A Gamble with Life

"Well, no," she answered, slowly. "I will not go quite so far as that. I guess there are still a few things you stick to."

"We all believe what we cannot help believing," he answered, enigmatically.

"Oh, what a profound utterance!" she said, laughing brightly in his face.

"It is rather profound, isn't it? But how have you enjoyed yourself in London?"

"Oh! moderately well. For the first two weeks or so we had rather a gay time, then things got flat, or I got flat. And then the weather, you know, was atrocious. Those London fogs are a treat!"

"So I've heard. I've had no experience of them."

"Well, you needn't be envious. But how about your invention? I've been looking for your name in the papers. When are you going to astonish us all?"

His face clouded in a moment and his eyes caught a far-away look. "It is never safe to prophesy," he said, after a pause.

"But you are still quite sure of success?" she questioned, a little anxiously.

He smiled a little bit sadly, and answered, "A friend of mine sometimes encourages me by telling me that there is nothing certain in this world but death."

"Your friend must be a pessimist," she said, "and I don't like pessimists. But tell me candidly, has your success been imperilled in any way by – by – your accident?"

"No, I do not think so," he answered, quickly. "My work has been delayed a little, that is all. If I fail, it will not be on that account."

"But you are not going to fail, of course you are not."

"I hope I shall not," he answered, seriously. "But in the chances of life there must be a great many failures. Think of the millions of toiling people in England to-day and how few of them have reached their hearts' desire."

"Yes, I suppose that is so," she answered, thoughtfully, "or perhaps the bulk of them have never had any large desires. But don't you think that most of the great men who have striven long enough have won in the end?"

"I was not thinking of the great men," he answered. "It is given only to a few men to be great, and of the rest, if they fail once, their chance is gone."

"And do you mean to tell me that if you don't succeed this time you won't try again?"

"If circumstances would let me, I would never cease trying," he answered. "But we are all of us more or less the slaves of circumstances, some more than others."

"You told me once that you had staked your all on the success of this enterprise."

"That is true."

"And if you fail, you will lose everything?"

"Everything!"

"You mean, of course, your time and your money, and your labour!"

"Yes, I mean that," he said, smiling wistfully.

"Oh, well! that is not everything, after all," she answered, brightly. "You are young enough to begin again. And, after all, what we call failures may be stepping-stones to success, and you will win in the end, I know you will. God will not let you fail."

"I wish I believed in God as you do," he said, with downcast eyes.

"So long as God believes in you it won't matter so much," she answered, cheerfully. "But I must be going back now. You are going further, I presume?"

"I am going to spend Christmas with my grandfather, at Tregannon."

"Is that far?"

"About six or seven miles."

"And are you going to walk all the distance?"

"I expect so, unless someone overtakes me who can give me a lift by the way."

"I hope you will have a very happy Christmas."

"Thank you. Let me wish the same wish for you."

"We shall be gay at any rate," she said, with a little sigh. "The Captain returns this evening."

"Ah! then you are sure to be happy. Good-bye!"

He took her outstretched hand and held it for a long moment, looking earnestly the while into her sweet, fearless eyes. Then without another word he picked up his bag and hurried away.

CHAPTER XVII

RETROSPECTIVE

Rufus tramped the seven long miles to Tregannon like one in a dream. Up hill and down dale he swung his way, heedless of the milestones and untroubled by distance. The short winter's day faded into darkness before he had covered half the journey. A little later the moon sailed slowly up in the eastern sky and flung weird shadows across the road, but he paid no heed. Through sleepy villages and hamlets he tramped, by lonely cottages and splashing water-wheels, but his thoughts were back in the quiet lane outside St. Gaved, and the warm hand of Madeline Grover still trembled in his.

He had tried to forget her, tried to keep out of her way; but what was the use? She had come into his life for good or ill, and she had come to stay. Until he ceased to draw breath she would dominate his heart, and it was only waste of strength and energy to fight against his fate.

He hardly knew whether he was sorry or glad. If he had to leave the world, loving her would make it all the harder, he knew. If his enterprise succeeded and his life stretched out to its natural span, the burden of an unrequited love would always press heavy upon him. And yet to love at all was worth living for. The thrill of her touch, the glance of her sweet, honest eyes, made heaven for the moment. Let the future go. Sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof. Twelve months hence he might be sleeping in the dust, and she might be the wife of Gervase Tregony. It was foolish, therefore, to anticipate the future. To-day alone was his, and he would make the most of it, and let his heart go out in free, unfettered affection, giving all and asking for nothing in return. It was in the inspiration and exaltation of this feeling that he swung along the quiet country lanes. No one could hinder him from loving, and love was its own reward. The joy was not so much in receiving as in giving. When love became selfish it ceased to be love. Madeline might never be his in the conventional sense. She might never know how much she had been to him, might never guess how much he loved her. That might not be all loss; it might, indeed, be gain. He felt already that he was a better man for this great passion that had come into his life – less selfish, less self-centred, less bitter and infinitely more pitiful.

He found his grandfather, Rev. Reuben Sterne, still active and alert, in spite of the eighty-four winters that had passed over his head. He was no less sure of his election now than he was sixty years ago, when he was first called to the ministry, and he was as anxious to remain a little longer on the earth as he was in the flowery days of his youth.

He extended to his grandson a grave and unemotional welcome, and then led the way into the little sitting-room, where his wife sat deep in an easy chair, a little, shrunken thing, who looked as if all the sap had dried out of her veins. Her welcome, however, was much warmer than her husband's, and the tears came into her faded eyes when he bent down to kiss her.

While supper was being got ready Rufus stretched himself in an easy chair before the fire and listened while the old people talked.

"Ah me, Rufus," Mrs. Sterne said, in her thin, quavering voice. "It is just sixteen years ago yesterday since news came that your father was dead. How time flies, to be sure, and your poor mother survived the shock just six months and a day."

Rufus had heard the story recalled nearly every Christmas Eve since. Whoever might forget, the little grandmother remembered, Joshua Sterne – Rufus's father – was her firstborn and only child, and the wound caused by his death never seemed to heal.

Rufus listened with no poignant sense of grief. His father had crossed the Atlantic to seek his fortune when he, Rufus, was little more than out-of-arms, and he had never returned. Rufus fancied that he remembered him. But he was never quite sure. The recollection – if such it was – was so vague and indistinct that it seemed little more than the shadow of a dream.

He remembered well enough the day when the news came of his father's death. Remembered the grief and anguish of his mother, which, boy-like, he did his best to soothe, but which he could not understand.

Six months later the broken-hearted mother slipped unexpectedly away into the land of shadows, and Rufus, bewildered and rebellious, was taken away from the silent house to live with his grandparents. That seemed like the beginning of all his griefs. He had often wondered since what his life would have been like if his mother had lived. How he would have rejoiced to toil for her and fight her battles. But it was not to be. In the cold and gloomy shadow of his grandfather's home it seemed to him that the better side of his nature had never a chance of developing. The sunshine was absent. The real joy of existence was unknown.