第75章 BOOK III:THE HEART OF MAN(28)

His success was an established fact.The second trial which he had made with his car,this time with the whole town gathered together in the streets as witnesses,had proved not only the reliability of its mechanism,but the great advantages which it possessed for a direct flight to any given point.Already he saw Fortune beckoning to him in the shape of an unconditional offer of money from a first-class source;and better still,-for he was a man of untiring energy and boundless resource -that opportunity for new and enlarged effort which comes with the recognition of one's exceptional powers.

All this was his and more.A sweeter hope,a more enduring joy had followed hard upon gratified ambition.Doris had smiled on him;-Doris!She had caught the contagion of the universal enthusiasm and had given him her first ungrudging token of approval.It had altered his whole outlook on life in an instant,for there was an eagerness in this demonstration which proclaimed the relieved heart.

She no longer trusted either appearances or her dream.He had succeeded in conquering her doubts by the very force of his personality,and the shadow which had hitherto darkened their intercourse had melted quite away.She was ready to take his word now and Oswald's,after which the rest must follow.Love does not lag far behind an ardent admiration.

Fame!Fortune!Love!What more could a man desire?What more could this man,with his strenuous past and an unlimited capacity for an enlarged future,ask from fate than this.Yet,as he bends over his letters,fingering some,but reading none beyond a line or two,he betrays but a passing elation,and hardly lifts his head when a burst of loud acclaim comes ringing up to his window from some ardent passer-by:"Hurrah for Brotherson!He has put our town on the map!"Why this despondency?Have those two demons seized him again?It would seem so and with new and overmastering fury.After the hour of triumph comes the hour of reckoning.Orlando Brotherson in his hour of proud attainment stands naked before his own soul's tribunal and the pleader is dumb and the judge inexorable.There is but one Witness to such struggles;but one eye to note the waste and desolation of the devastated soul,when the storm is over past.

Orlando Brotherson has succumbed;the attack was too keen,his forces too shaken.But as the heavy minutes pass,he slowly re-gathers his strength and rises,in the end,a conqueror.

Nevertheless,he knows,even in that moment of regained command,that the peace he had thus bought with strain and stress is but momentary;that the battle is on for life:that the days which to other eyes would carry a sense of brilliancy -days teeming with work and outward satisfaction -would hold within their hidden depths a brooding uncertainty which would rob applause of its music and even overshadow the angel face of Love.

He quailed at the prospect,materialist though he was.The days -the interminable days!In his unbroken strength and the glare of the noonday sun,he forgot to take account of the nights looming in black and endless procession before him.It was from the day phantom he shrank,and not from the ghoul which works in the darkness and makes a grave of the heart while happier mortals sleep.

And the former terror seemed formidable enough to him in this his hour of startling realisation,even if he had freed himself for the nonce from its controlling power.To escape all further contemplation of it he would work.These letters deserved attention.He would carry them to Oswald,and in their consideration find distraction for the rest of the day,at least.

Oswald was a good fellow.If pleasure were to be gotten from these tokens of good-will,he should have his share of it.A gleam of Oswald's old spirit in Oswald's once bright eye,would go far towards throttling one of those demons whose talons he had just released from his throat;and if Doris responded too,he would deserve his fate,if he did not succeed in gaining that mastery of himself which would make such hours as these but episodes in a life big with interest and potent with great emotions.

Rising with a resolute air,he made a bundle of his papers and,with them in hand,passed out of his room and down the hotel stairs.

A man stood directly in his way,as he made for the front door.

It was Mr.Challoner.

Courtesy demanded some show of recognition between them,and Brotherson was passing with his usual cold bow,when a sudden impulse led him to pause and meet the other's eye,with the sarcastic remark:

"You have expressed,or so I have been told,some surprise at my choice of mechanician.A man of varied accomplishments,Mr.

Challoner,but one for whom I have no further use.If,therefore,you wish to call off your watch-dog,you are at liberty to do so.

I hardly think he can be serviceable to either of us much longer."The older gentleman hesitated,seeking possibly for composure,and when he answered it was not only without irony but with a certain forced respect: