The Moving Finger Part 22

I'll get out here, if I may," he added, "and take a short cut across the Park to my club. Mary, if you want to oblige me, for Heaven's sake don't run this fellow! He gets on my nerves. I hate the sight of him."

Lady Mary turned towards her husband with a faint, curious smile as the carriage drew up.

"You had better talk to Pauline," she said. "He is more in her line than mine."

Rochester walked across the Park a little gloomily. His wife's last words were ringing in his ears. For the first time since he could remember, a little cloud had loomed over his few short hours with Pauline. She had resented some contemptuous speech of his, and as though to mark her sense of his lack of generosity, she had encouraged Saton to talk, encouraged him to talk until the other conversation had died away, and the whole room had listened to this exponent of what he declared to be a new science. The fellow was a _poseur_ and an impostor, Rochester told himself vigorously. He knew, he was absolutely convinced that he was not honest.

He sat down on a seat for a few minutes, and his thoughts somehow wandered back to that night when he had strolled over the hills and found a lonely boy gazing downward through the tree tops to the fading landscape. He remembered his own whimsical generosity, the feelings with which he had made his offer. He remembered, too, the conditions which he had made. With a sudden swift anger, he realized that those conditions had not been kept. Saton had told him little or nothing of his doings out in the world, of his struggles and his failures, of the growth of this new enthusiasm, if indeed it was an enthusiasm. He had hinted at strange adventures, but he had spoken of nothing definite.

He had not kept his word.

Rochester rose to his feet with a little exclamation.

"He shall tell me!" he muttered to himself, "or I will expose him, if I have to turn detective and follow him round the world."

He swung round again across the Park toward Mayfair, and rang the bell at Saton's new house. Mr. Saton was not at home, he was informed, but was expected back at any moment. Rochester accepted an invitation to wait, and was shown into a room which at first he thought empty. Then someone rose from an old-fashioned easy-chair, set back amongst the shadows. Rachael peered forward, leaning upon her stick, and shading her eyes as though from the sun.

"Who is that?" she asked. "Who are you?"

Rochester bowed, and introduced himself. As yet he could see very little of the person who had spoken. The blinds, and even the curtains of the room, were close drawn. It was one of Rachael's strange fancies on certain days to sit in the darkness. Suddenly, however, she leaned forward and touched the k.n.o.b of the electric light.

"My name is Rochester," he said. "I called to see Mr. Saton for a few minutes. They asked me to wait."

"I am the Comtesse de Vestignes," Rachael said slowly, "and Bertrand Saton is my adopted son. He will be back in a few moments. Draw your chair up close to me. I should like to talk, if you do not mind this light. I have been resting, and my eyes are tired."

Rochester obeyed, and seated himself by her side with a curious little thrill of interest. It seemed to him that she was like the mummy of some ancient G.o.ddess, the shadowy presentment of days long past. She had the withered appearance of great age, and yet the dignity which refuses to yield to time.

"Come nearer," she said. "I am no longer a young woman, and I am a little deaf."

"You must tell me if you do not hear me," Rochester said. "My voice is generally thought to be a clear one. I am very much interested in this young man. Suppose, while we wait, you tell me a few things about him. You have no objection?"

Rachael laughed softly.

"I wonder," she said, "what it is that you expect to hear from me."

CHAPTER XVI

PLAIN SPEAKING

From the depths of her chair, Rachael for several moments sat and subjected her visitor to a close and merciless scrutiny.

"So you," she said at last, "were the fairy G.o.dfather. You were the man who trusted a nameless boy with five hundred pounds, because his vaporings amused you. You pushed him out into the world, you bade him go and seek his fortune."

"I was that infernal fool!" Rochester muttered.

The woman nodded.

"Yes, a fool!" she said. "No one but a fool would do such a thing. And yet great things have come of it."

Rochester shrugged his shoulders. He was not prepared to admit that Bertrand Saton was in any sense great.

"My adopted son," she continued, "is very wonderful. Egypt had its soothsayers thousands of years ago. This century, too, may have its prophet. Bertrand gains power every day. He is beginning to understand."

"You, too," Rochester asked politely, "are perhaps a student of the occult?"

"Whatever I am," she answered scornfully, "I am not one of those who because their two feet are planted upon the earth, and their head reaches six feet towards the sky, are prepared to declare that there is no universe save the earth upon which they stand, no sky save the sky toward which they look--nothing in life which their eyes will not show them, or which their hands may not touch."

Rochester smiled faintly.

"Materialism is an easy faith and a safe one," he said. "Imagination is very distorting."

"For you who feel like that," she answered, "the way through life is simple enough. We others can only pity."

"Comtesse," Rochester said, "such an att.i.tude is perfectly reasonable.

It is only when you attempt to convert that we are obliged to fall back upon our readiest weapons."

"You are one of those," she said, looking at him keenly, "who do not wish to understand more than you understand at present, who have no desire to gain the knowledge of hidden things."

"You are right, Comtesse," Rochester answered, with a smile. "I am one of those pig-headed individuals."

"It is the Saxon race," she muttered, "who have kept back the progress of the world for centuries."

"We have kept it backward, perhaps," he answered, "but wholesome."

"You think always of your bodies," she said.

"They were entrusted to us, madam, to look after," he answered.

She smiled grimly.

"You are not such a fool," she said, "as my adopted son would have me believe. You have spared me at least that hideous Latin quotation which has done so much harm to your race."

"Out of respect to you," he declared, "I avoided it. It was really a little too obvious."

"Come," she said, "you are a type of man I have not met with for years. You are strong and vigorous and healthy. You have color upon your cheeks, and strength in your tone and movements. In any show of your kind, you should certainly be ent.i.tled to a prize."

Rochester laughed, at first softly, and then heartily.

"My dear lady," he said, "forgive me. I can a.s.sure you that although my inclinations do not prompt me to sit at your son's feet and accept his mythical sayings as the words of a G.o.d, I am really not a fool. I will even go so far as this. I will even admit the possibility that a serious and religious study of occultism might result in benefit to all of us. The chief point where you and I differ is with regard to your adopted son. You believe in him, apparently. I don't!"

"Then why are you here?" she asked. "What do you want with him? Do you come as an enemy?"

Rochester was spared the necessity of making any answer. He heard the door open, and the woman's eyes glittered as they turned toward it.

"Bertrand is here himself," she said. "You can settle your business with him."