"WHO IS MR. SATON?"
"Really, Henry," Lady Mary Rochester said to her husband, a few
minutes before the dinner-gong sounded, "for once you have been
positively useful. A new young man is such a godsend, and Charlie
Peyton threw us over most abominably. So mean of him, too, after the
number of times I had him to dine in Grosvenor Square."
"He's gone to Ostend, I suppose."
Lady Mary nodded.
"So foolish!" she declared. "He hasn't a shilling in the world, and he
never wins anything. He might just as well have come down here and
made himself agreeable to Lois."
"Matchmaking again?" Rochester asked.
She shook her head.
"What nonsense! Charlie is one of my favorite young men. I am not at
all sure that I could spare him, even to Lois. But the poor boy must
marry someone! I don't see how else he is to live. By the bye, who is
your protege?"
Rochester, who was lounging in a low chair in his wife's
dressing-room, looked thoughtfully at the tip of his patent shoe.
"I haven't the faintest idea," he declared.
His wife frowned, a little impatiently.
"You are so extreme," she protested. "Of course you know something
about him. What am I to tell people? They will be sure to ask."
"Make them all happy," Rochester suggested. "Tell Lady Blanche that he
is a millionaire from New York, and Lois that he is the latest thing
in Spring poets. They probably won't compare notes until to-morrow, so
it really doesn't matter."
"I wish you could be serious for five minutes," Lady Mary said. "You
really are a trial, Henry. You seem to see everything from some quaint
point of view of your own, and to forget all the time that there are a
few other people in the world whose eyesight is not so distorted.
Sometimes I can't help realizing how fortunate it is that we see so
little of one another."
"I can scarcely be expected to agree with you," Rochester answered,
with an ironical bow. "I must try and mend my ways, however. To return
to the actual subject under discussion, then, I can really tell you
very little about this young man."
"You can tell me where he comes from, at any rate," Lady Mary
remarked.
Rochester shook his head.
"He comes from the land of mysteries," he declared. "I really am
ashamed to be so disappointing, but I only met him once before in my
life."
Lady Mary sighed gently.
"It is almost a relief," she said, "to hear you admit that you have
seen him before at all. Please tell me where it was that you met," she
added, studying the effect of a tiara upon her splendidly coiffured
hair.
"I met him," Rochester answered, "sitting with his back to a rock on
the top of one of my hills."
"What, you mean here at Beauleys?" Lady Mary asked.
"On Beacon Hill," her husband assented. "It was seven years ago, and
as you can gather from his present appearance, he was little more than
a boy. He sat there in the twilight, seeing things down in the valley
which did not and never had existed--seeing things that never were
born, you know--things for which you stretch out your arms, only to
find them float away. He was quite young, of course."
Lady Mary turned around.
"Henry!" she exclaimed.
"My dear?"
"You are absolutely the most irritating person I ever attempted to
live with!"
"And I have tried so hard to make myself agreeable," he sighed.
"You are one of those uncomfortable people," she declared, "who loathe
what they call the obvious, and adore riddles. You would commit any
sort of mental gymnastic rather than answer a plain question in a
straightforward manner."
"It is perfectly true," he admitted. "You have such insight, my dear
Mary."
"I am to take it, then," she continued, "that you know absolutely
nothing about your protege? You know nothing, for instance, about his
family, or his means?"
"Absolutely nothing," he admitted. "He has an uncommon name, but I
believe that I gathered from him once that his parentage was not
particularly exalted."
"At least," she said, with a little sigh, "he is quite presentable. I
call him, in fact, remarkably good-looking, and his manners leave
nothing to be desired. He has lived abroad, I should think."
"He may have lived anywhere," Rochester admitted.
"Well, I'll have him next me at dinner," she declared. "I daresay I
shall find out all about him pretty soon. Come, Henry, I am quite sure
that everyone is down. You and I play host and hostess so seldom that
we have forgotten our manners."
They descended to the drawing-room, and Lady Mary murmured her
apologies. Everyone, however, seemed too absorbed to hear them. They
were listening to Saton, who was standing, the centre of a little
group, telling stories.
"It was in Buenos Ayres," Rochester heard him conclude, amidst a
ripple of laughter. "I can assure you that I saw the incident with my
own eyes."
Lois Champneyes--an heiress, pretty, and Rochester's ward--came
floating across the room to them. She wore a plain muslin gown, of
simpler cut than was usually seen at Lady Mary's house-parties, and
her complexion showed no signs whatever of town life. Her hair--it was
bright chestnut color, merging in places to golden--was twisted simply
in one large coil on the top of her head. She wore no jewelry, and
she had very much the appearance of a child just escaped from the
schoolroom.
"Mary," she exclaimed, drawing her hostess on one side, "you must send
me in with Mr. Saton! He is perfectly charming, and isn't it a lovely
name? Do tell me who he is, and whether I may fall in love with him."
Lady Mary nodded.
"My dear child," she said, "I shall do nothing of the sort. You are
not nearly old enough to take care of yourself, and we know nothing
about this young man at all. Besides, I want him for myself."
"You are the most selfish hostess I ever stayed with," Lois declared,
turning away with a little pout. "Never mind! I'll make him talk to me
after dinner."
"Is your friend in the diplomatic service?" Lord Penarvon asked
Rochester. "He is a most amusing fellow."
