Part 2

During the weeks that followed, the great change in Strone's temporal fortunes which as yet he had only dreamed of actually came to pass. The model spoke for itself and patents had been applied for in every country of the world. Already an offer was forthcoming for the American rights the amount of which sounded to Strone like a fairy tale. It was a hundred thousand pounds and the syndicate would resell for a quarter of a million--but it was cash and the miracle crane would make his fortune. With the offer for the first time he realized in some measure his altered position in life. A golden key had come into his hands, many doors in the pleasure house of the world would fly open now at his touch. Pictures, statuary, a library, travel--these things for which he had always craved were now within his reach. It had come with a magical suddenness--it was hard even now to realize. Where was he to draw the line? Where were the limits of the things which he might set himself to win?

Then the four walls of his room fell away. He stretched out his arms, his eyes kindled, he tore away the bandage from before them. No more hypocrisy! The madness which had become the joy of his life was stealing through all his veins, his heart beat fiercely with the delight of it. He pitted his common sense against what he had deemed a fantasy, and his common sense vanished like smoke, and the fantasy became a real living thing. She was as far above him as the stars--a delicately nurtured woman, with all the grace and beauty of her order--he was a mechanic of humble origin, ignorant of the ways of her world, of the world to which she must forever belong. What matter?

He was a man, after all, and she was a woman--and there was the golden key. It was in his hands, and who in the universe had ever been able to set a limit upon its powers? With her own lips he had heard her murmur, half in jest and half in earnest, her adoration of it. His common sense mocked at him but the madness was there like a thrall.

He walked over to the vicarage, where he had spent so many hours of late. She was out. He waited. When he heard her carriage stop, the trailing of her skirt as she crossed the lawn, he rose up and went to meet her.

"John leads a lonely life out here," she said presently. "I hope you will remember that, and come and see him often when I am gone."

He looked up at her quickly. His heart had stopped beating.

"Are you going away?" he asked.

She smiled.

"Don't you think that I have paid rather a long visit as it is?" she asked. "I have two houses of my own I am supposed to look after, and I had no end of engagements for last month and this. As a matter of fact, this is the longest visit I have ever paid here in my life."

"The longest visit you have ever paid here?" he repeated. "Perhaps that is because you have had more friends staying near?"

She looked into his eyes and laughed softly. Strone felt the hot color burn his cheeks. Something had happened! She was changed. The tired woman of the world had gone. She was not bored, she was not listless any longer. She was looking at him very kindly, and her eyes were wonderfully soft.

"Perhaps I have found one more," she said, smiling, "and have been content to be without the others. Let go my hands, sir, at once."

She drew a little away from him. His brain was in a whirl. He was scarcely sure of his sanity. Then:

"Will you sit down for a few minutes?" he asked. "There is something I want to say to you."

She paused.

"I am a little tired," she said. "Will another time do?"

"No," he answered. "I am going away early to-morrow."

She followed him without comment to the seat under the cedar tree. She leaned back and half closed her eyes. She was certainly a little pale.

"Well?"

"I have seen Dobell to-day."

"Your employer?"

"Yes. At least he was my employer. He is to be my partner."

She opened her eyes and looked at him now with languid curiosity.

"Is that not rather a sudden rise in the world?" she asked carelessly.

"It is very sudden," he answered. "It is the miracle crane. Mr. Dobell has had it patented, and we have been offered one hundred thousand pounds for the American rights alone. Mr. Dobell says that there is a great fortune in it."

She looked at him with wide-open eyes, eyes full of an expression which baffled him, which, if he had been a wiser man and more versed in woman's ways, should also have been a warning to him.

"I congratulate you," she said quietly. "You are wonderfully fortunate to become rich so suddenly, at your age."

Her tone was altogether emotionless, her lack of enthusiasm too obvious to be ignored. He was puzzled. He became nervous.

