unconcerned. "I have known too many gold-makers for that. Some of them
are now in workhouses; others are in prison. One of the last got three
months for stealing an overcoat, which was ridiculously unromantic."
"Not at all," said the Colonel; "theft is a complex subject capable of
analysis. A thief is a man who buys in the cheapest market. We all try
to do that in our way. There is no earthly reason why a _savant_, who is
near to possessing the philosopher's stone, should not be charged before
a magistrate with stealing a red herring. Life is all contrast, and the
contrast we speak of is a very pretty one. Go and see her at your
earliest opportunity."
"That's my advice too," said Bracebridge; "and if you've a fancy to
watch her at the crucible, I'll speak for you. What's more, I'll bet you
an even hundred pounds that you admit my conclusions."
"Which are?" I asked.
"That she has come nearer to the solution of the diamond problem than
any man or woman living or dead."
"I don't bet on certainties," said I; "but if you care to trouble the
lady to burn her doubtlessly pretty hands on my account, well, let's
have the interview by all means. If she convinces me that she can make
any sort of precious stone worth selling in the market, I'll give a
hundred pounds to a children's hospital--the Colonel can name it."
"Is it a serious offer?" asked the Colonel, looking, as I thought, a
little meaningly at Bracebridge, but I said,--
"I was never more serious, and town will be quite dismal enough after
this week" (it was the week of Goodwood). "Fix it up as early as you
can; and conjure the lady, whose name I have not yet had the pleasure of
hearing, to take care of your reputation. If she can cast me a ruby or a
sapphire worth looking at, I will set it in diamonds and make her a
present of it. You may tell her so from me."
"I'll give her your message undiluted," said Bracebridge, with a great
deal of content, "but I'll warrant that she'll have the laugh of you,
and so shall we."
They said no more upon the matter until the end of the dinner, and it
was not referred to in the smoking room after. We quitted the club at an
early hour to hear a song at a music-hall which the Colonel raved about;
and after that I left them and returned to Bayswater, with the
recollection of my rash promise gone clean out of my head. I did not
even recall it on the following morning, and it was some three days
after that I received a note from the Colonel saying that he had, during
Bracebridge's absence from town, made an appointment for me with Miss
Jessie Fleming--for such was the fair alchemist's name--and that she
would be glad to tell me anything she could about her work on the
following afternoon at half-past two o'clock. The letter at once
brought to my mind the whole of the conversation, at the club. I
remembered with a smile of contempt that the lady was to show me, during
a short interview, how the whole of a jeweler's occupation was soon to
be done with; how diamonds and sapphires and even the precious metal
itself, were presently to be as common as pebbles in a brook; and I
concluded with easy assurance that if any children's hospital depended
upon my being convinced, it would have to close its doors at an early
date. I had seen so much of this sort of thing; so many stories of
fortunes lying in a metal pot had been whispered into my ear; this could
be but an addition to the list; it remained to see if it would be an
amusing addition.
I will confess readily that if the pretender had been a man, I would
have declined curtly to see him. The whole of those who had come to me
hitherto with a pretended insight into the arcana of metals were
men--mostly half-pay officers--whose wits were half gone with their
money. Here, however, was, by all accounts, a charming professor of the
lost art. The season was beginning to be dull; there were no more "at
homes"; possibly she would amuse me. I had given my promise to the
men--and to put it briefly I found myself at Miss Jessie Fleming's door
on the following day, not a little expectant, disdainfully incredulous,
and exceedingly anxious to prove for myself if the physiognomist's
personal attractions were even a tithe of those which had been claimed
for her by so many long headed and usually sensible men.
My knock at the modest-looking portal was answered by a formidable
flunky, who did not wait to hear my name, but conducted me up a
staircase draped almost to darkness with heavy curtains, and so to a
well-furnished waiting-room on the first floor. Here three women, all
well known in society, were engaged in an heroic effort to appear
absorbed in the illustrated papers; but they were obviously
uncomfortable at my presence, and cast furtive looks over the pages as
though in appeal to me to make no mention of anything I had seen. I had
no opportunity, however, to abate their fear of publicity; for scarce
was I come into the room when the flunky appeared again at the
folding-doors which cut it off from the sanctum of My Lady, and beckoned
me to follow him.
