He pa.s.sed his arm around her affectionately, and kissed her when they parted for the night. Then he came down to his little room, and sat for a time at his desk, piled with books and works of reference. He brooded gloomily for several moments over what Rachael had been saying. A knock at the door made him start. It was only a servant, come to see to the fire, but his hand had darted out toward a certain drawer of his desk. When the servant had retired, he opened it for a minute and looked in. A small shining revolver lay there, and a box of cartridges.

"Your idea, my friend Rochester!" he muttered to himself.

CHAPTER x.x.x

A SURPRISING REQUEST

The d.u.c.h.ess of Ampthill was giving a great dinner-party at her house in Grosvenor Square. She had found several new prodigies, and one of them was performing in a most satisfactory manner. He sat at her left hand, and though, unlike Saton, he had at first been shy, the continual encouragement of his hostess had eventually produced the desired result. His name was Chalmers, and he was the nephew of a bishop. He had taken a double first at Oxford, and now announced his intention of embracing literature as a profession. He wore gla.s.ses, and he was still very young.

"There is no doubt at all," he said, in answer to a remark from the d.u.c.h.ess, "that London has reached just that stage in her development as a city of human beings, which was so fatal to some of her predecessors in pre-eminence, some of those ancient cities of which there exists to-day only the name. The blood in her arteries is no longer robust. Already the signs of decay are plentiful."

"I wonder," Rochester inquired, "what you consider your evidences are for such a statement. To a poor outsider like myself, for instance, London seems to have all the outward signs of an amazingly prosperous--one might almost say a splendidly progressive city."

Chalmers smiled. It was a smile he had cultivated when contradicted at the Union, and he knew its weight.

"From a similar point of view," he said, "as yours, Mr. Rochester, Rome and Athens, Nineveh, and those more ancient cities, presented the same appearance of prosperity. Yet if you ask for signs, there are surely many to be seen. I am anxious," he continued, gazing around him with an air of bland enjoyment, "to avoid anything in the nature of an epigram. There is nothing so unconvincing, so stultifying to one's statements, as to express them epigrammatically. People at once give you credit for an attempt at intellectual gymnastics which takes no regard to the truth. I will not, therefore, weary you with a diatribe upon the condition of that heterogeneous ma.s.s which is known to-day as Society. I will simply point out to you one of the portents which has inevitably heralded disaster. I mean the restless searching everywhere for new things and new emotions. Our friend opposite," he said, bowing to Saton, "will forgive me if I instance the almost pa.s.sionate interest in this new science which he is making brave efforts to give to the world. A lecture to-day from Mr. Bertrand Saton would fill any hall in London. And why? Simply because the people know that he will speak to them of new things. Look at this man Father Cresswell. There is no building in this great city which would hold the crowds who flock to his meetings. And why? Simply because he has adopted a new tone--because in place of the old methods, he stands in his pulpit with a lash, and wields it like a Russian executioner."

Lady Mary interrupted him suddenly from her place a little way down the table.

"Oh, I don't agree with you!" she said. "Indeed, I think you are wrong. The reason why people go to hear Father Cresswell is not because he has anything new to say, or any new way of saying it. The real reason is because he has the gift of showing them the truth. You can be told things very often, and receive a great many warnings, but you take no notice. There is something wrong about the method of delivering them. It is not the lash which Father Cresswell uses, but it is his extraordinary gift of impressing one with the truth of what he says, that has had such an effect upon everyone."

Rochester looked across at his wife curiously. It was almost the first time that he had ever heard her speak upon a serious subject. Now he came to think of it, he remembered that she had been spending much of her time lately listening to this wonderful enthusiast. Was he really great enough to have influenced so light a creature, he wondered?

Certainly there was something changed in her. He had noticed it during the last few days--an odd sort of nervousness, a greater kindness of speech, an unaccustomed gravity. Her remark set him thinking.

Chalmers leaned forward and bowed to Lady Mary. Again the shadow of a tolerant smile rested upon his lips.

"Very well, Lady Mary," he said, "I will accept the truth of what you say. Yet a few decades ago, who cared about religion, or hearing the truth? It is simply because the men and women of Society have exhausted every means of self-gratification, that in a sort of unwholesome reaction they turn towards the things as far as possible removed from those with which they are surfeited. But I will leave Father Cresswell alone. I will ask you whether it is not the bizarre, the grotesque in art, which to-day wins most favor. I will turn to the making of books--I avoid the term literature--and I will ask you whether it is not the extravagant, the impossible, the deformed, in style and matter, which is most eagerly read. The simplest things in life should convince one. The novelist's hero is no longer the fine, handsome young fellow of twenty years ago. He is something between forty and fifty, if not deformed, at least decrepit with dissipations, and with the gift of fascination, whatever that may mean, in place of the simpler attributes of a few decades ago. And the heroine!--There is no more book-muslin and innocence. She has, as a rule, green eyes; she is middle-aged, and if she has not been married before, she has had her affairs. Everything obvious in life, from politics to mutton-chops, is absolutely barred by anyone with any pretensions to intellect to-day."

"One wonders," Rochester murmured, "how in the course of your long life, Mr. Chalmers, you have been able to see so far and truthfully into the heart of things!"

Chalmers bowed.

"Mr. Rochester," he said, "it is the newcomer in life, as in many other things, who sees most of the game."

The conversation drifted away. Rochester was reminded of it only when driving home that night with his wife. Again, as they took their places in the electric brougham, he was conscious of something changed, not only in the woman herself, but in her demeanor towards him.

