A Gamble with Life

by Silas K. Hocking

In a great many instances Yankee cuteness was pitted against British caution and common-sense, and in the end the caution and common-sense won the day.

Moreover, Rufus's sense of accountability was particularly keen. He had only just come out of the furnace, in which he had been tried as few men have been tried. The consciousness of God had not been blurred by long years of professionalism. There was no latent or acquired taint of Pharisaism in his nature. His faith was as pure and simple as that of a child.

He might have made his pile in a week in an exciting gamble. On the mere chance of mineral being found he might have become a rich man; but he refused to proceed on those lines. He wanted occupation for himself. He wanted moral authority for all he did.

The breathless haste to be rich which he saw all around him almost made him angry. The majority of men seemed to be too eager to be honest, they were tumbling over each other in their passion to be first in the field.

The Rebothites began to understand the young Englishman after a while, and to respect him. His sterling honesty, his refusal to take a mean advantage, won their admiration. It might not be business. Judged by local standards, his conduct was Quixotic. They could not understand a man who was not eager and impatient to scoop up the dollars when he had the chance. But they had to take him as they found him, and in their hearts they admired him while they blamed him.

Rufus came slowly to the consciousness that he was a man of considerable importance. Slowly, too, he realised that in time he would be a rich man, not through any merit of his own, but through the judgment and foresight of his father.

For months he only thought of Madeline Grover at odd moments. He was too busy with the tasks that had been thrown suddenly upon him. Fresh duties appeared nearly every day, and better still, from his point of view, fresh opportunities were given for the exercise of his inventive talent.

He was no longer cribbed, and cabined, and confined. There was a sense of freedom he had never known in other days. He had room to work in, scope for all his energies, and release from the bars and bands imposed by a landed aristocracy. There were many things American he cordially disliked, but the air of freedom that was over everything was most exhilarating. He felt as though his brain worked with only half the effort, and with no slightest sense of weariness.

Besides all that, he was free to adopt new methods. Nobody was bound by precedent. He could exercise his inventive faculty without hostility and without criticism. Hence, life became to him a daily unfolding of fresh interests.