I had come out on this expedition purely, as I have said, to be amused.
When I found myself at last before the new Pythia of London, enthroned
as she was for the immediate interpretation of the oracle, I confess
that I did not foresee any disappointment of the venture. The room was
half in darkness, but there was light enough by which to observe many
fine pieces of china and delicate sketches upon its gold and green
walls; and to note the quaint conceits of the whole scheme of
decoration. A lamp of Eastern shape spread a soft red glow upon sofas
and seductive lounges; a conservatory, heaped up with shade-suggesting
palms, gave off at one end of it through doors of exquisitely colored
glass; there was a strange tripod of brass before the fireplace; and
flowers everywhere, seeming to grow from the very grate, to flourish in
all the crannies, to cover tables and bookcases, and even to decorate
the dress of the young girl who now stood to receive me, and welcomed me
with cordiality.
My first impression of the physiognomist--an impression which remains
with me--was the outcome of her extremely youthful appearance. I am
certain that whatever age she might have been she did not look it. Youth
in rich generosity was stamped upon her slightest action and her most
serious word. It flashed from her eyes, was seen in the unsurpassable
freshness of her complexion, in the golden sheen of her hair, in the
rotundity of her arms, and the development of her slight but well-formed
figure. If she had any serious mood, it was not apparent when first I
spoke to her; nor did a rapid analysis of her face tell me of any
uncommon mental power. Her chin was a firm one, it is true; but I
noticed that she had little height of head above her ears, and that
there was even something of weakness in her forehead. At the same time
there could not be two opinions of the general charm of her manner; and
she possessed in a very large degree that magnetic power of attracting
sympathy and admiration which is peculiarly the attribute of women.
Directly I had come into the pretentious chamber of audience, and the
flunky had closed the folding-doors behind me, this fascinating little
prophetess began to talk, her words rippling over one another like the
waves of a river; her natural excitement betraying itself in the obvious
restraint of her gestures.
"I'm so glad it's you!" she exclaimed, clasping her hands together, as
though in ecstasy. "Those old women bother me to death, and there have
been twelve of them here this morning. Colonel Oldfield told me all
about you yesterday, and I was interested at once. We must have a good
long talk. Oh, do listen to that dreadful creature; she talks in scales
beginning at the lower C and going up to no possible note in the music
of heaven or earth. I suppose she won't go away."
Her remark, and the clapping of her little hands to equally little ears,
followed upon the sound of altercation between one of the ladies in the
waiting-room and the flunky of formidable mien. Apparently the lady
would not depart without a _seance_, and the footman was compelling her.
In the end she went, declaring the whole thing a cheat, and "that chit
of a girl" a particular imposture. When the sound of her voice had died
away upon the stairs, My Lady took up the thread of her remarks.
"Now," said she, "I want to have a good look at you, and you must have a
good look at me. People like ourselves should know each other to begin
with. Don't think I'm going to bore you with the nonsense I trade
in--you are far too clever for that, and would find me out in a minute.
You see, I'm like a man with a good cellar: I keep the old wine for the
old birds who are not caught with chaff. That's a delightfully mixed
metaphor, isn't it? and not very polite, when I think of it. But come
and sit down near the light, where I can see you."
She spoke so quickly that I did not pretend to hear half of that which
she said, or to answer her; but I seated myself upon the ottoman near
the entrance to the conservatory; and when she had thrown open the glass
doors, she herself took the low arm-chair facing me. I saw then that she
wore a strange dress in the Egyptian fashion, and that her breast was
all covered with jingling gold medals, while her hair was similarly
ornamented.
"Come," she said, resting her head upon her hand, "I want to know from
you _why_ you are here. It is not for me to tell you about your life, is
it?"
"I will be frank," I replied; "it is not. My life has already spoken a
good deal for itself. What I did come here to see was the making of
diamonds. They tell me you possess the philosopher's stone, or something
near to it."
She looked at me with a penetrating gaze, and then laughed a little
hardly.
"And you believed it?" she asked presently.
