SPOKEN FROM THE HEART
Pauline took the card from the hand of her servant, and glanced at it
at first with the idlest of curiosity--afterwards with a fixed and
steadfast attention, as though she saw in those copperplate letters,
elegantly traced upon a card of superfine quality, something
symbolical, something of far greater significance than the unexpected
name which confronted her.
"I told you, Martin," she said, "that I was at home to nobody except
those upon the special list."
"I know it, your ladyship," the man answered, "but this gentleman has
called every day for a week, and I have refused even to bring his name
in. To-day he was so very persistent that I thought perhaps it would
be better to bring his card."
Pauline was lying upon a couch. She had been unwell for the last two
or three weeks. Nothing serious--nerves, she called it. A doctor would
probably have prescribed for her with a smile. Pauline knew better
than to send for one. She knew very well what was the matter. She was
afraid! Fear had come upon her like a disease. The memory of that one
night racked her still--the memory of that, and other things.
Meanwhile, the servant stood before her in an attitude of respectful
attention.
"I will see Mr. Saton," she decided at last. "You can show him in
here, and remember that until he has gone, no one else is to be
allowed to enter. Come yourself only if I ring the bell, or when you
serve tea."
The man bowed, and went back to where Saton was waiting in the hall.
"Her ladyship is at home, sir," he announced. "Will you come this
way?"
A certain drawn expression seemed suddenly to vanish from the young
man's face. He followed the servant almost blithely. In a few seconds
he was alone with her in the firelit drawing-room. The door was closed
behind him.
Pauline was sitting up on the couch. For a moment they neither of them
spoke. She, too, had been suffering, then, he thought, recognising the
signs of ill-health in her colorless cheeks and languid pose.
He came slowly across the room and held out his hand. She hesitated,
and shook her head.
"No!" she said. "I do not think that I wish to shake hands with you,
Mr. Saton. I do not understand why you have come here. I thought it
best to see you, and hear what you have to say, once and for all."
"Once and for all?" he repeated.
"Certainly," she answered. "It does not interest me to fence with
words. Between us I think that it is not necessary. What do you want
with me?"
"You know," he answered calmly.
She paused for a moment or two. She told herself that this was the
most transcendental of follies. Yet it seemed as though there were
something electrical in the atmosphere, as though something had come
into the room unaccountable, stimulating, terrifying. All the languor
of the last few days was gone.
"Am I to understand, then?" she said at last, speaking in a low tone,
and with her face averted from him, "that you have come to offer me
some explanation of the events of that night?"
"No!" he answered.
The seconds ticked on. She found his taciturnity maddening.
"Your visit had some purpose?" she asked.
"I came to see you," he answered.
"I am not well," she said, hurriedly. "I am not fit to see people or
to talk at all. I thought that you must have some special purpose in
coming, or I should not have received you."
"You wish to talk then, about that night?" he asked.
"No!" she answered--"and yet, yes!"
She sat upright. She looked him in the eyes.
"I have not dared to ask even myself this," she said, "but since you
are here, since you have forced it upon me, I shall ask you and you
will tell me. That night I had--what shall I call it?--a vision. I saw
you shoot Henry Rochester. Now you are here you shall tell me if what
I saw was the truth?"
"It was," he answered.
She drew back, shuddering.
"But why?" she asked. "He has never done you any harm."
"On the contrary," Saton answered, "he is my enemy. With all my heart
and soul I wish him dead!"
"It is terrible!" she murmured.
"It is the truth," he answered. "The truth sometimes is terrible. That
is why people so often evade it. Listen. I was only a boy, a
sentimental boy, when I first knew Rochester. Perhaps he has posed to
you as my benefactor. Certainly he lent me money. I tell you now,
though, that upon every penny of that money was a curse. Whatever I
did went wrong. However hard I fought, I was worsted. If I gambled, I
lost. If I played for safety, something--even though it might be as
unexpected as an earthquake--came to wreck my plans. It was like
playing cards with the Devil himself. One by one I lost the tricks.
When I was penniless, I had nothing left to think of but the only
piece of advice your friend Henry Rochester gave me when he sent me
out into the world. The sting of his voice was like a lash. Creatures
of the gutter he called those who had failed, and who dared to live
on. I tell you that until the time came when I looked down into the
Thames, and hesitated whether or no I should take his cynical advice
and make an end of myself, every action, every endeavor, and every
effort I had made, had been honest. It was his words, and his words
entirely, which drove me into the other paths."
"You admit, then--" she began.
