A Gamble with Life Part 17

The room seemed to grow dark when she took her departure, as though a cloud drifted across the face of the sun. For a long time he lay quite still, looking at the door, behind which she had disappeared. His heart was in a strange tumult, but whether pleasure or pain predominated he did not know. What he did know was that the intoxication of her presence was the sweetest thing he had ever known, but below the sweet and struggling to get to the top, was a sense of something exceedingly bitter.

He felt like a drunkard steadily gravitating toward the tap-room. His moral sense, his better judgment, urged him to turn aside or turn back; his appet.i.te, his desire for excitement or forgetfulness lured him with irresistible force.

"I know I am a fool," he said to himself, "and I shall have to pay dearly enough for my folly later on, but I can't help it."

He had rather prided himself on his courage, and this confession of weakness, even to himself, was distinctly humiliating.

It was the kind of thing for which he would have allowed no excuse in any other man. It was a pet theory of his that a man ought to be always master of himself, and that any man who allowed himself to be dominated and conquered by a human pa.s.sion was not worthy of respect or even sympathy.

Men who fail to live up to their theories are generally prolific in excuses. To own himself beaten out and out was too much for his self-respect. He had taken a step down, he knew, but there was a reason for it. Perhaps, if he searched diligently enough, he would be able to justify his conduct to the full.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "IT WILL BE JUST HEAVEN IF YOU WILL COME AND READ TO ME SOMETIMES"]

Before the day was out, he found any number of excuses. This life, he told himself, was all, and youth was the best part of life, in fact, the only part in which enjoyment could find a place, and if a cup of delight was placed to his lips, was it wise to dash it to the ground and spill all its contents, because it was possible and even probable it would leave a bitter taste in the mouth. But even though he was sure the bitter taste would follow, was he not justified in taking the sweet when he had the chance? Had not somebody said:

"'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all"?

Besides, he had not to consider only himself. That would be selfish.

This sweet-eyed girl wanted an outlet for her grat.i.tude and generosity, and if he rudely pushed aside the hand that was outstretched to help, and churlishly refused her sympathy, how hurt she would be. And a man would be a brute to give pain to so sweet a soul; he would rather cut his hand off than do it.

Also it did not follow that because he saw more of her he would become more deeply in love with her. He would recognise, of course, all the way through that she was out of his circle--that was a fact he would never allow to pa.s.s out of his mind. And keeping that in mind, he would be able to keep guard over his own heart.

So before the day was done, he was able to extract all the poison from his surrender. He might not have done the heroic thing, but it did not necessarily follow that he had done a foolish thing. Chance had flung this girl across his path, why should it be an evil chance? Why might there not grow out of the acquaintance something for the good of both?

Having arrived at that position, he ceased calling himself a fool, and gave himself up to pleasant dreams and even more pleasant antic.i.p.ations.

Closing his eyes he recalled their conversation, recalled every expression of her sensitive face, every tone of her musical voice.

He fancied her sitting again by his bedside. How dainty she was, how un.o.btrusively and yet how exquisitely attired. Things he had been aware of in a sub-conscious way now clearly defined themselves. He remembered her teeth, even and white, her ears small and coloured like a sea-sh.e.l.l, her eyebrows dark and straight, her eyelashes long, her mouth like Cupid's bow. He remembered, too, how her rich brown hair grew low in her neck, while a ma.s.sive coil seemed to balance her shapely head.

He smiled to himself at length. "How much I noticed," he said, "without seeming to notice. I wonder if other people think her so good to look upon."

He slept better that night than he had done since his accident, and through all his dreams Madeline seemed to glide, a healing and an inspiring presence. He awoke with his nerves thrilling like harpstrings, and a happy smile upon his lips.

He had dreamed that his invention had realised a thousand times more than he had ever hoped or imagined, that it had lifted him into the region of affluence and power, that he took his place among the successful men of his generation by right of what he had done, and that, thrilling with the knowledge of his success, he had laid his heart at the feet of Madeline Grover. "You have been my inspiration," he said to her. "But for my love for you I could not have wrought and striven as I have done," and for answer she laid her hands in his and lifted her face to be kissed; and then the twittering of the sparrows under the eaves awoke him.

"Dreams are curious things," he said, the smile still upon his lips.

"Now I dream I fail, and now that I succeed. Both dreams cannot be true, that is certain. I wonder. I wonder."

He was still wondering when Mrs. Tuke brought him an early cup of tea.

"Have you slept well?" she asked, and there was a sympathetic note in her voice that he did not remember to have heard before.

"The best night I have yet had," he said, cheerfully.

"Then you don't think having so much company yesterday did you any harm?"

"It did me good, Mrs. Tuke. I was beginning to mope."

"She is a beautiful creature."

"You called her a scare-away American yesterday."

"Did I? Oh, well, you see, I didn't know her so well then. Besides, I never denied that she was good-looking."

"But looks are only skin deep, I have heard you say."

"And that I sticks to. But Miss Grover has sense and judgment. You should have heard her talk yesterday. I never heard a girl of her age speak with so much wisdom. We've quite taken to each other."

"I'm very glad to hear it."

"She's not to be judged by the ordinary foot-rule either."

"No?"

"In America girls have more freedom. You see, they've no king there, only a president."

Rufus laughed.

"And everybody grows up equal, as it were. Girls learn to look after themselves and men to respect 'em."

"That's as it ought to be."

"But the women of St. Gaved would be envious enough to bite their thumbs off if they knew she made a friend of me; and would talk abominable. I know 'em, and what they are capable of."

"Some of them can gossip a bit," he said, reflectively.

"And if they know'd I allowed her to see you," Mrs. Tuke went on.

"The fat would be in the fire," he interrupted.

"But they're not going to know. Do you think I don't know a lady when I sees her, and know also what's due to her? You should hear Miss Grover talk."

"She has a taking way with her."

"No, 'tisn't that. There's no chaff with her, and as for myself, I can't abide flattery. But I do like common-sense," and with a self-satisfied smile lighting up her severe face, Mrs. Tuke bustled out of the room.

Rufus closed his eyes and laughed softly. "The little scare-away American got in the first shot, that's evident," he chuckled, and he kept on smiling to himself at intervals during the day.

The afternoon was beginning to wear away before Madeline put in an appearance. She came into the room like a breath of spring--gentle, fragrant, energising. She was not at all shy, neither was she obtrusive.

There was never anything self-conscious in her movements. She was trying to be kind, trying to pay in some measure a big debt of grat.i.tude she owed, and she was supremely happy in making the attempt.

"Do you know, I feel real pleased with myself to-day," she said, in her quaint American way.

"Do you?" he questioned.

"Seems to me living up in a big house like Trewinion Hall, one has scarcely a chance of being kind or neighbourly, and when the chance does come, it seems great."

"Do you think exclusiveness and selfishness mean the same thing?"