"Do you mind," he asked, soon after they started, "just dropping me at the club? It is scarcely out of your way, and I feel that I need a whiskey and soda, and a game of billiards, to take the taste of that young man's talk out of my mouth. What a sickly brood of chickens the d.u.c.h.ess does encourage, to be sure!"

"I wonder if you'd mind not going to the club to-night, Henry?" Lady Mary asked quietly.

He turned toward her in surprise.

"Why, certainly not," he answered. "Have we to go on anywhere?"

She shook her head.

"No!" she said. "Only I feel I'd like to talk to you for a little time, if you don't mind. It's nothing very much," she continued, nervously twisting her handkerchief between her fingers.

"I'll come home with pleasure," Rochester interrupted. "Don't look so scared," he added, patting the back of her hand gently. "You know very well, if there is any little trouble, I shall be delighted to help you out."

She did not remove her hand, but she looked out of the window. What she wanted to say seemed harder than ever. And after all, was it worth while? It would mean giving up a very agreeable side to life. It would mean--Her thoughts suddenly changed their course. Once more she was sitting upon that very uncomfortable bench in the great city hall.

Once more she felt that curious new sensation, some answering vibration in her heart to the wonderful, pa.s.sionate words which were bringing tears to the eyes not only of the women, but of the men, by whom she was surrounded. No, it was not an art, this--a trick! No acting was great enough to have touched the hearts of all this time and sin-hardened mult.i.tude. It was the truth--simply the truth.

"It isn't exactly a little thing, Henry. I'll tell you about it when we get home."

No, it was no little thing, Rochester thought to himself, as he stood upon the hearthrug of her boudoir, and listened to the woman who sat on the end of the sofa a few feet away as she talked to him. Sometimes her eyes were raised to his--eyes whose color seemed more beautiful because of the tears in them. Sometimes her head was almost buried in her hands. But she talked all the time--an odd, disconnected sort of monologue, half confession, half appeal. There was little in it which seemed of any great moment, and yet to Rochester it was as though he were face to face with a tragedy. This woman was asking him much!

"I know so well," she said, "what a useless, frivolous, miserable sort of life mine has been, and I know so well that I haven't made the least attempt, Henry, to be a good wife to you. That wasn't altogether my fault, was it?" she asked pleadingly. "Do tell me that."

"It was not your fault at all," he answered gravely. "It was part of our arrangement."

"I am afraid," she said, "that it was a very unholy, a very wicked arrangement, only you see I was badly brought up, and it seemed to me so natural, such an excellent way of providing a good time for myself, to marry you, and to owe you nothing except one thing. Henry, you will believe this, I know. I have flirted very badly, and I have had many of those little love-affairs which every woman I know indulges in--silly little affairs just to pa.s.s away the time, and to make one believe that one is living. But I have never really cared for anybody, and these little follies, although I suppose they are such a waste of emotion and truthfulness and real feeling, haven't amounted to very much, Henry. You know what I mean. It is so difficult to say. But you believe that?"

"I believe it from my soul," he answered.

"You see," she went on, "it seemed to me all right, because there was no one to point out how foolish and silly it was to play one's way through life as though it were a nursery, and we children, and to forget that we were grown-up, and that we were getting older with the years. You have been quite content without me, Henry?" she asked, looking up at him wistfully.

"Yes, I have been content!" he admitted, looking away from her, looking out of the room. "I have been content, after a fashion."

"Ours was such a marriage of convenience," she went on, "and you were so very plain-spoken about it, Henry. I feel somehow as though I were breaking a compact when I turn round and ask you whether it is not possible that we might be, perhaps, some day, a little more to one another. You know why I am almost afraid to say this. It has not been with you as it has been with me. I have always felt that she has been there--Pauline."

She was tearing little bits from the lace of her handkerchief. Her eyes sought his fearfully.

"Don't think, when I say that," she continued, "that I say it with any idea of blaming you. You told me that you loved Pauline when we were engaged, and of course she was married then, and one did not expect--it never seemed likely that she might be free. And now she is free," Lady Mary went on, with a little break in her voice, "and I am here, your wife, and I am afraid that you love her still so much that what I am saying to you must sound very, very unwelcome. Tell me, Henry. Is that so?"

Rochester was touched. It was impossible not to feel the sincerity of her words. He sank on one knee, and took her hands in his.

"Mary," he said, "this is all so surprising. I did not expect it. We have lived so long and gone our own ways, and you have seemed until just lately so utterly content, that I quite forgot that anywhere in this b.u.t.terfly little body there might be such a thing as a soul. Will you give me time, dear?"

"All the time you ask for," she answered. "Oh! I know that I am asking a great deal, but you see I am not a very strong person, and if I give up everything else, I do want someone to lean on just a little. You are very strong, Henry," she added, softly.

He took her face between his hands, and he kissed her, without pa.s.sion, yet kindly, even tenderly.

"My dear," he said, "I must think this thing out. At any rate, we might start by seeing a little more of one another?"

"Yes!" she answered shyly. "I should like that."

"I will drive you down to Ranelagh to-morrow," he said, "alone, and we will have lunch there."

"I shall love it," she answered. "Good night!"

She kissed him timidly, and flitted away into her room with a little backward glance and a wave of the hand. Rochester stood where she had left him, watching the place where she had disappeared, with the look in his eyes of a man who sees a ghost.