A Mayfair Magician E-Book

George Griffiths

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

George Griffiths is popular with science and science fiction novels. The desire of every person is to have the power to read minds. George Griffiths decided to make it into reality. A Mayfair Magician is a science fiction novel about a device that allows you to read minds.

Leseprobe

Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Despite the venerable antiquity of the saying, it is not always true that “Out of evil cometh good,” but certainly out of the apparent evil of the snow- burst which, on the morning of a Christmas Eve not many winters ago, suddenly buried H. M. Prison at Nether-moor from the sight of heaven and cut it off from all communication with the rest of earth, there came to me two good things in the shape of spontaneously offered and most generous hospitality, and one of the strangest stories of what I can only call inverted genius and diverted human power that it has ever been my good fortune to hear.

I had been visiting Nethermoor, which, as you doubtless know, is situated on one of the southern slopes of the Scottish border hills, during the course of a series of studies of British and Continental prison systems, and I had to be up early to catch the train to Newcastle if I was to have any chance of spending Christmas at home. But when the doctor, or to give him his official title, the Principal Medical Officer, who had kindly given me a bed, came to my door at daybreak, I heard his pleasant North Country burr saying across the frontiers of the Land of Nod–

“I’m thinking ye’ll have to eat your Christmas dinner off prison fare or something like it this year, Mr Griffith. Get up and take a look at the snow.”

I mustered resolution for the plunge and crept shivering to the window. Yes, there was no doubt about it. Southward and to east and west the white wilderness mingled with the grey sky, and there was no more chance of making the seven-mile drive to the station than there was of bringing the Scotch Express up to Nethermoor. It was in this manner that I came to pass my only Christmas, so far, within prison walls.

My host was one of the most interesting of the many interesting men I have had the good luck to meet. He was a prison doctor by choice, not from necessity. If I were to publish his name and give the locality of the prison a little more exactly–which I faithfully promised not to do–he would be recognised as one of the most distinguished psychologists of the day. He had a splendid London practice, but the attractions of his favourite science were too strong for him, and he gave it up to study criminal psychology under what he rightly considered to be the most favourable circumstances.

I had made the last round with him and the Governor and duly inspected the preparations for the very mild festivities which his Majesty’s involuntary guests are permitted to indulge in when, just as we were leaving the great kitchen, he asked me sotto voce to particularly notice a prisoner who had already attracted my attention owing to the fact that he was wearing a mask and goggles of the style that motoring has brought into fashion.

In spite of the cropped hair and the closely-sheared stubble which covered his cheeks and chin, one could recognise his face at once as that of a man of more than ordinary mental power t even deprived, as it was, of those principal organs of expression, the eyes, which were completely hidden, as I thought on account of ophthalmia, by the huge goggles. Even the hideous prison livery, too, was not sufficient to entirely disguise a distinction of form and a grace of movement which is seldom or never found in the true or natural born criminal.

“This is the season with us North Country folk for story telling,” said my host, as we tramped back to his house along one of the lanes that one of the spade-gangs had made, “and when we get to our grog after supper I’ll tell you the story of that man with the goggles and why he wears them; but if you ever tell it again, of course you’ll use different names and places–and maybe mix a bit of fiction with it.”

I promised all but the last, and that he left to my discretion.

Over supper we naturally fell into a discussion of that most absorbing of all topics for the criminologist–the possible nature of that essential difference of mental function which divides what are commonly called the criminal from the honest classes.

“Of course, I needn’t remind you,” said my host, when he had put a couple of fresh logs on the blazing fire and we had pulled our chairs round and loaded our pipes, “that the first thing the really scientific student of crime, the man who wants to get at the truth, has to do is to get rid once for all of what is called the moral view of crime. He has nothing to do with the right or wrong of the matter, but only with the why and the wherefore. Naturally the student must not carry that principle outside his study. If he does he will have a good chance of getting into trouble with the policeman, and it is just for that reason that the man I called your attention to in the kitchen is here wearing those goggles in prison instead of occupying a distinguished, in fact, I might say a unique, position in the world of science. It is a terrible pity,” he concluded with something like a sigh.

