To Win the Love He Sought Part 40

Powers s.h.i.+vered slightly.

"It is a possibility," he admitted. "Even if she remains sane, will you tell me this? What connection can there be between the mind of the girl of a month ago and the woman of a month to come?"

"It is an interesting psychological problem," Trowse answered, "which we shall know more about shortly. I must admit, though, that your position is inexplicable to me. Fortune has given you a marvelous opportunity. I cannot conceive how you could have acted differently. I cannot understand your present hesitation. If you wish for any sort of cooperation on my part, tell me how you first met this young woman, and under what circ.u.mstances you persuaded her to become your patient."

In a few words Powers told him.

There was a short silence. Trowse was regarding his friend with cold surprise.

"All that you tell me," he said, "makes your present hesitation the more extraordinary. Your scruples are unworthy of you. They would be unworthy of you even if you belonged to that sickly order of sentimentalists who would shrink from killing a poisonous snake because the reptile had been given life. According to your own showing, the girl was in an intolerable position. She enters upon her new life with every prospect of happiness. Believe me, Powers, the hand which struck away the bridge between her past and future was the hand of a benefactor."

"I suppose you must be right," Powers murmured.

"Right! It is hopelessly obvious," Trowse answered. "If this hesitation is anything more than a pa.s.sing mood with you, I shall be amazed. You probably saved the girl from moral s.h.i.+pwreck--you have transported her into a life which she could certainly never have reached by any other means!"

In his tone and in his face were signs of a rare and intense enthusiasm.

The eyes of the two men met. Trowse continued, with a gesture stiff, but almost dramatic:

"Man, it is wonderful! I could kill you as you stand there, for envy. It is among the possibilities that you, a dilettante, a dabbler, may solve the secret of all the ages past and to come. It may be that she will sing to you the songs that Pocahontas sang to the great G.o.d of the Indians or you may wake in the night to hear the wail of one of those daughters of Judah led captive into Egypt. Perhaps she was a priestess in the time-forgotten cities of Africa, gone before our history crept into being, swept who knows where off the face of the earth!"

Powers was shaking with excitement. This sudden eloquence from the one man on earth whose cold self-restraint had become a byword moved him strangely.

"Well," he said, "for good or for evil, the thing must go through as it has been arranged. I am glad that you are interested, Trowse. It may be that I shall need your help."

"Likely enough," Trowse answered shortly. "It seems to me that you have let go some of the old ideas. Believe me, they were the safest. The man who has work to do in the world has no greater enemy than this s.h.i.+fting sentimentalism. May I come and see your patient to-morrow?"

"You may see her as often as you like," Powers answered, "so long as you let me know beforehand that you are coming."

"I thank you," Trowse answered, with a cold smile. "You need have no fear that I shall attempt any single-handed experiments. Only, if you want my advice, don't give her over to society, no matter what your promise was. Why on earth don't you keep her quietly to yourself here instead of sending her to her mother? What do you want to go publis.h.i.+ng her to the world at all for? A thousand things may happen if you carry out this hairbrained scheme of yours. She may even want to marry. She is good-looking enough. You might easily lose her altogether."

Powers was suddenly pale. There were, indeed, many possibilities which he had not seriously considered. Yet he never hesitated.

"I must keep my word to her," he said. "I shall do it at all costs."

"You are a fool," Trowse declared bluntly. "Make her your wife. Bind her to you. Make sure of her."

Powers walked to the door with his visitor.

"It is useless to argue with you," he said. "We look at the matter from different points of view. The girl risked her life to gain a certain end. She has won, and she shall have her reward."

With the pa.s.sage of the months, Eleanor, little by little, entered upon a strange new life in accordance with what had been promised her.

Through the London social season she went about with Lady Fiske and was admired and sought after everywhere. It was as though a magician had touched her face, and there had pa.s.sed away from it all sense of trouble, all evil memories, every trace of suffering. The troubled mouth seemed ever ready to break into laughter, the faint lines and wrinkles had faded completely away. She was years younger. The light of past sorrows had gone from her eyes, they remained only the mirror of the brightest and gayest things in life. In her youth, her beauty, and her almost a.s.sertive _joie de vivre_ she seemed like a child among the little company by whom she was constantly surrounded wherever she went in her soulless, indefatigable quest for amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Are you not afraid, Eleanor, that some day you will grow tired of amusing yourself?" Powers asked her one night at a dinner where she had outshone all others.

