At the Sign of the Eagle Part 3

"Well, I never used the word that way in my life. When I don't like a thing, that ends it--it has got to go."

"You cannot do that with everything."

"Pretty much, if I set my mind to it. It is astonis.h.i.+ng how things'll come round your way if you keep on thinking and willing them so."

"Have you always got everything you wanted?" He had been looking off into the grounds through the open window. Now he turned slowly upon her.

"So far I have got everything I set my mind to get. Little things don't count. You lose them sometimes because you want to work at something else; sometimes because, as in cards, you are throwing a few away to save the whole game."

He looked at her, as she thought, curiously. In his mind he was wondering if she knew that he had made up his mind to marry her. She was suddenly made aware of the masterfulness of his spirit, which might, she knew, be applied to herself.

"Let us go into the grounds," he added, all at once. Soon after, in the shade of the trees, she broke in upon the thread of their casual conversation. "A few moments ago," she murmured, "you said: 'One life is about enough for most of us.' Then you added a disparaging remark about memory. Well, that doesn't seem like your usual point of view--more like that of Mr. Pride; but not so plaintive, of course. Pray do smoke,"

she added, as, throwing back his coat, he exposed some cigars in his waistcoat pocket. "I am sure you always smoke after lunch."

He took out a cigar, cut off the end, and put it in his mouth. But he did not light it. Then he glanced up at her with a grave quizzical look as though wondering what would be the effect of his next words, and a smile played at his lips.

"What I meant was this. I think we get enough out of our life to last us for centuries. It's all worth doing from the start, no matter what it is: working, fighting, marching and countermarching, plotting and counterplotting, backing your friends and hating your foes, playing big games and giving others a chance to, standing with your hand on the lynch-pin, or pulling your head safe out of the hot-pot. But I don't think it is worth doing twice. The interest wouldn't be fresh. For men and women and life, with a little different dress, are the same as they always were; and there's only the same number of pa.s.sions working now, as at the beginning. I want to live life up to the hilt; because it is all new as I go on; but never twice."

"Indeed?" She looked at him earnestly for a moment, and then added: "I should think you would have seen lost chances; and doing things a second time might do them better."

"I never missed chances," he replied, simply: "never except twice, and then--"

"And then?"

"Then it was to give the other fellow a chance."

"Oh!" There was a kind of dubiousness in her tone. He noticed it. "You can hardly understand, Miss Raglan. Fact is, it was one of those deals when you can make a million, in a straight enough game; but it comes out of another man--one, maybe, that you don't know; who is playing just the same as you are. I have had a lot of sport; but I've never crippled any one man, when my engine has been dead on him. I have played more against organisations than single men."

"What was the most remarkable chance you ever had to make a million, and did not?"

He threw back his head, smiling shrewdly. "When by accident my enemy got hold of a telegram meant for me. I was standing behind a frosted gla.s.s door, and through the narrow bevel of clear gla.s.s I watched him read it. I never saw a struggle like that. At last he got up, s.n.a.t.c.hed an envelope, put the telegram inside, wrote my name, and called a messenger. I knew what was in the message. I let the messenger go, and watched that man for ten minutes. It was a splendid sight. The telegram had given him a big chance to make a million or two, as he thought. But he backed himself against the temptation, and won. That day I could have put the ball into his wicket; but I didn't. That's a funny case of the kind."

"Did he ever know?"

"He didn't. We are fighting yet. He is richer than I am now, and at this moment he's playing a hard game straight at several interests of mine.

But I reckon I can stop him."

"You must get a great deal out of life," she said. "Have you always enjoyed it so?" She was thinking it would be strange to live in contact with such events very closely. It was so like adventure.

"Always--from the start."

"Tell me something of it all, won't you?" He did not hesitate.

"I was born in a little place in Maine. My mother was a good woman, they said--straight as a die all her life. I can only remember her in a kind of dream, when she used to gather us children about the big rocking-chair, and pray for us, and for my father, who was away most of the time, working in the timber-shanties in the winter, and at odd things in the summer. My father wasn't much of a man. He was kind-hearted, but s.h.i.+ftless, but pretty handsome for a man from Maine.

"My mother died when I was six years old. Things got bad. I was the youngest. The oldest was only ten years old. She was the head of the house. She had the pluck of a woman. We got along somehow, until one day, when she and I were scrubbing the floor, she caught cold. She died in three days."

Here he paused; and, without glancing at Miss Raglan, who sat very still, but looking at him, he lighted his cigar.

"Then things got worse. My father took to drinking hard, and we had mighty little to eat. I ch.o.r.ed around, doing odd things in the village.

I have often wondered that people didn't see the stuff that was in me, and give me a chance. They didn't, though. As for my relatives: one was a harness-maker. He sent me out in the dead of winter to post bills for miles about, and gave me ten cents for it. Didn't even give me a meal.

Twenty years after he came to me and wanted to borrow a hundred dollars.

I gave him five hundred on condition that he'd not come near me for the rest of his natural life.

