A Gamble with Life

"Remember, I am no sentimentalist, and whatever may happen to you, I shall be compelled in the end to claim my bond."

Sterne laughed a little bitterly. "You do not mean to insult me, I know. Nevertheless your words imply a doubt that I cannot help resenting. If the worst comes to the worst, you will have no need to claim your bond. You will get your own back without effort, and with compound interest."

"I have no desire to insult you, certainly. But equally am I desirous of preventing any misunderstanding later on. In a business transaction of this kind one cannot be too explicit. The time-limit I am compelled to insist upon."

"It is quite ample," Sterne broke in, impatiently. "I shall know my fate long before the end of next year."

"I hope you will succeed even beyond what you hope for."

"Let me tell you for the twentieth time that I am bound to succeed. When shall I have the money?"

"The day after to-morrow."

"That will do. Now I am a happy man."

"I hope you will never have cause to regret the bargain."

"You shall not, in any case."

The lawyer smiled, and lowered his eyebrows. "From a professional point of view," he said, reflectively, "it is not, of course, good business."

Sterne looked up suddenly. "I see what you mean," he said, after a pause. "You are not covered against any failure of courage or honour on my part?"

The lawyer nodded assent.

"I appreciate your trust in me," Sterne replied, with a touch of emotion in his voice. "I do indeed. You are lending me the money without any legal security."

"And the money is not mine," the lawyer added.

"I understand; and when the time comes you shall be rewarded," and Sterne rose to his feet and picked up his bowler hat, which had been lying on the floor.

The lawyer rose also, and held out his hand to his client. "The money shall be ready for you the day after to-morrow." So they parted.

Rufus Sterne went out into the street feeling as though all the world lay at his feet. No thought of failure crossed his mind. The thing he had been working for for years was at last to be realised. His invention would not only put money into his own pocket, but it would revolutionise the chief industry of his native county, and find work for thousands of willing hands.

In imagination he saw himself not only prosperous, but honoured and respected and hailed as a public benefactor. He had a long walk over the hills to the village in which he resided, but it seemed as nothing to him that evening. His heart was beating high with hope, his eyes sparkled with eager anticipation.

From the crest of the second hill the wide sweep of the Atlantic came into view, and for several minutes he stood still, with bared head. He had spent all his life in sight and sound of the sea, and he never tired of it. Relatives, friends, acquaintances by the dozen, slept their last sleep far out in its cool embrace. He had a feeling sometimes that he would like, when his day's work was done, to pillow his head among the seaweed and sleep for ever, while the waves sobbed and sang above him.

The sun was slowly sinking in a sea of molten gold. The window-panes of the scattered farmhouses were flashing back the evening fire. From the valley behind him came the bleating of lambs and the answering call of the mother sheep, and with the cooling of the day a breeze stirred faintly in the tree tops and through the hazel bushes.

He replaced his hat, and was about to continue his tramp when he was arrested by the sound of carriage wheels behind him. A sharp bend in the road hid the vehicle from sight, but he knew it would be on him in a moment. So he stepped aside, as the road was narrow, and waited for it to pass.

The horse came first into sight, and then the Squire's waggonette. Two people sat on the front seat, the coachman and a lady. The back of the vehicle was piled almost to the level of their heads with luggage. The horse came on slowly, which gave Rufus Sterne an opportunity of scanning the face of the lady.

"Evidently a stranger," was his first reflection. "Greatly taken with the view of the sea," his second. After that his reflections were of a very mixed character.

Two or three points, however, stood out in his mind with great distinctness. The first was the lady was young – "not more than twenty if she is a day," he reflected. The second was that she belonged to a type he had never seen before. "She's not Cornish, that's certain," he said to himself. "I question if she is English." The third was that she was most becomingly dressed. Whether she was richly or expensively attired he did not know. He had had no experience in such matters. But that her dress became her there could be no doubt. The hat she wore might have been designed by an artist for her alone. On some people's heads it might look a fright, but on the head of this fair creature it was a picture.

He stood so far back in the shadow of the hedge that she did not notice him. Besides, her eyes were fixed on the distant sea, which flashed in the sunset like burnished gold.

"Isn't it just too lovely for words?" Whether she addressed the coachman, or whether she was speaking to herself, he did not know. But her words fell very distinctly on his ear, and touched his heart with a curious sense of kinship or sympathy.

"No; she's not English," he said to himself. "An Englishwoman never speaks with an accent just like that. But wherever she comes from she's the loveliest creature I ever saw. I wonder who she is?"

He came out into the middle of the road, and followed in the wake of the vanishing vehicle. After a few minutes it disappeared completely, and he did not see it again.

"I wonder who she is?" The question occurred to him several times as he tramped steadily on in the direction of St. Gaved. It even pushed into the background his recent interview with Felix Muller, and the strange compact he had made.

The twilight was deepening rapidly by the time he reached the cottage in which he rented two tiny rooms. A frugal supper was laid ready for him on the table, but there was no one to give him welcome, no one to say good-night when he retired to rest. Yet no feeling of loneliness or friendlessness oppressed him. He felt that the day had been an eventful one, and that a future of unmeasured possibilities was opening up before him.

