The Soul Stealer

CHAPTER IV

THE SECOND LOVER ARRIVES

On the evening of the day in which she had fainted, Marjorie Poole sat alone in the drawing-room of her mother's house in Curzon Street.

It was a large, handsome place, furnished in the Empire style with mirrors framed in delicate white arabesques, and much gilding woven into the pattern. The carpet was a great purple expanse covered with laurel wreaths of darker purple.

There was but little furniture in the big, beautiful place, but it was all airy, fantastic and perfect of its kind. There was a general air of repose, of size and comely proportion in this delightful room. Here, an old French clock clicked merrily, there were two or three inlaid cabinets, and upon the walls were a few copies of some of Watteau's delightful scenes in the old courtly gardens of Versailles.

Marjorie wore a long tea-gown, and she was sitting quite alone in the brilliantly lit place, with a book in her hand. The book was in her hand indeed, but she was not reading it. Her eyes were fixed upon the opposite wall, though they saw nothing there. Her thoughts were busy and her face was pale.

She had recovered from her swoon in a minute or two, and found her mother fussing round her and her lover generally skilful in doing all that was necessary. And a short time afterwards she had driven home with Lady Poole.

What she had heard, the very strain of hearing and being so intensely interested in it, had taken her strength away. Then had come the words when Sir William told her that the very thoughts that she was thinking at that moment were being in some mysterious way recorded and known. And she knew that she had been thinking of another man, thinking of him as an engaged girl should never think.

But as she had returned to consciousness, Sir William had told her kindly and simply that if she had feared her thoughts, whatever they might be, were known to him, she need fear no longer. "There was no one," he said, "observing any record of vibrations from your dear mind. Do you think that I should have allowed that, Marjorie? How could you think it of me?"

She had driven home relieved but very weary, and feeling how complex life was, how irrevocable the mistakes one made from impulse or lack of judgment really were.

Ambition! Yes, it was that that had brought her to where she was now. Her heart had never been touched by any one. She never thought herself capable of a great love for a man. From all her suitors she had chosen the one who most satisfied her intellectual aspirations, who seemed to her the one that could give her the highest place, not only in the meaningless ranks of society, but in and among those who are the elect and real leaders of the world.

And now? Well, now she was waiting because Guy Rathbone was coming to the house.

A letter from him had arrived just before dinner. She had expected it by an earlier post, the post by which all his letters usually came, and she had been impatient at its non-arrival. But it had come at last, and she was sitting in the drawing-room waiting for him now.

He was on intimate terms in that house, and came and went almost as he would, old Lady Poole liking to have young people round her, and feeling that now Marjorie's future was satisfactorily settled, there was no need to bar her doors to people she was fond of, but who, before the engagement, she would have regarded as dangerous.

Even as Marjorie was thinking of him, the butler showed Guy Rathbone into the room.

Marjorie got up, flushing a little as she saw him.

"Mother's very tired," she said; "she's not well to-night, and so she's gone to bed. Perhaps you'd rather not stay."

He sat down, after shaking hands, without an answer in words. He looked at her, and that was his answer.

He was a tall young man, as tall as Sir William, but more largely built, with the form and figure not of the student but rather of the athlete. His face was clean-shaven, frank, open and boyishly good-looking; but a pair of heavy eyebrows hung over eyes that were alert and bright, robbing the upper part of his face of a too juvenile suggestion. His head was covered with dark red curls, and he had the walk and movements of perfect health and great physical power, that had once led a dyspeptic friend at the Oxford and Cambridge Club to remark of him, that "Rathbone is the sort of fellow who always suggests that he could eat all the elephants of India and pick his teeth with the spire of Strasburg Cathedral afterwards."

There was force about him, the force of clean, happy youth, health, and a good brain. It was not the concentrated force and power of Sir William, but it was force nevertheless.

And as he came into the room, Marjorie felt her whole heart go out to him, leaping towards him in his young and manly beauty. She knew that here indeed was the one man that would satisfy her life for ever and a day. He was not famous, he was clever without having a great intellect, but for some reason or other he was the man for her. She knew it, and she feared that he was beginning to know she knew it.

