A BUSY EVENING
The conversazione was, in its way, a brilliant gathering. There were
present scientists, men of letters, artists, with a very fair
sprinkling of society people, always anxious to absorb any new
sensation. One saw there amongst the white-haired men, passing
backwards and forwards, or talking together in little knots,
professors whose names were famous throughout Europe.
A very great man indeed brought Saton up to Pauline with a little word
of explanation.
"I am sure," he said to her--she was one of his oldest friends--"that
you will be glad to meet the gentleman whose brilliant paper has
interested us all so much. This is Lady Marrabel, Saton, whose father
was professor at Oxford before your day."
The great man passed on. Pauline's first impulse had been to hold out
her hand, but she had immediately withdrawn it. Saton contented
himself with a grave bow.
"I am afraid, Lady Marrabel," he said, "that you are prejudiced
against me."
"I think not," she answered. "Naturally, seeing you so suddenly
brought into my mind the terrible occurrence of only a few days ago."
"An occurrence," he declared, "which no one could regret so greatly
as myself. But apart from that, Lady Marrabel, I am afraid that you
are not prepared to do me justice. You look at me through Rochester's
eyes, and I am quite sure that all his days Rochester will believe
that I am more or less of a charlatan."
"Your paper was very wonderful, Mr. Saton," she said slowly. "I am
convinced that Mr. Rochester would have admitted that himself if he
had been here."
"He might," Saton said. "He might have admitted that much, with a
supercilious smile and a little shrug of the shoulders. Rochester is a
clever man, I believe, but he is absolutely insular. There is a belt
of prejudice around him, to the hardening of which centuries have come
and gone. You are not, you cannot be like that," he continued with
conviction. "There is truth in these things. I am not an ignorant
mountebank, posing as a Messiah of science. Look at the men and women
who are here to-night. They know a little. They understand a little.
They are only eager to see a little further through the shadows. I do
not ask you to become a convert. I ask you only to believe that I
speak of the things in which I have faith."
"I am quite sure that you do," she answered, with a marked access of
cordiality in her tone. "Believe me, it was not from any distrust of
that sort that I perhaps looked strangely at you when you came up. You
must remember that it is a very short time since our last meeting. One
does not often come face to face with a tragedy like that."
"You are right," he answered. "It was awful. Yet you saw how they
drove me on. I spoke what I felt and knew. It is not often that those
things come to one, but that there was death in the room that night I
knew as surely as I am sitting with you here now. They goaded me on to
speak of it. I could not help it."
"It was very terrible and very wonderful," she said, looking at him
with troubled eyes. "They say that Lady Mary is still suffering from
the shock."
"It might have happened at any moment," he reminded her. "The man had
heart disease. He had had his warning. He knew very well that the end
might come at any moment."
"That is true, I suppose," she admitted. "The medical examination
seemed to account easily enough for his death. Yet there was something
uncanny about it."
"The party broke up the next day, I suppose," he continued. "I have
been down in the country, but I have heard nothing."
"We left before the funeral, of course," she answered.
"Fortunately for me," he remarked, "I had important things to think
of. I had to prepare this paper. The invitation to read it came quite
unexpectedly. I have been in London for so short a time, indeed, that
I scarcely expected the honor of being asked to take any share in a
meeting so important as this."
"I do not see why you should be surprised," she said.
"You certainly seem to have gone as far in the study of occultism as
any of those others."
He looked at her thoughtfully.
"You yourself should read a little about these things," he
said--"read a little and think a little. You would find very much to
interest you."
"I am sure of it," she answered, almost humbly. "Will you come and see
me one day, and talk about it? I live at Number 17, Cadogan Street."
"I will come with pleasure," he answered, rising. "Will you forgive me
if I leave you now? There is a man just leaving with whom I must
speak."
He passed away, and left the room with a little thrill of
satisfaction. He had contrived to impress the one woman whom he was
anxious to impress! Children like little Lois Champneyes and those
others, were easy. This woman he knew at once was something different.
Besides, she was a friend of Rochester's, and that meant something to
him.