"Not for a moment," said I; "but I thought it was not unlikely that you
had some amusing trick which you would not mind showing me. I am very
much interested in jewels, you know."
"So am I," she exclaimed, but with the air of one whose mind is away
from the words--"there is nothing more beautiful or more mysterious on
earth than a diamond. It just seems to be a prison for lovely things of
which it gives us the lights when we treat it well. And you thought I
might amuse you with a trick? That was a poor compliment, wasn't it?"
The thing was said with a swift reversion of her mind to the subject,
as I could see; and there was a world of humor in her eyes when she
turned them on me.
"It was no poor compliment," said I, "since you have convinced such a
man as Colonel Oldfield that you can make rubies. He is a judge of
jewels, too."
"And a very good one," she replied; "but really there was nothing in my
experiment. What I do has been done by French chemists for twenty years
past. The Colonel came here with an open mind--but you, you closed the
doors of yours as you came upstairs."
I protested feebly, but she did not listen to my answer.
"Yes," she exclaimed, speaking very rapidly, "I have been thinking about
you as you sat there, and I am sure that I know you now. You are a man
so well accustomed to steer in the shallows of your business that you
never look beyond them. You make a gospel of distrust, and you consider
confidence the sign of a weak intellect. You have been often deceived,
for your breadth of view is not large; and you will be often deceived
again. It is impossible for you to conceive beauty which is not
saleable; and for romance you have no place in your heart. You have come
here, saying all the way, 'I am going to interview an impostor; she will
not amuse me--most possibly she will bore me. It is ten thousand to one
that her experiments are all rubbish, but I will take the ten thousandth
chance, in the hope that she might have found out something which I can
sell--sell--sell.' Yet you are honest in a measure, since you ask me
for a trick, knowing well that a trick is all you can reasonably expect
from me. You are, in short, not very far removed from that dreadful
person 'the pure man of business'; and you feel wofully strange already
in the presence of one whose occupation is romance, and whose profession
is undisguisedly practised in the offices of mystery. Do I speak the
truth?"
She bent forward so that I could look straight into her eyes as she
finished the excited sketch of character; and while with any other
speaker my vanity had been sore wounded, I listened to her with no other
feeling than those of growing admiration. The potency of her personality
was beyond description; I have never met a woman who could communicate
her own magnetism so quickly when she chose to talk seriously. And
beyond this, I had already corrected my assumption that she was not
clever. She had, indeed, one of the quickest brains I have ever dealt
with.
"You are very hard on me," said I, as she waited for me to speak, "but I
cannot say that you do not get to the bottom of the affair. You do me an
injustice, however, when you say that my visit is purely commercial. No
one in London would be more unselfishly interested than myself if any
progress were made with the thousand attempts to manufacture jewels. If
you have succeeded, even in a small degree, your fortune is made."
"Do you think that?" she cried. "Well, a word from Mr. Bernard Sutton is
a word indeed; but we shall see. Meanwhile, we are going to have some
fruit and wine. Don't you find it fearfully close in here?--that's the
heat from my furnace in the conservatory there. I've had a little one
put up especially for my experiments. As you were coming, we had to get
the metal melted; and we've had a fire there since last night."
"You will experiment for me, then?" said I, with considerable interest.
"If you are very good," she replied, "I may show you something; but
first you must taste my sherbet, and tell me all about the diamonds
which I have bought and not made. You've heard, perhaps, that I waste
all my money on jewelry."
I told her that I had not, but the flunky appearing at that moment, she
did not pursue the subject, occupying herself in mixing me an
effervescing draught in a great crystal goblet. The drink was gratifying
on the hot day; and when I had taken it there was a warm coursing of
blood through my veins as though I had drunk of rich Burgundy.
"Now," said she, when the man had gone, but had left the little table
piled up with fruit--"now we can talk seriously. Let us carry the liquid
with us--that's what Jack Lucas always calls it; he gets me that sherbet
from some place in the East with an unpronounceable name. I am going to
put you into an arm-chair, and you are not to ask a single question
until I have finished. Have you got any cigarettes with you?--you may
smoke if you are very good."
