Despair's Last Journey Part 62

'You are satisfied?' said Bill, rolling her golden curls in her Tam-o'-Shanter cap.

'I am not merely satisfied, William,' Paul responded. 'Words fail me to express my grat.i.tude.'

'Don't you begin to chaff me,' said Bill. 'If you do, I shan't make the bargain I was going to.'

'I a.s.sure you,' said Paul, 'that I was never more serious in my life.

I swear it by the most sacred of man's possessions--gold. This is an English sovereign.'

'For me?' asked Bill, her lambent eyes regarding him as if no thought of greed or bribery could touch the angel's soul which shone through them.

'For you,' said Paul.

'Right oh!' Bill replied, biting at the coin with her milk-white teeth, and then bestowing it in her pocket. 'Now, if you'll promise never to leave Madge alone about one thing, I'll be as good--as good--you can't guess anything as good as I'll be.'

'There's no such thing as a one-sided bargain,' said Paul, 'and you must let me know what you expect from me in answer to this astonis.h.i.+ng confession.'

'Don't you chaff me,' said Bill, still rolling her golden head upon his shoulder, and beaming on him with those eyes of innocence. 'I might be having a sweetheart of my own one of these days. Don't you think that's likely?'

'I don't mind betting,' Paul answered, 'that you'll have fifty--'

Bill sat up straight in her deck-chair, clasped her hands with a vivid gesture, and looked skyward with a glance pure as the heavens themselves.

'What a lark!' she breathed--' oh, what a lark! Fifty? Do you think they'd all come together?' she asked with a sudden eagerness, as if her life depended on the answer.

'Say, five at a time,' said Paul--'ten per annum; that will give you five years to deal with them, beginning, we will say, about two years from now.'

'But that's where I want to come in,' said Bill 'I want to begin at once.'

'There is no need to be in a hurry,' Paul answered. 'There is plenty of time before you.'

'Oh yes,' said Bill thoughtfully. 'But, then, you see, I don't want to waste any of it. Now, I just want to tell you what I want you to do for me. I want you to din it into Madge's ears, morning, noon, and night, that it's time that I should do my hair up and wear long frocks.'

'And if I undertake that mission?' Paul asked

'We're friends,' cried Bill, rising and holding out her hand 'You'll see,' she added, 'I can be just as nice as I have been nasty.'

From this time forward the voyage was like a happy dream. Suez and Naples and Gibraltar were full of interest and wonder to the untravelled Madge, and the Mediterranean was smooth as a pond through all the lovely days and nights of the European spring. The Bay of Biscay so far belied its stormy reputation that there was scarcely a heave upon its surface, and at last the sh.o.r.es of England came in sight, sacred and beautiful to the eyes of a girl born and bred in the Colonies. Then came Tilbury, and at Tilbury brother George was waiting to bid his sisters welcome.

Paul was happy and content enough to be in the mood to like anybody and everybody, and an inward suggestion that he was not favourably impressed with brother George presented itself only to be discounted and ignominiously turned out of doors at once. As Tennyson has said, 'It is not true that second thoughts are best, but first and third, which are a riper first.' Brother George was undeniably good-looking after his fas.h.i.+on. He was well set up and a little over the middle height. He was very perfectly groomed, and had very fine, regular, white teeth which he was a little too fond of showing in a rather mechanical smile. His eyes were rather too closely set either for beauty or for character, and his manner was a trifle over-suave.

Bill, who had been promoted after her own desires, fell upon him like an avalanche, and being at first unrecognised in her aspect of grown-up young lady, embarra.s.sed brother George considerably. But there was such a laugh at this as set all four in high spirits, and there were so many questions and answers that the time of waiting for the train pa.s.sed in a flash.

The quartette lunched together at a restaurant in town, and brother George carried off his sisters to the apartments he had secured for them in the house in which he lodged. But before he went a little episode, which was afterwards renewed in various forms until it grew monotonous, occurred. Brother George naturally played the host at the restaurant, and spread a generous and delicate feast, but on the presentation of the bill was struck through with chagrin at the discovery that he had lost his purse. That he had brought it from home was beyond cavil in his mind, for had he not paid his cab-fare and the other expenses from it?

It was an awkward beginning of an acquaintance, as he allowed with an embarra.s.sed smile, but if Mr. Armstrong would be his banker for a day---- Mr. Armstrong was happy enough to be willing to be any man's banker at that moment, and brother George borrowed a ten-pound note with many expressions of regret and obligation. He forgot this little transaction so completely, that it was not so much as mentioned for a year or two; but brother George gave clear proof later on that he was not the man to leave unworked any social patch which at the first stroke of the hoe would yield so promising a little harvest, and first and last quite a handsome income in a small way accrued to brother George at the expense of brother George's sister's lover.