He walked along Regent Street to the end, and crossing the road,
entered a large cafe. Here he sat before one of the marble-topped
tables, and ordered some coffee. In a few minutes he was joined by
another man, who handed his coat and hat to the waiter, and sat down
with the air of one who was expected. Saton nodded, a little curtly.
"Will you take anything?" he asked.
"A bottle of beer and a cigar," the newcomer ordered. "A shilling
cigar, I think, to-night. It will run to it."
"Anything special?" Saton asked.
"Things in general are about the same as usual," his companion
answered. "They did a little better in Oxford Street and Regent
Street, but Violet had a dull day in Bond Street. I have closed up
the Egyptian place in the Arcade--'Ayesha' we called it. The police
are always suspicious of a woman's name, and I had a hint from a
detective I know."
Saton nodded.
"You have something else to tell me, haven't you?" he asked.
"Yes!" the other answered. "We had a very important client in Bond
Street this afternoon, one of those whose names you gave me."
Saton leaned across the table.
"Who was it?" he asked.
"Lady Mary Rochester of Beauleys," the other answered--"got a town
house, and a big country place down in Mechestershire."
Something flashed for a moment in Saton's eyes, but he said nothing.
His companion commenced to draw leisurely a sheet of paper from his
breast coat pocket. He was fair and middle-aged, respectably dressed,
and with the air of a prosperous city merchant. His eyes were a little
small, and his cheeks inclined to be fat, or he would have been
reasonably good-looking.
"Lady Mary called without giving her name," he continued, "but we knew
her, of course, by our picture gallery. She called professedly to
amuse herself. She was told the usual sorts of things, with a few
additions thrown in from our knowledge of her. She seemed very much
impressed, and in the end she came to a specific inquiry."
"Go on," said Saton.
"The specific inquiry was briefly this," the man continued. "She gave
herself away the moment she opened her mouth. She behaved, in fact,
like a farmer's daughter asking questions of a gipsy girl. She showed
us the photograph of a man, whom we also recognised, and wanted to
know the usual sort of rubbish--whether he was really fond of her,
whether he would be true to her if she married him."
"Married him?" Saton repeated.
"She posed as a widow," the other man reminded him.
"What was the reply?"
"Violet was clever," the man remarked, with a slow smile. "She saw at
once that this was a case where something might be done. She asked for
three days, and for a letter from the man. She said that it was a case
in which a sight of his handwriting, and a close study of it, would
help them to give an absolutely truthful answer."
"She agreed?" Saton asked.
The other nodded, and produced a letter from his pocket.
"She handed one over at once," he said. "It isn't particularly
compromising, perhaps, but it's full of the usual sort of rot. She's
coming for it on Tuesday."
Saton smiled as he thrust it into his pocketbook.
"I will put this into Dorrington's hands at once," he said. "This has
been very well managed, Huntley. I will have a liqueur, and you shall
have some more beer."
"Don't mind if I do," Mr. Huntley assented cheerfully. "It's thirsty
weather."
They summoned a waiter, and Saton lit a cigarette.
"You've been amongst the big pots to-night," Huntley remarked, looking
at him.
Saton nodded.
"I have been keeping our end up," he said, "in the legitimate branch
of our profession. You needn't grin like that," he added, a little
irritably. "There is a legitimate side, and a very wonderful side,
only a brain like yours is not capable of assimilating it. You should
have heard my paper to-night upon self-directed mesmeric waves."
The man shook his head, and laughed complacently.
"It's not in my way," he answered. "Our business is good enough as it
is."
"You are a fool," Saton said, a little contemptuously. "You can't see
that but for the legitimate side there would be no business at all.
Unless there was a glimmer of truth at the bottom of the well, unless
there existed somewhere a prototype, Madame Helga, and Omega, and
Naomi might sit in their empty temples from morning till night. People
know, or are beginning to know, that there are forces abroad beyond
the control of the ordinary commonplace mortal. They are willing to
take it for granted that those who declare themselves able to do so,
are able to govern them."
He broke off a little abruptly. Huntley's unsympathetic face, with the
big cigar in the corner of his mouth, choked the flow of his words.
"Never mind," he said. "This isn't interesting to you, of course. As
you say, the business side is the more important. I will see you at
the hotel to-morrow night. Considering where I have been this
evening, it is scarcely wise for us to be seen together."
