'Oh yes,' said Claudia, 'in fun. But now, without nonsense--really? Am I pretty?'

'No; you're not pretty, Claudia. Pretty's commonplace. You are lovely. I think you are the most beautiful woman in the world.'

'You darling boy! There's a kiss for that. No, no, no, Paul. Only a very little one. But I'm not so silly as to believe you, Paul.'

'Claudia,' said Paul--they had reached by this time to the brotherly and sisterly att.i.tude, and sat on the couch together, with the sisterly arm round Paul's neck--' I was bitterly sorry to leave old Darco, and to let him think that I was ungrateful. I know how much he has done for me.'

'I am sure I am not sorry to leave Darco,' she said. 'Grumpy, frumpy, stumpy, dumpy old German! I hate him!'

'Don't say that,' said Paul. 'There's as kind a heart under old Darco's waistcoat as you'll find in the whole wide world.'

'Never mind Darco, Paul dear. He's not a favourite theme of mine.'

'I wish you hadn't had to leave him, all the same, because then I shouldn't have had to leave him. Where shall you live in London, Claudia?'

'I'm going to stay with a Mrs. Walpole, a widow lady, a friend of mine who takes in a few boarders.'

'Might I stay there, too?

'You? Oh, you improper boy! Of course not.'

'Don't say that, Claudia. I've given up everything only to be near you.

That's all I ask for, Claudia. It's all I want in the world.'

'My dear Paul,' said Claudia, 'you must not dream of such a thing. It would be most unwise. Why, good gracious, child, you'd compromise me every hour!'

'Indeed, indeed I wouldn't,' Paul declared. 'I would rather die than do it Oh, Claudia! you don't know how I love you. You don't know what it will be to me to be with you. You can't guess how miserably unhappy I shall be if I am away from you.'

'Very well, Paul,' said Claudia rather frigidly; 'but you must not blame me if you lose my friendship by presuming on it. I have no fear of being able to take care of my own reputation, and I want you to understand that I will do it. And now you may kiss me, and then we will talk business.' Paul availed himself of the permission with alacrity until Claudia slid gently away. 'That is enough, and more than enough. I won't have you making any more declamatory love-scenes, you dreadful boy! No, not another. No; not the least little one in the world. You will keep to that side of the table and I shall sit on this. Now, reach me my writing-desk. I am going to give you a letter of introduction to Walton, my new manager. I shall tell him how clever you are, and that you are ambitious and want to get to London. You'll get nothing like such a salary as Darco gave you--not more than half at the outside. You'll live in a poky little garret at the top of a smoky London house, and you'll pay thirty shillings a week for board and lodging, and the rest will go in washing and 'bus fares. You're making a very bad exchange, I can tell you, even if Walton will have anything to say to you.' 'I don't care if I'm to be near you, Claudia.'

'But you're not going to enjoy the liberties I allow you here. You must understand that, Paul.'

'I shall see you,' said Paul 'I shall be near you.'

'Very well. Now, I'll write the letter. And when it is written you will take the very first train to town and give it into Walton's hands to-night.'

'But I am going on with you to Cardiff,' Paul cried.

'Indeed,' said Claudia, 'you will do nothing of the kind. I am not so absurd as to allow it I am not going to be compromised in that way in my last week with the company.' Paul stared at her with a face so disconsolate that she laughed; but she put on a tender seriousness a moment later. 'Do you call that love, Paul? Ah, no! Few men--very few--ever so much as learn the meaning of the word. It is pure selfishness. You don't think of poor Claudia. You would let her reputation be torn to rags and tatters, but what would that amount to if only you could gratify your own wishes?'

'I'll go, Claudia,' cried Paul. 'I'll go to London. Great Heaven 'what a selfish, unreasonable beast I am 'Forgive me, Claudia. I did not think.'

'Now you are my own dear Paul again. But you mustn't expect me to find _all_ the wisdom.'

She wrote her letter, and Paul watched the white hand skimming over the paper. When it was written she read it out to him. It was really an excellent letter of introduction, business-like and cordial. Paul received it with devout thanksgiving. Then Claudia gave him the address of the boarding-house to which she herself was bound, and looked up his train in the time-table.

'You must start in half an hour,' she said. 'Oh, Paul dear! Paul! I wonder if, in spite of all your protestations, you are so sorry to part as I am.'

'Claudia!' said Paul, and ran to the open arms.

He was abjectly in love and abjectly submissive, and Claudia had never been so kind. But when at last she told him 'You must go,' he strained her in his arms so wildly that he fairly frightened her. Then, terrified in his own turn, he released her, and covered her hand with tears and kisses of contrition.

'Go,' she said pantingly--'go, at once!'

He looked with remorse at her pale face and questioning eyes, and lurched towards the table on which he had laid his hat.

'Paul,' said Claudia, 'it would have been better for you if you had never met me.'

'No,'he answered, looking back at her. 'I shall never think that, whatever happens.'

'You will think it often,' she said. 'But go now, dear, for pity's sake.'

He went out into the street with his wet face, and for a minute or more did not know why people stared at him. Then he came to his senses a little, and found himself walking away from the station instead of towards it He retraced his steps, caught his train, and travelled up to London, his pulses beating 'Claudia' all the way.

CHAPTER XII

Claudia's introduction served so well that Paul was allowed to show what he was made of in rehearsal at the Mirror Theatre, with a prospective salary of fifty shillings a week. He had been a personage of late, and Darco had delegated to him a good deal of his own authority. He was not a personage any longer, and he was not altogether happy in his fall from dignity. But Claudia was coming. He and Claudia would be in the same house together, and playing at the same theatre. He would see her at breakfast, at luncheon, at dinner; he would escort her from the theatre and home again. That would be happiness enough to atone for anything.

