Two people did not sleep at all that night. Pain kept Rufus Sterne awake—an active brain banished slumber from the eyes of Madeline Grover. Possibly some subtle and intractable current of sympathy ran between the cottage and the mansion—some occult and undiscovered movement of the air between brain and brain or heart and heart, some telepathic communication that science had not scheduled yet. Be that as it may, neither Rufus nor Madeline could woo a wink of sleep. All through the long hours of the night they lay with wide-open eyes—the one weaving the threads of fancy into all imaginable shapes, the other fighting for the most part the twin demons of pain and fear.
Madeline lived through that fateful afternoon a thousand times. She recalled every incident, however trivial it might be. Memory would let nothing escape. Things that she scarcely noticed at the time became hugely significant. Simple words and gestures seemed to glow with new meanings.
She was not superstitious—at least she believed she was not. Neither was she a fatalist, and yet she had a feeling that for good or ill, her life was in some way or other bound up with this stranger. It was not his fault that he had come into her life. He had not sought her. The beginning of the acquaintanceship was all on her side. She had made the first advance,and the whirligig of chance or the workings of an inscrutable providence had done all the rest.
In some respects it was scarcely pleasant to feel that she was so much in debt to a stranger. Whatever might happen in the future, or wherever her lot was cast, she would never be able to get away from the feeling that she owed her life to this Rufus Sterne. To make matters all the worse, he was suffering considerable pain and loss on her account. How much this accident might mean to him she had no means of knowing. All his immediate prospects might be wrecked in consequence. For a young man dependent on his own exertions to be incapacitated for two or three months might be a more serious matter than she could guess.
Sometimes she wished that some homely fisherman or ignorant ploughboy had rescued her. She might in such a case have given material compensation, and it would have been accepted with gratitude, and her obligation would be at an end.
But Rufus Sterne was a gentleman—that fact was beyond all dispute—and doubtless he had all the pride that generally attaches to genteel poverty. The obligation, therefore, would have to remain. There was, as far as she could see, no possible way of discharging it. To speak of compensation would be to insult him.
Behind all this there was another feeling: What did he think of her? Did he resent her intrusion into the quiet sanctuary of his life? Did he wish that she had never crossed his path? Was his thought of her at that moment such as her cheeks would redden to hear? She wished she knew what he thought of her—what in his heart he felt. It would be humiliating if he regarded her with contempt, or even with mild dislike.
She would not live to be regarded by him even with indifference. Her cheeks grew hot when she made this confession to herself. If he had been a fisherman or a ploughboy it would not have mattered, and she would not have cared. But he was one of the most noticeable men she had ever seen. A man who would win a second look in any crowd. A man who—given a fair chance—would make his mark in the world.
She hoped that he was not very angry with her, that he was not writing her down in his mind as a foolish and headstrong girl. She would like, after all, to have his good opinion—like him to think that in saving her he had saved a life that was worth saving. It might not be true in fact, but she would like him to think so all the same.
To what end had he saved her? As she looked at her life stretching forward into the future she saw nothing great or heroic in it. It had all been mapped out for her, and mapped out in a very excellent way. The exhortation "take no thought for the morrow," was not needed in her case. Everything was being settled to everyone's satisfaction, her own included. She had only to fall in with the drift and current of events and all would be as she would like it to be.
Other women might have to plan and struggle, and labour and contrive; but in the scheme of her life such unpleasant things had no place. All contingencies had been provided against. She did not need to take any thought for to-morrow.
"I'm not sure that my life was worth saving after all," she said to herself, a little bit fretfully. "It seems an aimless, selfish kind of thing as I look at it now. A poor woman who inspires her husband to do some great deed, even if she is incapable of any greatdeed herself, surely lives a nobler life than that which seems marked out for me."
Her cheeks grew red again. How proud she would be if she could be the inspiration of some great achievement! To give hope to some great soul struggling amid adverse circumstances would be an end worth living for. To stand by the side of a man she could look up to, and help him to win in the hard battle of life—that would be the crown of all existence.
She began to wonder, after a while, why such thoughts came to her. Why the future should look different from what it had always done. Why a thread of a different hue should show itself in the pattern that had been woven for her. Why a doubt should arise in her heart as to whether the absolutely best had been marked out for her.
Until to-night she had been quite content to take things as she found them. Of course, she had had her troubles, like other girls. It was a trouble to her that she had never known the love of her mother, a trouble that she had never been able to get on with her step-mother, a trouble when her father died—though, as she had seen very little of him for seven years previously, the sense of loss was not so keen as it might have been. It was a trouble to her to say good-bye to her schoolfellows and friends, and cross the seas to a new home in England.