“Yes,” I assented, “it hardly seems, somehow, in the fitness of things that such a lot of knowledge as he must have should be shut up in a prison cell. Still, he may be persuaded to make a legitimate use of it when he gets out.”

“He will never get out,” was the somewhat startling reply. ldquo;He is a prisoner because he failed to realise that there are some things–human life and honour and happiness for instance–which may not be sacrificed on the altar of science, even for the possible ultimate benefit of humanity, and he will die a prisoner because there is no law on the British Statute Book under which he could be hung for the crime he committed, murder though it was.”

“That sounds promising, doctor,” I said after a few pulls at my new-lit pipe. “But what about the goggles–are they part of the punishment for this new sort of crime?”

“They,” replied my host, “are not a punishment. They are only a protection, not for his eyes, but against them. Ah! I see you hardly follow me. Well, never mind, you will see what I mean shortly.”

The doctor took a pull at his grog and two or three meditative whiffs at his pipe, and then proceeded to tell me the story of the convict with the goggles, which I reproduce in the following chapters from the notes which I took the same night and also others of lengthy conversations which we had on the subject during the week for which the snow kept me a not unwilling prisoner at Nethermoor.

CHAPTER I

Enstone Manor, one of the finest as well as one of the oldest estates between the Pennines and the North Sea, came into the possession of the late owner, Sir Godfrey Enstone, in this fashion. He was a younger son, but everyone said that he ought to have been the elder, with his handsome face and stalwart figure and high spirit, albeit the last was wont on occasion to flame up somewhat swiftly to anger. The heir and only other child was more of a throw- back to some remote generation than the son in spirit as well as in blood of his own father and mother, for he was not only mean to look upon, but he was in disposition and nature everything that a gentleman ought not to be–secretive, underhand, revengeful, and as close-fisted as a Dutch miser.

That, however, is not germane to the story save in so far as it was responsible for the everlasting quarrels between the brothers which ended when Archibald, the elder, managed to get Godfrey into terrible hot water with his parents over some youthful escapade, and received at his hands a thrashing so sound that Archibald received injuries from which he never quite recovered. Of course, Godfrey was deeply and sincerely penitent when he cooled down and recognised what his momentary passion had led him to do; but his father would have none of his repentance, and so in the end he gave him five hundred pounds and his curse and bade him never let him see his face again. Like most curses, that one duly came home to roost under the old roof-tree.

Godfrey disappeared utterly for over twenty years. The old baronet and his wife died within a few months of each other of pneumonia following influenza. The heir succeeded–a soured, enfeebled misanthrope, who hated women and believed that all the girls of the countryside and in London were after his money and position, whereas no decent woman would have married him if he had been a duke and a millionaire. He killed himself with quack medicines and drugs in little more than a year, and then the solicitors set to work to find Sir Godfrey, as he was now, if alive.

For two or three years nothing was heard of him, and the estate was managed by trustees, appointed by the Court of Chancery. Then, without any notice, he walked one day into the solicitor’s office and explained that he had only heard of the deaths of his father and brother six weeks before in Hong Kong, on his return from a three years’ exploring expedition in Central and North-Eastern Asia.

However, he had made his money; he was evidently very wealthy, and when he had established his identity and taken possession of the carefully-nursed estates he was one of the richest men in the North Country. But although there was no doubt as to his being Godfrey Enstone, all who had known him before his banishment agreed that no one could well have been more unlike what one might have expected “Master Godfrey” to grow up than the thin, grave, slightly- stooping, parchment-skinned man who seemed to have little or no interest in life beyond his estates and his scientific studies–which some of his sporting neighbours looked upon with frank and openly-expressed suspicion.

