'Don't mock at it, for G.o.d's sake!' said young Mr. Janes. 'I'm going home. Good-night. I think you were right to tell me. I think I should have done the same. You're going----' He paused there, and looked up with a white face. 'You're going to see her in the morning?'

'On that one errand,' Paul answered.

'Well,' said Mr. Janes, 'good-bye, Armstrong.'

He offered his hand, and Paul took it warmly. Janes went dejectedly away.

At ten minutes before the strike of noon next day Paul and Gertrude met for the last time. She came gaily towards him with both hands outstretched in welcome, but her face changed as he stood before her with no recognition of her proffered salute.

'What is the matter?' she asked.

'I am here to tell you, Gertrude,' he responded. 'I told you a part of my adventures of yesterday, but I did not tell you all. When my walk was finished I had luncheon, and after luncheon I lay down on a chair upon the veranda and fell asleep there. I awoke at the moment when Mr. Janes was telling you that it was dangerous. I had not the courage to break in upon a conversation so intimate, and--may I say it?--so familiar. I could not get away without a risk of being seen, and so I stayed where I was.'

She had gone white to the lips, and she was trembling, but she faced him.

'Oh,' she said, 'I had thought you a little worthier than that! An eavesdropper!'

'An eavesdropper!' Paul answered. 'That is understood; but not a willing one. You have wasted a good part of my life, but of that I have no right to complain. But I do lament a little that you should have taken away my last illusion. I had learned a little of your adorable s.e.x, Gertrude, before I met you, and nothing in my experience had taught me to think well of it. But I believed I had found in you a proof of the monstrous falsity of the belief into which I was being thrust. Well, you see, you confirm that belief. I shall go to my grave now in the certainty that one-half the world is made to wheedle and befool the other half, and that every woman is born to treason as the sparks fly upward. You lied to me, Gertrude, and I believed you. You lured me on deliberately, with a cold cruelty for which there is no name. I shall never hate you as well as I have loved you, for I have a rather poor capacity in that way.

You found a man with a bruised heart, and for your own wicked pleasure you set to work to torture him. There is no use in words, and I have said all I came to say.'

That was the end of that episode, and a minute later he was striding along the street. In three days he was aboard ship at Havre, and the disconsolate Janes was one of his fellow-voyagers.

CHAPTER XXV

If a philosopher were set to describe the best and the worst of life, he would certainly have a considerable choice before him. But amongst the best he would have to set down love, and amongst the worst he would have to set down love's disillusion. The curse of age is indifference. With the increase of the years you come to a time when nothing matters.

Anything which helps hearty youth this way is harmful. In ninety cases in a hundred age is a crime against the hopes of the world, and nothing ages like cynicism. This is the beginning of senile decay. And what is a man to do who has lavished his heart, and has always found that the woman has played counters of affectation against the sincere gold of his soul? Obviously he turns cynic, despising himself and his too cheap emotions; and to cheapen one's own emotions is to play the very devil.

It was written from of old that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and a man who has learned to loathe one half of his own nature is not stable. Even that he has a perfect right to do it does not help him.

May Gold had fooled Paul Armstrong. Claudia Belmont had carried on the game. So had Annette, and so had Gertrude. It was a wise man who wrote that the net is spread in vain in the sight of any bird, but he wrote nonsense, all the same. The capturing net is the one to which we are most accustomed.

So with a heart filled with distrust, and misliking half the world, Paul travelled across the Atlantic, and sauntered about the United States.

The money question was settled for the time being, if not definitely, and for a year or two he would have no occasion to think of ways and means. He got away into the prairies and the mountains, camped out, shooting and hunting, learned to sit a horse, learned to handle a gun, to build a tent, and to cook.

Then he went back into civilization, and travelled on to San Francisco, and the western parts of Canada. And one day at Victoria, having nothing better before him, he wandered on board a vessel which in four-and-twenty hours from that time was bound to sail for j.a.pan. He took lunch with the proprietors and officers of this boat, and, almost before he knew it, had booked his pa.s.sage for Yokohama. Why not see the world?

