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"I am no maker of phrases," he replied, "nor am I eloquent. I cannot tell you how marvellous it is. The one great citadel against which human ingenuity and time have beaten in vain since our first forefathers, is stormed at last! In my hands will shortly be the keys of the human soul. No man or woman will have a secret from me. The whole relation of society will be changed utterly."
"What is it? What is it?" she asked with a light in her eyes. "Have you done what mother said in jest? Have you indeed finally conquered the air?"
He waved his hand with a scornful gesture.
"Greater far – greater than that," he answered. "Such a vulgar and mechanical triumph is not one I would seek. In a material age it is perhaps a great thing for this or that scientist to invent a means of transit quicker and surer than another. But what is it, after all? Mere accurate scientific knowledge supplemented by inventive power. No! Such inventions as the steam-engine, printing, gun-powder, are great in their way, but they have only revolutionized the surface of things; the human soul remains as it was before. What I now know is a far, far loftier and more marvellous thing."
In his excitement he had risen and was bending over her.
Now she also rose, and stared into his face with one hand upon his arm.
"Oh, tell me," she said, "what in life can be so strange, so terrible in its effects as this you speak of?"
"Listen," he answered once more. "You know what light is? You know that it can be split up into its component parts by means of the prism in the spectroscope?"
"Every child knows that to-day," she answered.
"Good!" he replied. And he went on. "I am putting this in the very simplest possible language. I want you to see the broadest, barest, simplest outlines. Do you know anything of the human mind? What should you say hypnotism was, for instance, in ordinary words?"
"Surely," she replied, "it is the power of one brain acting upon another."
"Exactly," he said, "and in what way? How is a brain, not physically touching another brain, able to influence it?"
"By magnetism," she replied, "by" – she hesitated for a word – "by a sort of current passing from one brain to another."
He held out both his hands in front of him. They were clasped, and she saw that his wrists were shaking. He was terribly excited.
"Yes," he went on, his voice dropping lower and lower and becoming even more intense, "you have said exactly the truth. The brain is a marvellous instrument, a sensitive instrument, an electric instrument which is constantly giving out strange, subtle, and hitherto uninvestigated currents. It is like the transmitter at the top of Signor Marconi's wireless telegraphy station. Something unseen goes out into the air, and far away over the Mother of Oceans something answers to its influence. That is exactly what happens with the human brain. Countless experiments have proved it, the scientists of the world are agreed."
"Then – ?" she said.
"Supposing I had discovered how to collect these rays or vibrations, for that is the better word, these delicate vibrations which come from the human brain?"
"I think I begin to see," Marjorie said slowly, painfully, as if the words were forced from her and she spoke them under great emotion. "I think I begin to see a little light."
"Ah," he answered, "you are always above ordinary women. There is no one in the world like you. Your brain is keen, subtle, strong. You were destined for me from the first."
Once more, even in the midst of her excitement, a shade passed over her face. She touched him on the arm again.
"Go on! Tell me! Not this, not that. Tell me about the work!"
"I," he repeated, "I alone of all men in the world have learnt how to collect the invisible vibrations of thought itself. Now, remember what I told you at first. I mentioned Light, the way in which Light can be passed through a prism, split up into its component parts, and give the secret of its composition to the eye of the scientist. Not only can I collect the mysterious vibrations of the human brain, but I can pass them through a spectroscope more marvellous than any instrument ever dreamt of in the history of the world. I can take the vibrations of thought, and discover their consistency, their strength, their meaning."
She stared at him incredulously. "Even yet," she said, "I fail to see the ultimate adaptation of all this. I realize that you have discovered a hitherto unproved truth about the mechanism of thought. That is an achievement which will send your name ringing down the avenues of the future. But there seems to be something behind all you are telling me. You have more to say. What is the practical outcome of all this, this theoretical fact?"
"It is this," he answered. "I hold in my hands the power to know what this or that person, be it a king upon his throne, a girl on her wedding day, or a criminal in the dock, is thinking at any given moment."
She started from him with a little cry. "Oh no," she said, and her face had grown very white indeed. "Oh no, God would not allow it. It is a power only God has."
He laughed, and in his laugh she heard something that made her shrink back still further. It was a laugh such as Lucifer might have laughed, who defied a Power which he would not acknowledge to be greater than his.
"You will never do that," she said, "wonderful as you are."
"Marjorie," he answered, "I am a man with a brain that theorizes, but never ventures upon a statement that cannot be proved by fact. If I tell you this, if I hint broadly at the outcome of my life's work, I am doing so, believe me, because I have chapter and verse for all I say, because I can prove that it has passed from the dim realms of theory and of hope into the brilliant daylight of actual achievement!"
She stared at him. His words were too much for her mind to grasp immediately.
It was an intense moment.
But, as in real life intense moments generally are, it was broken by a curious interruption.
A voice came thickly from the arm-chair by the fire, where old Lady Poole had been reclining in placid sleep. It was the strange voice of one who sleeps, without expression, but perfectly distinct.
"I will not have it, cook – (indistinguishable murmur) – explained when I engaged you – will not have men in the kitchen!"
Sir William and Marjorie looked at each other for a moment with blank faces. Then, all overstrung as they were, the absurdity of the occurrence struck them at the same moment, and they began to laugh softly together.
It was a little pleasant and very human interlude in the middle of these high matters, and at that moment the great man felt that he was nearer to Marjorie than he had been before at any other moment of the afternoon. She no longer hung entranced upon his impassioned and wonderful words, she laughed with him quite quietly and simply.
Lady Poole snored deeply, and no longer vocalized the drama of her domestic dream.
Suddenly Marjorie turned back once more to Sir William.
"It's only mother dreaming about one of the servants we have had to send away," she said. "What a stupid interruption! Now, go on, go on!"
Her voice recalled him to his marvellous story.
"Tell me what is the actual achievement," she said.
"It is this. When you speak into a telephone the vibrations of your voice agitate a sensitive membrane, and by means of electricity the vibrations are conveyed to almost any distance. When Madame Melba sings into the gramophone, her voice agitates the membrane, which in its turn agitates a needle, which in its turn again makes certain marks upon a waxen disc."
"Yes, go on, go on!"
"When I put a certain instrument upon the head of a man or a woman, when I surround the field of emanation by a shield which captures the vibrations, they are conducted to a receiver more delicate and sensitive than anything which has ever been achieved by scientific process before. That receiver collects these vibrations and can transmit them, just in the manner of a telephone or telegraph wire, for almost any distance."
"And at the other end?" Marjorie asked.
"It has been a difficulty of ten long, anxious, unwearying years."
"And now?"
"Now that difficulty has been finally overcome."
"Therefore?"
"What a person thinks in London can be sent in vibrations along a wire to Paris."
"I see. I understand! But when there they can only be transmitted to another brain, of course. You mean that you have invented a more marvellous system of telegraphy than has ever been invented before. For instance, I could sit here in this room and communicate with you with absolute freedom in Paris. How wonderful that is! What a triumphant achievement! But – but, William, marvellous as it is, you do not substantiate what you said just now. The secrets of thought may be yours, but only when the sender wills it."
"Ah," he answered, with a deep note of meaning coming into his voice. "If I had only discovered what you say, I should have discovered much. But I have gone far, far away from this. I have done much, much more. And in that lies the supreme value of my work."
Once more they were standing together, strained with wonder, with amazement and triumph passing between them like the shuttle of a loom; once more she was caught up into high realms of excitement and dawning knowledge, the gates of which had never opened to her brain before.
"To come back to the phonograph," Sir William said. "The marks are made upon the waxen disc, and they are afterwards reproduced in sound, recorded upon metal plates to remain for ever as a definite reproduction of the human voice. Now, and here I come to the final point of all, I have discovered a means by which thought can be turned into actual vision, into an actual expression of itself for every one to read. What I mean is this. I have discovered the process, and I have invented the machine by which, as a person thinks, the thought can be conveyed to any distance along the wire, can be received at the other end by an instrument which splits it up into this or that vibration. And these vibrations actuate upon a machine by the spectroscope, by the bioscope, which show them upon a screen in the form of either pictures or of words as the thoughts of the thinker are at that moment sent out by the brain in words or pictures."
"Then what does this mean?"
