"A CONQUEST OF FORTUNE," 0.|1910-12-05|Evening Express

"A CONQUEST OF FORTUNE," 0.

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"A CONQUEST OF FORTUNE," 0. By GEORGE GRIFFITH. BEGiN THE STORY HERE. I CHAPTER. T.-The f-tory opens with the romantic ret.irrt, to Dudley from America after twelve yeirs' absence of Mr. Bryan Endicot. who. as hoy. left school and went away after his father's tragic death, Hi" father was an ironmaster supposed to be wealthy, but at I yourve; Endicot I le^eived from 1,u,-as Star key. a. iawver. was 4?, anci he came home to find the latter m po:<;e1nn of the ?orkp. During his stay in America Endicot gained wealth ard fame as Frank T'-nan, an inventor. Whttn he reached home he was invited by Mr Heath-^te. an old friend, who was also a.n ironmaster, to join his firm in order to avnsd opposition, but Fndieot said he was determined to regain the works once held by his father. CHAPTER II.—Bryan, after leaving Mr. Heathcote, wandered to a DOt where years I before he used to meet Vivien Lenox, his little sweetheart, daughter of the classical master at Kins: Edward's School, and to h;" <nlfPru::e discovered a letter in the tree which they bad used for depositing mes- saras to each other. ? was Vivien, aneøw :;lneri:e: in ?* );v: Sb? expressed ?;urLri,?e that he had not C3!'ed upon he". Later he learned that Mr. I.enox was dead from the shock of receiving a fortune, and that Vivien had left, and was supposed to have married. CHAPTER III. (Continued). I me lawyer laugneu. lie was beginning to Bryan Endicot as a mere dreamer. Certainly he had developed into a remark- able genius and had become one of the men of the time, and this great, endowment had probably dwarfed his othr mental faculties. as was often the case when faculties were rapidly developed. I shall not have much trouble with him. he thought. "He is simply bubblina; over with foolish sentiment." "T heard what you were saying about marriage and all that. and I am sure that 1 wish you happiness and success. Brvan sighed. "Stourbridge is a pretty rlacfI and *he surrounding country is charm- ing. "I live at Red Hill, right through the town," answered Mr. Starkey. Bryan soon saw that the lawyer was a man (f importance in Stourbridge. As the carriage whirled into the town passers-by touched their hats and the occupants of pass- ing "arriages greeted him with bows and smiles and lifted hats. Do you happen to mow a family named Tyldeslev. living somewhere rotind here?" Bryan asked. Mr. Starkey looked at him sharply. "There are several families of that name. Why do you ask?" "Just, curiosity." laughed Bryan "The name !p familiar to me from the old days," I After another pau?e the lawyer said rather drily 'H, rather remarkable that yon should put. that question, my dear Fruiicot. The Tyldesleys of the place are my nearest, neigh- bours." Bryan felt his face growing alternately hot and ^old. and his heart was certainly beating a few strokes more to the minute. "Perhaps I shall see Vivien." he thought. < "And if I do [ shall hear something of the truth about her." The town was left behind, and the carriage j had entered a narrow lane. The way was hilly, and so the horse was allowed to walk. "Nearly home." said Mr. Starkey'. "That is Tyldesley's place. You CJn see the housa through the trees. Bryan did not reply. He was looking with all hig eyes at a girl on the lawn in frwit of the house. She was rather tall. < hut the exquisite lines of her figure and her perfect pof-e made her entirely admirable and desirable. Her thick-coiled hair gleamed in the sunlight with the lustre of ripe co^n. Bryan gave a hoarse sort of gasp and then shti* his teeth. What the deuce is the matter with you. Endicot?" asked the lawyer "American dyspepsia, I'm afraid," he answered with a well-simulated hiccough. this is your home?" he added, as the carriago turned into a trirrly-kept drive. "Yes. I have named it Coningsby. after one ot Beacon-field'* books. I daresay you will be a bit surprised, my dear Endicot. to find that I should keep up an establishment like this- Yes. I ran see it iii your face." he laughed. "I have the shabbiest office in Dudley. and. I think, the nicest house round Stourbridge. When you come to know wlxat, f really am and what t intend to he. you 1 won't wonder so much. After lunch we'll call i !> tha Tyldesleys, and then I shall have the ereat privilege of introducing Mr. Frank Tynan, the great investor of the new cen- tury." He chuckled, in a n-ii-, altogether pleasant fashion, as Bryan thought, and, for some unaccountable reason, he felt thil he was approaching some new combination of eir- cumstances out of whirh might ir;,P, some great crisis in his life. CHAPTER IV. Bryan had not been Ion in Mr- fttartey'sl house before he found out thaf. however ne bad made his money, he had got eicell<»1 value for it. and that he had learnt the art! ,f doing himself remarkably well. His house was solidly furnished, after the fashion of the Midlands, but it was comfortable almost to the point of luxury. His servants evidently knew their work—and their master. His con- servatories were filleri with excellently-chosen exotics, and the garden made just the kind of surrounding that such a should have had. "Try that claret, my dear Endicot." he said tc his guest at Junch, pushing the decanter towards him; "that's part of a special ship- ment that I've get over from a friend of mine in Medoc. I think you'll find it nice. light, snuniI wine. That will do, Johnson, you needn't wait. I think we "an look after ourselves," he continued to hi7 butler, who, as a. matter of fact, had recently been pro- moted from the stable yard. When they were alone he continued:— Of course, it would not be the slightest use, my dear Endicot. for me to attempt to decene you in any way 1.