Of course, the last trouble had its compensations. To an American girl whose forebears were English, "The Old Country," as it is affectionately termed, is the land of romance, the home of chivalry, the cradle of heroes and of history. To see the things she had read about in her childhood, to visit spots made sacred by the blood of the heroic dead, to tread on the groundwhere kings have stood, to pay homage at the shrine of poets and seers—that would be worth crossing a thousand oceans for.
It is true she had been more than a little disappointed. Trewinion Hall was so far away from everywhere, and the people who visited it from time to time were very little to her taste. She would have liked to live in London always. Life and colour and movement were there. Its very streets were historic. Many of its public buildings were hoary with antiquity, and "rich with the spoils of time." The men and women of rank and name and power moved in and out amongst the crowd. History was being made from day to day in its Halls of Assembly.
St. Gaved seemed to her like a little place that had got stranded in the dim and distant past. The rest of the world had run away from it. It lived on its traditions because it had no hope of a future. Like the granite cliffs that stretched north and south, it never changed. Its business, its politics, its morals, its religion, were what they had been from time immemorial. A man who said anything new, or advanced an opinion that was not strictly orthodox, was regarded with suspicion.
St. Gaved had its charm, no doubt. The charm of antiquity, the charm of leisureliness, the charm of immobility. Moreover, it was beautiful for situation. The cliffs were magnificent beyond anything she had ever dreamed. The great ocean was a never-failing source of interest. The valleys that cleft their way inland, the streams that lost themselves in tangled brakes of undergrowth, the hillsides rich in timber, the hedgerows that were masses of wild flowers, the moorlands yellow with gorse—all these things were a set off against its dull and slow-moving life.
Then, besides all that, life would not always be dull. Gervase was returning from India in the spring, and a great many things might happen then.
Gervase was Sir Charles' only son, and heir to the title and estates. He was a handsome soldier of the genuine military type, tall and straight, and not over-burdened with flesh. His hair was pale, his complexion ruddy, his voice harsh, his manner that of one born to command.
Madeline had met him three years before at Washington, and as he was in some far-off and round-about way related to her, he had escorted her to any number of receptions, and danced with her more times than she could count. She thought him then the most handsome man she had ever seen, especially in his uniform. She liked him, too, because he was so dogmatic and masterful; there was nothing timid, or feeble, or retiring about him. He was a man who meant to have his own way, and generally got it.
His courage and daring also touched her heart and imagination. His talk had been mainly about shooting dervishes in Egypt and hunting tigers in India, and some of his exploits had thrilled her to the finger-tips. It puzzled her that he could talk so light-heartedly about the slaughter of human beings, even though they were Arabs and Hindoos, but then he was trained to be a soldier, and soldiers were trained to kill.
It was one of those things she had looked forward to with the greatest interest in coming to England. She would see Gervase Tregony again. It seemed to her like a special providence that Sir Charles Tregony should be her trustee until she was twenty-one, and of course nothing could be kinder than that he should invite her to stay at the Hall as long as she liked—to make her permanent abode there if she chose to do so.
She was glad to accept the invitation for several reasons. In the first place, it was impossible to live with her step-mother, who for some reason appeared to resent her very existence. In the second place, she longed, with all a school-girl's longing, for change, and to see England and Europe had been the very height of her ambition. And in the third place—and this was a secret that she safely guarded in her own bosom—she would the sooner see Captain Tregony; for if she were in England she would be among the first to give him welcome on his return from India, and she imagined with a little thrill at her heart how his face would light up and his eyes sparkle when he saw her standing behind the rest, waiting to give him the warmest welcome of all.
This little secret added a peculiar charm and zest to life, and all the more so because every arrangement had been made respecting her future, as though Captain Tregony had no existence. She imagined sometimes that her father had been under the guidance of a special providence when he made Sir Charles Tregony her trustee, that Sir Charles was under the same kindly influence when he accepted the responsibility and took her to the shelter of his own home.
Had she known the scheming and manœuvering that went on at an earlier date, her faith in providence would have been rudely shaken. But she had no idea that she was only a pawn in a game that was being played by others. It was some solace to John Grover, even when dying, that his only child would mix with the English aristocracy and probably become "my lady" before she had finished her earthly course.
To John Grover, who had started life with empty pockets, who had struggled through years of grinding poverty, who had "struck oil," as he termed it, inmiddle life and made a huge fortune before he was fifty—to such a man the thought of his daughter marrying an English officer who was also heir to a baronetcy was a distinction almost too great to be shaped into words.
To have married the President of the United States would have been nothing comparable to it. It was a proud day for John Grover when he discovered that his first wife, the mother of Madeline, was remotely connected with the Tregonys of Trewinion Hall, Cornwall. He wrote claiming relationship with Sir Charles on the strength of it, much to the Baronet's annoyance and disgust. But several years later, when John Grover had become a millionaire, Sir Charles decided to hunt him up. A penniless man was one thing, a man with a million was another.