It is not when a man is happy, and the errors of his life have not yet yielded their inevitable crop of suffering, that conscience bestirs itself. Things went smoothly with Paul Armstrong. His plays prospered and yielded rich returns. A volume of verses gave him something more than the reputation of the average minor poet There was no more popular man at his clubs than he, and, if he had cared for it, he might have been something of a social lion. As it was, he met many notable people on terms of intimacy, and reckoned himself as rich in friends.h.i.+ps as any man alive; and, when the six months' probation was over, he and Madge went quietly away together to spend in Paris a honeymoon which had not been consecrated by any rite of the Church, and entered upon a wedded life which was not even sanctioned by the registrar. Madge became informally Mrs. Paul Armstrong, and, under that style and t.i.tle, was introduced to a dozen of Paul's intimates who were in no doubt as to the facts of the case, and to hundreds of other people who accepted the pretence without a thought of inquiry. The whole family lived together--Madge and her mother, Bill and brother George--and things went smoothly for two or three prosperous and happy years. In mere prosperity and happiness there is little to record, but the heart of the Exile in the mountains yearned over that vanished time in a bitter and unavailing regret. How sweet it had been! With how tender a gradation the first pa.s.sion of delight in possession had softened into friends.h.i.+p, and the calm love of happily wedded people, and the delicious intimate camaraderie which springs of the unbroken companions.h.i.+p of board and bed, and the sharing of every little confidence of life!

The past was obliterated; it was wiped out as cleanly as if it had been written on a slate, and a wet sponge had been pa.s.sed over it.

Practically it was forgotten, but the obliterated record sprang to light again with an unlooked-for, dreadful swiftness.

Bill by this time had developed into Miss Hampton, and was a grown-up young lady in real earnest, with lovers by the dozen. She and Paul were chums, and she had no secrets from him. Her face alone was bright enough to have made suns.h.i.+ne in any house; but it happened one day that Paul, returning from rehearsal, found it blank with astonishment and pain. She had evidently been waiting and listening for him; for at the instant at which his latch-key clicked in the lock, she threw the hall-door open, and, as he entered, closed it silently, almost stealthily, behind him.

Then, with her hand upon his shoulder, she led him to his study--the plainly furnished little workshop which looked out on the trim suburban garden. This was the room in which he had spent the richest and most prosperous hours of the only tranquil years he had known, and it was here that he was fated to meet the death-blow to his happiness.

'What is the matter?' he asked--'what has happened? Where is Madge?'

'She is in her own room,' Phyllis answered, her eyes wide with terror, and her pretty Australian roses all vanished from her cheeks. 'Mother and she have locked themselves in together, and Madge is crying her heart out Oh, Paul, Paul,' she cried, clasping her hands, 'what have you done?'

With that she broke into sudden weeping, and Paul stood amazed, with a chill terror, as yet unrecognised, clutching at his heart.

'What have I done?' he echoed--' what _have_ I done, dear?'

'Done!' she flashed at him, drawing her hands away from her streaming eyes, and throwing them pa.s.sionately apart 'Oh, Paul, we have all loved you so, and honoured you so, and now----'

She cast herself into an arm-chair with a reckless abandonment, and cried bitterly. The chill hand at Paul's heart grew icy, but even yet he did not recognise his fear.

'For mercy's sake, Bill, tell me!'

She flashed to her feet in a second, and looked at him from head to foot with a burning scorn.

'Never call me by that name again,'she said, through her clenched white teeth. 'You ask me what you have done? You have ruined Madge's life and broken her heart, and mine,' she cried, striking her clenched hand upon her breast--'and mine!'

She went raging up and down the room like a lovely fury, her hair disordered, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng, and her cheeks new-crimsoned with anger.

'Tell me--tell me,' he besought her, 'what has happened.'

'This has happened,' she answered, with a sudden tense quiet: 'your wife has been here--your wife, an overdressed, painted French trull, so drunk that she could barely stand.'

'Good G.o.d!' said Paul. He laid his hand upon a bookshelf, and stood swaying there as if he were about to fall. 'What brought her here?' he gasped.

'You don't deny it?' said the girl, speaking with the same tense quiet as before.

'No, no,' said Paul, 'I don't deny it What brought her here?'

'She came to a.s.sert her rights,' said Phyllis, with a biting indignation. 'She came to warn us that she was setting the law in motion, and that she would drag Madge's name--you hear? Madge's name--through the mud of the Divorce Court; and only this morning I loved you, and respected you, and believed in you.'

'I must see Madge,' said Paul.

'You shall not!' she cried, flas.h.i.+ng to the door, and setting her back against it.

But the door was opened from without, and Madge was here. Paul opened his arms to her, and she laid her pale face against his breast.

'I have feared it always,' she said, 'and it has come at last. My poor, poor Paul 'how you must have suffered!'

'Your poor, poor Paul,' said Phyllis, in a voice of bitterest disdain, 'is a very fitting object for your pity. My personal recommendation is that your poor Paul should drown himself.'

'You don't understand, dear,' Madge answered her--' you don't understand. Paul has done me no wrong. We did not take you into our confidence, because you were too young; but there has been no disguise among the rest of us. I knew of this before Paul and I resolved to spend our lives together. Mother knew it; George knew it; you know it now, dear. Will it part us, Bill?'

The girl's face changed from angry scorn to pure bewilderment, and then again to pity.