Huntley took the hint, finished his drink, and departed. Saton sat for
a few more minutes alone. Then he too went out into the street, and
walked slowly homewards. He let himself into the house in Regent's
Park with his latchkey, and went thoughtfully upstairs. The room was
still brilliantly illuminated, and the woman who was sitting over the
fire, turned round to greet him.
"Well?" she asked.
Saton divested himself of his hat and coat. Madame's black eyes were
still fixed upon him. He came slowly across towards her.
"Well?" she repeated.
"You were there," he reminded her. "I saw you sitting almost in the
front row. What did you think of it?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"What does it matter what I think of it? Tell me about the others."
"My paper was pronounced everywhere to be a great success," he
declared. "Many of the cleverest men in London were there. They
listened to every syllable."
Madame nodded.
"Why trouble to teach them?" she asked, a little scornfully. "What of
Huntley? Have you seen him? How have they done to-day?"
"It goes well," he answered. "It always goes well."
She moved her head slowly.
"Yet to-night you are not thinking of it," she said. "For many nights
you have not counted your earnings. You are thinking of other things,"
she declared harshly. "Don't look away from me. Look into my eyes."
"It is true," he answered. "To-night I have been with clever men. I
have measured my wits against theirs. I have pushed into their
consciousness things which they were unwilling to believe. I have made
them believe. There were many people there who felt, I believe, for
the first time, that they were ignorant."
The woman looked at him scornfully. There was no softening in her
face, and yet she had taken his hand in hers and held it.
"What do we gain by that?" she asked harshly. "What we want is gold,
gold all the time. You ought to know that, you, who have been so near
to starvation. Are you a fool that you don't realize it?"
"I am not a fool," Saton answered calmly, "but there is another side
to the whole matter. A meeting such as to-night's gives an immense
fillip on the part of society to what they are pleased to call the
supernatural. It is only the fear of ridicule which keeps half the
people in the world from flooding our branches, every one of them
eager to have their fortunes told. A night like to-night is a great
help. Clever men, men who are believed in, have accepted the principle
that there are laws which govern the future so surely as the past in
its turn has been governed. One needs only to apprehend those laws, to
reduce them to intelligible formulae. It is an exact study, an exact
science. This is the doctrine which I have preached. When people once
believe it, what is to keep them from coming in their thousands to
those who know more than they do?"
The woman shook her head derisively.
"No need to wait for those days," she answered. "The world is packed
full of fools now. No need to wrestle with nature, to wear oneself
inside out to give them truth. Give them any rubbish. Give them what
they seem to want. It is enough so long as they bring the gold. How
much was taken to-day altogether?"
Saton passed on to her the papers which the man Huntley had given him
in the cafe.
"There is the account," he said. "You see it grows larger every day."
"What becomes of the money?" she asked.
"It is paid into the bank, and the banker's receipt comes to me each
morning. There is no chance for fraud. I must make some more
investments soon. Our balance grows and grows."
The woman's eyes glittered.
"Bring me some money to-morrow," she begged, grasping his other hand.
"I like to have it here in my hands. Money and you, Bertrand, my
son--they are all I care for. Banks and investments are well enough. I
like money. Kiss me, Bertrand."
He laughed tolerantly, and kissed her cheek.
"My dear Rachael," he said, "you have already bagsful of gold about
the place."
"They are safe," she assured him, "absolutely safe. They never leave
my person. I feel them as I sit. I sleep with them at night. I am
going to bed now. Bertrand!"
"Well?" he asked.
She pointed to him with long forefinger, a forefinger aflame with
jewels.
"Look! We play with no fortune-telling here. What is there in your
face? What is there in your life you are not telling me of? Is it a
woman?"
"There are many women in my life," he answered. "You know that."
"I do," she answered. "Poor fools! Play with them all you will, but
remember--the one whom you choose must have gold!"
He nodded.
"I am not likely to forget," he said.
She left the room with a farewell caress. There was something almost
tigress-like about the way in which her arms wound themselves around
him--some gleam of the terrified victim in his eyes, as he felt her
touch. Then she left the room. Saton sank back into an easy-chair, and
gazed steadfastly into the fire through half-closed eyes.