There was, however, one exception to this rule. He brought back with him a fine, strapping, honest-faced young fellow of about twenty-two, whom all his friends at first hoped was his son. But the world soon learnt that he was really the son of an old comrade and fellow-adventurer, who had lost his life in saving Sir Godfrey’s. He had adopted him, and one of the first things he did when he got settled was to go through the legal process of giving him his name and declaring him his heir to the estates, which were unentailed, and his own personal property.

The title was to die with himself. He had proved that a father’s curse, whether rightly or wrongly given, was a grievous burden to bear. His own wife and child had died together of plague fifteen years before on the anniversary of his banishment. Five years later on the same day his own life had been saved only at the expense of that of the only friend he had on earth. He had not a single blood-relation in the world, and he had determined that the title should die with him and the blood line of Enstones cease to exist.

He had few friends, scarcely any at all in England; but, as the postmaster at Enstone was well aware, he had a large circle of corresponding acquaintances scattered nearly all over the world, and of these, according to the experience of the postmaster, the most frequent and constant was a certain Professor Jenner Halkine who appeared to possess addresses in pretty nearly every corner of the globe.

One morning at breakfast, nearly two years after his return, Sir Godfrey said to his adopted son, who was known legally as Harold Dacre Enstone– his father’s name had been Dacre,–

“Harold, my boy, what do you say to a run up to London for a few days? You want some new guns and hunting-gear before the season, I believe, arid you could have a look round and choose them for yourself. It will be better than having them sent on approval.”

“With pleasure, dad,” was the reply; “but, of course, you’re going too?”

“Oh, yes,” said Sir Godfrey, with what was for him an unwonted eagerness. “The fact is that 1 have just had a letter from Professor Halkine and he tells me that he has at last made up his mind to give up wandering and pitch his tent permanently in England. He says his niece is growing up now and he doesn’t think it quite fair to her to keep on the everlasting trek any longer. At anyrate, whatever that resolve may prove to be worth, he landed at Brindisi four days ago and will be in London the day after to-morrow. Curiously enough, although we’ve been friends on notepaper and in the scientific journals for years, this is the first time we have been within about a thousand miles of each other. In this letter he asks me to call on him at Morley’s Hotel on Wednesday and at last make his personal acquaintance.”

Harold remembered as he spoke that Wednesday was the Anniversary, as they called it–the Black Day of the year on which Sir Godfrey never began or ended anything of importance, but he did not share his feelings on this subject, although they had never discontinued the custom of putting on black ties on the day of his father’s death.

“That is distinctly curious,” he said, laying down the paper he was reading. “It ought to be a very interesting meeting for you, though I hope you’ll like the professor personally better than I like those theories of his, great man as he certainly is. I wonder what the niece will be like. Large and angular, most probably, with the muscles of a man and the complexion of a Jap. That’s the worst of those travelling women. They’re neither huggable nor kissable.”

Two days later Mr Harold Enstone had the best of reasons to alter this very sweeping assertion. Sir Godfrey brought back an invitation to dinner from his hitherto unknown friend, whom he enthusiastically described as a most charming man and a thorough gentleman, and warned him that he was to meet the possibly formidable niece. Harold, somewhat against his inclination, found himself forced to agree with him as to the professor. He was certainly a man of birth, breeding and education, and in addition, he possessed that indefinable air of “at-homeness” which only travel can give. But for all that there was something about him, an air of quiet, repressed power which even suggested irresistible authority if once seriously exerted, which he found himself resenting during the first five minutes of conversation over the usual sherry and bitters.

In addition to this he possessed the most extraordinary pair of eyes that Harold had ever seen in a human head. They were very large–too large, in fact, for a man–and intensely luminous. They differed, too, in colour with every changing light. Sometimes they were dusky and sombre almost to blackness. When their owner got animated they brightened to a deep violet which at times paled slowly. When they looked towards the light, which they very seldom did, they were a greenish-grey with frequent glints of reddish fire in them. To look directly into them for more than a momentary glance was not possible without a disquieting feeling or rather suggestion of possible submission to the control of the forceful soul which was looking out of them –at least that was Harold’s first impression of them.