"You know that it isn't the money I care about," he said. "You yourself have always admitted that to be a power in the world wealth is a necessity. I only care for money for what it may bring me. You once said that the millionaire is all-powerful."

"Did I?" she answered. "That, of course, was an exaggeration."

He rose suddenly to his feet, a flush in his cheeks, his tone husky. He stood over her, his hand on the back of her seat, his eyes seeking to penetrate the graceful nonchalance of her tone and manner.

"Lady Malingcourt," he said, "there is one thing in the world--perhaps I am mad to dream of it--I know I am, but if ever I had the smallest chance of gaining it, there is nothing I would not attempt, nothing I would not do."

There was a sharp break in his voice, a mist before his eyes. Lady Malingcourt was studying the pattern of her lace parasol. Suddenly she closed it and looked up at him.

"Don't you think you had better postpone the rest--until after dinner?" she said quietly.

"No," he answered. "You and your brother, Lady Malingcourt, have been very kind to me. You have made me sometimes almost forget the difference between a mechanic such as I am and gentle people such as you. So I have dared to wonder whether that difference must be forever."

"You are really rather foolish to talk like this," she remarked, smiling placidly at him. "I do not know quite what difference you mean. There is no difference between your world and mine whatever, except that a mechanic is often a gentleman, and gentle people are often snobs. You are wonderfully modest to-day, Mr. Strone. I had an idea that people with brains like yours considered themselves very superior to the mere butterflies of life."

"I am speaking as I feel," he answered. "I have tried to make myself think differently, but it is impossible. One can't ignore facts, Lady Malingcourt, and when I am with you I feel rough, and coarse, and ignorant; I feel that even to think of what I want to say to you is gross presumption."

She rose slowly to her feet.

"Then do not say it, Mr. Strone," she said quietly, "and leave off thinking about it."

His eyes sought hers eagerly, passionately. There was no sign in her face of the woman from whose hands had fluttered those white roses through the darkness into his keeping. Her head was uplifted, her eyes cold--even it seemed to him that her delicate lips were slightly curled. His heart sank like lead.

"You see, after all, I am right," he cried bitterly. "You are angry with me, you will not let me speak. You think I am mad because I have dared to dream of you as the one hope of my life."

"No," she answered, "I am not angry with you. I hope that you will never allude to this again, so I will tell you something. The difference of rank between us counts for nothing. You are young, and you have gifts which will make you, when you choose, willingly accepted among any class of people with whom you care to spend your days. But, nevertheless, I consider what you were about to say to me presumption."

He started quickly. They were face to face now upon the edge of the lawn. Lady Malingcourt had drawn herself up, and a bright spot of color burned in her cheeks.

"That you are a mechanic," she said, "makes you, to be candid, more interesting to me. Nothing in your circumstances would have made your feeling toward me anything but an honor. It is as a man that you fail. Your standard of life is one which I could not possibly accept. I presume that it comes from your bringing up, so I do not wish to say anything more about it. Only I beg you to consider what I have said as final, and to do me the favor of thinking no longer of what must remain forever absolutely--impossible."

She swept past him and entered the house. He remained for a moment nerveless and tongue-tied. The lash of her bitter words stupefied him. What had he done?--wherein had he so greatly failed? After all, what did it matter? About him lay the fragments of that wonderful dream which had made life so sweet to him. Nothing could ever reëstablish it. He staggered out of the gate, and walked blindly away.

The man's passion found kinship with the storm which broke suddenly over his head. The thunder clouds rolled up from the horizon, and the lightning shone around him with a yellow glare. Below him the tree tops and the young corn were bent by a rushing wind--even the cattle in the fields crept away to shelter. The sky above grew black, forked lightning now glittered from east to west, writing its lurid message to the trembling earth. He sat on a high rock bareheaded, and the rain, falling now in sheets, drenched him through and through.

