The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1910-07-15
THE MAN WHO
 ROSE AGAIN
by JOSEPH ROCKING
ICopyright, 1909, by George H. Doran
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 (Continued from page 10.) promising to marry such a thing as I. But she shall pay for that, by she shall. Yes, my proud lady, I'll humble your pride to the dust. You shall eat your words"
 He started to his feet, and paced the empty carriage like mad lion paces his cage. A new passion had laid hold of him now.
 ''No more whining sentimentality for me- he cried, mo more moral platitudes, no more drivel about try ing to be a good man. Good man, Ha,. .Ha. But I'll humble her; yes, I'll not be beaten. Yes, and when I've got my way, I'll taunt her with her words, I'll make her suffer what I'm suffering; aye, and more-lf 1t is possible. You. little thought. my pattern young Sunday school teacher, of what you were doing when you drove me to the devil"
 He caught up the paper, and read the paragraph again. On the face of 1t, it was a lie, poor clumsy at- tempt to cover up the truth. The world would soon know all about it. There were at least seven in the sec ret. There was Purvis, and Sprague, and Winfield, and John Castlemaine yes, and the minister SackvilIe. John Castlemaine would be sure to tell him. Then, as matter of course, the minister would tell his wife. After that-well, every old woman in the congregation would mouth the spicy bit of gossip. Miss Castlemaine had cast him off, be- cause he in drunken freak had made a wager that he would win her as his wife, and she had found him cut. He reflected on the way that the far silly old women in the world Of so-called society would discuss it over afternoon tea, he imagined brainless dudes giving their opinions about him over the whiskies. The men he had despised would pity him, and utter insults about him. Of course the news would reach his con- stituency too. What capital his op- ponerits would make of it all. He imagined the leading article which would appear in the rag called The Taviton Angus. about the reasons for Miss Castlemaine being taken sudden 1y i'll. And it would all be true. Aye, and what was worse, people would say that he, Leicester, the cynic, the man who despised the conventional goodness of the age, had become teetotaler, a supporter of philanthro- pie institutions in order to win a wager. Aye, more, he who had laugh ed at religion had gone to church like a family grocer, had sat in the pew of a Nonconforming conventicle, and had listened to the prosy plati- tudes of an abstrous spiritual shep- herd, to win a girl who had found him out. He fancied the cartoons which would appear in The Taviton Argus, ,picturing him sitting in church, and singing Sankey's hymns. Per haps they would have him kneeling at the penitent form, all to get girl who found him out to be a liar and hypocrite.
 The reflection maddened him. But he would pay them all out. Yes, Purvis and Sprague should bitterly repent the day they opposed his will; as for Olive Castlemaine-well, she should suffer more than he was suf- fering.
 But this mood did not last long. Try as he might he could not hide the gloomy black future which loom ed before him. He pictured himself as he was before the wager was made, a hopeless cynic, a hard bitter man, slave to whisky. And he was worse now. He had been in heaven during these last few months. Yes. he could not deny that woman had cleared his cloudy sky,and had arous- ed in him hopes and 1ongings to which he had been a stranger The future had appeared to him as paradise, a heaven because a woman he loved more than words could say had promised to be his wife. Oh. and he had loved her. Say what he would about the falseness of women. and the evil of the world, this wo- man had changed everything for him, so that he had contemplated the fu- ture with joy; but now he saw noth- ing but hell. What had the future for him now2 Lonely, misery, haunt ed by bitter thoughts of what might have been. What was a seat in Par liament? Who cared about him? For years he had alienated those who would be his friends, he had become a parish, a kind of intellectual and moral Ishmael. How could he bear it?
 With this thought the craving for