But when he went into the drawing-room and he saw those same eyes set like glorious gems under a pair of dark, delicately-curved brows, and lighting up the most exquisitely lovely face his own glowing fancy had ever dreamed of, his opinion suddenly changed again, both as to rainbow eyes and women travellers.

“My niece, Miss Grace Romanes,” said the professor, as the slender form and the royally-poised head, crowned with its diadem of red-gold coils, bowed before them. When the introduction was over Sir Godfrey looked at him with an expression which reminded him forcibly of his rash remark at breakfast the morning but one before. When Miss Romanes spoke he had some difficulty in repressing a visible start, as often happens when one hears for the first time a voice of extraordinary sweetness.

How the dinner and the couple of hours which followed at the Opera passed Harold never exactly knew, but when he got up the next morning with his soul full of the most fantastically delightful dreams, he first informed himself that he was little better than a drivelling idiot, and then expressed the opinion at breakfast that girls like Miss Grace Romanes ought not to be allowed to go about loose. It was not fair to men who had eyes in their heads and blood in their veins. Sir Godfrey sympathised laughingly with him and told him for his comfort that he had asked Dr Halkine and his niece to pay a visit to the Manor for the purpose of comparing scientific notes. He suggested that if Harold felt that the proximity would be more than his fortitude could safely risk, a month’s fishing in Norway would afford excuse for a dignified retreat. Master Harold decided to take the risk and felt absurdly pleased with himself when a very few days later it developed into a delightful and yet harrowing certainty.

The conquest of Harold Enstone was as rapid as it was complete and irrevocable, and it was accomplished before his fair conqueror appeared to have the slightest knowledge of her unconscious triumph. She was a charming companion, perfectly natural and unaffected, as might be expected of a girl whose education had been begun and completed amidst the realities of life and the eternal problem of Nature instead of the artificial trivialities which form the surroundings of the average Society girl. This gave her an added charm in his eyes which no other woman could have had. His own life and education had been much the same, and so from the beginning there was a bond between them, of which, as she afterwards confessed, she must even then have felt the strength without realising it.

He had one of those open natures which make anything like concealment or the most innocent deception irksome and even unbearable where friends are concerned, and so, as soon as he had made up his mind to the inevitable, he went to his father–as he always called and considered him–and told him everything.

It so happened that on the morning of the same day Dr Halkine, with whom Sir Godfrey had apparently become the fastest friends, had promised to rent a snug little Dower House on the estate, so that he might settle down to the pursuit of his studies, not only in absolute quiet, but also in touch with a kindred spirit whose intellectual activities and scientific aspirations were practically identical with his own.

Curiously enough, as it seemed to him then, the ardent lover did not find himself able to look with unqualified approval upon this arrangement, despite the fact that it would give him the best of opportunities for an almost ideal love-making. In the first place, he liked difficulties, and this looked as though things were going to be made too easy for him in one sense and, therefore, perhaps, in another impossible, if Miss Grace ever got a suspicion that matters had been arranged this way. Again, he did not like the doctor. He was the only man he had ever felt uncomfortable with, and that was probably because he was the only man of whom he had ever felt in any sense afraid. He despised and, for her sake, reproached himself for this feeling, but it was no use, though, out of deference for Sir Godfrey’s great liking for him, he kept his sentiments strictly to himself. At the same time he thought it only fair, both to Miss Romanes and himself, that she and her uncle should be told frankly that he loved her and meant to win her if he could, before they finally decided to settle in the Dower House.

Sir Godfrey fully agreed with him and put the matter with perfect plainness before Dr Halkine, who accepted the situation with a quite philosophical consideration for a natural infirmity of age and sex, which interested him only as one of the inevitable phenomena of human life in its present phase. Whether or not he acquainted his niece with the state of affairs did not appear just then; but the house was taken and the two guests remained at the Manor till it was ready for their reception.