This prophecy was not quite realized. Claudia chose to breakfast in her own room, and she was a woman of many friends, and lunched out and dined out so often that Paul hardly saw anything of her. The Sundays would have been Elysian days, but ladies and gentlemen of fashionable aspect drove to the house in handsome equipages, and spirited Miss Belmont away to revels at Richmond and elsewhere in which Paul had no part. He moved sadly about the house, in the streets, with no heart for study, or for the writing of the new comedy on which his mind had been set so warmly only a few weeks before. His old companions were travelling about the country, meeting old friends and making new ones, and he wished himself back amongst them many a time. He could have written to Claudia, and have looked forward to the time when he could have met her again on equal terms. They were not equals any longer. Miss Belmont was starred in big type, and was leading lady, at a biggish salary; for her first real chance had come to her, and she had charmed the town. Paul was a walking gentleman with a part of fifty lines, and not a solitary critic named his name.

Sometimes, but very rarely, Claudia shone upon him. On fine evenings, and on those spa.r.s.e occasions when she and Paul dined at the same table, she would walk to the theatre and accept his escort Then, for a brief half-hour, life was worth the living again. But there was one nightly hour of torment. His work was over early, for he had nothing to do after the opening of the third act of the piece then playing. He would dress and wait in his room, and wonder whether that idiot, that dolt and fool incomparable, Captain the Honourable John MacMadden, was waiting at the stage-door. Captain MacMadden belonged to the Household Brigade, and was a bachelor of five-and-thirty. He parted his hair in the middle, and wore a moustache and weeping whiskers of the jettiest, shiny black. He smiled constantly, to show a set of dazzling white teeth. In his own mind Paul loaded this exquisite with savage satire. He was a tailor's dummy carrying about a barber's dummy, and the barber's dummy was finished with a dentist's advertis.e.m.e.nt He carried a very thin umbrella--the mere ghost of an umbrella--he was gloved and booted with the fineness of a lady, and he was always delicately perfumed. He was reported to be wealthy, abominably wealthy, and three nights a week or more he would present himself at the theatre, and take Miss Belmont out to supper. But so discreet was that lady, and so careful of her good report, that Captain MacMadden never came without a guardian dragon in the person of another young lady of the theatres, who was accompanied by a gentleman who was in all points tailored and barbered and gloved and booted like Captain MacMadden himself.

Paul would wonder if the splendid warrior were below until he could endure himself no longer. Then he would descend and hang about the stage-door, to find his enemy or not to find him, as the case might be, but in either event to eat his heart in jealousy and impatience. When he found him he burned to insult him by asking him what tailor he advertised, or by addressing him as the Housemaid's Terror or the Nursegirl's Blight. He ground tegmenta of 'Maud' between his teeth as he looked at him. 'His essences turn the live air sick,' and 'that oiled and curled a.s.syrian bull, smelling of musk and of insolence.' And it happened one night that Captain MacMadden, arriving late, and in a mighty hurry and flutter lest he should have missed the lady, tapped Paul upon the shoulder, and said:

'My boy, can you tell me if Miss Belmont has left the theatre?'

Paul, who was at that instant bending all the force of his mind upon Captain MacMadden, and punching his head in visioned combat, turned on him with a pa.s.sionate 'd.a.m.n your impertinence, sir!' which set the startled gentleman agape with wonder. At this instant Claudia pushed through the swinging door which led from the stage to the corridor, and she ran in between the belligerent Paul and the object of his rage.

'What is this?' she asked.

'This gentleman,' said Paul, 'is sadly in want of a lesson in good-breeding. I shall be happy to offer him one.'

'Upon my word,' returned Captain MacMadden mildly, 'you're devilish peppery. Hadn't the slightest intention to affront anybody, upon my word. Nothing further from thoughts. Can't say moah.'

'Mr. Armstrong,' said Claudia, 'I have never seen you display this ill-bred brutality before. I had not expected you to show it in my presence to my friend.'

Paul felt for the instant that he had been brutal and ill-bred. Claudia judged him so, and whatever Claudia said must needs be just But when she had swept by him to the waiting brougham and the fashionable escort had followed her, he stood in a choking rage, and felt like Cain. A thick drizzle was falling, and he swung out into the night, glad of the wet coolness in his flaming face, and the wet wind that fanned him. The streets were heavily mired and the drizzle grew to a fast downpour.

He turned up his coat-collar and ploughed along, growing more and more resolutely angry, and more and more resolved to fight his case out with Claudia. The house in which they lived was dark when he reached it, except for a single gas-jet in the hall at which guests bound bedward lit their candles. He walked into the dining-room and sat down to wait, with nothing but the winking jet on the wall and his own thoughts for company. The fire in the grate had died, and its cooling ashes made a crisp, faint noise from time to time. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked irritatingly, and sounded the quarters at intervals which seemed curiously irregular. At times one quarter seemed to follow close on another's heels, and the next seemed to lag for hours. Paul was soaked to the skin, and had violent fits of shivering, but he would not leave his post lest he should miss Claudia.

Cabs rolled by, and every one brought Claudia to his fancy, but scores of them pa.s.sed without pause. One o'clock sounded and no Claudia. Two o'clock, and no Claudia. Then the rumble of a lonely hansom, a slippery stoppage of a horse's feet, and Claudia's voice crying, 'Two doors higher up.' Then a renewed motion, a pause, the sc.r.a.pe of a latchkey at the lock, and Paul was on his feet, candlestick in hand.

'Mayn't I come in?' asked the hateful voice of Captain MacMadden. 'On'y a moment, upon my word.'

'Certainly not,' Claudia answered curtly. 'Good-night.'

'You'll think of what I asked you?'