CHAPTER II

DREAMS AND REALITIES

Rufus Sterne awoke next morning with a feeling of buoyancy and hopefulness such as he had never before experienced. The sun was streaming brightly through the little window and gilding the humble furniture of the room with thin lines of gold; the house-sparrows were chirruping noisily under the eaves; the fishermen, early in from their night's fishing, were calling "Mackerel" in the winding street below; whilst the memory of pleasant dreams was still haunting the chambers of his brain – dreams in which his own identity had got mixed up in some curious fashion with that of the fair stranger he had seen the evening before.

Mrs. Tuke, his landlady, laid his breakfast in silence. It was very rarely now that she spoke to him. On her face was a look of injured innocence or pained resignation. She had done her best in days gone by to lead him to see what she called the error of his ways, but without success. Now she had given him over – though not without considerable reluctance – to the hardness of his heart. She sometimes wondered whether she ought to keep as a lodger a man who was claimed neither by church nor chapel, and whose religious opinions not a man in the entire village would endorse.

However, as he paid his bill regularly and gave no trouble, and as moreover he had no bad habits, and was exceedingly gentlemanly both in manners and appearance, she concluded that on the whole she was justified in giving him shelter and taking his money.

Rufus did not notice Mrs. Tuke's resigned look and pathetic eyes this morning. His thoughts were intent on other things. At last he was on the road to fame and fortune, so he honestly and sincerely believed. To-morrow he would walk into Redbourne and take possession of a thousand pounds. Then life would begin in earnest. He would give up his position at the Wheal Gregory Mine and devote all his energies to the completion of the great scheme, which would take the whole county by surprise.

What a relief it would be to get away from the common-place and humdrum tasks that had filled his hands for the last three or four years – tasks that any young man with a School Board education could discharge without difficulty. He did not despise the work – no honest labour was to be despised. But the work was not of the kind that appealed to him. It was monotonous, mechanical, uninteresting. There was nothing in it to call out latent skill or originality. He might go on doing it till his brain stagnated and the springs of imagination ceased to flow.

He was called the secretary of the mine – a high-sounding name enough – but the name was the only important thing about it. He was time-keeper, clerk, and office-boy rolled into one.

The salary was just enough to keep him in a position of respectable poverty. The only way he could hope to save any money was by insuring his life until he was a certain age. But there were times when he was half disposed to let his policy lapse. It was such a pinch to find the money to pay the premiums.

At last, however, he believed the struggle was over. His thoughts were going to take tangible shape; his nebulous dreams were to be reduced to concrete form. The lines he had so carefully traced on paper would be seen in brass and steel; the mental travail of years would end in the birth of a great invention.

He walked away from the house humming a popular waltz, and his steps kept time to the music. Wheal Gregory lay over the hill more than a mile away. Taking a field path he skirted the park of Trewinion Hall, the residence of Sir Charles Tregony, the squire of the parish and the largest landowner in the district. It was Sir Charles's waggonette that passed him the previous evening when returning from Redbourne.

He slackened his pace almost unconsciously, and looked over the tall thorn hedge in the direction of the squire's mansion. An opening in the belt of trees brought a portion of the terrace into view, with a strip of lawn and a glimpse of the rose garden. At the moment, however, Rufus saw neither the garden nor the lawn. It was a graceful girlish figure clad in white that arrested his attention. She was flitting in and out among the standard roses with a pair of scissors in one hand and a large bunch of blooms in the other. She stood still at length and looked towards the house, then waved her hand to someone Rufus could not see. Then she turned right about face and looked in his direction. Rufus lowered his head in a moment and peeped at her between the branches of a tree. It might not be the height of good manners, but he could not help it. She was so fair a picture, so graceful, so piquant and fresh, that he would be almost less than human if he did not make the most of his opportunity.

A few minutes later she was joined by the squire's daughter, Beryl, and together they walked away till the thick foliage hid them from view.

Rufus heaved a little sigh, and then continued his walk in the direction of Wheal Gregory.

"I wonder if people who live in big houses, and have lovely gardens and lawns and all the other pleasant things of life are happier than ordinary folks," he said to himself. "I wonder if that girl is happy. I wonder if she knows how pretty she is? I wonder where she came from? I wonder who she is? I wonder if she has come to stay?"

He laughed at length quite loudly, for no one was near to listen. It was strange that he should be interested in anyone who had come to stay at the Hall. Sir Charles was one of the proudest and most exclusive men in the county. There was no one in the parish of St. Gaved, excepting perhaps the vicar, that he considered good enough to associate with, and Sir Charles's visitors were generally as exclusive as himself.

The rattle of the "fire stamps" down in the valley called him back at length to more mundane affairs. It was nothing to him who the new visitor at the Hall might be, and whether she stayed a week or a year was no concern of his. He had his own work to do, and just now that work would fill his thoughts night and day.

He did his best to give all his attention to his ordinary duties, but it was no easy matter. He had lost all interest in Wheal Gregory Mine. His resignation as secretary would be handed in on Saturday morning: for the future he would live on another plane, and more important issues would claim his thought and attention.

The day seemed interminably long, but it came to an end at length, and he turned his face towards St. Gaved with a light heart. Every day now would shorten the period of his exile and inactivity. He was eager to get his own great enterprise under weigh, eager to show the people among whom he lived the stuff of which he was made.