Harold naturally accepted the decision as a tacit permission to press his suit openly, and that he proceeded to do with such effect that within a month he felt justified in speaking out and asking Miss Grace to decide his fate for him. She did so with a quiet gravity which at once delighted and puzzled him. She gave him, with most sweetly gracious earnestness, permission to undertake the most entrancing of all tasks that a man can set himself to, the winning of a half-willing maid; but all through the conversation, which meant so much to him, he was haunted by a strangely chilling sense of impersonality in her manner. She was as sweet and gentle as the most exacting lover could wish his mistress to be–and yet there was a something wanting for which he was fain to account by the strangeness of her early surroundings and the unconventionality of her bringing up.

Both Sir Godfrey and his now almost inseparable companion, the doctor, gave their approval and their congratulations, but here again Harold was mystified and, in his father’s case, somewhat angered to discover the same element of impersonality, the same suspicion of aloofness or mental detachment. Later on he told Grace of this, but she only increased his difficulties by turning those marvellous, all-compelling eyes upon him, each of them with a note of interrogation in it, and saying in a sweetly exasperating tone of unconcerned inquiry–

“I can’t say that I have noticed anything uncommon in their manner, but surely one cannot expect men who pass most of their lives in the actual presence of the greatest mysteries of existence to be very deeply interested in this little love-affair of ours?”

As the said “love-affair” happened just then to be quite the most important matter for him within the limits of human concerns he entirely failed to agree with her. He said so both verbally and otherwise, and with that he was fain to be content until the Fates should vouchsafe an explanation, if ever they did, of a mystery in the presence of which he was, mentally speaking, as helpless as a little child.

CHAPTER II

That evening over their coffee and cigars after dinner Sir Godfrey and Harold were discussing the important events of the day, and when Sir Godfrey had, for the third or fourth time, expressed his opinion of his great good luck in winning such a lovely girl for his wife, and–which he seemed to think quite as important–making such a close alliance with so distinguished a scholar as Dr Jenner Halkine, Harold, who had not spoken for several minutes, rose from his chair and began to walk up and down the room.

“Dad,” he said a trifle nervously, “I scarcely know how to put the thing even to you under the circumstances, especially as you and the professor are such great friends, but–well, to be quite frank–there’s something about Dr Halkine that I can’t understand and therefore, because of that, I suppose I don’t like him.”

“That, my dear boy,” interrupted Sir Godfrey, “is one of the most natural things in the world. We most of us dislike what we don’t or can’t understand. It is, if I may say so without offence, one of the commonest infirmities in the human mind. A history of that particular phase of human character would also be a history of religious persecution as well as of the almost universal opposition to every new discovery and invention, until its truth and utility have been proved beyond the possibility of doubt,”

“Yes, I quite see what you mean,” laughed Harold. And then he went on much more seriously, “I know, of course, that I stand on a very different mental plane to yourself and Dr Halkine. You are both miles above me in intellect and attainments, but this is more of a moral than an intellectual matter.”

“My dear Harold, what do you mean?” exclaimed Sir Godfrey, looking up at him in sudden surprise.

“It’s rather hard to explain,” he replied, “and perhaps the easiest way to do it is this. The other day I went to have a talk with him, a straight one, as I had right to have, about the ancestry and so on of the girl I had made up my mind to marry if I could. I hadn’t got the first two sentences out before those infernal eyes of his were looking right through the back of my head, and the whole course of my thoughts and intentions changed in a moment, and–well, we talked about something else that I didn’t really care a rap about.”

“And yet,” replied Sir Godfrey, with a gentle smile, “if I mistake not, Miss Grace herself has eyes very like her uncle’s, and because you have got her you think yourself the most fortunate fellow alive. Rather a curious position, isn’t it?”

