CHAPTER VIII
AN INSTANCE OF OCCULTISM
The guests at Beauleys were all grouped together in the hall after dinner, the men, and some of the women, smoking cigarettes. Coffee and liqueurs were being served from the great oak sideboard. Lord Guerdon and his host had drawn a little apart from the others, at the former’s instigation.
“Your friend Saton—extraordinary name, by the bye—seems to have struck upon an interesting theme of conversation,” the judge remarked, a little drily, glancing across to where Saton stood, surrounded by most of the other guests.
“He has travelled a great deal,” Rochester said, “and he seems to be one of that extravagant sort of persons who imbibe more or less the ideas of every country. Chiefly froth, I should imagine, but it gives him plenty to talk about.”
The judge nodded thoughtfully.
“His face,” he declared, “still puzzles me a little. Sometimes I am sure that I have seen it before. At others, I find it quite unfamiliar.”
Rochester, who was watching Pauline, shrugged his shoulders.
“We may as well hear what the fellow is talking about,” he remarked. “Let us join the adoring throng.” ...
“I will tell you one thing which I have realized in the course of my travels,” Saton was saying as they drew near. “Amongst all the nations of the world, we English are at once the most ignorant, and the slowest to receive a new thing. In the exact sciences, we are perhaps just able to hold our own, but when it comes to the great unexplored fields, the average English person turns away with a shrug of the shoulders. ‘I do not believe!’ he says stolidly, and that is sufficient. He does not believe! Since the birth of Time there has been no more pitiful cry than that.”