"It means that once my apparatus, whether by consent of the subject or by force, is employed to collect the thought vibrations, then no secrets can be hidden. The human soul must reveal itself. Human personality is robbed of its only defence. There will be no need to try the criminal of the future. He must confess in spite of himself. The inviolability of thought is destroyed. The lonely citadel of self exists no longer. The pious hypocrite must give his secret to the world, and sins and sinners must confess to man what only God knew before."
Marjorie sat down in her chair and covered her face with her hands. Various emotions thronged and pulsed through her brain. The stupendous thing that this man had done filled her with awe for his powers, with terror almost, but with a great exultation also. She did not love him, she knew well that she had never loved him, but she realized her influence over him. She knew that this supreme intellect was hers to do with as she would. She knew that if he was indeed, as he said, master of the world, she was mistress of his mind, she was the mistress of him. The mysterious force of his love, greater than any other earthly force which he could capture or control, had made him, who could make the minds of others his slaves and instruments, the slave of her.
Yes! Love! That, after all, was the greatest force in the whole world. Here was a more conclusive proof than perhaps any woman had ever had before in the history of humanity.
Love! Even while the inmost secrets of nature were wrested from her by such a man as this, love was still his master, love was still the motive power of the world.
And as she thought that, she forgot for a moment all her fears and all her wonder, in a final realization of what all the poets had sung and all the scientists striven to destroy. Her blood thrilled and pulsed with the knowledge, but it did not thrill or pulse for the man whose revelations had confirmed her in it. The man whom she had promised to marry was the man who had confirmed her in the knowledge of the truth. And all he had said and done filled her with a strange joy such as she had never known before.
At that moment Sir William came towards her. He had switched on the electric light, and the room was now brilliantly illuminated. In his hand he held a large oval thing of brass, bright and shining.
At that moment, also, old Lady Poole woke up with a start.
"Dear me," she said, "I must have taken forty winks. Well, I suppose, my dear children, that I have proved my absolute inability to be de trop! What are you doing, William?"
"It's a little experiment," Sir William said, "one of my inventions, Lady Poole. Marjorie, I want you to take off your hat."
Marjorie did so. With careful and loving hands the great man placed the metal helmet upon her head. The girl let him do so as if she were in a dream. Then Sir William pressed a button in the wall. In a few seconds there was an answering and sudden ring of an electric bell in the study.
"Now, Marjorie!" Sir William said, "now, all I have told you is being actually proved."
He looked at her face, which flowered beneath the grotesque and shining cap of metal.
"Now, Marjorie, everything you are thinking is being definitely recorded in another place."
For a moment or two the significance of his words did not penetrate to her mind.
Then she realized them.
Lady Poole and the scientist saw the rapt expression fade away like a lamp that is turned out. Horror flashed out upon it, horror and fear. Her hands went up to her head; she swept off the brilliant helmet and flung it with a crash upon the ground.
Then she swayed for a moment and sank into a deep swoon.
She had been thinking of Mr. Guy Rathbone, barrister-at-law, and what her thoughts were, who can say?
CHAPTER IV
THE SECOND LOVER ARRIVES
On the evening of the day in which she had fainted, Marjorie Poole sat alone in the drawing-room of her mother's house in Curzon Street.
It was a large, handsome place, furnished in the Empire style with mirrors framed in delicate white arabesques, and much gilding woven into the pattern. The carpet was a great purple expanse covered with laurel wreaths of darker purple.
There was but little furniture in the big, beautiful place, but it was all airy, fantastic and perfect of its kind. There was a general air of repose, of size and comely proportion in this delightful room. Here, an old French clock clicked merrily, there were two or three inlaid cabinets, and upon the walls were a few copies of some of Watteau's delightful scenes in the old courtly gardens of Versailles.
Marjorie wore a long tea-gown, and she was sitting quite alone in the brilliantly lit place, with a book in her hand. The book was in her hand indeed, but she was not reading it. Her eyes were fixed upon the opposite wall, though they saw nothing there. Her thoughts were busy and her face was pale.
She had recovered from her swoon in a minute or two, and found her mother fussing round her and her lover generally skilful in doing all that was necessary. And a short time afterwards she had driven home with Lady Poole.