He had lost all control of himself. The passion which had been his sole inheritance from his drink-sodden parents mastered him easily. At that moment he was almost a savage. He cursed John Martinghoe and the moment when he had been lured into the belief that his self-education and mastery of self had made him the equal of those who were divided from him only by the accident of birth. He cursed the woman whose kindness had led him into a fool's paradise, the sudden change in his position which seemed now only a mockery to him. The fit passed with a little outburst of shame. Nevertheless, it was with bent head and gray-lined face that he crept downward to his cottage, drenched to the skin.

He heaped wood upon the embers of a fire and sat over it, shivering. Almost a stupor came over him as he sat there, weak, numbed to the bone with the clinging dampness of his clothes. If this thing had happened to him in full health, he would have met it more bravely. After all, it was the end which he had always told himself was inevitable. A sense of bitter shame was mingled with his dejection. He had built up his life so carefully, only to see it sent crashing about his ears at a woman's light touch. So he sat brooding among the fragments, while the rain beat fiercely against his window pane and the wind howled in the wood.

He came to himself suddenly, awakened by the opening of the door. He looked around. Milly stood there, her pale cheeks glowing with the sting of the rain and the wind, her hair in disorder, her eyes alight with the joy of seeing him. She dropped a heap of parcels and fell on her knees by his side.

"Oh, thank God!" she sobbed. "Oh, I am so glad to see you, so glad!"

Her streaming eyes, the warm touch of her hands, pierced his insensibility. He even smiled faintly.

"What are you doing here, child?" he asked, "on such a night, too. Why, you are wet through."

She evaded his question, horror-stricken at his own state.

"You're fair soaked," she cried. "Mercy me!"

She brought out his gray homespun clothes from the chest, and with deft fingers removed his coat and waistcoat, talking all the while.

"Well, I never," she exclaimed. "The rain's gone through the lining. It's a mercy you've had sense to keep the fire in. I'll make you a hot drink directly."

He submitted himself to her care. After the agony of the last few hours the sound of her shrill, but not unpleasant, voice and her breathless anxiety on his behalf seemed almost grateful. He was hustled into dry clothes, and his feet and hands were rubbed into a state of glowing warmth. Fresh logs were thrown upon the fire, a kettle boiled, and some tea deftly prepared. From one of her parcels came bread and meat. He ate at her bidding. Outside the storm grew in violence.

She sat crouched almost at his feet, the firelight playing on her brown hair, her eyes wet with tears.

A clearer sense of what was happening came to him. He sat up suddenly.

"How did you come here?" he asked.

"I haven't a home," she said. "Mother died last Thursday, Nancy's taken the kids, father's in jail--he's got six months."

His old pity was revived. He smoothed her hair.

"Poor child!"

At his touch the sobs came. Her head drooped upon his knee.

"Nancy wouldn't have me in the house; her husband thinks he likes me, and I am afraid of him. I'd nowhere to sleep, so I walked out here, meaning to sleep in the woods. Don't turn me out, oh, don't! I'm all alone in the world, and I don't want to be like the others. Let me stay. I'll do everything for you. I won't speak when you don't want me to. You'll never know I'm here, except when you want anything done. Oh, please, please be kind to me. If you don't, I shall go and drown myself. I've been miserable so long."

Her cry went to his heart, pierced even the dull lethargy of his own despair. The rain was dashing against the window. He glanced at the clock--it was nearly midnight.

"Poor little waif," he murmured, "and there are so many like you."

She crept, sobbing, into his arms; her hands were clasped around his neck. For her it was happiness immeasurable; for him, too, there was a certain solace in the thought that this lone creature loved him and was dependent upon him. He sat with wide-open eyes, gazing into the fire all the night long.

* * * * *

They were married the next day.

Through the weeks that followed things remained the same at Strone's cottage yet different. Everything was spotlessly clean, but somehow the atmosphere was altered. The chairs were ranged in order against the wall. There were enormities in the shape of woolen antimacassars, a flimsy curtain hung before the small window.

A table on which had lain a _Spectator_ and _Fortnightly Review_ was littered over now with copies of the _Young Ladies' Journal_, some cheap and highly colored sweets, an untidy workbasket.

