Part 1

Chapter 14,108 wordsPublic domain

Transcriber's Note:

This transcription into digital form attempts to remain true to the original except for punctuation marks that have been supplied where missing.

THE YELLOW HOUSE

MASTER OF MEN

E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM

AUTHOR OF

"THE MISCHIEF-MAKER" "BERENICE" "HAVOC" "THE LOST LEADER" "THE MALEFACTOR"

VOLUME ONE

NEW YORK P. F. COLLIER & SON

MASTER OF MEN

Upward in long sinuous bends the road wound its way into the heart of the hills. The man, steadily climbing to the summit, changed hands upon the bicycle he was pushing, and wiped the sweat from his grimy forehead. It had been a gray morning when he had left, with no promise of this burst of streaming sunshine. Yet the steep hill troubled him but little--he stepped blithely forward with little sign of fatigue.

His workman's clothes, open at the throat, showed him the possessor of a magnificent pair of shoulders; the suggestion of great physical strength was carried out also in his hard, clean-cut features and deep-set, piercing gray eyes. He passed a grove where the ground was blue with budding hyacinths, and he loitered for a moment, leaning upon the saddle of his bicycle, and gazing up the sunlit glade. A line or two of Keats sprang to his lips. As he uttered them a transfiguring change swept across his face, still black in patches, as though from grimy labor. His hard, straight mouth relaxed into a very pleasant curve, a softer light flashed in his steely eyes.

He reached a wooden gate at last on his right-hand side, and, pushing it open, skirted a stone wall until he came to a sudden dip in the field, and with its back against a rocky eminence, a tiny cottage built of the stones which lay in heaps about the turf. He leaned his bicycle against the wall, and, taking a key from his pocket, unlocked the door.

"Saturday at last," he exclaimed aloud. "Thirty-six hours of freedom. Phew!"

He had plunged a basin into the soft-water tank outside and held his head in it for a moment. Then, all dripping, he carried a canful to a hollow bath ingeniously fixed among the rocks against which the cottage was built, and, throwing off his soiled clothes, jumped in. There was no longer any sign of the grease-stained mechanic when he emerged, and, with his towel wrapped lightly around him, stepped into the cottage.

He reappeared in a few minutes clad in a gray homespun suit, which showed many signs of wear, a pipe in his mouth, a book in his hand. Leisurely he filled a kettle from the well and thrust it into the centre of the small wood fire, which he had kindled. Then, with a sigh of relief, he threw himself upon the soft, mossy turf.

The book lay unheeded by his side. From his high vantage point he looked downward at the wide panorama which stretched to the horizon, faintly and mistily blue. The glorious spring sunshine lay like a quickening fire upon the land. The tree tops, moving lightly in the west wind, were budding into tender green; the dark pine groves were softened; the patches of rich brown soil, freshly turned by the plow, gleamed as though with promise of the crops to come.

Below him the dusty lane along which he had traveled stretched like a narrow white belt, vanishing here and there in the woods and disappearing at times between lichen-stained gray walls. He traced it backward across the silvery brook, back to the quaint village with its clustering gray stone houses, red-tiled roofs, and strange church tower, and watched for a moment the delicate wreaths of smoke curl upward, straight with the promise of fine weather. Farther still he followed it into the flat country past the reservoir, a brilliant streak of scintillating light, back into the heart of the town whence he had come, and which stretched there now in the middle distance a medley of factory chimneys and miles of houses--a great foul blot upon the fair landscape.

He remembered it as he had ridden out an hour or so ago, the outskirts with all their depressing ugliness, a cobbled road, a shabby tramcar with a tired horse creeping along a road where dirty children played weary games and shouted shrilly to one another. A miserable region of smoke-begrimed houses and small shops, an unattractive public house at every corner, round which loafed men with the white faces of tired animals, and women dragging babies and shouting abuse to their more venturesome offspring.

