Part 15

Her remark, and the clapping of her little hands to equally little ears, followed upon the sound of altercation between one of the ladies in the waiting-room and the flunky of formidable mien. Apparently the lady would not depart without a _séance_, and the footman was compelling her. In the end she went, declaring the whole thing a cheat, and "that chit of a girl" a particular imposture. When the sound of her voice had died away upon the stairs, My Lady took up the thread of her remarks.

"Now," said she, "I want to have a good look at you, and you must have a good look at me. People like ourselves should know each other to begin with. Don't think I'm going to bore you with the nonsense I trade in--you are far too clever for that, and would find me out in a minute. You see, I'm like a man with a good cellar: I keep the old wine for the old birds who are not caught with chaff. That's a delightfully mixed metaphor, isn't it? and not very polite, when I think of it. But come and sit down near the light, where I can see you."

She spoke so quickly that I did not pretend to hear half of that which she said, or to answer her; but I seated myself upon the ottoman near the entrance to the conservatory; and when she had thrown open the glass doors, she herself took the low arm-chair facing me. I saw then that she wore a strange dress in the Egyptian fashion, and that her breast was all covered with jingling gold medals, while her hair was similarly ornamented.

"Come," she said, resting her head upon her hand, "I want to know from you _why_ you are here. It is not for me to tell you about your life, is it?"

"I will be frank," I replied; "it is not. My life has already spoken a good deal for itself. What I did come here to see was the making of diamonds. They tell me you possess the philosopher's stone, or something near to it."

She looked at me with a penetrating gaze, and then laughed a little hardly.

"And you believed it?" she asked presently.

"Not for a moment," said I; "but I thought it was not unlikely that you had some amusing trick which you would not mind showing me. I am very much interested in jewels, you know."

"So am I," she exclaimed, but with the air of one whose mind is away from the words--"there is nothing more beautiful or more mysterious on earth than a diamond. It just seems to be a prison for lovely things of which it gives us the lights when we treat it well. And you thought I might amuse you with a trick? That was a poor compliment, wasn't it?"

The thing was said with a swift reversion of her mind to the subject, as I could see; and there was a world of humor in her eyes when she turned them on me.

"It was no poor compliment," said I, "since you have convinced such a man as Colonel Oldfield that you can make rubies. He is a judge of jewels, too."

"And a very good one," she replied; "but really there was nothing in my experiment. What I do has been done by French chemists for twenty years past. The Colonel came here with an open mind--but you, you closed the doors of yours as you came upstairs."

I protested feebly, but she did not listen to my answer.

"Yes," she exclaimed, speaking very rapidly, "I have been thinking about you as you sat there, and I am sure that I know you now. You are a man so well accustomed to steer in the shallows of your business that you never look beyond them. You make a gospel of distrust, and you consider confidence the sign of a weak intellect. You have been often deceived, for your breadth of view is not large; and you will be often deceived again. It is impossible for you to conceive beauty which is not saleable; and for romance you have no place in your heart. You have come here, saying all the way, 'I am going to interview an impostor; she will not amuse me--most possibly she will bore me. It is ten thousand to one that her experiments are all rubbish, but I will take the ten thousandth chance, in the hope that she might have found out something which I can sell--sell--sell.' Yet you are honest in a measure, since you ask me for a trick, knowing well that a trick is all you can reasonably expect from me. You are, in short, not very far removed from that dreadful person 'the pure man of business'; and you feel wofully strange already in the presence of one whose occupation is romance, and whose profession is undisguisedly practised in the offices of mystery. Do I speak the truth?"

She bent forward so that I could look straight into her eyes as she finished the excited sketch of character; and while with any other speaker my vanity had been sore wounded, I listened to her with no other feeling than those of growing admiration. The potency of her personality was beyond description; I have never met a woman who could communicate her own magnetism so quickly when she chose to talk seriously. And beyond this, I had already corrected my assumption that she was not clever. She had, indeed, one of the quickest brains I have ever dealt with.

"You are very hard on me," said I, as she waited for me to speak, "but I cannot say that you do not get to the bottom of the affair. You do me an injustice, however, when you say that my visit is purely commercial. No one in London would be more unselfishly interested than myself if any progress were made with the thousand attempts to manufacture jewels. If you have succeeded, even in a small degree, your fortune is made."

"Do you think that?" she cried. "Well, a word from Mr. Bernard Sutton is a word indeed; but we shall see. Meanwhile, we are going to have some fruit and wine. Don't you find it fearfully close in here?--that's the heat from my furnace in the conservatory there. I've had a little one put up especially for my experiments. As you were coming, we had to get the metal melted; and we've had a fire there since last night."

"You will experiment for me, then?" said I, with considerable interest.

"If you are very good," she replied, "I may show you something; but first you must taste my sherbet, and tell me all about the diamonds which I have bought and not made. You've heard, perhaps, that I waste all my money on jewelry."

I told her that I had not, but the flunky appearing at that moment, she did not pursue the subject, occupying herself in mixing me an effervescing draught in a great crystal goblet. The drink was gratifying on the hot day; and when I had taken it there was a warm coursing of blood through my veins as though I had drunk of rich Burgundy.

"Now," said she, when the man had gone, but had left the little table piled up with fruit--"now we can talk seriously. Let us carry the liquid with us--that's what Jack Lucas always calls it; he gets me that sherbet from some place in the East with an unpronounceable name. I am going to put you into an arm-chair, and you are not to ask a single question until I have finished. Have you got any cigarettes with you?--you may smoke if you are very good."

We went into the conservatory, which was ridiculously small, and close almost to suffocation, and there I saw many evidences of her attempt to fathom the unfathomable mysteries. There were racks with bottles round three sides of the apartment, and in the corner of the other side there stood a common little furnace such as smiths use. These, with a number of brass plates covered with hieroglyphics, some presses in steel, a basket containing strips of metal and a quantity of crystals, were her whole equipment for the business before her; but there was a low arm-chair in the shape of those used for dental horrors; and there she asked me to sit while she herself prepared for the undertaking.

"The first thing for you to do," said she, "is to make yourself comfortable. A man who is ill at ease is in the worst possible mental state, for he cannot concentrate himself. Just at present I want you to concentrate yourself on that cigarette and the fizzing stuff. When everything is ready I shall call out."

With this said, she set the fruit and the cup at the side of my chair, and then rolled up the sleeves of her dress quickly, putting on an apron which covered her finery; and she looked for all the world like an unusually pretty housemaid. I watched her with even a larger interest than I had done; and I remember thinking, as I settled in the great lounge, that whatever her mental claims might be upon the admiration of the city, her personal qualities were undeniable.

These were especially to be observed when she began to busy herself with the furnace and the tiny crucibles upon it, the glow of soft light seeming to emphasize the youthfulness of her perfect face, and to converge upon it as light focussed upon a picture. She had now fallen into a very serious mood, and after she had used the bellows vigorously at her fire, and placed the smallest of the crucibles upon it again, she sat herself upon a stool at the side of my chair, and resting her head upon her open hand--her favorite attitude--she spoke with evident earnestness.

"The mysteries of jewels," she exclaimed, "and the mysteries of gold have eaten the heart out of many a clever man, from Gebir to Sir Isaac Newton. If you will read the history of the philosophers, even of some in the story of that which we call the modern ages, you will find amongst the greatest the names of those who sought for an 'alkahest' or universal solvent. Even the wisest of men have hoped for a full knowledge of the arcana of metals. Paracelsus himself believed in the fifth, or the quintessence of creation. Roger Bacon, to whom death came out of neglect, prescribed as the elixir of life gold dissolved in nitro-hydrochloric acid. Why should I tell you how science now laughs at these old philosophers, and lumps them together as little better than maniacs? Yet does she laugh at them with good reason? Is it not just possible that she will be ultimately the means of turning the laugh upon herself? In our day she has come very near to knowing of the transmutability of metals. Allotropy has turned the eyes of many back to the remoter past. The chemist is beginning to ask himself, Were these men such fools? The near future may cast a light upon long centuries of darkness. But those only will reap who come to the work with open minds, with the certain conviction that in all pertaining to this vast science we are still children. Do you follow me in this?"

"Perfectly," I replied; and assuredly a prettier lecture was never given. The girl's eyes seemed to flash lights as she warmed to her subject; her enthusiasm was so contagious that I found myself softening before it. She was earnest, at any rate; and most of her kind were quacks.

"If you grant this long premiss, and do not consider that all inquiry is necessarily useless," she continued, "you solve the greater difficulties which surround my conceptions. It remains to ask, What steps must the chemist follow who would seek to turn from his crucible the perfect jewel? Let us take the sapphire as an instance. It is my favorite stone, one compelling, as the ancients declare, the wearer to all good works. Well, the sapphire in all its beautiful tints is only a variety of corundum, colored by metallic oxide. It is a common crystal, a six-sided prism terminated in a six-sided pyramid. It is taken from gneiss, and we know to-day that alumina is the basis of it, as it is the basis of so many precious stones. Granted this, what is the work before the chemist? Is it not simply to cast in his crucible the crystals of the base, to color them with the metallic oxide, if he can and to harden them so that they will bear the test? The process is a long one--it needs days to bring it to perfection: the annealing, the polishing, the setting--these are not work for an hour. What I have to show you now are but the stages of it. These you shall see and judge for yourself; but I ask you very sincerely to weigh up this great question for yourself, not to be led by the incredulity of the fanatic, and to believe with me that we are on the brink of a discovery which shall pour jewels on the world as the sea casts pebbles upon a beach."