Sir Charles himself was as poor as a church mouse, that is taking his position into account. His son and heir, Gervase, was a young man of very expensive tastes and very lax notions of economy. Hence if their ancestral hall could be refurnished by American dollars, and Gervase's debts paid off out of the savings of this John Grover, it would be a happy and an ingenious stroke of business.
Of course, diplomacy would be needed, and diplomacy of the most delicate and subtle kind. Sir Charles took Gervase into his confidence, and Gervase confided to his father that he was prepared to marry anybody in reason so long as she had plenty of the needful.
Sir Charles took a voyage to the United States and interviewed his relatives. A few months later Gervase went across and paid court to Madeline, and with remarkable success. Madeline was in her seventeenth year at the time, romantic, inexperienced and impressionable. Then came the death of herfather, the discovery that Sir Charles Tregony was her trustee, and the option of spending her minority in Trewinion Hall.
So far everything had happened as anticipated. There had been no hitch anywhere, and to all appearances the little scheme would be brought to a successful issue.
Sir Charles kept Gervase well posted up as to the course of events.
"She has not the remotest idea that we have any designs upon her," he said, in one of his early letters. "If she got the smallest hint I fear she might jib. She has grown to be a remarkably handsome girl, high spirited and intelligent. There is nobody here to whom she will lose her heart, and I am keeping her as secluded as possible till you return. I trust to you to put as much warmth in your letters to her as you think advisable. At present she thinks the world of you. I am sure of it. You impressed her mightily when you were in the States. She regards you as a sort of saint and hero rolled into one. She thinks also that you are immensely clever. Hence it is rather a difficultrôleyou will have to play. By letter you can do a great deal between now and the new year. Keep up the idealism. She is very puritanic in some of her notions. Don't shock her, for the world. If you can arrange an engagement before you return so much the better. A long courtship, I fear, might spoil everything. She has sharp eyes; and yet you have to guard against being too precipitate. So far, I flatter myself we have both handled the matter with great delicacy. A few months more, and—with care and judgment, you may snap your fingers at the world."
Sir Charles had rightly estimated her character in one respect. If Madeline had had the smallest suspicion that he and his son had designs upon her—thata deliberate plot was being hatched—her indignation would have known no bounds.
But her own little secret had been, perhaps, the best safeguard against any such suspicion. To her ingenuous mind the world was the best of all possible places. Her friends had so arranged her life and her lot that everything appeared to be working together for the best. She had not to worry about anything. The Captain's letters had as much warmth in them as she could desire. Her future, shaped for her without any contriving of her own—shaped by friends and by Providence, left nothing to be desired.
It was clear what the Captain wished. It would have pleased her father had he been alive, it would be satisfactory to Sir Charles, it would fit in with her own conception of life. So she would dance along the primrose way without a want, without a care, without a responsibility. There would be gaiety, and mirth, and music, balls and crushes, and social functions of all sorts and kinds. She would get into social circles she had never known before, and be "Lady" Tregony before she died.
It was all as straight as a rule, and as clear as a sunbeam.
Why had it never seemed empty and sordid and selfish until to-night? Why did her inward eyes look for a sterner and more heroic way? Why did pleasure look so uninviting and duty wear such a noble mien? Why was all her future outlook changed as in a flash?
These were questions she was debating with herself when a new day stole into the room.
A few days later, Madeline received a letter from Captain Tregony, which contained a carefully-worded, though very definite, proposal of marriage. Gervase had been only too pleased to carry out his father's suggestion. The prospect of fingering at an early date a few of her surplus dollars was a very tempting one. He was not particularly in love with her. He had got through the sentimental age, so he believed. Moreover, he had seen so much of life and the world, and had had such a wide and varied experience of feminine kind that he was not likely to be carried off his feet by a pretty face or engaging manners.
Nevertheless, if he was to marry at all—and since he was an only son and heir to a title and estates, marriage seemed a very obvious duty—then there was no one, all things considered, he would sooner take to his heart and endow with all his worldly goods than Madeline Grover. She was very young, very pretty, very sweet-tempered, and, best of all, very rich; and he knew no one else who possessed such a combination of excellencies.
It had been a great relief to him when he went out to America to make the acquaintance of John Grover's daughter, to discover that she was such an unspoiled child of nature. He had been haunted by the fear that she might be ugly or ignorant or uneducated. Hence, when he found a charming school-girl, ingenuous,unsophisticated, impressionable, he heaved a big sigh of relief, and set to work at once to make a favourable and an abiding impression.
He would have proposed then and there had he considered it politic to do so. His father, however, who was his chief adviser, would not hear of it. "You will spoil the whole game if you do," Sir Charles insisted. "Make a good impression now, and let time and absence deepen it. She will put a halo round your head after a few weeks' absence, and eagerly look forward to the next meeting."
In this Sir Charles showed his knowledge of human nature, especially of feminine human nature.