“Yes, dad,” he laughed, with a sudden change of manner, “I suppose I am really the luckiest fellow on earth just now. There never was such a girl–”

“No, no, of course not,” said Sir Godfrey. “There never is. Every man who is really and honestly in love with the girl he wants to marry thinks that, Harold, and if he didn’t he would not be genuinely in love with her, I suppose. Well, go on. What were you going to say?”

“Naturally,” he laughed again, “it must be so, but there is one thing I have been wanting to ask you lots of times since Dr Halkinecame–I mean since we got to know him and Grace pretty intimately. Have you ever noticed anything peculiar about his eyes?”

“What on earth do you mean, Harold?” exclaimed Sir Godfrey. “Certainly they are very wonderful eyes; I think the most beautiful pair of eyes I have ever seen in a man’s head: but why should you trouble about that? Evidently his sister had the same and Miss Romanes has inherited them from her, and I presume that in your estimation no girl ever had such eyes as Miss Romanes.”

“Of course, dad, of course. Why, when you look into them your whole soul seems to–No, I am not going to deviate into sentiment or what, I suppose, you would call lover’s nonsense. I am asking about the doctor’s eyes. I want to ask you whether, when he has been looking at you, you have ever felt an inclination to do the thing that you don’t want to do; even to do something that you didn’t feel at the moment to be quite right.”

“My dear Harold,” replied Sir Godfrey, seriously, “that is really a very grave question to put, because it involves one of the most intricate problems of psychology. I mean, of course, the possible influence of one mind over another convened through the medium of the optic nerve from the brain, the optic nerve being, as you know, the sole communication existing between the eye and the brain with the exception of those governing muscles which move the eyes. In common speech that is called hypnotism which, to those who have studied the subject at all deeply, means either anything or nothing– anything to the vulgar, nothing to the learned. I may say that our own researches, Halkine’s and mine, have gone a good deal deeper than that.

“In short,” he went on with a note of something like exultation in his voice, “I think I am in a position to say that we have arrived almost at the threshold of the greatest discovery in psychology that has ever been made. A most marvellous discovery, my dear Harold; one which might possibly result in the creation of a power which, in hands capable of using it wisely and well, might possibly solve all the problems which now perplex humanity– problems social, political, moral, all these might–no, I hardly dare trust myself to say what might not be accomplished through the exercise of such a power once under due control.”

“Yes,” said Harold, leaning forward over the back of his chair, “that is just the answer or something like it to the question that I asked you. You say that this power, whatever it is–and I suppose it really means a sort of reading the thoughts of others and turning them into the direction willed by the reader–means in plain English just this–that the person who really could do that could also command the thoughts of those whom he or she could get into sufficiently close communication.”

“Really, Harold,” said Sir Godfrey, after a long pull at his cigar, “I must congratulate you upon a very fairly succinct definition of the new power which, according to Halkine’s researches and mine, may at any time be called into being. That is exactly what would happen, provided always a complete knowledge of the lines upon which the average mind of mankind works. We have been working very hard at it, but it is, as you can imagine, a problem full of intricacies, only a few of which have so far been unravelled even by the greatest of mental scientists.

“Of course you know that hitherto, among all the thousands of millions of human beings that have been born into this world, everyone, male or female, has been an impenetrable mystery to every other. No matter how intimate their social or friendly relations may have been, still the mystery remains. As Halkine was saying to me only last night after we had been at work for some hours on the subject, every human being resembles a triple-walled fortress. Those other human beings whom he meets casually in the world are those who only knock at the doors of the outer walls, and sometimes they are opened to them. His intimate acquaintances are allowed to pass the first door, but the second remains for ever shut to them. Through that only his friends, one or two, perhaps, in a whole lifetime, are permitted to pass. But in the third wall there is no door. Within that central citadel the man is for ever alone with himself. It is the eternally inviolate abode of the human soul–the naked soul–that which no eyes of friend or wife or child or lover have ever looked upon; the mystery of mysteries, the problem of which every human being is the insoluble incarnation.

