A Gamble with Life Part 25

Then he stopped suddenly and rose hurriedly to his feet. "I am growing morbid," he said. "I wish Muller had kept the article to himself. In a case of this kind ignorance is bliss." And he turned out the lamp and climbed slowly upstairs to bed.

CHAPTER XV

MISGIVINGS

The day after Felix Muller's visit to Rufus the squire and his family returned to the Hall. The news soon spread through St. Gaved that the big house was alive once more, and that the captain was expected home in time to eat his Christmas dinner with the family. Rufus heard the news with a curious thrill, but whether of pain or of pleasure it would be hard to say.

His heart had been aching for a sight of Madeline's face ever since she went away. And yet there were times when he desired above all things that he might never look into her eyes again. Pain was not to be cured by additional pain. To see Madeline would not appease the hunger, it would only increase it. Hence to keep out of her way would be the wise thing for him; to avoid the field-path in front of the park, and the familiar road across the downs and round by the cliffs. If they met she would be sure to speak, and the very sound of her voice would awaken into life all the wild longings of his soul once more. It was far better, therefore, for him that they never met.

Besides, it was more than probable that by this time she was the promised wife of Gervase Tregony. He was coming home to claim her and coming home at express speed. Was he delighted at the prospect, he wondered. Did he love her as she deserved to be loved?

"Oh, if it had only been my lot to win so sweet a soul," he said to himself. "Is it true, I wonder, that we always long most pa.s.sionately for the impossible?"

For several days he kept close to business, never venturing out of doors till after sunset. Once he thought he pa.s.sed her in the bright moonlight, and his heart almost stopped, but he never paused in his walk, never looked back; indeed he strode on with a longer and quicker stride, and did not breathe freely again till a sharp bend in the road prevented any possibility of recognition.

When he yielded to the witchery of her presence before, there was some excuse for his doing so, but all the circ.u.mstances were different now.

He had no excuse to-day, no right. His tenure of life hung on a thread.

His chance of success was growing less hopeful day by day.

Even if Madeline were free and within his reach he would have no right to speak to her of love. While this sword of Damocles was suspended over his head he was bound in honour to be silent. But since she was neither free nor within his reach, and he was walking across a volcano that at any moment might burst open beneath his feet, it would be the part of a madman to put himself in her way if there was any chance of keeping out of it.

So he pursued his work with all the earnestness and intensity he could command, but he was conscious all the time that something had gone out of his life. The enthusiasm that springs from certainty had left him, the chill and lethargy of doubt had crept into his blood. Instead of constantly dwelling on the delights of success, he found himself brooding over the prospect of failure, and wondering what lay beyond the grim shadow of death.

By a curious combination of circ.u.mstances both life and death had become doubly hard to contemplate. Success had once been his dream. To-day success of itself seemed nothing. The one thing that was of value, that would have turned earth into heaven was love. He would have courted failure--gloried in it--if failure would have given him Madeline. But since Madeline was denied him, neither success nor failure mattered much, and life and death were both robbed of the light of hope. He told himself one minute that he did not care to live since Madeline could never be his, and the next minute he dreaded the thought of death, since death would blot out the sight of her and the thought of her for ever and ever. So, in whatever direction he looked, he found neither solace nor inspiration.

The thing that spurred him on from day to day was not so much the hope of victory as the humiliation of defeat. There was any number of people in St. Gaved who had no sympathy whatever with him in his ambitions, whose invincible creed was that a man ought to be content to remain in that state of life to which it had pleased G.o.d to call him. These people had expressed themselves with great freedom and candour on his folly in giving up a good position at the mine, and devoting all his time and energy to something in the clouds; and which, in all likelihood, would never be of any benefit to man or beast.

Rufus used to smile at the criticisms of these people, and antic.i.p.ate the day when he would stand proud and triumphant before them. Now he began to fear that the day might come when they would triumph over him, when they would expand their chests and smile wisely, and say to their neighbours: "There, didn't we tell you so?" It was rather with the object of preventing such a triumph than of winning any triumph for himself that he toiled on from day to day, throwing into his work more of the energy of despair than the inspiration of hope.

Meanwhile Madeline had been suffering from what she called "an acute attack of the blues." For no sufficient reason, so she admitted to herself, she became restless and peevish, and generally discontented.

She was not ill. Generally speaking, her appet.i.te was as good as it had been, while her energy was greater than ever. But for some reason nothing satisfied her--things that at one time she would have gone into ecstacies over barely interested her. She was in the mood to be pleased at nothing, and to find fault with everything.

That this condition of things began on the day Sir Charles took her to task for visiting Rufus Sterne she was well aware; but why it should have continued was a puzzle. She had been angry with Sir Charles at the moment it was true, but after a day's reflection she had been led to see that he was perfectly in the right. Moreover Sir Charles had behaved very handsomely all the way through. She was convinced that it was very largely on her account that they went to London for the autumn, and while in London she had scarcely a wish that was not gratified. She had gone to receptions and b.a.l.l.s and dinners by the dozen. She had been taken to every place of interest she wanted to see. She had blossomed out into what she termed "a tame celebrity," and had had more compliments showered upon her than ever before in her life, yet, in spite of all this, she was not happy. Indeed, after a few weeks, she tired utterly of London and wanted to return again to Trewinion Hall.