"The next thing I did was to leave home--'run away,' I suppose, is the way to put it. I got to Boston, and went for a cabin-boy on a steamer; travelled down to Panama, and from there to Brazil. At Brazil I got on another s.h.i.+p, and came round to San Francisco. I got into trouble in San Francisco with the chief mate of the Flying Polly, because I tried to teach him his business. One of the first things I learned in life was not to interfere with people who had a trade and didn't understand it. In San Francisco I got out of the situation. I took to selling newspapers in the streets.

"There wasn't enough money in it. I went for a cabin-boy again, and travelled to Australia. There, once more, I resigned my position, chiefly because I wouldn't cheerfully let the Mate bang me about the quarter-deck. I expect I was a precocious youth, and wasn't exactly the kind for Sunday-school prizes. In Melbourne I began to speculate.

I found a ticket for the theatre where an American actor--our biggest actor today--was playing, and I tried to sell it outside the door of the theatre where they were crowding to see him. The man who bought it was the actor himself. He gave me two dollars more than the regular price.

I expect he knew from my voice I was an American. Is there anything peculiar about my voice, Miss Raglan?"

She looked at him quickly, smiled, and said in a low tone: "Yes, something peculiar. Please go on."

"Well, anyway, he said to me: 'Look here, where did you come from, my boy?' I told him the State of Maine. 'What are you doing here?' he asked. 'Speculating, said I, and seeing things.' He looked me up and down. 'How are you getting on?' 'Well. I've made four dollars to-day,'

I answered. 'Out of this ticket?' I expect I grinned. He suddenly caught me by the arm and whisked me inside the theatre--the first time I'd ever been in a theatre in my life. I shall never forget it. He took me around to his dressing-room, stuck me in a corner, and prodded me with his forefinger. 'Look here,' he said, 'I guess I'll hire you to speculate for me.' And that's how I came to get twenty-five dollars a month and my living from a great American actor. When I got back to America--with him--I had two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and good clothes.

I started a peanut-stand, and sold papers and books, and became a speculator. I heard two men talking one day at my stall about a railway that was going to run through a certain village, and how they intended to buy up the whole place. I had four hundred and fifty dollars then.

I went down to that village, and bought some lots myself. I made four thousand dollars. Then I sold more books, and went on speculating."

He paused, blew his cigar-smoke slowly from him a moment; then turned with a quick look to Miss Raglan, and smiled as at some incongruous thing. He was wondering what would be the effect of his next words.

"When I was about twenty-two, and had ten thousand dollars, I fell in love. She was a bright-faced, smart girl. Her mother kept a boarding-house in New York; not an up-town boarding-house. She waited on table. I suppose a man can be clever in making money, and knowing how to handle men, and not know much about women. I thought she was worth a good deal more to me than the ten thousand dollars. She didn't know I had that money. A drummer--that's a commercial traveller--came along, who had a salary of, maybe, a thousand dollars a year. She jilted me.

She made a mistake. That year I made twenty-five thousand dollars. I saw her a couple of years ago. She was keeping a boarding-house too, and her daughter was waiting on table. I'm sorry for that girl: it isn't any fun being poor. I didn't take much interest in women after that. I put my surplus affections into stocks and shares, and bulling and bearing...

Well, that is the way the thing has gone till now."

"What became of your father and your brother?" she asked in a neutral tone.

"I don't know anything about my father. He disappeared after I left, and never turned up again. And Jim--poor Jim!--he was s.h.i.+ftless. Jim was a tanner. It was no good setting him up in business. Steady income was the cheapest way. But Jim died of too much time on his hands. His son is in Mexico somewhere. I sent him there, and I hope he'll stay. If he doesn't, his salary stops: he is s.h.i.+ftless too. That is not the kind of thing, and they are not the kind of people you know best, Miss Raglan."

He looked at her, eyes full-front, bravely, honestly, ready to face the worst. Her head was turned away.

He nodded to himself. It was as he feared.

At that moment a boy came running along the walk towards them, and handed Mr. Vandewaters a telegram. He gave the lad a few pence, then, with an apology, opened the telegram. Presently he whistled softly, in a quick surprised way. Then he stuffed the paper into his waistcoat pocket, threw away his cigar, and turned to Gracia Raglan, whose face as yet was only half towards him. "I hope your news is good," she said very quietly.

"Pretty bad, in a way," he answered. "I have lost a couple of millions--maybe a little more."

She gasped, and turned an astonished face on him. He saw her startled look, and laughed.

"Does it not worry you?" she asked.

"I have got more important things on hand just now," he answered. "Very much more important," he added, and there was that in his voice which made her turn away her head again.

"I suppose," he went on, "that the story you have just heard is not the kind of an autobiography you would care to have told in your drawing-room?"

Still she did not reply; but her hands were clasped tightly in front of her. "No: I suppose not," he went on--"I--I suppose not. And yet, do you know, Miss Raglan, I don't feel a bit ashamed of it, after all: which may be evidence of my lost condition."

Now she turned to him with a wonderful light in her eyes, her sweet, strong face rich with feeling. She put out her hand to his arm, and touched it quickly, nervously.

"Your story has touched me inexpressibly," she said. "I did not know that men could be so strong and frank and courageous as you. I did not know that men could be so great; that any man could think more of what a woman thought of--of his life's story--than of"--she paused, and then gave a trembling little laugh--"of two millions or more."