“That is as it has ever been,” he went on, rising from his chair and beginning to walk up and down the other side of the room. “For this reason men, yes, and women too, have failed in accomplishing their highest ideals of conquest and empire. But for that Alexander would never have sighed for other worlds to conquer. Caesar would never have fallen under his friend’s dagger at the foot of the throne of the world, and Napoleon would have died Emperor of the Earth instead of a prisoner at Saint Helena. You have asked me what I think of Professor Halkine’s eyes? I tell you now, Harold, of course in the strictest confidence, that the day may come, not very far hence perhaps, when those eyes may be able to see through that inner wall which no mortal sight has yet penetrated, and then–”

“And then, or rather, before then,” said Harold, straightening up and thrusting his hands into his jacket pockets, “with all due deference to you, dad, and in spite of the fact that he is Grace’s uncle, I think he ought to be shot in the best interests of humanity. I quite see what you mean, but I don’t believe the time has come yet for any man to wield such a tremendous power as that would be. Fancy a man who could see another man’s soul as naked as he could see his body! No, I don’t think that ever ought to be.”

“I quite see what you mean,” replied Sir Godfrey, quietly. ldquo;It is only natural for you to think that way since you have not studied the subject, but still, I may remind you, as I said just now, that Miss Grace’s eyes are very like her uncle’s. What if they could see, for instance, into your soul, through that third wall of the inmost citadel?”

“Well, as far as I know,” he replied, with a laugh, “there is nothing there that she is not welcome to see, and the most interesting that she would see would be the best conception of herself that I have been able to make. Of course, it is very imperfect, but I hope it is something like her.”

“Spoken as a true lover should speak, Harold,” laughed Sir Godfrey, “and not at all badly put. But she would also see the true reason why you asked me that question about her uncle’s eyes–eyes which are so like her own. You take my meaning, of course?”

“I am afraid you are getting a bit too deep for me, dad,” replied Harold, taking a fresh cigar out of his case. “Of course I see, or think I see, what you mean, but I must say that, much as I love Grace–and I do not believe any man could love a girl much more than I love her–I am bound to tell you that the reason why I asked you that question was that I’d give a good deal, if I had it, for her to be somebody else’s niece, and for this searcher of souls to be safely back in Thibet contemplating the eternities and immensities and letting ordinary human beings alone.”

“That, my dear Harold,” said Sir Godfrey, “is exactly what a young fellow like yourself, with all the world before him, with his heart full of love and his veins full of good blood, would naturally say. But at the same time you will allow that such things as these may look very different from the point of view of men like Halkine and myself who have all our passions behind us, and, as you put it, only the eternities and immensities before us.

“Yes, I quite see that, dad,” answered Harold, throwing himself back into his arm-chair again, “but for all that I’m afraid I cannot agree with you.

Human nature, even of the best, is not perfect enough yet to be trusted with a power like that. At least, that is my opinion, and, with all due deference to him as Grace’s uncle, if Dr Halkine tries any soul-searching experiments on her or myself after we are married I shall take the law into my own hands, whatever the consequences are. I don’t like the man and I don’t trust him, and I shall take jolly good care to get Grace out of reach of his unholy influence as soon as I have the right to do so.”

CHAPTER III

That evening at the Dower House Dr Halkine had a conversation with Miss Grace on the same subject–the marriage which was now practically agreed upon between herself and Harold Enstone.

“Then you have quite made up your mind, Grace,” he said, “and you really think that the marriage is in accordance with your–well, perhaps, I ought not to put it quite so prosaically as that, although you and I are so much accustomed to talk that way.”

“Oh, yes, I quite see what you mean, uncle,” she laughed. “You mean –do I think it in accordance with the eternal fitness of things, which, of course, includes my own affections and inclinations? Yes,” she continued, putting her elbows on the table and her chin between her hands and looking at him, as few others were able to do for any length of time, straight in the eyes. “Yes, you may call it an illustration of the law of selection, of the adaptation of the fittest to the fittest under the special circumstances of the case, suitability to environment and all that kind of scientific stuff if you like. In plain English it comes to this–that Harold loves me, and I –well–yes I think I love him.”

