The Soul Stealer

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.

He stood up in the middle of the room. Tall, columnar, with a great dignity about him, had there been any one there to see. It was a dual dignity, the dignity of supreme success and the dignity of irremediable pain.

The butler came in with the letters upon a copper tray. There was a great pile of them, and as the man closed the door after he put the tray upon the writing-table, Sir William began to deal the letters like a pack of cards, throwing this and that one on the floor, with a shuffling movement of the wrist, and as he did so his eyes were horrid in their searching and their intensity. At last he came to the one he sought. A letter addressed to him in a bold but feminine handwriting. As his fingers touched it a loud sob burst out into the silence of the room. With shaking fingers he tore it open, standing among the litter of the unopened letters, and began to read.

He read the letter right through, then walked to the mantel-piece, leaning his right arm upon it as if for support. But the tension was now a little relaxed. He had come down to find the worst, to meet the inevitable. He had met it, and there was now neither premonition of the moment of realization nor the last and torturing flicker of despairing hope.

This was the letter. It began without preface or address —

"You must have known this was coming. Everything in your manner has shown me that you knew it was coming. And for that, unhappy as I am, I am glad. I have a terrible confession to make to you. But you who are so great, you who know the human mind from your great height, as a conquering general surveys a country from a mountain-top, you will understand. When you asked me to marry you and I said 'Yes,' I was pleased and flattered, and I had a tremendous admiration and respect for you and for all you have done. Then when we came to know each other, I began to see the human side of you, and I had, and if you will let me say so, still have, a real affection for you. And had it not been that something more powerful than affection has come into my life, I would have been a true and faithful wife and companion to you.

"But you have seen, and you must know, that things are changed. Are we not all subject to the laws of destiny, the laws of chance? Is it not true that none of us on our way through the world can say by whom or how we shall be caught up out of ourselves and changed into what we could not be before? Oh, you know it all. You of all men know it!

"I need not here speak in detailed words, because from things you have seen you know well enough what I am about to say, of whom I would speak if I could. But it is enough, William, to tell you what you already know. That I love some one else, and that if I am true to myself, which is after all the first duty of all of us, I could never marry you. I can never be to you what you wish or what I would like to be as your wife. I am stricken down with the knowledge of the pain all this will give you, though, thank God, it is not a pain for which you are unprepared. I dare not ask your forgiveness, I can say nothing to console you. I have acted wickedly and wrongly, but I cannot do anything else but what I am doing.

"Forgive, if you can. Think kindly, if you can, of Marjorie."

Now he knew. He folded the letter gently, kissed it – an odd action for a man so strong – and put it in the inside pocket of his coat, which pressed next his heart.

Then he rang the bell.

"Ask Mr. Guest to come," he said.

"Very well, Sir William," the butler answered, "but Mr. Charliewood has just arrived."

"Then ask him in," Gouldesbrough answered.

Charliewood came into the room.

"By Jove!" he said, "you look about as seedy as I've ever seen you look!"

Sir William went up to him and put his hand upon his shoulder.

"Look here," he said, "I've had a smack in the face this morning, Charliewood. You know what it is, I need not tell you. And look here, too, I'm going to ask you to help me as you've never helped me before. I'm afraid, old fellow, I've often been a nuisance to you, and often rather rubbed in the fact that you owe me money, and that you've had to do things for me. Forgive me now, if you will. I'm going to call upon you for active friendship."

"Oh," Charliewood answered, "we won't talk about friendship between you and me. I've done what I had to do and there's enough."