Gervase had hinted that, if he was not getting old, he was getting distinctly older, that the crows'-feet were very marked about his eyes, and that his hair was getting decidedly thin.
"My dear boy," Sir Charles said, affectionately, "that is all in your favour. If she were eight or nine and twenty, she might cast longing eyes on the youths, but a girl of seventeen always dotes on an elderly man. Always! I don't know why it should be so, but I simply state a fact. Girls have not a particle of reverence or even respect for youths of twenty-one or two. They sigh for a man who bears the scars of years and battle."
So Gervase went away to India, leaving his father to work the oracle for him at home. On the whole, Sir Charles's forecast had proved correct. Things had turned out much as he anticipated they would.
Madeline read the Captain's letter with a distinct heightening of colour. She was still weak and a little inclined to be hysterical. Her adventure on the cliffs had shaken her nerves to an extent she was only just beginning to realise.
She closed her eyes after she had put the letter back in the envelope, and tried to think. The Captain's proposal had not surprised her in the least, while the manner of it was just what she had expected. He had used just the right words and said neither too much nor too little.
She admired him for his reticence, and for his strength in holding himself so well in check, and yet there was a passionate earnestness in his well-chosen words that revealed the depth of his affection, as well as his determination to win.
Very adroitly and diplomatically also he had hinted of the good time they might have together. They would not settle down in a sleepy place like St. Gaved. They would have a town house, and perhaps a shooting-box in Scotland, and when tired of the United Kingdom they would travel on the Continent—Paris, Vienna, Monte Carlo, Florence, were delightful places to visit, and to tarry in for a few weeks or months. The common work-a-day world might roar and fret and toil and perspire, but they would live in a serener atmosphere, undisturbed by the jar and strife that went on around them.
It was a very fair and enticing picture that his words conjured up, and one that she had often pictured for herself. This was the future that her friends, in conjunction with a kindly Providence, had shaped for her. There seemed nothing for her to do but say "Yes." It was all in the piece. Her life had been beautifully planned, and planned without effort or contrivance by anybody. The current had borne her along easily and gently to the inevitable union with Gervase Tregony.
His face and form came up before her again as she last saw him. How handsome he looked in his uniform!How fierce his eyes were when he looked at other people, how gentle when he looked at her! Some people might think his voice harsh and raucous, but there was an undertone of music in it for her. It was the voice of a hero, of a man born to command. Its echoes seemed to be in the air even now.
And yet for some reason her heart did not respond as it once did. Was it that her nerves had been shaken—that she had not quite got over the shock of the adventure? Something had happened during the last few days, but what it was she could not quite understand. The life of pleasure, to which she had looked forward, undisturbed by a single note of human pain, did not appeal to her, for some reason, as once it did. A new ingredient had been dropped into the cup, a new thought had come into her brain, a new impulse had shaken her heart.
Had she looked at death so closely that life could never be the same to her again, or was it that she looked at life more truly and steadily? Had a change come over other people, or was the change wholly in herself? That something had happened she was certain, but what it was, was a question she could not definitely answer.
Of one thing, however, she was sure. If the letter had come three or four days sooner, it would have found her in a wholly different frame of mind. Hence, whatever the change was, it was compassed by these few days.
Her meditations were disturbed by a knock at the door, and a moment later Dr. Pendarvis entered. "Ah! you are better this morning," he said, in his bright, cheery fashion. "Now, let me feel your pulse." And he drew up a chair and sat down by her side.
"A little inclined to be jumpy still, eh? Ah, well, you had rather a nasty experience. But you'll be all right again in a few days."
"I think I am all right now," she said, with a smile. "Don't you think I might go out of doors?"
"Well, now, what do you think yourself?" he questioned, stroking his chin and smiling.
"I'm just a little shaky on my feet," she answered, "but I guess that would go off when I got into the fresh air."
"And how about the bruises?"
"Oh, they are disappearing one by one."
"And how far do you think you could walk?"
"I don't know, but I do know it's awfully dull being in the house."
"And do you want to go anywhere in particular?" he asked innocently, and he glanced at her furtively out of the corner of his eye.
"Oh, no!" she answered, blushing slightly; "or, at any rate, not just yet. Of course, when I get stronger I shall be glad to walk into St. Gaved again."
"You ran into it last time," he said, laughing. "What a day of adventures you had to be sure!"
"I was compelled to run," she said, averting her eyes and looking out of the window; "he would have drowned if I hadn't."
"Exactly. And it was touch and go by all accounts. He couldn't have held out many minutes longer."
"And is he going on all right, doctor?" She turned her eyes suddenly upon him, and waited with parted lips for his answer.
"Well, about as well as can be expected," he answered, slowly, "taking all the circumstances into account."
"And is he suffering much pain?"
"A good deal I should say. In fact, that is inevitable."
"He must wish me far enough."
