The maid was straightening her face as she entered. "That gentleman,
miss, Mr. Sault, has called."
Beryl tapped her lips with the feathered penholder. "Did you tell
him that the doctor was out?"
"Yes, miss. He asked if you were in. I told him I'd go and see."
Something about the visitor had amused the girl, for the corners of
her lips twitched.
"Why are you laughing, Dean?" Beryl's manner was unusually cold and
her grave eyes reproving. For no reason that she could assign, she
felt called upon to defend this man, against the ridicule which she
perceived in the maid's attitude.
"Oh, miss, he was so strange! He said: 'Perhaps _she_ will see me.'
'Do you mean Miss Merville?' says I. 'Merville!' he says in a queer
way, 'of course, Beryl Merville,' and then he said something to
himself. It sounded like 'how pitiful'. I don't think he is quite
all there, miss."
"Show him up, please," said Beryl quietly. She recognized the
futility of argument. Dean and her type found in the contemplation
of harmless lunacy a subject for merriment--and Dean was the best
maid she had had for years. She sat waiting for the man, uncertain.
Why did she want to see him? She was not really curious by nature
and the crude manners of the class to which he belonged usually
rubbed her raw. The foulness of their speech, the ugliness of their
ideals and their lives; the gibberish, almost an unknown language to
her, of the cockney man and woman, all these things grated. Perhaps
she was a neurotic after all; Ronnie was quite sure of his judgment
in most matters affecting her.
Ambrose Sault, standing in the doorway, hat in hand, saw her bite her
lower lip reflectively. She looked around with a start of surprise
and, seeing him, got up. He was a colored man! She had not realized
this before, and she was unaccountably hurt; just colored and yet his
eyes were gray!
"I hope I haven't disturbed you, mademoiselle," he said. His voice
was very soft and very sweet. Mademoiselle? A Creole--a
Madagascan--an octoroon? From one of the French foreign territories,
perhaps. He spoke English without an accent, but the "mademoiselle"
had come so naturally to his lips.
"You are French, Mr. Sault--your name of course?" She smiled at him
questioningly and wondered why she troubled to ask questions at all.
"No, mademoiselle," he shook his great head and the mask of a face
did not relax. "I am from Barbadoes, but I have lived in Port de
France, that is, in Martinique, for many years. I was also in
Noumea, in New Caledonia, that is also French."
There was an awkward silence here. Yet he was not embarrassed and
displayed no incertitude of his position. Her dilemma came from the
fact that she judged men by her experience and acquaintance with
them, and the empirical method fails before the unusual--Ambrose
Sault was that.
"My father will be home very soon, Mr. Sault. Won't you please sit
down?" As he chose a chair with some deliberation it occurred to her
that she would find a difficulty in explaining to the fastidious Dr.
Merville, why she had invited this man to await him in the
drawing-room. Strangely enough, she herself felt the capacity of
entertaining and being entertained by the visitor and she had no such
spasm of dismay as had come to her, when other, and more presentable,
visitors, had settled themselves for a lengthy call. This fact
puzzled her. Ambrose Sault was--an artisan perhaps, a messenger,
more likely. The shabbiness of his raiment and the carelessness of
his attire suggested some menial position. One waistcoat button had
been fastened into the wrong buttonhole, the result was a little
grotesque.
"Have you been working very long, with my father?" she asked.
"No--not a very long time," he said. "Moropulos and Steppe know him
better than I."
He checked himself. She knew that he would not talk any more about
his associates and the enigma which their companionship presented
would remain unsolved, so far as he could give a solution.
"Moropulos"--"Steppe"? He spoke as an equal. Even Ronnie was
deferential to Mr. Steppe and was in awe of him. Her father made no
attempt to hide his nervousness in the presence of that formidable
person. Yet this man could dispense with the title. It was not
bravado on his part, the conscious impertinence of an underling,
desirous of asserting his equality. Obviously, he thought of Mr.
Steppe as "Steppe". What would he call her father? No occasion
arose, but she was certain he would have been "Merville" and no more.
Sault's eyes were settled on her, absorbing her; yet his gaze lacked
offence, being without hostility, or notable admiration. She had a
ridiculous sensibility of praise. So he might have looked upon
Naples from the sea, or upon the fields of narcissi above Les Avants,
or the breath-taking loveliness of the hills of Monticattini in the
blue afterlight of sunset. She could not meet his eyes--yet was
without discomfort. The praise of his conspection was not human.
She laughed, artificially, she thought, and reached out for a book
that lay on the table.
"We have just returned from Italy," she said. "Do you know Italy at
all, Mr. Sault?"
"I do not know Italy," he said, and took the book she held to him.
"This is rather a wonderful account of Lombardy and its history," she
said. "Perhaps you would like to read it?"
He turned the leaves idly and smiled at her. She had never seen a
man smile so sweetly.
"I cannot read," he said simply.
She did not understand his meaning for a while thinking that his
eyesight was failing.