What she had heard, the very strain of hearing and being so intensely interested in it, had taken her strength away. Then had come the words when Sir William told her that the very thoughts that she was thinking at that moment were being in some mysterious way recorded and known. And she knew that she had been thinking of another man, thinking of him as an engaged girl should never think.
But as she had returned to consciousness, Sir William had told her kindly and simply that if she had feared her thoughts, whatever they might be, were known to him, she need fear no longer. "There was no one," he said, "observing any record of vibrations from your dear mind. Do you think that I should have allowed that, Marjorie? How could you think it of me?"
She had driven home relieved but very weary, and feeling how complex life was, how irrevocable the mistakes one made from impulse or lack of judgment really were.
Ambition! Yes, it was that that had brought her to where she was now. Her heart had never been touched by any one. She never thought herself capable of a great love for a man. From all her suitors she had chosen the one who most satisfied her intellectual aspirations, who seemed to her the one that could give her the highest place, not only in the meaningless ranks of society, but in and among those who are the elect and real leaders of the world.
And now? Well, now she was waiting because Guy Rathbone was coming to the house.
A letter from him had arrived just before dinner. She had expected it by an earlier post, the post by which all his letters usually came, and she had been impatient at its non-arrival. But it had come at last, and she was sitting in the drawing-room waiting for him now.
He was on intimate terms in that house, and came and went almost as he would, old Lady Poole liking to have young people round her, and feeling that now Marjorie's future was satisfactorily settled, there was no need to bar her doors to people she was fond of, but who, before the engagement, she would have regarded as dangerous.
Even as Marjorie was thinking of him, the butler showed Guy Rathbone into the room.
Marjorie got up, flushing a little as she saw him.
"Mother's very tired," she said; "she's not well to-night, and so she's gone to bed. Perhaps you'd rather not stay."
He sat down, after shaking hands, without an answer in words. He looked at her, and that was his answer.
He was a tall young man, as tall as Sir William, but more largely built, with the form and figure not of the student but rather of the athlete. His face was clean-shaven, frank, open and boyishly good-looking; but a pair of heavy eyebrows hung over eyes that were alert and bright, robbing the upper part of his face of a too juvenile suggestion. His head was covered with dark red curls, and he had the walk and movements of perfect health and great physical power, that had once led a dyspeptic friend at the Oxford and Cambridge Club to remark of him, that "Rathbone is the sort of fellow who always suggests that he could eat all the elephants of India and pick his teeth with the spire of Strasburg Cathedral afterwards."
There was force about him, the force of clean, happy youth, health, and a good brain. It was not the concentrated force and power of Sir William, but it was force nevertheless.
And as he came into the room, Marjorie felt her whole heart go out to him, leaping towards him in his young and manly beauty. She knew that here indeed was the one man that would satisfy her life for ever and a day. He was not famous, he was clever without having a great intellect, but for some reason or other he was the man for her. She knew it, and she feared that he was beginning to know she knew it.
He was sitting in the chair, when he turned and looked her straight in the face.
"I have come to-night," he said, "to say something very serious, very serious indeed. I am glad Lady Poole isn't here, just for to-night, Marjorie."
"I've told you you oughtn't to say Marjorie," she said.
"Well," he answered, "you've called me Guy for a good long time now, and one good turn deserves another."
He smiled, showing a perfect and even row of teeth, a smile so simple, hearty and spontaneous that once more that furiously beating heart of hers seems striving to burst its physical bonds and leap to him.
Then he passed his hand through his hair, and his face immediately became full of perplexity and doubt.
"I should have been here before," he said, "only I was detained. I met a man who happened to take my overcoat to-day in mistake for his own from the hairdresser's. He turned out to be a decent sort of chap, and I couldn't get rid of him at once. But that's by the way. I've come here to say something which is awfully difficult to say. I've fought it out with myself, and I've wondered if I should be a bounder in saying it. I'm afraid I'm going to say something that a gentleman oughtn't to say. I don't know. I really don't know. But something within tells me that if I don't say it I should be doing something which I should regret all my life long. But you must forgive me, and if after what I've said to you you feel that I oughtn't to have done so, I do beg you will forgive me, Marjorie. Will you forgive me?"