"Not at present, at any rate," Rochester answered. "I really forget
what he used to do when I met him first. As a matter of fact, I have
seen very little of him lately."
A servant announced dinner, and they all trooped across the hall a
little informally. It was only a small party, and Lady Mary was a
hostess whose ideas were distinctly modern. Conversation at first was
nearly altogether general. Saton, without in any way asserting
himself, bore at least his part in it. He spoke modestly enough, and
yet everything he said seemed to tell. From the first, the dinner was
a success.
Rochester found himself listening with a curiosity for which he
could not wholly account, to this young man, seated only a few feet
away. His presence was so decidedly piquant. It appealed immensely
to his sense of humor. Saton's appearance was in every respect
irreproachable. His tie was perfectly tied, his collar of the latest
shape. His general appearance was that of an exceedingly smart young
man about town. The only sign of eccentricity which he displayed was
an unobtrusive eyeglass, suspended from his neck by a narrow black
ribbon, and which he had only used to study the menu.
Rochester looked at him across the white tablecloth, with its
glittering load of silver and glass, its perfumed banks of pink
blossoms, and told himself that one at least of his somewhat eccentric
experiments had borne strange fruit. He thought of that night upon
the hillside, the boy's passionate words, his almost wild desire to
realize, to turn into actual life, the fantasies which were then only
the creation of his fancy. How far had he realized them, he wondered?
What did this alteration in his exterior denote? From a few casual and
half-forgotten inquiries, Rochester knew that he was the son, or
rather the orphan of working-people in the neighboring town. There
was nothing in his blood to make him in any way the social equal
of these men and women amongst whom he now sat with such perfect
self-possession. Rochester found himself watching for some traces of
inferior breeding, some lapse of speech, some signs of an innate lack
of refinement. The absence of any of these things puzzled him. Saton
was assured, without being over-confident. He spoke of himself only
seldom. It was marvelous how often he seemed to avoid the use of the
first person. He seemed, too, modestly unconscious of the fact that
his conversation was in any way more interesting than the speech of
those by whom he was surrounded.
"You seem to have lived," his hostess said to him once, "in so many
countries, Mr. Saton. Are you really only as old as you look?"
"How can I answer that," he asked, smiling, "except by telling you
that I am twenty-five."
"You must have commenced to live in your perambulator," she declared.
"I have lived nowhere," he answered. "I have visited many places, and
travelled through many lands, but life with me has been a search."
"A search?" she murmured, dropping her voice a little, and intimating
by the slight movement of her head towards him, that their
conversation was to become a tete-a-tete. "Well," she continued, "I
suppose that life is that with all of us, only you see with us poor
frivolous people, a search means nearly always the same thing--a
search for amusement or distraction, whichever you choose to call it."
Saton shrugged his shoulders slightly.
"Different things amuse different people," he remarked. "My search, I
will admit, was of a different order."
"It is finished?" she asked.
"It will never be finished," he answered. "The man who finds what he
seeks," he added, raising his dark eyes to hers, "as a rule has fixed
his ambitions too low."
"Speaking of ambitions, Mr. Saton," Lord Penarvon asked across the
table, "are you interested in politics?"
"Not in the least," Saton answered frankly. "There seem to me to be so
many other things in life better worth doing than making fugitive laws
for a dissatisfied country."
"Tell me," his hostess asked, "what do you yourself consider the
things better worth doing?"
Saton hesitated. For the first time, he seemed scarcely at his ease.
He glanced across at Rochester, and down at his plate.
"The sciences," he answered, quietly. "There are many torches lit
which need strong hands to carry them forward."
Lois leaned across the table. As yet she had scarcely spoken, but she
had listened intently to his every word.
"Which of the sciences, Mr. Saton?" she asked, a little breathlessly.
He smiled at her, and hesitated a moment before answering.
"There are so many," he said, "which are equally fascinating, but I
think that it is always the least known which is the most attractive.
When I spoke, I was really thinking of one which many people would
scarcely reckon amongst the orthodox list. I mean occultism."
There was a little murmur of interest. Saton himself, however,
deliberately turned the conversation. He reverted to a diplomatic
incident which had come to his notice when in Brazil, and asked Lord
Penarvon's opinion concerning it.
"By the bye," the latter asked, as their conversation drew toward a
close, "how long did you say that you had been in England, Mr. Saton?"
"A very short time," Saton answered, with a faint smile. "I have been
something of a wanderer for years."
"And you came from?" Rochester asked, leaning a little forward.
Saton smiled as his eyes met his host's. He hesitated perceptibly.
"I came from the land where the impossible sometimes happens," he
answered, lightly, "the land where one dreams in the evening, and is
never sure when one wakes in the morning that one's dreams have not
become solid things."
Lady Mary sighed.
"Can one get a Cook's ticket?" she asked.
"Can one get there by motor-car, or even flying-machine?" Lois
demanded. "I would risk my bones to find my way there."
Saton laughed.
"Unfortunately," he said, "there is a different path for every one of
us, and there are no signposts."
Lady Mary sighed as she rose to her feet. She nodded a friendly little
farewell to her interesting neighbor.
"Then we may as well go and have some really good bridge," she said,
"until you men take it into your heads to come and disturb us."