He was sitting in the chair, when he turned and looked her straight in the face.

"I have come to-night," he said, "to say something very serious, very serious indeed. I am glad Lady Poole isn't here, just for to-night, Marjorie."

"I've told you you oughtn't to say Marjorie," she said.

"Well," he answered, "you've called me Guy for a good long time now, and one good turn deserves another."

He smiled, showing a perfect and even row of teeth, a smile so simple, hearty and spontaneous that once more that furiously beating heart of hers seems striving to burst its physical bonds and leap to him.

Then he passed his hand through his hair, and his face immediately became full of perplexity and doubt.

"I should have been here before," he said, "only I was detained. I met a man who happened to take my overcoat to-day in mistake for his own from the hairdresser's. He turned out to be a decent sort of chap, and I couldn't get rid of him at once. But that's by the way. I've come here to say something which is awfully difficult to say. I've fought it out with myself, and I've wondered if I should be a bounder in saying it. I'm afraid I'm going to say something that a gentleman oughtn't to say. I don't know. I really don't know. But something within tells me that if I don't say it I should be doing something which I should regret all my life long. But you must forgive me, and if after what I've said to you you feel that I oughtn't to have done so, I do beg you will forgive me, Marjorie. Will you forgive me?"

Her voice was very low. "Yes," she said in almost a whisper.

"You are engaged to another man," he said. "I don't know him, I have never seen him. I know he is a great swell and very important. A year ago, if anybody had told me that I was going to talk to a girl who was engaged to another man as I'm going to talk to you, I should probably have knocked him down. Shows one never knows, doesn't it, Marjorie?"

She began to breathe quickly. Her breast rose and fell, her agitation was very manifest. The tears were beginning to well up in her eyes. She hated herself for this visible emotion; she did her best to control it, but it was utterly impossible, and she knew that she was telling him even now what she knew also he most desired to hear.

He got up from his chair, big, forceful, manly and young, and was by her side in a moment.

"Marjorie," he said, "dear, sweet girl, I can't help telling you, however wrong it may be. I love you, I love you deeply and dearly. I am quite certain, I don't know how, but I'm certain, and nothing in the world could persuade me I wasn't, that I'm the man who was made for you, and that you're the girl who was made for me. I can't put it poetically, I don't know how to say it beautifully, as the Johnnies say it in the novels and on the stage, but, darling, I love you."

There was a catch and a break in his voice; a sob had come into it.

Then he went on. "Do you know, Marjorie, I can't help thinking somehow that you must have made a mistake – " He was kneeling now by the side of her chair. His arms stole round her, she made no motion to forbid it. It was a moment of absolute surrender, a surrender which she had no power to withstand.

And now he held her in his strong arms, his kisses fell upon her lips, her head was on his shoulder, she was sobbing quietly and happily. With no word of avowal spoken, she gave herself to him at that moment. He had felt, and his whole body was shaken with joy and triumph, that come what might, she was his in spirit if indeed she could never be his in any other way.

It was a great moment for those two young lives. Young man and maid, knowing themselves and each other for the first time. It wasn't romantic, exactly, there was nothing very striking about it, perhaps, but it was sweet – ah! unutterably sweet!

He was walking about the room.

"You must tell him," he said, "dearest. You'll have to go through so much more than I shall, and it cuts me to the heart to think of it. You'll have to face all the opposition of everybody, of your people, of society and the world generally. And I can't help; you'll have to go through this alone. It's a bitter thought that I can't help you. Dear, dare you fight through this for me? Are you strong enough? are you brave enough?"

She went up to him, and placed both her hands upon his shoulders, looking straight into his face.

"I have been wicked," she said, "I have been wrong. But perhaps there were excuses. Until one has felt love, real love, Guy, one doesn't realize its claims or the duties one owes it. I was ambitious. I liked William well enough. He interested me and stimulated me. I felt proud to think that I was to be the companion of a man who knew and had done so much. But now the mere thought of that companionship fills me with fear. Not fear of him, but fear of the treachery I should have done my nature and myself if I had married him. I don't know what will happen, but here and now, Guy, whatever may be the outcome, I tell you that I love you, and I swear to you, however wrong it may be, whatever violence I may be doing to my plighted troth, I tell you that, however great the unworthiness, I will be yours and yours alone. I know it's wrong, and yet, somehow, I feel it can't be wrong. I don't understand, but – but – " He took her in his arms once more and held her.