With painful distinctness he saw it all--the opened factory gates, the belching out of a slatternly mob of shrieking girls and ribald youths, the streets untidy with the refuse of the greengrocers' shops, the hot, fetid atmosphere of the low-lying town. He closed his eyes--ah, how swiftly it all vanished! In his ears was the pleasant chirping of many insects, the glorious sunshine lay about him like wine, the west wind made music in the woods, one thrush in particular was singing to him blithely from the thatched roof of his cottage--a single throbbing note against a melodious background of the whole woodful of twittering birds. The man smiled to himself, well pleased.

Then his thoughts in relief slipped away from the present to the little perfumed garden of the vicarage across the hills. He was there in the deepening twilight listening in wonder to the song that floated on the still air. The voice was that of a woman such as Strone had never looked upon before. He closed his eyes with the memory--the night lived again for him as the song grew--and the air seemed suddenly sweet and vibrating with music. He was strangely, wonderfully thrilled, for that night from the lips of this tired woman of fashion, there had come to him a new wonder in life. His pulses quivered with the memory of it, of the music that died away. As in a dream he saw her again upon the threshold of the French window looking listlessly out at them, her beautiful slim figure softly defined against the rose-shaded background. Every detail of that wonderful moment was stamped upon his mind forever. The gleam of the Reverend Martinghoe's cigar shone softly in the silence--the eager words of the two men had long since died away, and Strone's gaze went in thought from the man who had brought him there to the face of Lady Malingcourt who had come out to them in the darkness. With a rich voice that seemed still to hold the last note of her song, she had chided them for their lack of compliments. The Reverend Martinghoe had only laughed as he looked up at his sister, but Strone the mechanic, the laborer from Gascester, who had penetrated these precincts only on the older man's kindness, had moved from out the shadows and with a few murmured words had ridden away as in a dream....

A carriage grated on the road beyond. Strone opened his eyes and saw a brougham and pair leisurely ascending the hill; he watched it with surprise for it was a rough road and seldom used.

It drew level with him, and he became aware of a brilliant vision, a Bond Street toilet, a woman fair and listless, leisurely extending a daintily shod foot to the step of the suddenly checked carriage. He was astonished to find himself the possessor of emotions more fierce and vivid than any he had ever imagined. He was suddenly shy and awkward.

She stepped across the road and held out a gray-gloved hand.

"How do you do, Mr. Strone? Are we really anywhere near this wonderful cottage of yours?"

He pointed to where the smoke crept up behind the hillock.

"You are very near, indeed, Lady Malingcourt," he said.

She paused, suddenly embarrassed. How stupid the man was, standing there like an owl.

"I am curious to see the outside," she said. "I cannot imagine what a home-made house looks like. It reminds one so much of the picture books of our youth. Can I see it from the other side of the field without climbing anything?"

Strone threw open the gate, and she passed through, her gray skirt trailing with a silken rustle across the short, green turf. She looked at him sideways languidly--how stupid the man was.

"I have been paying calls," she said; "a dreary ordeal in the country. People expect you to play croquet or smell flowers, and have tea out of doors. So extraordinary. Life seems made up of people who live in London and have houses in the country, and people who live in the country and have houses in London. Such a wonderful difference, isn't there?"

"I suppose so," he answered.

Then there was a short silence. It was an event, this, so bewildering, so unexpected, that Strone was unable to recover himself. A new shyness held him speechless. Lady Malingcourt, who was wondering now if she rightly understood it, did nothing to help him.

Of the wonderful hour that followed Strone had a rather confused impression. Little by little his tongue became loosened, he initiated her into the mysteries of that very simple place his hermitage, and all unknown to himself, to that rather complex thing the man. She enthused over the one and affected to ignore the other, while with rare subtlety she threw into their talk a salt-like impetus in regard to his work that stung.

"I must go," she said at last rising. "Remember that John is bringing me to have tea with you next Sunday. I have promised to take him to Lingford Grange to dine to-night."