"It depends how far that is, I should say," and the old doctor chuckled.
"You've not heard him heaping maledictions on my defenceless head?"
"No, I have not," he answered, with a satirical smile; "but then you see he's not given to expressing his thoughts in public."
"Exactly. I guess his thoughts about me would not bear repeating in any polite society."
"That is possible," the old doctor said, pursing his lips, and looking thoughtful.
"I suppose no one sees him yet?"
"Well, Chester or I myself see him every day—sometimes twice."
"I intend seeing him myself soon."
"You do?"
"Yes I do. There's nothing wrong in it, is there?"
"Why do you ask that question?"
"Because you've got such stupid notions about propriety in this country. In fact, few things seem to be regarded as proper except what is highly improper. I'm constantly stubbing my toes against the notice tablets, 'keep off the grass,' the dangerous places are left without warning."
The doctor laughed.
"Isn't it true what I'm saying?" she went on. "Half the people seem to be straining at gnats and swallowing camels. Directly you propose to do some perfectly innocent thing, if it should happen to be unconventional, you are met with shocked looks and outstretched hands and cries of protest. I'm getting rather tired of that word 'proper.'"
"But Society must have some code to regulate itself by," he said, with an air of pretended seriousness.
"Aren't the Ten Commandments good enough?" she questioned.
"Well, hardly," he said, in a tone of banter. "You see they are a bit antiquated and out of date. Society, as at present constituted, must have everything of the most modern type. And modernity is not able to tolerate such an antiquated code as the Decalogue."
"What do you mean by Society?" she questioned.
"Ah! now you have cornered me," he said, with a laugh. "But just at the moment I was thinking of the idle rich. Men and women who have more money than they know how to spend, and more time than they know how to kill. The people who have never a thought beyond themselves, who live to eat and dress, and pander to the lowest passions of their nature. Who will spend thousands on a dinner fit only for gourmands, while the people around them are dying of hunger. Who waste in folly and luxury and vice what ought to go for the uplifting of the downtrodden and neglected. It is a big class in England, and a growing class, recruited in many instances from across the water——"
"You mean from my country?" she questioned.
"Yes, from your country," he said, with a touch of indignation in his voice, "they come bringing their bad manners and their diamonds, and they hang round the fringe of what is called the 'Smart Set,' and they bribe impecunious dowagers and such like to give them introductions, and they worm their way into the big houses, and God alone knows what becomes of them afterwards. I have a brother who has a big practice in the West-end. You should hear him talk——"
"If people are rich," Madeline retorted warmly, "they have surely the right to enjoy themselves in their own way so long as they do no wrong."
"Enjoy themselves," he snorted. "Is enjoyment the end of life?—and such enjoyment! Has duty no place in the scheme of existence? Because people have grown rich through somebody else's toil——"
"Or through their own toil," she interrupted.
"Or through their own toil—if any man ever did it—are they justified in wasting their life in idle gluttony, and in wasteful and wanton extravagance?"
"Extravagance is surely a question of degree," she replied. "A hundred dollars to one man may be more than ten thousand to another."
"I admit it. But your idle profligate, whether man or woman, is an offence."
"What do you mean by profligate?"
"I mean the creature who lives to eat and drink and dress. Who shirks every duty and responsibility, who panders to every gluttonous and selfish desire. Who hears the cry of suffering and never helps, who wastes his or her substance in finding fresh sources of so-called enjoyment, or discovering new thrills of sensation."
"But we surely have a right to enjoy ourselves?"
"Of course we have. But not after the fashion of swine. We are not animals. We are men and women with intellectual vision and moral responsibility. The true life lies along the road of duty and help and goodwill."
"Yes, I agree with you in that. But I do not like to hear anyone speak slightingly of my country people."
"For your country and your people as a whole, I have the greatest respect. But every country has its snobs and its parasites; and it is humbling that our owngreat army of idle profligates should receive recruits from the great Republic of the West."
When Dr. Pendarvis had gone Madeline sat for a long time staring out of the window, but seeing nothing of the fair landscape on which her eyes rested. She tried to recall what it was that led their conversation into such a serious channel. To say the least of it, it was not a little strange that he should have taken the hazy and nebulous efforts of her own brain, and shaped them into clear and definite speech. The life of ease and pleasure and self-indulgence to which she had looked forward with so much interest and with such childish delight, he had denounced with a vigour she had half resented, and which all the while she felt answered to the deepest emotions of her nature.
She took the Captain's letter from the envelope and read it again. It was a most proper letter in every respect. There was not a word or syllable that anyone could take the slightest exception to. The love-making was intense and yet restrained, the pleading eloquent and even tender, the prospect pictured such as any ordinary individual would hail with delight. What was it that it lacked?
It seemed less satisfying since her talk with the doctor than before.