We went into the conservatory, which was ridiculously small, and close
almost to suffocation, and there I saw many evidences of her attempt to
fathom the unfathomable mysteries. There were racks with bottles round
three sides of the apartment, and in the corner of the other side there
stood a common little furnace such as smiths use. These, with a number
of brass plates covered with hieroglyphics, some presses in steel, a
basket containing strips of metal and a quantity of crystals, were her
whole equipment for the business before her; but there was a low
arm-chair in the shape of those used for dental horrors; and there she
asked me to sit while she herself prepared for the undertaking.
"The first thing for you to do," said she, "is to make yourself
comfortable. A man who is ill at ease is in the worst possible mental
state, for he cannot concentrate himself. Just at present I want you to
concentrate yourself on that cigarette and the fizzing stuff. When
everything is ready I shall call out."
With this said, she set the fruit and the cup at the side of my chair,
and then rolled up the sleeves of her dress quickly, putting on an apron
which covered her finery; and she looked for all the world like an
unusually pretty housemaid. I watched her with even a larger interest
than I had done; and I remember thinking, as I settled in the great
lounge, that whatever her mental claims might be upon the admiration of
the city, her personal qualities were undeniable.
These were especially to be observed when she began to busy herself with
the furnace and the tiny crucibles upon it, the glow of soft light
seeming to emphasize the youthfulness of her perfect face, and to
converge upon it as light focussed upon a picture. She had now fallen
into a very serious mood, and after she had used the bellows vigorously
at her fire, and placed the smallest of the crucibles upon it again, she
sat herself upon a stool at the side of my chair, and resting her head
upon her open hand--her favorite attitude--she spoke with evident
earnestness.
"The mysteries of jewels," she exclaimed, "and the mysteries of gold
have eaten the heart out of many a clever man, from Gebir to Sir Isaac
Newton. If you will read the history of the philosophers, even of some
in the story of that which we call the modern ages, you will find
amongst the greatest the names of those who sought for an 'alkahest' or
universal solvent. Even the wisest of men have hoped for a full
knowledge of the arcana of metals. Paracelsus himself believed in the
fifth, or the quintessence of creation. Roger Bacon, to whom death came
out of neglect, prescribed as the elixir of life gold dissolved in
nitro-hydrochloric acid. Why should I tell you how science now laughs at
these old philosophers, and lumps them together as little better than
maniacs? Yet does she laugh at them with good reason? Is it not just
possible that she will be ultimately the means of turning the laugh upon
herself? In our day she has come very near to knowing of the
transmutability of metals. Allotropy has turned the eyes of many back to
the remoter past. The chemist is beginning to ask himself, Were these
men such fools? The near future may cast a light upon long centuries of
darkness. But those only will reap who come to the work with open minds,
with the certain conviction that in all pertaining to this vast science
we are still children. Do you follow me in this?"
"Perfectly," I replied; and assuredly a prettier lecture was never
given. The girl's eyes seemed to flash lights as she warmed to her
subject; her enthusiasm was so contagious that I found myself softening
before it. She was earnest, at any rate; and most of her kind were
quacks.
"If you grant this long premiss, and do not consider that all inquiry is
necessarily useless," she continued, "you solve the greater difficulties
which surround my conceptions. It remains to ask, What steps must the
chemist follow who would seek to turn from his crucible the perfect
jewel? Let us take the sapphire as an instance. It is my favorite stone,
one compelling, as the ancients declare, the wearer to all good works.
Well, the sapphire in all its beautiful tints is only a variety of
corundum, colored by metallic oxide. It is a common crystal, a six-sided
prism terminated in a six-sided pyramid. It is taken from gneiss, and we
know to-day that alumina is the basis of it, as it is the basis of so
many precious stones. Granted this, what is the work before the chemist?
Is it not simply to cast in his crucible the crystals of the base, to
color them with the metallic oxide, if he can and to harden them so that
they will bear the test? The process is a long one--it needs days to
bring it to perfection: the annealing, the polishing, the setting--these
are not work for an hour. What I have to show you now are but the
stages of it. These you shall see and judge for yourself; but I ask you
very sincerely to weigh up this great question for yourself, not to be
led by the incredulity of the fanatic, and to believe with me that we
are on the brink of a discovery which shall pour jewels on the world as
the sea casts pebbles upon a beach."
