Rochester eyed his visitor a little thoughtfully.
"A plat.i.tude merely," he said. "One accepts alms every day, every moment of the day. One goes about the world giving and receiving. It is a small point of view which reckons gold as the only means of exchange."
The young man bowed.
"I am corrected," he said. "Yet you must admit that there is something different in the obligation which is created by money."
"Mine, I fear," Rochester answered, "is not an a.n.a.lytic mind. A blunt regard to truth has always been one of my characteristics. Therefore, at the risk of indelicacy, I am going on to ask you a question. I found you on the hillside, a discontented, miserable youth, and I did for you something which very few sane people would have been inclined even to consider. Years afterwards--it must be nearly seven, isn"t it?--you return me my money, and we exchange a few polite plat.i.tudes.
I notice--or is it that I only seem to notice--on your part an entire lack of grat.i.tude for that eccentric action of mine. The discontented boy has become, presumably, a prosperous citizen of the world. The two are so far apart, perhaps----"
Saton threw out his hands. For the first time, there flashed into his face something of the boy, some trace of that more primitive, more pa.s.sionate hold upon life. He abandoned his measured tones, his calm, almost studied bearing.
"Grat.i.tude!" he interrupted. "I am not sure that I feel any! In those days I had at least dreams. I am not sure that it was not a devilish experiment of yours to send me out to grope my way amongst the mirages. You were a man of the world then. You knew and understood.
You knew how bitter a thing life is, how for one who climbs, a thousand must fall. I am not sure," he repeated, with a little catch in his throat, "that I feel any grat.i.tude."
Rochester nodded thoughtfully. He was not in the least annoyed.
"You interest me," he murmured. "From what you say, I gather that your material prosperity has been somewhat dearly bought."
"There isn"t much to be wrung from life," Saton answered bitterly, "that one doesn"t pay for."
"A little later on," Rochester said, "it will give me very much pleasure to hear something of your adventures. At present, I fear that I must deny myself that pleasure. My wife has done me the honor to make me one of her somewhat rare visits, and my house is consequently full of guests."
"I will not intrude," the young man answered, rising. "I shall stay in the village for a few days. We may perhaps meet again."
Rochester hesitated for a moment. Then the corners of his mouth twitched. There was humor in this situation, after all, and in the thing which he proposed to himself.
"You must not hurry way," he said. "Come and be introduced to some of my friends."
If Rochester expected any hesitation on the part of his visitor, he was disappointed. The young man seemed to accept the suggestion as the most natural in the world.
"I shall be very glad," he said calmly. "I shall be interested, too, to meet your wife. At the time when I had the pleasure of seeing you before, you were, I believe, unmarried."
Rochester opened the door, and led the way out into the hall without a word.
CHAPTER III
"WHO IS MR. SATON?"
"Really, Henry," Lady Mary Rochester said to her husband, a few minutes before the dinner-gong sounded, "for once you have been positively useful. A new young man is such a G.o.dsend, and Charlie Peyton threw us over most abominably. So mean of him, too, after the number of times I had him to dine in Grosvenor Square."
"He"s gone to Ostend, I suppose."
Lady Mary nodded.
"So foolish!" she declared. "He hasn"t a shilling in the world, and he never wins anything. He might just as well have come down here and made himself agreeable to Lois."
"Matchmaking again?" Rochester asked.
She shook her head.
"What nonsense! Charlie is one of my favorite young men. I am not at all sure that I could spare him, even to Lois. But the poor boy must marry someone! I don"t see how else he is to live. By the bye, who is your protege?"
Rochester, who was lounging in a low chair in his wife"s dressing-room, looked thoughtfully at the tip of his patent shoe.
"I haven"t the faintest idea," he declared.
His wife frowned, a little impatiently.
"You are so extreme," she protested. "Of course you know something about him. What am I to tell people? They will be sure to ask."
"Make them all happy," Rochester suggested. "Tell Lady Blanche that he is a millionaire from New York, and Lois that he is the latest thing in Spring poets. They probably won"t compare notes until to-morrow, so it really doesn"t matter."
"I wish you could be serious for five minutes," Lady Mary said. "You really are a trial, Henry. You seem to see everything from some quaint point of view of your own, and to forget all the time that there are a few other people in the world whose eyesight is not so distorted.
Sometimes I can"t help realizing how fortunate it is that we see so little of one another."
"I can scarcely be expected to agree with you," Rochester answered, with an ironical bow. "I must try and mend my ways, however. To return to the actual subject under discussion, then, I can really tell you very little about this young man."
"You can tell me where he comes from, at any rate," Lady Mary remarked.
Rochester shook his head.
"He comes from the land of mysteries," he declared. "I really am ashamed to be so disappointing, but I only met him once before in my life."
Lady Mary sighed gently.
"It is almost a relief," she said, "to hear you admit that you have seen him before at all. Please tell me where it was that you met," she added, studying the effect of a tiara upon her splendidly coiffured hair.
"I met him," Rochester answered, "sitting with his back to a rock on the top of one of my hills."
"What, you mean here at Beauleys?" Lady Mary asked.
"On Beacon Hill," her husband a.s.sented. "It was seven years ago, and as you can gather from his present appearance, he was little more than a boy. He sat there in the twilight, seeing things down in the valley which did not and never had existed--seeing things that never were born, you know--things for which you stretch out your arms, only to find them float away. He was quite young, of course."
Lady Mary turned around.
"Henry!" she exclaimed.
"My dear?"
"You are absolutely the most irritating person I ever attempted to live with!"
"And I have tried so hard to make myself agreeable," he sighed.