To Win the Love He Sought Part 41

"You know that I am not talking about her looks. She's beautiful enough to bewitch every man who comes near her--and she does it."

"It must be a little inconvenient for you," Trowse remarked. "Beyond that, I scarcely see your point."

"Man, you have eyes," Powers exclaimed, with subdued pa.s.sion. "I have seen you studying her closely when you fancied yourself undisturbed. You can see what I see. She is like a marvelous piece of mechanism. The working of it is perfect, but it isn't human. She is ready to be amused at anything; she is never serious for a single moment. She is only alive upon the sensuous side. Confound it, Trowse, don't look at me like that.

She has no soul. There is nothing alight inside."

Trowse broke the short silence.

"I am to take it, then," he said coldly, "that you abandon the experiment. In your present condition it is, I suppose, inevitable. You have lost all influence over her. It would be hopeless to expect her to respond to your will."

"I have already abandoned it," Powers answered. "I curse the day and the thought which made me ever attempt it."

"It is as well, then," Trowse answered, "to give you fair warning. I do not propose to stand by quietly and watch your folly."

"What do you mean?" Powers demanded.

"This: That if you do not carry this thing through--I shall!"

Powers sprang to his feet, his face was dark with pa.s.sion.

"If you should dare to interfere," he cried, "if you should make the slightest attempt to----"

"Stop!"

The monosyllable came like a pistol-shot, incisive, compelling! There was a breathless silence. Trowse continued, and his words were cold and hard.

"Do not threaten me," he said. "You should know better than that. You should know exactly of how much account I hold my life when it comes to a question of adding to the sum of human knowledge. I shall do as I say.

My decision is unalterable."

Powers was a man again.

"It is well to be prepared," he said. "I thank you for your warning.

Take mine in return. I have as little fear of death as you, and I think that my love for Eleanor is a pa.s.sion as strong as your devotion to science. I tell you that I will not have her made the subject of your experiments. I will not have her life or reason imperiled, even to solve the greatest of all mysteries."

Trowse shrugged his shoulders.

"I think," he said, "that we understand one another perfectly."

Their talk fanned a growing distrust of Trowse that Fiske had felt for weeks. He knew the man's hypnotic power, he saw the fascination with which his friend haunted Eleanor's side at gatherings where her clear bright laugh would suddenly cease and a look almost of terror creep into her eyes with Trowse's entrance. Then she forgot every one else and yielded herself to his spell.

Very subtly, very deftly, Trowse pursued his cold-blooded course of experiment while Powers in vain sought to end it. At last he forbade Trowse to enter his home and all went well until returning one day, at an unexpected hour, Powers heard from his library ringing through the house, through closed doors and curtained hallways, the cry of a woman in mortal fear.

He sprang to the door and threw it open. Outside all was silent. There was no repet.i.tion of the cry. Then a fainter sound reached him--a low, convulsive moaning as of some creature in pain. He crossed the hall, ran wildly down a long pa.s.sage, and flung open the door of the little sitting-room which had been given to Eleanor for her own. With his foot upon the threshold he paused for a second. He heard stealthy movements in the hall, the front door softly opened and shut. On the floor before him, white and motionless, Eleanor was lying.

He knew that this was Trowse's work; he ran to the front door with murder in his heart but there was no sight of anyone. Marian, too, from the drawing room had heard the door close softly.

Powers sat with Eleanor's hand in his, watching for her return to consciousness. Her fingers lay in his, cold and pa.s.sive, her hair was in wild disorder, and her face was still deadly pale. He bent over the closed eyes, and a fierce, pa.s.sionate desire crept into his heart. If only she might wake up as he had known her first. If only these terrible months of her second existence might be blotted out forever. He was content to have failed in his great experiment. He had no longer any ambition to add to the sum of human knowledge. The memory of Halkar and his patients had become a nightmare to him. Forever he would have been content to remain ignorant of those things which lay now so short a distance beyond. It was an unexpected lesson which he had learned, a strange fever which had wrought so marvelous a transformation in him.

The old ideals were dead and buried, life itself had become centered around the girl who lay by his side now, white and inanimate.

At last with a little s.h.i.+ver she opened her eyes.

Physically, Eleanor became at that time a puzzle both to Powers and to the physician whom he called in to attend upon her. From an almost animal perfection of health, she pa.s.sed after her recovery from that prolonged fainting fit into a state of nervous prostration, the more remarkable from its contrast to her former robustness. She lost her color, her light gracefulness of movement, her brilliant gaiety of manner. She moved about listlessly, with pallid cheeks, and always with a strange gleam in her eyes--of expectancy, mingled with apprehension.

"It is so absurd--so horrible--to look back--and to remember nothing,"

she said one day, with a little break in her voice. "I want to see some one who really belongs to me--my father, or my uncle, or some one.

Perhaps that would help me--to remember."

"My dear," Powers said, "I am afraid that you would never be able to find your father. He is in China on a secret mission for the Government.

That is why he cannot write or receive letters. You must be content with us for a little longer. We may hear from your uncle any day."

There was a dead silence. In her face were traces of a strange new nervousness.

"If I could get away--a long distance away!" Eleanor exclaimed, with a sudden tremulous emotion. "If only I could."

Powers took one of her restless hands in his.

"Eleanor," he said, "we have been talking about taking you to a little place we have in Lincolns.h.i.+re, close to the sea. There will be only Marian and I. You shall be alone as much as you choose. No one shall come near you whom you do not care to see."

She looked at him almost wistfully.

"To-morrow!" she repeated.

They left London early the next morning and Eleanor, with a face that was almost haggard leaned wearily back in the train and scarcely spoke during the entire trip.

Toward the end of dinner, on the evening of their arrival, Powers threw open the French windows and let in the deep music of the sea. She started to her feet with a strange little cry.

"Hark!"

It was the first sign of her awakening interest in life.

"The tide is coming in," Powers said. "You see the beach is just below the gardens."

She stepped through the window and crossed the lawn. From there a winding path led down to the beach. She never paused until she stood upon the s.h.i.+ngle, with her pale, rapt face turned seaward. Powers followed noiselessly close behind. Almost to their feet, the long waves came thundering in, weird and ghostlike. She stood like a statue, her lips parted, her bosom rising and falling quickly under her dinner-gown.

"Listen," she murmured, "it is the old cry, unending, everlasting. Where have I heard it before? Oh, tell me! Tell me!"

"I cannot," he answered. "I would that I could!"

She paid no more attention to him. She stood with her face turned seaward, listening--always listening. He went back to the house and brought wraps. She let him adjust them without thanks or remark. Soon the gathering darkness blotted out everything except the faint phosph.o.r.escent light on the tops of the breaking waves.

"Come," he said at last, touching her arm gently, "it is late, and we have left Marian alone."

She did not move, but soon Marian came out and called to them. Then she permitted him to lead her slowly toward the house, pausing every now and then to listen. A faint moon was s.h.i.+ning through a misty sky, and he caught a glimpse of her face, which startled him. It was as though she were listening to voices which he could not hear. There was the breath of another world about her.

"Are you afraid of being dull here?" he asked. "You see, we have no neighbors, and the village is a mile away."

She smiled curiously.