A peal of light, sweet laughter rang out above the babel of conversation. Everyone looked toward Eleanor's table. She was leaning a little forward in her chair, her lips parted, her cheeks flushed, her eyes alight with enjoyment. A single row of pearls encircled her long, graceful neck, her shoulders and bare arms were dazzlingly soft, her hair gleamed in the shaded lamplight.

"No! Why on earth should I? What else is there to do?"

"What about amusing other people sometimes--by way of change?"

She smiled delightfully.

"How dull! I suppose you mean have a night cla.s.s for boys, or get up concerts to send ragged children to the seaside."

"Why not? Such things are kindly enough; they do good! They are excellent things for a girl to interest herself in."

"But it wouldn't amuse me at all, Powers! I should be bored to death."

"And you are going to think of nothing but amusing yourself all your life?" he asked slowly.

"Why not?" she answered lightly.

Powers turned his face away in quick vexation, to encounter his mother's disapproving glance focused on Eleanor from a near-by table.

For Lady Fiske, ever ready to further her son's scientific projects, had lent the girl her social patronage, and had tried to blind herself to the arrant selfishness and inconsideration that she everywhere encountered in their intercourse. Between Eleanor and Powers' sister Marian there was almost less in common, for the Eleanor of a month ago had ceased to exist. Beautiful, brilliant, hard, she flitted like a b.u.t.terfly through the world that Powers had promised her, beating her wings in a mad pursuit of amus.e.m.e.nt and pleasure, commanding homage and self-sacrifice with a touch as hard as steel.

Powers breathed a long sigh and there was a careworn look in his eyes as he glanced again at the girl in front of him.

Almost immediately Lady Fiske rose, and the women pa.s.sed out. Trowse stood back among the shadows behind the small table at which he had been sitting, and steadfastly watched the girl of whom he and Marian Fiske had been talking. Prosperity had indeed had a wonderful effect upon Eleanor's looks. The light of perfect health had flushed her delicate cheeks, her figure had filled out; she carried herself with a grace and confidence which took no count of those days of slow torture through which she had pa.s.sed. Yet there was about her beauty some faint note of peculiarity which had puzzled others before Trowse. He asked himself what it was as she pa.s.sed out, a queen running the gantlet of a court of admiring eyes, fresh, exquisitely natural, the living embodiment of light-hearted gaiety. When at last the door was closed and the men drew nearer together, he smiled quietly to himself.

"It is like one of those pictures," he murmured, "which come near to breaking the heart of the painter. It is perfect in color and form, it is beautiful--and yet it does not live. There is no background."

He moved to a table nearer the center of the room from which he could watch his host. The heavily shaded lights were kind enough to the faces of the men who sat laughing together over their cigarettes, but Trowse was a keen watcher, and he saw things which were hardly apparent to a casual observer. Powers had altered during the last few months. There were curious lines about his mouth, his eyes were a little sunken, his geniality was a trifle forced. Trowse smiled grimly.

"Conscience!" he muttered to himself. "Powers was never quite free from the sentimentalities of life. What a fool to trifle with such an opportunity!"

He waited for his chance, and moved up presently to his host's table.

Powers welcomed him, but without heartiness. It happened that for the moment the two were virtually isolated. Trowse leaned over toward the other.

"How does the great experiment go?" he asked, in a low tone.

Powers visibly flinched. He glanced around him nervously.

"I want to talk to you about her, Trowse," he said. "I can't expect your sympathy, and you can't help me--you nor any other man. But I've got to talk to some one--or go mad."

Trowse nodded with the air of a Sphinx. "Well?"

"She is so horribly changed," Powers said. "Can't you see it? Of course you can't judge because you did not know her before. Trowse, I feel like a man who has created a monster, who has breathed life into some evil thing and let it loose upon the world."

Trowse smiled grimly.

"Personally," he said, "I admit that I am no judge. I understand, however, that society in general scarcely takes the same view of Miss Hardinge. Isn't she supposed to be rather a beauty?"

Powers beat impatiently with his hand upon the table.