enough. You might easily lose her altogether."
Powers was suddenly pale. There were, indeed, many possibilities which he had not seriously considered. Yet he never hesitated.
"I must keep my word to her," he said. "I shall do it at all costs."
"You are a fool," Trowse declared bluntly. "Make her your wife. Bind her to you. Make sure of her."
Powers walked to the door with his visitor.
"It is useless to argue with you," he said. "We look at the matter from different points of view. The girl risked her life to gain a certain end. She has won, and she shall have her reward."
With the passage of the months, Eleanor, little by little, entered upon a strange new life in accordance with what had been promised her. Through the London social season she went about with Lady Fiske and was admired and sought after everywhere. It was as though a magician had touched her face, and there had passed away from it all sense of trouble, all evil memories, every trace of suffering. The troubled mouth seemed ever ready to break into laughter, the faint lines and wrinkles had faded completely away. She was years younger. The light of past sorrows had gone from her eyes, they remained only the mirror of the brightest and gayest things in life. In her youth, her beauty, and her almost assertivejoie de vivreshe seemed like a child among the little company by whom she was constantly surrounded wherever she went in her soulless, indefatigable quest for amusement.
"Are you not afraid, Eleanor, that some day you will grow tired of amusing yourself?" Powers asked her one night at a dinner where she had outshone all others.
A peal of light, sweet laughter rang out above the babel of conversation. Everyone looked toward Eleanor's table. She was leaning a little forward in her chair, her lips parted, her cheeks flushed, her eyes alight with enjoyment. A single row of pearls encircled her long, graceful neck, her shoulders and bare arms were dazzlingly soft, her hair gleamed in the shaded lamplight.