It was late, and he was going, and was bidding her farewell. He knelt before her and took her hand, bowing over it and kissing it.

"Good-night," he said, "my lady, my love, my bride! I am with you now, and shall be with you always in spirit until we are one – until the end of our lives. And whatever may be in store in the immediate future I shall be watching and waiting, I shall be guarding you and shielding you as well as I can, and if things come to the worst, I shall be ready, and we will count the world well lost, as other wise lovers have done, for the sacred cause and in the holy service of Love."

So he bowed over her slim white hand and kissed it, looking in his beauty and confidence and strength like any knight of old kneeling before the lady he was pledged to serve. And when he was gone, and she was alone in her room up-stairs, Marjorie was filled with a joy and exhilaration such as she had never known before. Yet there seemed hanging over the little rosy landscape, the brightly-lit landscape in which she moved, a dark and massive cloud.

She dreamt thus. She dreamt that this cloud grew blacker and blacker, and still more heavy, sinking lower and lower towards her. Then she saw her lover as a knight in armour cutting upwards with a gleaming sword until the cloud departed and rushed away, and all was once more bathed in sunlight. She knew the name of that sword. It was not Excalibur, it was Love.

CHAPTER V

A CONSPIRACY OF SCIENTISTS

Sir William Gouldesbrough had been up very late the night before. He came down from his room on a grey morning a fortnight after the day on which he had told Marjorie something of his hopes. It was nearly twelve o'clock. He had not retired to rest until four upon the same morning. And when he had at last left the great laboratories built out of the back of the house, he had stumbled up to his room, a man drunk with an almost incredible success – a success of detail so perfect and complete that his intelligence staggered before the supreme triumph of his hopes.

But the remaining portion of the night, or rather during the beginning of the chill wintry dawn, he had lain alone in his great Georgian bedroom, watching the grey light filtering into the room, flood by flood, until the dark became something more terrible, something filled with vast moving shadows, with monstrous creatures which lurked in the corners of the room, with strange half lights that went and came, and gave the wan mirrors of the wardrobe, of the mantel-shelf, a ghost-like life only to withdraw, and then once more increase it.

And as this great and famous man lay in this vast lonely room without power of sleep, two terrible emotions surged and throbbed within him, – two emotions in their intensity too great for one mind to hold.

One was the final and detailed triumph of all he held dear in the world of science and in the department of his life's work. The other was the imminent and coming ruin of his heart's hope, and the love which had come to him, and which had seemed the most wonderful thing that life could give.

Yes, there he lay, a king of intellect, a veritable prince of the powers of the air, and all his triumph was but as dust and ashes and bitterness, because he knew that he was losing a smaller principality perhaps, but one he held dearer than all his other possessions.

Emperor of the great grey continent of science, he must now resign his lordship of the little rosy principality of Love.

So, as he came down-stairs close upon mid-day of the winter's morning – a tall distinguished figure in the long camel's-hair dressing-gown, with its suggestion of a monk's robe – the butler who was crossing the hall at the time was startled by the fixed pallor of his face.

The man went up to him.

"Excuse me, Sir William," he said, "but you're working too hard. You're not well, sir. You mustn't overdo it. I have got you a sole and mushrooms for breakfast, sir, but I should not advise you to touch it, now I've seen you. If you'll allow me to offer my advice, I should suggest a bowl of soup."

"Thank you, Delaine," Sir William answered. "But I don't think I could even take anything at present. Will you send my letters into the study?"

"Yes, Sir William," the man replied, "and I shall make so bold as to bring you a bowl of soup in half-an-hour, as well."

Gouldesbrough crossed the great gloomy hall and entered the study.

A bright fire was glowing on the hearth, the place was all dusted, tidy and cheerful, even though the world outside was a blank wall of fog.