The man at her side stopped suddenly.

"Will you sing to them there?" he asked.

She did not answer at once. She was studying the picturesque incongruity of Strone with his surroundings, the contrast between his marvelous attire and his easy, fluent speech. Neither flustered nor assertive, he was unconscious of his quiet, strong mastery; encouraged to talk he talked; when opportunity came he was silent. She was filled with admiration of the man, the genius, the mechanic inventor who, his brother had told her, was to make a name that would live; and there stole to this blasé woman under the glancing sunlight a strange new feeling which she defined as interest.

"Why? You will not be there surely?"

He ignored the insolence of her question.

"If you mean that I shall not be one of Colonel Drevenhill's guests--certainly not," he rejoined. "Nevertheless if you are asked to sing, I hope that you will."

He watched the carriage until it was out of sight.

All the rest of the afternoon he lay on the warm turf above the cottage smoking fiercely, and reading Heine. Then a gate slammed. The book slipped from his fingers. He sat up, listening, his heart beating thickly, his eyes ablaze. It was a woman who came into sight, but a woman in an ill-hanging skirt, pushing a cheap bicycle, a woman hot and dusty with riding. He ground his heel upon his feeling of sickly disappointment. This was better for him. He rose and went to meet her--took the bicycle; did his best to seem pleased.

"I didn't know whether I oughter come again so soon," she began doubtfully, watching him with anxious eyes.

"I am glad to see you," he said. "Have you come for more books? See, I will put the kettle on."

He took it to the well and filled it, made up the fire, and reached down some things from the cupboard. She watched him, drawing her gloves through her hand, anxious that he should notice her new hat. He looked at her furtively now and then, wondering whether white muslins and pink roses would have the power to transform her into a creature of that feminine world of which it seemed to him that there could be but one real habitant. Her thick stuff gown, her untidy skirt, and pitifully cheap little hat--he looked them all over mercilessly.

She felt vaguely that her appearance displeased him, yet he had seemed glad to see her. She made up her mind to believe he was glad. It had been so miserable a week--every morning she had woke up in her stuffy little room with only this thought to cheer her--that she was one day nearer Saturday. Much scheming--even a harmless little fib had gone to the buying of the new hat. She had earned it fairly enough. A record week's wages, a dizzy head, fingers and hands sore with labor. But her reward had come. She threw herself upon the turf by his side.

They talked very little. The birds were singing and the west wind blowing through the tree tops. Below them a wide stretch of country, blue-carpeted woods, brown and furrowed fields, fields green with sprouting corn. The girl spoke timidly of the books she had read; he listened, blowing out dense clouds of tobacco smoke. She talked, and every now and then she sighed.

"It is so beautiful here," she murmured. "If only there was no going back."

He was silent. His eyes were fixed upon the tall chimneys and smoky clouds which hung over the city. The girl was picking grass and throwing it away. Her hand met his, sought his touch--and Strone, so unused to anything of the sort, was embarrassed, and clumsily removed it.

She rose up at once.

"You don't want me here any longer," she said. "I'm off."

He stopped her.

"Why, what's the matter, Milly?" he exclaimed. "You have not had your tea yet."

"I don't want any tea."

She stood with her back turned to him. He had an uncomfortable suspicion that she was crying.

"What nonsense," he said. "Sit down while I see about it."

"I don't want any," she repeated. "I'm sorry I came. I'm sorry I ever saw you. I'm off!"

She started down the turf walk, pushing her dusty old bicycle. Strone groaned to himself as he followed in pursuit. He caught her by the gate, touched her arm. She shook herself free.

"Let me be," she said, keeping her face averted.

He saw the gleam of tears in her eyes, and felt himself a brute. Then, somehow, he scarcely knew how it happened, his arm was around her waist and he had kissed her. After that there was no more talk of her going. She sobbed herself into an ecstasy. They returned together.