There were ladies aboard, and they flirted with the stranger because he was young and already famous, and more than average good-looking. They flirted demurely, and they flirted fiercely, and they flirted in all the ways which are known to women; but for once in feminine experience they met a man who was proof against all their charms, charmed they never so wisely. To be dangerous to man's peace of mind a woman must inspire belief, and in Paul's heart belief was dead.

The ship went on to New Zealand, her port of call Dunedin. Why not New Zealand? Why not see the world? More flirts aboard, and more flirtations, but still the hitherto so susceptible heart unmoved. The next port of call Hobart Town, then Melbourne. Still, why not see the world? More flirts and more flirtations, as if there were nothing but the rustle of a petticoat which is worth taking notice of on the surface of the planet. But observe that the young man is spoiled, at least for the time being.

Possum and kangaroo shooting make good sport. Rabbits swarm in literal millions. We grow very handy with the gun, very handy at building a shelter of any sort, or at cooking a dinner.

Then back to New Zealand, and here the beginning of a new life.

New Year's Eve, as it happens, and the exile's mind not unnaturally filled with thoughts of home. And tucked away in the further corner of the dining-room of the Grand Hotel the familiar figure of an English comedian! who, when Paul last saw him, was playing in a piece written far himself and Darco.

'Hillo, Paul! Can't I get into any blooming corner of the world but some old pal is bound to root me out?' 'How's trade?' said Paul. 'Going strong?' 'Bad, dear boy,' the comedian answered. 'Bad as bad can be.

Do me a turn, old fellow. Write me a play. I've brought out three, and they're all rotten failures. Ask the press, and they'll tell you I'm coining money. Ask me, and I'll tell you I'm dropping it by the barrelful. Been here long--eh?'

Paul was at the theatre again that night, for the first time since he had left England, two years ago. Two years ago! Such a distance had been placed between him and Gertrude--between him and Annette!

A dreary farce in three acts greeted him, and ambitions awoke anew. The cheery comedian asked:

'Why not try it on the dog? Give us a bit of human nature, dear child.

Run it round these far outlying provinces. No harm to you if you make a failure; loads of minted money if you make a hit. What I always say, dear boy: minimize the risk of failure--eh?'

Paul took fire. He knew his man, and could fit him like a glove.

'Where are you in ten weeks' time?' he asked 'Ten weeks? said the comedian. 'Auckland.' 'Good!' said Paul. 'We meet in Auckland.' 'Right you are,' said the comedian; and then they parted, and never met again for years.

But the talk set Paul at work again, and he laboured like a Trojan on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Te Anau, with heath and sky and mountains for his comrades and inspirers, and when his play was finished he went back to civilization to discover that his comedian was well on his way to England. That mattered little enough. He sent a copy of the piece to Darco, and wandered hither and thither about the southern island until by hazard he tumbled against a new fate in the person of a new comedian.

'And you don't happen to have a play in your pocket, Mr. Armstrong? said he, in the first hour of their acquaintanceship.

'As it happens,'said Paul, 'I have. You may read it this afternoon.'

There was a business chaffer, and the affair was virtually settled. Paul was to read the play to the company of the travelling comedian on the morrow.

He presented himself at the theatre at the appointed hour, and the manager kept him waiting for a minute or two whilst he harangued the baggage-man.

'You'll know her by this portrait: she's small; she's very ordinary-looking; she wears her hair in a topknot, with a hat stuck over it about so high'--he held his arms abroad. 'Excuse me, Mr. Armstrong, we are all ready for you with the exception of a lady who will be here in half an hour. I wired for her a week ago to Australia The boat was signalled two hours since. Since we must wait, you won't mind my utilizing the half-hour?'

'Pray go on,' said Paul; and, seating himself upon a rolled-up bale of carpet, surrendered his mind to ennui.

In due time the lady for whose help the company waited appeared. The play was read, the characters were apportioned, and the date of the first production was fixed Paul took no special note of the new arrival, and, indeed, she did not seem specially notable. She was little more than a child, with a child's stature but a woman's figure. She had brown eyes and brown hair, and she wore a dress of brown velvet. She was strange to the crowd about her, so it seemed; for she was introduced to every member of it, and she scrutinized everybody with a childlike mixture of frankness and reticence.