I said nothing in answer to this remarkable delivery, for the truth was that I watched the girl rather than heard her words. Her earnestness, nay, her enthusiasm, was so pretty to see that all my interest seemed absorbed in her; and now, when she rose swiftly and drew the curtains over the windows, leaving the place illuminated only by one rose-colored lamp, I followed all her actions as one follows the change of a picture.

"Let us keep away the daylight," said she, "and then we can see the crystals forming. By-and-by I will show you the perfect jewel. Now look."

What she did in the next few minutes I am quite unable to say, so swift were her movements and so hurried her talk. But I remember that she opened the furnace door, allowing soft rays of deep yellow light to flood the room; and then quickly she cast a dozen crystals upon the table from the glowing crucible; and from a press near to her hand she took three more and laid them on the plate. The largest of the crystals, which was blue as a sapphire, and possessed little light at a distance, she presently picked up with tiny tongs, and coming over to me, she knelt at my side, holding the jewel before my eyes, and clasping my left hand in hers. And then she cried with the wildest excitement in her voice, and her breast heaving with her emotion,--

"Oh, look at it! is there anything more beautiful on earth than a perfect sapphire? and I made it, it is all my work, all my own!"

While she cried thus she held my hand firmly, and the pressure of her own was hot as fire, but this I only remembered afterwards, for gradually, as I looked at the jewel critically, it took the color and the shape of a perfect gem. It was not a large stone, perhaps one of three carats, but the longer I looked upon it the more brilliant and beautiful did it appear to be. Never had I seen more perfect shape or promise of light when set; and with the realization of the discovery my head reeled as the possibility that this mere girl had succeeded where so many had failed loomed at last before me. It was true, then, as Oldfield said, that she could manufacture a perfect jewel before his eyes. Here was one which, if well cut, I could sell for a hundred pounds. She had made that, as I could swear: why should she not make a hundred, a thousand? My heart leaped at the conclusion.

"Tell me," said I, "you had no help in this work?"

"You saw that I had none," she cried. "Look at the other crystals; there are five of them. You have seen them come straight from the crucible--and you know that I have succeeded. Will you buy my sapphire? Buy it in proof that I have conquered you. When you return to-morrow I will tell you everything. I am exhausted now. The work always excites me terribly. My nerves are all unstrung; I can do no more to-day."

"If you will sell me the stone you hold in those tongs, I will give you fifty pounds for it," I said, concluding that, even had I been tricked, a real jewel, and a very good one, was before my eyes. But at this promise she cried out with joy, and putting the stone in a little box with lightning speed, she handed it to me.

"Pay me to-morrow, any time," she said. "It was good of you to come here, and to listen to me. I am very grateful. When you come again you shall know all my secret. Only think well of me and be my friend."

With this she led the way quickly into her own room, and the lackey appeared in answer to her ring. The interview was at an end, abruptly as it seemed to me, and I left her with a strange feeling of dizziness, and my head burning with excitement--but her sapphire was in my pocket.

* * * * *

When I met Bracebridge, who was waiting in my room for me, he had an ugly leer upon his face.

"Well," said he, "I fancy my hundred's all right?"

"What hundred?"

"With Oldfield," said he. "I bet him a hundred she'd sell you a piece of glass for a sapphire; and I don't suppose you'll deny that she did it?"

"I'm not going to deny anything of the sort," said I; "she did sell me glass, and of the commonest kind. I am now seeking an undiscovered superlative. The biggest fool in London is no designation for me."

"Ah," said he, "you should take it quietly. She's done a complete dozen of us at the game. That paraphernalia which Jack Lucas rigged up in her conservatory for her is the medium, I fancy. Lucas, you know, is a professor or something at Emmanuel, Cambridge. He taught her all that jargon about crystals."

"But," said I, as I pitched her glass into the fireplace, "what I want to know is, how did I come to think that the stuff was real? I could have sworn to it."

"So could we all," he replied, with a great burst of laughter; "but I'll tell you in a word--she hypnotized you. I always said you were a grand subject."

I looked him in the face for a minute, during which he made an heroic attempt to be serious. But it was too much for him. Presently he gave one great shout of hilarity which you could have heard half-way down the street, and then rolled about in his chair uncontrollably.

"You seem to find it amusing," said I, "but I fail to catch the point."

"You'll be seeing it by-and-by," said he, and at that he went off to the club to be first with it.

THE END.

* * * * *

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[Transcriber's Notes:

Italic typeface in the original book is indicated with _underscores_.

Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author's words and intent.

Page 38, changed "a" to "at" ("a customer at Dieppe").

Page 140, changed "absense" to "absence" ("the utter absence of clue").

Page 150, added the word "all" ("they all of a sudden").

Page 217, changed "colour" to "color" ("upon a glow of color").

Page 267, changed "conversatory" to "conservatory" ("rigged up in her conservatory").

The following spelling variants have been retained as printed:

"Dunholm" and "Dunholme" "Kennet" and "Kennett"]