The Captain pleaded for an answer by return of post. He wanted to have the assurance before he left India for home. He was tired of roughing it and wanted to look forward to long years of domestic peace. If the engagement were settled now they would be able to set up a house of their own soon after his return.
She put away the letter after reading it through twice, and heaved a long sigh.
"If it had come a week ago," she said to herself, "I should have answered 'Yes' without any misgiving.But now, everything seems changed. Perhaps I shall feel differently when I get out of doors again."
On the following day she took a ramble in the rose garden, and sat for an hour on the lawn in the sunshine. On the second day she strayed into the plantation beyond the park, and on the third day she ventured on to the Downs, and came at length to the high point on the cliffs where she first met Rufus Sterne. Here she sat down and looked seaward, and thought of home and all that had happened since she left it.
The plan of her life which had looked so clear was becoming more and more hazy and confused. Was Providence interposing to upset its own arrangements? Was she to tread a different path from what she had pictured.
The fresh air brought the colour back to her cheeks again, and vigour to her limbs, but it did not clear away the mists that hung about her brain and heart. The Captain's letter remained day after day unanswered.
"If I were engaged to the Captain," she said to herself, reflectively, "It might not be considered proper for me to call on Rufus Sterne. But while I am free, I am free. He saved my life, and it would be mean of me not to call. So I shall follow my heart"; and she rose to her feet and turned her steps towards home.
Mrs. Tuke came into the room on tip-toe, and closed the door softly behind her. There was a mysterious expression in her eyes, and she began at once to straighten the chairs and re-arrange the antimacassars. Her best parlour had been turned, for the time being, into a bedroom. To carry Rufus Sterne up the steep and narrow staircase was a task the fishermen refused to undertake, especially as Rufus had pleaded to be allowed to remain on the sofa. So a bed had been set up in the parlour—not without serious misgivings on the part of Mrs. Tuke, though she admitted the convenience of the arrangement later on. After Mrs. Tuke had arranged the furniture and antimacassars to her satisfaction, she advanced to the side of the bed.
"A lady has called to see you," she said, in an awed whisper.
"A lady?" Rufus questioned, with a slight lifting of the eyebrows.
Mrs. Tuke nodded.
"To see me or simply to inquire?"
"To see you."
"Do I know the lady?" and a faint tinge of colour came into his cheek.
"I suppose so. You ought to do at any rate. It's that scare-away American as is staying at the Hall." And Mrs. Tuke turned and looked apprehensively toward the door.
Rufus felt his heart give a sudden bound, but he answered quietly enough: "Is she waiting in the passage?"
"No, I turned her into your room. Are you going to see her?"
"Most certainly. I think it is awfully kind of her to call."
"I suppose being a furrener explains things?"
"Explains what, Mrs. Tuke?"
"Well, in my day young ladies had different notions of what was the proper thing to do."
"No doubt, Mrs. Tuke; but the world keeps advancing, you see."
"Keeps advancing, do you call it. I am thankful that none of my girls was brought up that way." And Mrs. Tuke walked with her most stately gait out of the room.
Rufus waited with rapidly beating heart. For days past—ever since the pain had become bearable, in fact—he had been longing for a glimpse of the sweet face that had captivated his fancy from the first. That she would call to see him he did not anticipate for a moment. That she had made inquiries concerning his condition he knew from his conversations with Dr. Pendarvis. More than that he could not expect, whatever he might desire. Hence, to be told that she was in the house, that she was waiting to see him, seemed to set vibrating every nerve he possessed.
He heard a faint murmur of voices coming across the narrow lobby, and wondered what Mrs. Tuke was saying to her visitor. He hoped she would not feel it incumbent upon her to unburden her puritanical soul. When Mrs. Tuke was "drawn out," as she expressed it, she sometimes used great plainness of speech. At such times neither rank nor station counted. To clear her conscience was the supreme thing.
On the present occasion, however, Madeline got the first innings. She guessed from the set of Mrs. Tuke's lips that she did not altogether approve. Moreover, she was afraid that on the occasion of her first visit—when Mrs. Tuke revived her with burnt feathers—she had not made a very good impression.
Madeline came, therefore, fully armed and prepared to use all her wiles. She waited with a good deal of trepidation until Mrs. Tuke returned from her lodger's room.
"What a noble, generous soul you must be, Mrs. Tuke," she said, and she looked straight into the cold, blue eyes and smiled her sweetest.
Mrs. Tuke drew herself up and frowned.
"And how lovely you keep your house," Madeline went on, "and what taste you have shown in arranging your furniture."
Mrs. Tuke's face relaxed somewhat, and she gave the corner of the table cloth a little tug to straighten it.
"I think people stamp their character on everything they do, don't you, Mrs. Tuke? If a woman is a lady the house shows it. Look at these flowers how beautifully arranged they are," and Madeline bent down her head and sniffed at them.