'Like a little brown mouse,' said Paul to himself, 'peeping out of her cranny at an a.s.semblage of cats, without quite knowing the cat's proclivity.'

Beyond this she was Miss Madge Hampton, an amateur of some small private means, and he thought no more about her. Rehearsal in an insignificant part displayed her as capable and willing to be taught.

The company never stayed more than a week in any one town, and for a considerable part of the time went bushwhacking from place to place, taking one-night stands! and crawling by sleepy railways amongst some of the most exquisite scenery of the land. Paul had nothing better to do--had, indeed, nothing else to do--and found a pleasure in this revival of old experiences. It reminded him of the ancient days with Darco, which now looked so far away, and he surrendered himself, as he had always done, to the interests of the moment and the hour. A fair proportion of the working day was spent in travel, and sometimes, as they crossed the exquisite plain of flowering green, with the snowcapped mountains in the distance, the ladies of the company would cry out at sight of some especial bank of wild flowers, and the conductor would stop the leisurely train to let them go out and cull bouquets. At some such excursions Paul a.s.sisted, and, whether by hazard or goodwill, he found himself oftener by the side of Miss Madge Hampton than elsewhere.

He had himself been born to the inheritance of a most inordinate mouthful of provincial accent, and since he had studied and learned to speak almost every dialect known to the little islands which are the centre of our Empire, his ear had grown nice and critical. The ladies and gentlemen of the company, with the exception of the famous and admirable comedian who led them, were all of colonial education, and they all spoke with the accent the existence of which our colonial brethren and sisters so strenuously deny. It was, of course, the language of fashion, as they knew it, but it was, as it still is, perilously near the English of Mile End, and the ear of the Englishman, grown critical through many studies, used to ache at it. The leader of the troupe talked the English of the stage, which, after all, is perhaps not quite the English of the cultured Englishman, but was not altogether intolerable. But, by some accident, Miss Hampton had no trace of the accent which disfigured the speech of her companions, and this little fact of itself accounted for something in the very gradual intimacy which grew up between herself and Paul.

The train was sauntering along in its customary easy-going fashion, when it came to a halt at the signal of a man in corduroy trousers, a flannel shirt which had once been scarlet, and a felt hat of no colour. The signaller sat upon a fence and wanted a chat with the driver, who was quite willing, in the course of his leisurely progress, to spare him half an hour or so.

'If you ladies,' said the conductor, 'would like to stretch yourselves, there's any amount of flowers to be got here, and there's time to waste.

There's no run back except on a Sat.u.r.day, and an hour or two in the time of arrival won't make no difference.'

So the ladies got down and went flower-hunting, whilst the driver and the stoker and the guard sat on the fence together and talked politics and the latest mail from England.

Paul went out with the rest, and the party chanced upon a marshy piece of land where a species of purple iris grew in great profusion. There was a cry of delight at the sunlit patch of colour, and everybody charged down upon it, with the result that half of the travellers were bogged to the knees, and there was a good deal of pully-hauley business gone through before the last adventuress was extricated. Miss Madge Hampton fell to Paul's share by accident of mere neighbourhood, and she stretched out her little brown-kid-gloved hand to him with an air of timid appeal. He pulled stanchly, but the ground gave way beneath him, and before he knew it she was in his arms. There was a laugh all round, and a blush on both sides, but the lady was on firm earth again, and in a minute or two the drawling call of the conductor brought the party back to the train. The journey was renewed, and the incident forgotten by everybody save the dramatist, who sat coiled in his corner, with his eyes fixed upon a book which he might as well have held upside-down.

The women of the company, five in number, were chattering like a nest of starlings, shrilling high against the slow rumble of the wheels. Miss Hampton alone was silent amongst them. Their talk was of matrimony, and the leading lady sparkled out with an engaging inquiry which embraced the whole carriageful.

'And what about Miss Hampton?'

'Oh,' said the little brown lady demurely, 'I shall die an old maid!'