The last sentence was not spoken as a girl really in love would have uttered the words. There was just a suspicion of restraint, a little hesitation between the words, which might not have struck an ordinary person in their true meaning, but which Dr Halkine grasped at once.

“Then, Grace,” he said, leaning back in his chair and taking a long meditative pull at his pipe, “I may take it, I presume, that you have really made up your mind that you can marry this young man, and, as the story books say, ‘ live happily ever after’!”

“I think so, uncle,” she replied. “At least, of course, so far as one can foresee these things, and yet, you know, it is very curious. He is almost absolutely the opposite to everything that you ever taught me to look upon as –what shall I say?–well, the best in man.”

“That is a very singular remark, Grace,” said the doctor, sending a cloud of smoke curling up towards the ceiling. “Really, it is one of the most curious remarks that a young lady in your present position could very well make. What am I to understand by it? Surely you are not beginning to see spots on the sun already?”

“Oh, no, no,” she laughed; “that isn’t a bit what I mean. What I ought to have said is this: You have always trained and educated me to think that the highest qualities of man are the mental and intellectual and that, however good and strong and manly a man might be, he was, after all, only a higher kind of animal unless he possessed exceptional mental and intellectual powers. Now, of course, as you know, Harold is everything that a man, as man, ought to be–at anyrate, I think so. But although he is clever and well-educated as Society reckons education, it would be absurd to say that he could compare for a moment with either Sir Godfrey or yourself.”

“Or yourself, for instance,” added the doctor, knocking the ashes out of his pipe. “That, Grace, I think, is a matter which you really ought to think seriously about,” he went on, keeping his eyes upon hers and speaking in a tone which was familiar enough to her, but which it would not have done Harold Enstone very much good to hear. “You know that you are not merely an ordinary girl who can make a brilliant marriage like this just because you are beautiful, well educated and fairly well off. Your education has been very different to that of the ordinary society beauty and–to put it plainly–it has given you powers which they have, possibly, never dreamed of.”

“Is that really so, uncle?” she said, getting up from her seat and beginning to walk up and down the room with her hands clasped behind her. ldquo;Frankly, I hope it isn’t so, because since, well, since that afternoon in the park when Harold told me that he loved me, and wanted me, and I looked at him–”

“Yes, you looked at him,” said the doctor, “and what then? You looked him straight in the eyes, I suppose, and then?”

“That,” she laughed, with a quick flush, “is not a question that you ought to ask, and I certainly sha’n’t answer it. What I mean is this,” she went on more seriously. “Ever since then I have had an uncomfortable haunting suspicion that I have got some sort of power, as you say, that I use it unconsciously to–well, make him love me.”

“My dear Grace,” he laughed, “if that is all you are going to say you need not have taken the trouble. It is merely the power that every beautiful girl has to make a man love her, provided always that she exercises it over the right man. There is no mystery about that, except the eternal mystery of what people call love, which has never been explained, and which no sensible person wants to explain.”

“Yes,” she replied, “but there is something else. You may be able to explain it, but I can’t–something that is a complete mystery to me.”

“Ah!” he said, “well now, perhaps, we are coming to the most interesting part of the problem. Of course, I will solve the puzzle for you if I can, but what is it?”

“It is a very difficult thing,” she replied, flushing again, “for a girl to explain to any man if he is her uncle, even such an uncle as you have been to me–in fact the only sort of father I ever knew.”

“Yes,” he said so gravely that his tone rather surprised her. “Yes, I quite understand that is difficult; it must be, and by way of helping you out a little I should suggest that you should detach yourself entirely from the personal question and put it into the ordinary language that we are accustomed to talk in.”