PETTY WORRIES
Saton threw down the letter which he had been reading, with a little
exclamation of impatience. It was from a man whom, on the strength of
an acquaintance which had certainly bordered upon friendship, he had
asked to propose him at a certain well-known club.
_"My dear Mr. Saton," it ran, "I was sent for to-day by the
Committee here upon the question of your candidature for the
club. They asked me a good many questions, which I answered
to the best of my ability, but you know they are a very
old-fashioned lot, and I think it would perhaps be wisest if
I were to withdraw your name for the present. This I propose
to do unless I hear from you to the contrary._
"_Sincerely yours,_
"_Gordon Chambers."_
Saton felt his cheeks flush as he thrust the letter to the bottom of
the little pile which stood in front of him. It was one more of the
little annoyances to which somehow or other he seemed at regular
intervals to be subjected. Latterly, things had begun to expand with
him. He had persuaded Madame to give up the old-fashioned house in
Regent's Park, and they had moved into a maisonette in Mayfair--a
little white-fronted house, with boxes full of scarlet geraniums, a
second man-servant to open the door, and an electric brougham in place
of the somewhat antiquated carriage, which the Countess had brought
with her from abroad. His banking account was entirely satisfactory.
There were many men and women who were only too pleased to welcome him
at their houses. And yet he was at all times subject to such an
occurrence as this.
His lips were twisted in an unpleasant smile as he frowned down upon
the tablecloth.
"It is always like it!" he muttered. "One climbs a little, and then
the stings come."
Madame entered the room, and took her place at the other end of the
breakfast table. She leaned upon her stick as she walked, and her face
seemed more than ever lined in the early morning sunlight. She wore a
dress of some soft black material, unrelieved by any patch of color,
against which her cheeks were almost ghastly in their pallor.
"The stings, Bertrand? What are they?" she asked, pouring herself out
some coffee.
Saton shrugged his shoulders.
"Nothing that you would understand," he answered coldly. "I mean that
you would not understand its significance. Nothing, perhaps, that I
ought not to be prepared for."
She looked across the table at him with cold expressionless eyes. To
see these two together in their moments of intimacy, no one would ever
imagine that her love for this boy--he was nothing more when chance
had thrown him in her way--had been the only real passion of her later
days.
"You do not know," she said, "what I understand or what I do not
understand. Tell me what it is that worries you in that letter."
He pushed it away from him impatiently.
"I asked a friend--a man named Chambers--to put me up for a club I
wanted to join," he said. "He promised to do his best. I have just
received a letter advising me to withdraw. The committee would not
elect me."
"What club is it?" she asked.
"The 'Wanderers'," he answered. "The social qualification is not very
stringent. I imagined that they would elect me."
The woman looked at him as one seeking to understand some creature of
an alien world.
"You attach importance," she asked, "to such an incident as this?
You?"
"Not real importance, perhaps," he answered, "only you must remember
that these are the small things that annoy. They amount to nothing
really. I know that. And yet they sting!"
"Do not dwell upon the small things, then," she said coldly. "It is
well, for all our sakes, that you should occupy some position in the
social world, but it is also well that you should remember that your
position there is not worth a snap of the fingers as against the great
things which you and I know of. What do these people matter, with
their strange ideas of birth and position, their little social
distinctions, which remind one of nothing so much as Swift's famous
satire? You are losing your sense of proportion, my dear Bertrand. Go
into your study for an hour this morning, and think. Listen to the
voices of the greater life. Remember that all these small happenings
are of less account than the flight of a bird on a summer's day."
"You are right," he answered, with a little sigh, "and yet you must
remember that you and I can scarcely look at things from the same
standpoint. They do not affect you in the slightest. They cannot fail
to remind me that I am after all an outcast, rescued from shipwreck by
one strange turn in the wheel of chance."
She looked at him with penetrating eyes.
"Something is happening to you, Bertrand," she said. "It may be that
it is your sense of proportion which is at fault. It may be that your
head is a little turned by the greatness of the task which it has
fallen to your lot to carry out. It is true that you are a young man,
and that I am an old woman. And yet, remember! We are both of us
little live atoms in the great world. The only things which can appeal
to us in a different manner are the everyday things which should not
count, which should not count for a single moment," she added, with a
sudden tremor in her tone.
"You are right, of course," he answered, "and yet, Rachael, you must
remember this. You have finished with the world. I am compelled to
live in it."
"If you are," she rejoined, "is that any reason, Bertrand, why you
should pause to listen to the voices whose cry is meaningless? Think!
Remember the blind folly of it all. A decade, a cycle of years, and
the men who pass you in Pall Mall, and the women who smile at you from
their carriages, will be dead and gone. You--you may become the
Emperor of Time itself. Remember that!"
"And in the meantime, one has to live."
"Keep your head in the clouds," she said. "Make use of these people,
but always remember that in the light of what may come, they are only
the dirt beneath your feet. Remember that you may be the first of all
the ages to solve the great secret--the secret of carrying your
consciousness beyond the grave."
"Life is short," he said, "and the task is great."
"Too great for cowards," she answered. "Yet look at me. Do I despair?
I am seventy-one years old. I have no fear of death. I have learnt
enough at least to help me into the grave. That will do, Bertrand. Go
on with your breakfast, and burn that letter."
He tore it in half, and went to the sideboard to help himself from one
of the dishes. When he returned, Madame was drumming thoughtfully upon
the tablecloth with her long fingers.
"Bertrand," she said.
He looked toward her curiously. There was a new note, a new expression
in the way she had pronounced his name.
"The girl, the little fair fool of a girl with money--Lois Champneyes
you called her--where is she?"