"I thought that you wanted me gone," she said, in a broken tone, mopping her eyes with her handkerchief. "I was so miserable."

Strone was very uncomfortable. He almost wished that he had let her go. However, he made the best of it, hurried on the tea, and ignored sundry affectionate little overtures on her part. Afterward he chose for his seat an isolated rock, and pointed out to her a place beneath. However, he couldn't avoid her resting her head upon his knee. She began to talk--volubly. It wasn't very interesting--a long tirade--a record of her woes, fascinating to him, for it was a page from the life of one of his kind. What a bringing up! A father who drank, a mother to be passed over in dark silence, a squalid home, children unwholesome and unmanageable. What a struggle for respectability, and what would be the end of it, he wondered, as the light grew dimmer, the evening insects buzzed around them, and far down in the valley little yellow dots of light leaped into life. Then he rose up, and she sadly followed his example.

"I suppose I must go," she said doubtfully.

"I am quite sure of it, if you want to get home to-night," he answered. "I'll carry your bicycle to the gate and light your lamp. You'll remember what we've been talking about. You'll read the books and be brave?"

"Yes."

"Life isn't always black. There's a time when the clouds lift."

"When may I come again?" she asked bluntly.

He took her hand gravely.

"Next Saturday, Milly. If I am not here, you know where the key is. Stop and make yourself some tea."

"If you're away I'll wait," she answered. "I shan't want any tea."

He started her off, and trudged homeward with a sense of unaccountable relief. He felt stifled, vaguely troubled by the memory of the girl's white face and pleading brown eyes. Then a nightingale sang to him. At once his mind was swept bare of all such thoughts. Once more the pine and the clover-scented air around him seemed quivering with strange and passionate music.

That night in the grounds of Lingford Grange the man stood like a statue, half invisible among the shadows. Only his face, wrung with emotion, gleamed pale through the darkness. Out from the window, ablaze with much illumination, out into the cool, still night came the wonderful music tugging at his heartstrings, sending the blood rushing through his veins at fever heat.

The song swelled and the music grew, and with it his impotence. Then came the end--the dying away of that long sustained, melodious note, the crash of chords on the piano, the buzz of applause, merging into conversation.

And all these things Strone heard, for Lingford Grange, with its magnificent front and groves of poplars, stood with its back sheer upon a country road, and the newly built music room almost overhung the pathway. He heard, and he listened for more. They would make her sing again! Soon a silence, the silence of expectation--a note or two upon the piano--and again her voice. More wonderful than ever. It was a fantasy of music, elusive, capricious, delightful. The song ended with the woman's laughter. Strone groaned where he stood, under the rustling leaves. It was like an omen, a chill forewarning of his own certain fate.

Shadows passed backward and forward across the window, and Strone waited, drunk for the moment with his stupendous folly. The music had crept into his brain; a new force was alive within him. He stood there rigid, immovable.

"She will come to the window," he said to himself.

And she came. He knew her at once, as she came slowly into sight, leaning on the arm of Colonel Devenhill. A diamond star burned in her hair, a great bunch of white roses were clustering loosely at her bosom. She walked straight to the window and looked out. The spirit of the song seemed still to linger in her face, her eyelids dropped a little, her lips were parted in the faintest of smiles! Against the lamplit background she formed perhaps the fairest image of a woman Strone had ever gazed upon. Her bare arms and neck shone like alabaster, her black net gown glittered all over with some marvelous trimming traced in a strange design about her skirt. She stood there looking out, and Strone lifted his eyes to hers. It was like fire flashing through the summer darkness. Then he heard her voice.

"How delicious this air is. Could I trouble you to fetch my fan, Colonel Devenhill? It is on the piano."

The man disappeared. Then Strone's heart throbbed. Though he dared not speak or move toward her it seemed to him that they were alone. He watched her breathlessly. A white jeweled hand played for a moment with the ornament which held her roses--then they came dropping into the darkness, a little shower of white blossoms. Almost immediately the young man rejoined her, the fan in his hand. With a single bound Strone cleared the road, picked up the roses one by one with hot, dry fingers, and regained his shelter with the echo of a woman's soft laugh ringing in his ears.

He chose a safe place and watched her go by an hour or so later, leaning back in the carriage with half-closed eyes, as though asleep, and a cloud of drooping white lace around her shoulders. It was only a glimpse. Then he lit his pipe and trudged homeward across the hills. With the gray dawn he turned upon his madness and fought it.

Day by day he rode backward and forward from his hillside cottage to Gascester, through the misty dawn and the white moonlight. Like a man at bay he fought his madness--he, the grimy mechanic in grease-stained clothing, who had drawn an evil poison into his veins. Heart and soul he flung himself with grim determination into his great work. The wheels of his models whirred and the great pistons throbbed with life. Out of chaos there resolved itself before him a problem to be solved--beyond was fortune immeasurable. So he toiled, not discouraged by many failures, grim and unswerving in his resolve to struggle through into the light.

It was in those days that Strone's ambition, kindled long enough ago, burst suddenly into full flame. He neglected his reading and his solitary country rambles for a spell of downright hard work. Many nights he remained at the works long after the workpeople had left, locked in his shed, with a single light burning--laboring always at the same apparently confused collection of wheels and strangely shaped pieces of metal which were to do the work of ten machines or a hundred men. His progress was slow, and a less forceful man would long ago have been discouraged. There was a point beyond which movement seemed impossible. Ever he was hammering away, as many others had done before him, at a problem which seemed insoluble.

He rode backward and forward like a man in a dream. Ever those wheels seemed flying round before his eyes, and somewhere between them and the piston rod there was a link--but where? He told himself plainly that the thing was possible. Some day it would come to him. He had always told himself that. Only whereas a few months ago he had contemplated the end with a sort of leisurely curiosity, he felt himself impelled to work now with a feverish haste, as though time had suddenly closed in upon him.

* * * * *

At last the day came when Strone lay on the short turf, smoking quietly, looking out upon the glimmering world with new eyes. Sphinxlike he gazed with an impassivity somewhat to be wondered at, for an hour ago he had finished his task. Those silent days, those long spells of work, when day had become fused into night and night into day, had left their mark upon him. His face was thinner, his eyes almost brilliant, a slight feverishness had flushed his cheeks. The man's sense of power had grown and deepened. For he had faced great problems, he had bent great forces to his will. He had succeeded where other men had failed.

He looked out into the world and tried to apprise himself rightly. He wanted to know where he stood. There was a place which he could claim. Where? How high up, how low down? How far could wealth take him? What was the value of his brains in the world's esteem? He tried to reckon these things up, and he found it difficult. It was a kaleidoscopic, misty wilderness into which he looked. He was trying to deal with his future from a wholly new point of view, and felt very much at sea.

Those moments of introspective thought became moments of self-confession. He realized, and admitted, the change in himself. The old ideals were unshaken, but they no longer held paramount sway. The gift of his brains to humanity, the betterment of his fellows, the inauguration of certain carefully conceived labor schemes no longer appealed to him with that wonderful enthusiasm which seemed to have almost sanctified his work. They were still dear to him, the end and aim of his practical efforts, but they were no longer all-controlling. A new thing had come to him, a new emotion, quickening, irresistible, delirious! He was no longer completely master of himself--a stray memory could set his heart thumping, could scatter his thoughts to the four winds of heaven. A touch of madness, this, yet sweeter even than his sense of triumph. Such madness, too! What had he, Enoch Strone, to do with fair women and white roses, though the woman had smiled for a moment upon him, and the perfume of the roses still hung about his little room. Yet--wealth was transfiguring--omnipotent. The words were her own. And in his hand was the golden key.