CHAPTER V
A CONSPIRACY OF SCIENTISTS
Sir William Gouldesbrough had been up very late the night before. He came down from his room on a grey morning a fortnight after the day on which he had told Marjorie something of his hopes. It was nearly twelve o'clock. He had not retired to rest until four upon the same morning. And when he had at last left the great laboratories built out of the back of the house, he had stumbled up to his room, a man drunk with an almost incredible success—a success of detail so perfect and complete that his intelligence staggered before the supreme triumph of his hopes.
But the remaining portion of the night, or rather during the beginning of the chill wintry dawn, he had lain alone in his great Georgian bedroom, watching the grey light filtering into the room, flood by flood, until the dark became something more terrible, something filled with vast moving shadows, with monstrous creatures which lurked in the corners of the room, with strange half lights that went and came, and gave the wan mirrors of the wardrobe, of the mantel-shelf, a ghost-like life only to withdraw, and then once more increase it.
And as this great and famous man lay in this vast lonely room without power of sleep, two terrible emotions surged and throbbed within him,—two emotions in their intensity too great for one mind to hold.
One was the final and detailed triumph of all he held dear in the world of science and in the department of his life's work. The other was the imminent and coming ruin of his heart's hope, and the love which had come to him, and which had seemed the most wonderful thing that life could give.
Yes, there he lay, a king of intellect, a veritable prince of the powers of the air, and all his triumph was but as dust and ashes and bitterness, because he knew that he was losing a smaller principality perhaps, but one he held dearer than all his other possessions.
Emperor of the great grey continent of science, he must now resign his lordship of the little rosy principality of Love.
So, as he came down-stairs close upon mid-day of the winter's morning—a tall distinguished figure in the long camel's-hair dressing-gown, with its suggestion of a monk's robe—the butler who was crossing the hall at the time was startled by the fixed pallor of his face.