"Some people never notice such things," Mrs. Tuke said, in an aggrieved tone.
"Oh, Mrs. Tuke! how can they help it; I am sure you would recognise taste and beauty anywhere."
"So many of the women hereabouts have no taste," Mrs. Tuke replied. "They keep their houses any fashion. I always say you can tell what a house is like by the window curtains. You need not put your head inside the door."
"I quite agree with you, Mrs. Tuke. May I ask where you send your curtains to be got up so beautifully?"
"I get 'em up myself."
"No?"
"I do, indeed," and Mrs. Tuke smiled upon her visitor most benignantly.
"How clever you must be. Do you know I think we should become quite fast friends? We seem to understand each other so well. Some people never understand each other. Now, if you were like some narrow, uncharitable people you would not approve of my calling to see Mr. Sterne."
Mrs. Tuke started, and took a sidelong glance out of the window.
"And I have no doubt," Madeline went on, "if some of the people in St. Gaved got to know that I was in the habit of calling here they would say all sorts of uncharitable things."
"I've not the least doubt of it," Mrs. Tuke said, severely.
"It is so nice to think you are not one of that sort," Madeline said, with a winning smile. "If I came here fifty times I know you would not talk about it. You see you understand people, Mrs. Tuke. And in America, as you know, girls have so much more freedom than they have in this country."
"So I've heard."
"It's natural, perhaps; they go to the same State schools together, and they grow up to respect each other. The girls learn self-reliance, and the boys chivalry."
"That sounds very nice," Mrs. Tuke remarked, with an interested look.
"It ought to be so everywhere. I don't think much of a girl who is not able to take care of herself."
"But men are not to be trusted, my dear," Mrs. Tuke said, with a pained expression in her eyes.
"Then they should be avoided and ostracised."
"Yes, I quite agree with you," Mrs. Tuke said,doubtfully; "but had you not better go and see Mr. Sterne now? Between ourselves, I believe he will be terribly impatient."
"And we'll renew our interesting conversation some other time."
"It's kind of you to want to talk to an old woman like me."
"You must not call yourself old, Mrs. Tuke," and Madeline tripped across the hall, and knocked timidly at the parlour door.
"Come in," called a clear, even voice, and Madeline turned the handle and entered. Her heart was beating considerably faster than usual, and directly she caught sight of Rufus a choking sensation came into her throat.
It was painfully pathetic to see this strong, handsome man lying pale and helpless on his narrow bed, and all because of her. If she had not been foolish and headstrong it would not have happened. And yet a great wave of gratitude surged over her heart at the same moment. His life had been spared. If he had been drowned she would never have forgiven herself to the day of her death.
He greeted her with a smile that was all brightness and sunshine. For the moment all the pain and disappointment and foreboding of the last week were forgotten. The presence of this beautiful girl was compensation for all he had endured.
"It is good of you to come," he said, in a tone that vibrated with unmistakable gratitude.
"No, please don't say that," she answered, a mist coming up before her eyes. "I was afraid you might hate the very sight of me."
He smiled at her for answer, and pointed to a chair.
"I've been wanting to see you for days," she went on; "wanting to ease my heart by telling you howgrateful I am, and how terribly I regret causing you so much loss and suffering."
He smiled again. What answer could he make to such words of self-revealing? He would simply have to let her talk on until she gave him something to reply to.
"I told Dr. Pendarvis that I expected in secret you were heaping maledictions on my defenceless head."
"Have you so poor an opinion of me as all that?" he questioned, looking steadily into her sweet, brown eyes.
"Well, you see, I calculate I was judging you by myself somewhat."
"And if you had saved me, and slightly damaged yourself in the process, would you have been very angry with me?"
"Oh! I am only a girl, and if I were disabled for a year, nobody would be the loser. But with you it is different. I wish it had been the other way about."
"I don't."
"No?"
"No, I am glad things are as they are."
"But your invention is at a standstill."
"Who told you about my invention?"
"Dr. Pendarvis, I think. Oh no, it was Dr. Chester; he said you would be a great man some day."
"Dr. Chester will have to cultivate the habit of thinking before he speaks," he said, with a laugh, "If I can be a useful man, I shall be content."
"Is it better to be useful than to be great?" she questioned, naïvely.
"Oh, well, that all depends, I expect, on the meaning you attach to words," he answered, with a broad smile. "If a man is truly great, he is, of course, useful, while a man may be very useful without being great."
"Oh, then, I shall back Dr. Chester," she said, with a pretty shrug of her shoulders.
"You had better not," he said, soberly. "Not that it will matter, of course. For whether I win or lose, you cannot be affected by the one or the other."
"Why not?"
"Oh, for fifty reasons."
"Please give me one."
"I would rather not."
"But I insist upon it."
"And if I still refuse?"
"I shall stay here till you do answer."
"Oh, that will be delightful," he answered, laughing. "How quickly the days will pass."