> to my pre-ent circumstances. You know my humble origin," he said with a smile and a gesture which Uriah Hcep himself might have envie<i, and which made his guest want to take him by the collar and kick him through the win- dow.. on to his own lawn. "All the same, of course. I don't want that fact advertised to the world in general under the present circumstances. The people about here, as you unrlerstand-I mean those, of course, who are anybody—are a trifle sensitive on that subject, and I should not care for it to be known in certain quarters that I was the son of a journeyman carpenter earning twenty-five shillings per week. and paying five of it for the cottage that I was born in. However. that's ail over and done with now. and you see what I have attained to." "Yes." said Brvan. with perhaps less enthusiasm than his host expected; joii cer- tainly seem to have got along wonderfully v-ell. Mr. Starkey. and you have made your- self a most comfortable little nest here-a; nest which. I presume, from what you said as we came along, you hope to have shared by a mate entirely to your-what shall I say— present fortunes and future expectations? That's about it, isn't it?" Although it ISy no means suited his plans to give Mr. Starkey any offence just then, Endicot was quite unable to keep all the sarcasm out of his voice that he wanted to put into it. but what there was his host never noticed. Like all hard men, he had his soft. [ sides, and. little knowing how far he was committing himself, he was bent upon exposing it now. "Yes, yes," he replied, filling his glass and holding it up to the light, "that is it, Endicot— that is it. Until a year or so ago I confess that I I had hut one object in life. As you know, I was the son of a working man, and a poor one at that. As I fought and struggled and rose, as 1 worked my way from the Parish School to the Orrammar School, and from there to Mason's College—where T studied for my law examinations-I saw on every side that tuonev meant power—the only power Lhat. nineteen out of every twenty men and women acknowledge. "I saw. as you yourself must have seen, that there are two elements in success, ahility and opportunity. Neither of them is any good without the other. There are hundreds of geniuses starving now just because they have never had the right opportunity to make use of then- brains. There are other hundreds of men. thousands perhaps, who have le," brains than these, bnt who found their opnori IInitY-:Hld I am one of them." "Yes." replied Bryan, after a sip at his wine, "I quite agree with you. As a matter of fact, that happened to myself. And now, having, as we say over on the other side, made your pile. I suppose you find yourself in a position to moralise about the vanity of richcs. "Oh. come now. my dear Endicot." replief) his host, with another somewhat too expres- sive smile. Don't be too severe. Remember, please, that you also have made your pile. as you c-411 it. and. therefore, it is within He was looking with all his eyes at a girl standing on the lawn. the bounds of possibility that you might find vourself in the same position as myself, and therefore you will be able to practically sympathise with me." "I'm afraid I don't quite follow you as far r.5 that," replied Bryan. He did not tell his host that he was thinking of the golden- crowned. blue-eyed vision that he had seen as they had passed the garden gate next door. "I quite agree with you as to the purchasing power of money. I know just as well as you do that, as long as you've got a sovereign or a five-pound note you can buy twenty or hun- dred shillings worth of human flesh and blood and brain?, and when you've done with it you can throw the refuse away, and have no more responsibility about it." "And why should you have?" said Mr. Starkey, putting hi; right elbow on the table and resting his chin on his hand. "You have bought it and paid for it just as you would any other article of commerce. We are j not all of us individual branches of the Charity Organisation Society." "Quite so," assented Bryan, "I thought you'd say that. That is just the difference I between the old kind of slavery and the r:ew. "My dear sir. of course I know that you've come back from the most democratic country in the world, but I hope that you are not I going to ask me to believe that there is any- thing like economic freedom in the United States of America any more than there was, as a matter of fact, in the old days of personal slavery. That is a strong saying, but I am talking of what I know. I "Yes, yes, I think I quite see what you I mean now, although I confess that I have never had the question put so strikingly I .before Those iniquitous trusts and corners. i Terrible. But all the same. you must admit that under present conditions of employment. as we have them in this country, our workers are free. They can engage themselves, and they can discharge themselves." ,TO BE CONTINUED TO-MORROW.)

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