In Strone himself the change was wonderful. Life had narrowed in upon him; he looked forward with a shudder, the past was as a sealed book. Only some days there came little flashes of memory. He found himself suddenly recalling those wonderfully sweet days of his freedom, when every shadow of care seemed to pass away as he rode out from Gascester, when the wind and the sun and the song of the birds had been his companions. That was all over now. He climbed the steep hill with listless footsteps, no longer full of anticipation of those long hours of exquisite solitude which had become so dear to him. Those days had gone by--forever.

Milly would be waiting at the door, would shower upon him caresses which long ago had palled, would chatter emptily, and dwell peevishly on the long day's solitude. He found himself thinking with a shiver of the interminable evening. There was no escape. If he went out she would follow him; if he read, she sulked. He groaned to himself as he turned the last corner and caught a glimpse of the gray smoke curling upward.

Then he stopped short in the middle of the lane. What little color the heat had brought into his cheeks died away. He looked wildly around, as though half inclined to leap the gray-stone wall and vanish in the tangled wilderness beyond. Yet there was nothing more alarming in the way than a smartly turned-out victoria descending the hill toward him, and, leaning back among the cushions, a tired-looking woman in a white dress and hat with pink roses. Almost at the same moment she saw him, and, leaning forward, she stopped the carriage. To his amazement she stepped lightly out, gave the man an order, and waited for him in the shade of a great oak tree which overhung the road.

He ground his teeth together and advanced to meet her steadily. She greeted him with her old quiet smile. She, too, he thought, was looking pale and listless.

"I'm so glad to see you. Do you mind resting your bicycle somewhere and coming into the shade? I will not keep you very long."

He obeyed her in silence. Words seemed difficult to him just then. They stood in the shadow of the trees which hung over from the wood. She lowered her parasol and seemed for a moment intent upon studying the pattern of the filmy lace. The man's heart beat out like a sledge hammer. Yet he stood there, slowly mastering his emotion, and it was the woman who found speech so difficult.

"I am going to tell you something," she said at last, "which a few days ago I was very sure that I would never tell you."

She pauses. He remains speechless, his eyes fastened upon her.

"Go on."

"One afternoon when you were away I had a fancy to look at your cottage. I came--and found someone there. I questioned the girl. She was a friend of yours, she said. She was confused; what she said seemed incapable of bearing more than one interpretation. I accepted the inference--and that afternoon there was plain speaking--on the lawn."

He was no longer steady on his feet, and in his ears was the rushing of strange sounds, trees and sky were mixed up together.

"You believed--that?" he gasped.

"I judged you," she answered, "by the standard of a world which I believed to be lower than yours. Remember, too, that in many ways I knew so little of you. Different classes of society regard the same thing from such different points of view. Yes, I judged you. I want your forgiveness."

He looked at her wildly.

"What infernal sophistry," he cried. "What is sin in your world is sin in mine!"

"Mind," she continued drearily, "I do not say that even without this I could have answered you differently."

"Don't you know why I came," she said at last impulsively--"It is because you are a man--because you have power and a great future. I want you to rouse yourself--I want you to make a stir in the world. This is what I have come to say to you--to preach a very simple doctrine. Make the best of things. There is room for you in great places, Enoch Strone. This generation is empty of strong men. Fill your life with ambitions and remember all those wonderful dreams of yours. Strive to realize them. Tell Milly about them; let her know each day how you are getting on. Come out of the crowd, Enoch, and let me feel that I have known one man in my life, at least, who was strong enough to climb to the hilltop with another's burden upon his shoulders."

Under the spell of her words his apathy and indifference gave way. Life was there in her face--in her voice. He listened to her with kindling eyes, conscious that the old passion for life was moving once more in his veins--conscious, too, with a certain sense of wonder at the transformation, that this woman, who was pleading with him so earnestly, stood revealed in a wholly new light. The delicate vein of mockery, which sometimes gave to her most serious sayings an air of insincerity, as though conversation were a mere juggling with words, seemed to have passed away. She spoke without languor or weariness, and her words touched his heart--stirred his brain.