"I admit nothing," he answered. "Yet I will tell you this. There are
things in my life which I loathe, and they are there because of
Rochester's words. Yet bad though I am," he continued, bitterly, "that
man's contempt is like a whip to me whenever I see him. What, in
God's name, is he? Because he has ancestors behind him, good blood in
his veins, the tricks of a man of breeding, the carriage and voice of
a gentleman, why, in Heaven's name for these things should he look
upon me as something crawling upon the face of the earth--something to
be spurned aside whenever it should cross his path? I have lived and
spoken falsehoods. The greatest men in the world have lived and spoken
falsehoods. But I am not a charlatan. I have mastered the rudiments of
a great and mighty new science. I am not a trickster. I have a claim
to live, as he has. There is a place in the world for me, too, as well
as for him. You know what he has told me? You know with what he has
threatened me? He has told me that if he even sees you and me
together, that if I even dare to find my way into your presence, that
he will horse-whip me. This because he has muscles and I have none.
Yet you ask me why I desire to kill him! I have had only one desire in
my life stronger than that, one thing in my life more intense than my
hatred of this man."
"You are both in the wrong," she said. "Henry Rochester is a
straight-living, God-fearing man, a little narrow in his views, and a
little violent in his prejudices. You are a person such as he would
not understand, such as he never could understand. You and he could
never possibly come into sympathy. He is wrong when he utters such
threats. Yet you must remember that there is Lois. He has the right
there to say what he will."
"There is Lois, yes!" Saton repeated.
"You wish to marry her, don't you?" she asked.
The question seemed to madden him. Suddenly he threw aside the almost
unnatural restraint with which he had spoken and acted since his
entrance into the room. He rose to his feet. He stood before her couch
with clenched hands, with features working spasmodically as the words
poured from his lips.
"Listen," he said. "I have no money. I have lived partly upon the
woman who adopted me, and partly by nefarious means. Science is great,
it is fascinating, it is the joy of my life, but one must live. I have
tasted luxury. I cannot live as a workingman. The woman who adopted me
is all the time at my elbow, telling me that I must marry Lois because
of her money. The child is willing. I have been willing."
"To marry her for her money--for her money only!" Pauline exclaimed,
with scorn trembling in her tone.
"Absolutely for her money only!" Saton answered. "Now you know how
poor a thing I am. Yet I tell you that all men have a bad spot in
them. I tell you that I am dependent upon that woman for every penny I
spend, and for the clothes I wear. When I tell her that I will not
marry Lois Champneyes, she will very likely throw me into the street.
What is there left for me to do? I have tried everything, and failed.
I have no strength, I have a cursed taste for the easy ways of life.
Yet this has come to me. I will not marry Lois Champneyes. I will
break with this woman, notwithstanding all I owe to her, and I will go
away and work once more, wherever I can earn enough to keep me. And I
will tell you why. I haven't a good quality that I know of. I am as
selfish as a man can be. I am a murderer at heart, an actor most of
the time, but in one thing I am honest. I love you, Pauline Marrabel!
I can't help it. It is the curse of my life, if you will, but it is
the joy of it. Rochester knows it, and he hates me. I know that
Rochester loves you, and I hate him. Listen. There is a man who
believes in me--a great man. I'll go to him. I'll work, I'll study,
I'll write. I'll live the thoughts I want to live. I'll shape my life
along the firm straight lines. I'll make a better thing of myself, if
you'll wait. Mind, I don't ask you to touch me now. If you offered me
your hands, I wouldn't take them. I'm not fit. But there is just this
one thing in me. I know myself and I know you. Give me the chance to
climb!"
Time seemed to stand still while she looked at him. Yes, he had been
honest! She saw him stripped of all the glamour of his unusual
learning. She saw him as he was--small, false, a poor creature, who
having failed on the mountains, had been content to crawl through the
marshes. He seemed in those few moments to be stripped bare to her. He
was not even a gentleman. He wore his manners as he wore his clothes.
He belonged to her world no more than the servant who had announced
him. She clenched her fingers. It was ignoble that her heart should be
beating, that the breath should come sobbing through her parted lips.
He was a creature to be despised!
She raised her head and told him so, fighting all the while with
something greater and stronger which seemed to be tearing at her heart
strings.
"If that is what you came here to say," she said, "please go."
He rose at once. She saw the anxious light with which his eyes had
been filled, fade away. He turned almost humbly toward the door.
"You are quite right," he said. "I should not have come. I do not
often have impulses. It is a mistake to listen to them. Yet I came
because it was the one honest desire which I have had since I looked
down into the water and turned away."
He walked toward the door. She stood with her finger pressing the
bell. He seemed somehow to have lost what little presence he had ever
possessed. His head was bowed; he walked as one feeling for his way in
the dark. Never once did he look round. As he stood before the door,
her lips were suddenly parted. A great wave of pity rose up from
amongst those other things in her heart. She would have called out to
him, but her butler was already there. The door had been opened.
She clenched her teeth, and resumed her place upon the sofa. She heard
the front door closed, and she found herself watching him through the
blind. She saw him cross the road very much as he had crossed the
room--unseeing, stricken. She watched him until he crossed the corner
of the square. Her eyes were misty with tears!