"She is in London," he answered.
"With the Rochesters?"
"Yes!"
Rachael frowned.
"You find it difficult to see her, then?" she remarked, thoughtfully.
"I can see her whenever I choose to," he answered.
"You must marry her," Rachael said. "The girl will serve your purpose
as well as another. She is rich, and she is a fool."
"She is not of age," Saton said drily, "and Mr. Rochester is her
guardian."
"She will be of age very soon," Rachael answered, "and the money is
sure."
"Do we need it?" he asked, a little impatiently. "We are making now
far more than we can spend."
"We need money all the time," she answered. "At present, things
prosper. Yet a change might come--a change in the laws, a campaign in
the press--anything. Even the truth might leak out."
Saton rose from his place, and going once more to the sideboard, took
up and lit a long Russian cigarette. He returned with the box, and
laid it before Rachael.
"If the truth should leak out," he said, "that would be the end of us
in this country. We have had one escape. I do not mean to find myself
in the prisoner's dock a second time."
"There is no fear of that," she answered. "The whole business is so
arranged that neither you nor I would be connected with it. Besides,
we have rearranged things. We are within the pale of the law now. To
return to what I was saying about this girl."
"There is no hurry," he said. "Marriage does not interest me."
"Marriage for its own sake, perhaps, no," she answered, "and yet money
you must have. No man has ever succeeded in any great work without it.
If a pauper proclaims a theory, he is laughed to scorn. He is called a
charlatan and an impostor. If a rich man speaks of the same thing, his
words are listened to as one who stirs the world. There is a change in
you, Bertrand," she continued. "You have avoided this girl lately. You
have avoided, even, your work. What is it?"
"Who knows?" he answered, lightly. "The weather, perhaps--the
moon--one's humor. I will walk this morning in Kensington Gardens.
Perhaps I shall see Lois."
He left the house half-an-hour later, after dictating some letters to
a newly installed secretary. He accepted a carefully brushed hat from
a well-trained and perfectly respectful servant, who placed also in
his hands his stick and gloves. He descended a few immaculate steps
and turned westward, frowning thoughtfully. The matter with him! He
knew well enough. He had taken his fate into his hands, played his
cards boldly enough, but Fate was beginning to get her own back.
He turned not toward Kensington Gardens, but towards Cadogan Street.
He rang the bell at one of the most pretentious houses, and asked for
Lady Marrabel. The butler was doubtful whether she would be inclined
to receive anyone at that hour. He was shown into a morning-room and
kept waiting for some time. Then she came in, serene as usual, with a
faint note of inquiry in her upraised eyebrows and the tone of her
voice as she welcomed him.
"I must apologize," he began, a little nervously. "I have no right to
come at such an hour. I heard this morning that Max Naudheim will be
in London before the end of the week, and I wondered whether you would
care to meet him."
"Of course I should," she answered, "only I hope that he is more
comprehensible than his book."
"I have never met him myself," Saton answered, "but I know that he has
a letter to me. He will come to my house, I believe, and if he follows
out his usual custom, he will scarcely leave it while he stays in
England. I shall ask a few people to talk one night. I cannot attempt
anything conventional. It does not seem to me to be an occasion for
anything of the sort. If you will come, I will let you know the night
and the time."
She hesitated for a moment.
"And if you should come," he continued, "even though it be the
evening, please wear an old dress and hat. Naudheim himself seldom
appears in a collar. Any social gathering of any sort is loathsome to
him. He will talk only amongst those whom he believes are his
friends."
"I will come, of course," Pauline answered. "It is good of you to
think of me."
"He may speak to you," Saton continued. "He takes curious fancies
sometimes to address a perfect stranger, and talk to them intimately.
Remember that though he lives in Switzerland, and has a German name,
he is really an Englishman. Nothing annoys him more than to be spoken
to in any other language."
"I will remember," Pauline said.
There was a moment's silence. Saton felt that he was expected to go.
Yet there was something in her manner which he could not altogether
understand, some nervousness, which seemed absolutely foreign to her
usual demeanour. He took up his hat reluctantly.
"You are busy to-day?" he asked.
"I am always busy," she answered. "Perhaps it is because I am so lazy.
I never do anything, so there is always so much to do."
He made the plunge, speaking without any of his usual
confidence--hurriedly, almost indistinctly.
"Won't you come and have some luncheon with me at the Berkeley, or
anywhere you please? I feel like talking to-day. I feel that I am a
little nearer the first law. I want to speak of it to someone."
She hesitated, and he saw her fingers twitch.
"Thank you," she said, "I am afraid I can't. If you like, you can come
and have luncheon here. I have one or two people coming in."
"Thank you," he said. "I shall be glad to come. About half-past one, I
suppose?"
"From that to two," she answered. "My friends drop in at any time."
He passed out into the street, not altogether satisfied with his
visit, and yet not dissatisfied. He had an instinctive feeling that in
some degree her demeanour towards him was changed. What it meant he
could not wholly tell. She no longer met his eyes with that look of
careless, slightly contemptuous interest. Yet when he tried to find
encouragement from the fact, he felt that he lacked all his usual
confidence. He realized with a little impulse of annoyance that in the
presence of this woman, whom he was more anxious to impress than
anyone else in the world, he was subject to sudden lapses of
self-confidence, to a certain self-depreciation, which irritated him.
Was it, he wondered, because he was always fancying that she looked at
him out of Rochester's eyes?
A cab drove past him, and stopped before the house which he had just
left. He looked behind, with a sudden feeling of almost passionate
jealousy. It was Rochester, who had driven by him unseen, and who was
now mounting the steps to her house.