The man in him leaped up, vigorous and eager. He faced her with glowing eyes.

"If the burden had been twice as heavy," he cried, "I would bear it cheerfully now. Forever--"

He stopped short. Some instinct told him that any further words were unnecessary. As she had spoken and looked, so would she remain to him forever. So he called her carriage, and once more her fingers rested in his great work-hardened hand.

"Good-bye," she said, "and good fortune."

When he reached the cottage Milly brought tea out to him, waited upon him breathlessly. The terrible gloom which had oppressed her so much had passed away. He was dressed in new and well-fitting clothes. Even to her untrained eye there was a wonderful change in his bearing and demeanor.

"Milly," he said, "would you like to live in London?"

The thought was like paradise. She strove to contain herself.

"With you, Enoch--anywhere."

"With me, certainly," he answered. "We shall go there next week. You will be able to have a decent house and servants. Dobell's are opening a London branch, and I shall have to manage it. I ought to have told you some of these things before. I had no right to keep them to myself. You will never be poor again, Milly. It seems as though we were going to be very rich."

"Enoch! Enoch!"

He smiled at the excitement which baffled speech.

Later he walked out by himself, crossed the field, and entered the deep, cool shade of the wood. It was significant that he passed the spot where he had first met Milly with a little shudder, and hurried away, as though even the memory of that night pursued him. All the while a subtle sense of excitement was in his veins, mingled with a strange, haunting sadness. For him the life in quiet places was over. This was his farewell pilgrimage. Henceforth his place was in the stress of life, in the great passion-riven heart of the world. His days of contemplation were over. There had come Milly, and he very well knew that the old life here, where the singing of every wind, the music of the birds, thrilled him with early memories, was impossible.

After all, good might come of it. The sweetness of solitude, of crowding the brain with delicate fancies, of basking in the joy of beautiful places, was in many senses a paralyzing sweetness. Man was made for creation, not contemplation. So he turned his eyes upon the new world, and there were big things there to wrestle with. The cry of his fellows was in his ears, the cry of those to whom life was a desert place, the long-drawn-out murmur of the great nether world. Life would be good there where the giants fought. Perhaps some day he might even win forgetfulness.

There followed for Enoch Strone during the three succeeding years all the varied lights that shine on a quick success. Not long after his arrival in London he was elected to Parliament, and the ringing maiden speech and rapid progress in the House of the new Labor member were the talk of political circles for a long time. During this period the calls of home and friendship were many, yet he moved through it all singularly unspoilt, impersonally attending in an official capacity only the brilliant dinners and social gathering where he found himself a man among men, but which threw into cruel relief the atmosphere of his own home. Wherever he went Strone was treated with much deference, for he was without doubt in the political world a person of some importance. The balance of parties being fairly even, the government was dependent upon the support of the Labor men to neutralize the Irish faction. And of late Strone had been pushing his claims with calm but significant persistence. The government was pledged to his "Better Housing of the Poor" bill, and he had firmly refused to have it shelved any longer.

This fact he made plain among the men gathered at Lord Sydenham's one evening.

"You don't let the grass grow beneath your feet, my friend," remarked his host, "and your bill on Thursday is going to hit the landlords very hard, you know."

"There are a good many landlords whom I would rather see hanged than merely hit," Strone answered.

The Duke of Massingham moved across to them.

"Come, come, Strone. What's this I hear--you want to hang the landlords?"

"Not all, your grace," Strone answered, with a gleam in his eye. "Only those who house men and women like rats, who let their property tumble to ruin while they drag the last shilling of their rents from starving men and women. To such as these I would make the criminal laws apply. They are responsible for many human lives--for the lower physique of our race."

Lord Sydenham turned round and touched him upon the shoulder.