Master of Men Part 2

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 sn.o.bs. 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 b.u.t.terflies 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 coa.r.s.e, 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, pa.s.sionately. 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 cla.s.s 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 circ.u.mstances 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 reestablish it. He staggered out of the gate, and walked blindly away.

The man's pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d!" 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."