I said nothing in answer to this remarkable delivery, for the truth was
that I watched the girl rather than heard her words. Her earnestness,
nay, her enthusiasm, was so pretty to see that all my interest seemed
absorbed in her; and now, when she rose swiftly and drew the curtains
over the windows, leaving the place illuminated only by one rose-colored
lamp, I followed all her actions as one follows the change of a picture.
"Let us keep away the daylight," said she, "and then we can see the
crystals forming. By-and-by I will show you the perfect jewel. Now
look."
What she did in the next few minutes I am quite unable to say, so swift
were her movements and so hurried her talk. But I remember that she
opened the furnace door, allowing soft rays of deep yellow light to
flood the room; and then quickly she cast a dozen crystals upon the
table from the glowing crucible; and from a press near to her hand she
took three more and laid them on the plate. The largest of the crystals,
which was blue as a sapphire, and possessed little light at a distance,
she presently picked up with tiny tongs, and coming over to me, she
knelt at my side, holding the jewel before my eyes, and clasping my
left hand in hers. And then she cried with the wildest excitement in her
voice, and her breast heaving with her emotion,--
"Oh, look at it! is there anything more beautiful on earth than a
perfect sapphire? and I made it, it is all my work, all my own!"
While she cried thus she held my hand firmly, and the pressure of her
own was hot as fire, but this I only remembered afterwards, for
gradually, as I looked at the jewel critically, it took the color and
the shape of a perfect gem. It was not a large stone, perhaps one of
three carats, but the longer I looked upon it the more brilliant and
beautiful did it appear to be. Never had I seen more perfect shape or
promise of light when set; and with the realization of the discovery my
head reeled as the possibility that this mere girl had succeeded where
so many had failed loomed at last before me. It was true, then, as
Oldfield said, that she could manufacture a perfect jewel before his
eyes. Here was one which, if well cut, I could sell for a hundred
pounds. She had made that, as I could swear: why should she not make a
hundred, a thousand? My heart leaped at the conclusion.
"Tell me," said I, "you had no help in this work?"
"You saw that I had none," she cried. "Look at the other crystals; there
are five of them. You have seen them come straight from the
crucible--and you know that I have succeeded. Will you buy my sapphire?
Buy it in proof that I have conquered you. When you return to-morrow I
will tell you everything. I am exhausted now. The work always excites
me terribly. My nerves are all unstrung; I can do no more to-day."
"If you will sell me the stone you hold in those tongs, I will give you
fifty pounds for it," I said, concluding that, even had I been tricked,
a real jewel, and a very good one, was before my eyes. But at this
promise she cried out with joy, and putting the stone in a little box
with lightning speed, she handed it to me.
"Pay me to-morrow, any time," she said. "It was good of you to come
here, and to listen to me. I am very grateful. When you come again you
shall know all my secret. Only think well of me and be my friend."
With this she led the way quickly into her own room, and the lackey
appeared in answer to her ring. The interview was at an end, abruptly as
it seemed to me, and I left her with a strange feeling of dizziness, and
my head burning with excitement--but her sapphire was in my pocket.
* * * * *
When I met Bracebridge, who was waiting in my room for me, he had an
ugly leer upon his face.
"Well," said he, "I fancy my hundred's all right?"
"What hundred?"
"With Oldfield," said he. "I bet him a hundred she'd sell you a piece of
glass for a sapphire; and I don't suppose you'll deny that she did it?"
"I'm not going to deny anything of the sort," said I; "she did sell me
glass, and of the commonest kind. I am now seeking an undiscovered
superlative. The biggest fool in London is no designation for me."
"Ah," said he, "you should take it quietly. She's done a complete dozen
of us at the game. That paraphernalia which Jack Lucas rigged up in her
conservatory for her is the medium, I fancy. Lucas, you know, is a
professor or something at Emmanuel, Cambridge. He taught her all that
jargon about crystals."
"But," said I, as I pitched her glass into the fireplace, "what I want
to know is, how did I come to think that the stuff was real? I could
have sworn to it."