That however, was shown to be an impossibility. The house had been taken practically till the end of the year, and the servants at Trewinion Hall had been put on board wages till Christmas.

"Are you sure you are quite well, Madeline?" Sir Charles said to her, when she preferred her request.

"Quite sure," she replied. "In fact I was never better in my life."

"Then why do you want to go back to the Hall?"

"Oh! I don't know. This endless whirl and excitement has got on my nerves, I think."

"But you complained of Cornwall getting on your nerves some time ago."

"Did I? Well, it did seem rather flat and tame at first."

"No, it was not at the beginning. You were delighted with it on your arrival----"

"And I am still," she interrupted. "I think it is just too lovely for anything."

"But have you really got tired of London life?"

"I think it is too stupid for words. Oh! no, I don't mean that exactly.

Pardon me, Sir Charles"--seeing the pained look in his eyes--"I won't complain any more if I can help it, I won't really."

"I am very anxious that you should enjoy yourself all you possibly can.

Beryl is dreading the time when she will have to go back again."

"She knows so many people," Madeline said, reflectively.

"And you have made hosts of acquaintances, have you not?"

"Yes, acquaintances, but they don't mean anything. I never realised before, I think, how many people there are in the world, and how many things there are in the world I can do without."

"That oughtn't to be a very startling discovery," he said, with a smile.

"But you don't feel it in a place like St. Gaved," she said. "There everybody seems necessary to everybody else."

"Indeed?" he questioned, dryly.

"Well, I mean that in a little community where each one plays his part, and each one's part is known to all the rest----"

"Yes?" he questioned, seeing she hesitated.

"Oh! I can't explain myself very well, but you must know very well what I mean."

"No; really you flatter me," he said, in a tone of banter, "for in reality your meaning is quite beyond me."

"Then I must be stupider than I thought," she answered, with a pout, and relapsed into silence.

Sir Charles was not only perplexed, he was more or less troubled. If he dared he would have been angry, but he knew that anger would defeat the particular end he had in view. Whatever Madeline might or might not be she was not the kind of person to be coerced. She might be led in many directions, but no one could drive her. At the least suggestion of the lash, she would jib and back, and nothing short of physical force would move her a step forward.

Hence Sir Charles had felt from the first that his task was one of extreme difficulty and delicacy. Moreover, every day as it pa.s.sed increased the difficulty. Madeline was swiftly growing out of girlhood into womanhood, and the things that fascinated her as a girl quickly palled upon her as a woman, and Sir Charles was growing desperately afraid lest when she saw Gervase again she might be disillusioned, as she evidently had been in other matters.

He was more troubled also than he liked to confess over her intimacy with Rufus Sterne. He could not forget the romantic circ.u.mstances under which they had met, the signal service he had rendered her, and the long weeks of suffering and idleness that followed as a consequence, and on a romantic and generous nature like Madeline's, these things would make an abiding impression. For that reason he had got her away from St. Gaved as quickly as possible after he had made the discovery that she was in the habit of visiting him, and for the same reason he intended to keep her away until within a few days of his son's return.

Sir Charles had counted so long on annexing the American heiress for his son, that any thought of failure now was too humiliating to be entertained. It was his last hope of rehabilitating Trewinion Hall, and the historic name of Tregony. Gervase's record was of such a character that no English heiress would look at him unless, indeed, he consented to marry the daughter of a tradesman, and even in such case as that his chances would be very doubtful.

The beautiful thing about an American heiress was that n.o.body inquired into her antecedents. So long as she had the requisite number of dollars nothing else mattered. Her father might be a pork-butcher, or a p.a.w.nbroker, or an oilman; that was no barrier to his daughter becoming a countess or even a d.u.c.h.ess.

Poor as Sir Charles was, he would have fainted at the idea of Gervase marrying the daughter of a Redbourne tradesman, however rich or beautiful or accomplished she might be. The very suggestion of "trade"

was an offence to his aristocratic nostrils. But Madeline came from a country where the only aristocracy was that of cash, hence by virtue of her uncounted millions she was eligible for the highest positions on this side the water. The logic might not be very sound, but it was satisfying. If the Earl of this and the Duke of that had regilded their coronets with American dollars, why might not he refurbish the Tregony coat of arms with the same precious metal? The reasoning appeared to him to be without a flaw.

Moreover, there was the additional argument of necessity. In consequence of the low price of corn along with nearly all other articles of food, agriculture was in a terribly depressed condition. In other words, the farmer could pay only about half the amount in rent that he would be able to do if wheat and barley, and bacon and b.u.t.ter, stood at twice their present prices.