"Oh, Mr. Sterne, I did not know you could be so provoking," she said, with a little pout.
"Do you really want a reason?" he said, looking gravely into her eyes.
"Really and truly."
"Well, then, my invention will affect only the toilers—the poor people if you like. Its success or failure will not matter one whit to Sir Charles Tregony, for instance, and you belong to the same circle, do you not?"
"But its success or failure will matter to you, won't it?"
"It will matter everything to me."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Just what I say. Everything means everything. I've staked my all."
"Oh, no, you have not," she said, brightly. "You may have staked your fortune, and your reputation as an inventor, and your immediate prospects. But life is left."
He caught his breath sharply. "But what is life worth when all you have lived for is swept away?"
"And have you nothing else to live for?" she questioned, seriously.
"Nothing! I'm a lonely soul in a lonely world."
"But there is still life," she persisted. "And no great soul gives up at one failure or at ten."
He felt the hot blood rush to his face and he averted his eyes instinctively. He did his best to recover himself before she should notice, but her keen eyes were quick to see the look of pain and distress that swept over his face.
"Now I have said something foolish—something that has hurt you——" she began.
"My leg hurts me occasionally," he answered, with a poor attempt at a smile.
"I have been very thoughtless," she said, rising suddenly to her feet. "I did not think how I must be tiring you."
"But you have not tired me at all," he persisted. "You have done me good. You cannot think how intolerably irksome it is lying here helpless day after——" then he checked himself suddenly. It was his turn now to see a look of distress come into her eyes.
"And it is all my fault," she interrupted. "Oh, if I could only atone in some measure."
"You have atoned, if atonement were needed, by coming to see me. Will you not come again?"
"May I? Really and truly it would do me good if I could serve you in some way. I might read to you if you would let me, or write your letters."
He felt himself shaken as if with a tempest. He knew, as if by instinct, that he had reached the most fateful—perhaps the most perilous—crisis in his life. He had only to say the word and this beautiful girl would come and sit by his side day after day, come out of pure goodness and gratitude, never dreaming what her presence might mean to him.
He was only too painfully conscious that he was half in love with her already. She had touched hisheart and imagination as no one had ever done before. From the time he caught that first glimpse of her face as she was driving from the station until now, she had been almost constantly in his thoughts. It was as though the fates—malicious as usual—had conspired to throw them together, for if he learned to love her, only misery and heart-ache could be the result. She would think of him only as someone she ought to be kind to. She was out of his circle. Whoever, or whatever she might have been in America, here she was the ward of Sir Charles Tregony, one of the proudest and most exclusive men in the county. Besides, for all he knew, she might be engaged already.
Beyond all, there was the fact that his life was at stake. If his project failed he was bound in honour to see that Felix Muller suffered no loss. The rights of the Life Assurance Company had not occurred to him even yet. There must be no human ties to make the struggle harder. If the worst came to the worst—a possibility that would persist in haunting him—he must go unmourned and unmourning into the darkness.
The brain works quickly in times of excitement and emotion, and all these considerations passed through his mind as in a flash. Should he tell this sweet-eyed girl that she must not come to see him again, and let her go away believing that he disapproved of her coming at all?
Better so. Better a few hours or days of sharp pain now than a life-long agony after.
"I must be brave," he said to himself. "The first lesson in life is self-conquest."
The form of words he decided to use shaped themselves quickly. The more explicit the better.
He turned his head toward her with resolutions full grown in his heart, and their eyes met again.
Generally speaking, Rufus Sterne was not lacking in courage, either physical or moral. But no man knows his strength till he is tested. Many a man has passed through tempest and flood, fire and sword, unscathed and undaunted, and in the end has gone down helplessly and ignominiously before a pair of soft brown eyes.
When Rufus turned his head he meant to say firmly but kindly that it would be better if they did not meet again. And then he would soothe the hurt—if hurt there should be—by telling her how grateful he was for her visit and how much he appreciated her kindness.
He was quite sure she would understand. She was not a child and her eyes were more than ordinarily sharp. If she chose to take offence, of course, he would be sorry; but better she should be offended than that he should break his heart.
He was bristling all over with courage when their eyes met, and then all his strength departed. Madeline had no thought of conquest. She only wanted to be kind. She felt infinitely pitiful toward this strong man who had been brought low through her, and her pity shone in her eyes and vibrated in every tone of her voice.
It was her artlessness, her sweet ingenuousness that broke Rufus down. In addition to which she was so exquisitely beautiful, while the unfamiliar lilt and intonation of her voice were like music in his ears.
"It will be just heaven if you will come and read to me sometimes," he heard himself saying, and then he wondered whether he was awake or dreaming.
"Then I will come to-morrow. It will be perfectly lovely to do some little bit of good in the world."
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 appetite, 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 passion 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 hadtaken 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.