"Perhaps you would care to take it home."
He shook his head and the book came back to her.
"I cannot read," he said, without shame, "or write--at least I cannot
write words. Figures, yes, figures are easy; somebody told me--he
was a professor of English I think, at one of the universities--that
it was astonishing that I could work out mathematical problems and
employ all the signs and symbols of trigonometry and algebra without
being able to write. I wish I could read. When I pass a bookshop I
feel like an armless man who is starving within hands' reach of
salvation. I know a great deal and I pay a man to read to me--Livy
and Prescott and Green, and, of course, Bacon--I know them all.
Writing does not worry me--I have no friends."
If he had spoken apologetically, if he had displayed the least
aggression, she might have classified, and held him in a place. But
he spoke of his shortcomings as he might have spoken of his gray
hair, as a phenomenon beyond his ordering.
She was thunderstruck; possibly he was so used to shocking people
from this cause that he did not appear to observe the effect he had
produced.
He was so completely content with this, the first contact with his
dream woman, that he was almost incapable of receiving any other
impression. Her hair was fairer than he had thought, the nose
thinner, the molding of her delicate face more spirituel. The lips
redder and fuller, the rounded chin less firm. And the eyes--he
wished she would turn her head so that he could be sure of their
color. They were big, set wide apart, there was depth in them and a
something upon which he yearned. The figure of her he knew by heart.
Straight and tall and most gracious. A patrician; he thought of her
as that. And oriental. He had pictured her as a great lady at
Constantine's court; he set her upon the marble terrace of a decent
villa on the hills above the Chrysopolis; a woman of an illustrious
order.
She could never suspect that he thought of her at all as a distinct
personality. She could not guess that he knew her as well as his own
right hand; that, day after day, he had waited in the Row, a shabby
and inconspicuous figure amongst the smart loungers: waited for the
benison of her presence. She had not seen him in Devon in the
spring--he had been there. Lying on the rain-soaked grass of Tapper
Downs to watch her walking with her father; sitting amidst gorse on
the steep slope of the cliff, she unconscious of his guardianship,
reading in her chair on the smooth beach.
"How curious, I nearly said 'sad'. But you do not feel very sad
about it, Mr. Sault, do you?" Amused, he shook his head.
"It would be irritating," he said, "if I were sorry for myself. But
I am never that. Half the unhappiness of life comes from the vanity
of self-pity. It is the mother of all bitterness. Do you realize
that? You cannot feel bitter without feeling sorry for yourself."
She nodded.
"You miss a great deal--but you know that--poetry. I suppose you
have that read to you?"
Ambrose Sault laughed softly. "Yes--poetry.
"'Out of the dark which covers me,
Black as a pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods there be,
For my unconquerable soul--'
"That poem and Theocrite, and only two lines of Theocrite, are the
beginning and the end of my poetical leanings. I attend lectures of
course. Lectures on English, on architecture, music,
history--especially history--oh, a hundred subjects. And
mathematics. You can get those in the extension classes only,
unfortunately, I cannot qualify for admission to the classes
themselves."
"Have you never tried to--to--"
"Read and write? Yes. My room is packed with little books and big
books. A-b, ab; c-a-t, cat; and copy books. But I just can't. I
can write the letters of the alphabet, a few of them that are
necessary for mathematical calculations, very well; but I cannot go
any further. I seem to slip into a fog, a sort of impenetrable wall
of thick mist that confuses and baffles me. I know that c-a-t is
'cat' but when I see 'cat' written it is a meaningless combination of
straight and curved lines. It is sheerly physical--the doctors have
a word for it--I cannot remember what it is for the moment, I just
can't read--"
Dr. Merville came in at that moment, a thin colorless man, myopic,
irritable, chronically worried. He entered the drawing-room
hurriedly. Beryl thought he must have run upstairs. His frowning,
dissatisfied glance was toward Sault; the girl he ignored.
"Hello, Sault--had no idea you were here. Will you come into my
study?" He was breathless and Beryl knew by the signs that he was
angry about something. It occurred to her instantly, that he was
annoyed with her for entertaining the untidy visitor. The study was
next door to the drawing-room and he walked out with a beckoning jerk
of his chin.
"I am glad to have met you, mademoiselle." Ambrose Sault was not to
be hurried. Returning to the open doorway, Dr. Merville, clucking
his impatience, witnessed the leisurely leave-taking.
The study door had scarcely closed on the visitor before it opened
again and her father returned. "Why the deuce did you ask that fellow
up, Beryl? He could have very well waited in the servants' hall--or
in the breakfast room or anywhere. Suppose--somebody had called!"
"I thought he was a friend of Mr. Steppe's," she said calmly. "You
know such extraordinary people. What is he?"
"Who, Sault? Well, he is--"
Dr. Merville was not immediately prepared to define the position of
his visitor. "In a sense he is an employee of Moropulos--picked him
up in his travels. He is an anarchist."