It was at this instant that a singular and yet accustomed pang a.s.sailed the dramatist's heart. He ought to have known it well enough, in all conscience, for he had already had an opportunity of studying it four times over. May Gold had taught it, and Claudia had taught it, and Annette for a fleeting instant, and Gertrude through a heavy year or two. He looked at the smiling little face before him, and it took a new sweetness in his eyes. If he had had his absolute will at that moment, he would have taken its owner in his arms, and have cried 'No!' to her protestation. But, then, it is difficult to do these things in the presence of a whole carriageful of people who make a profession of comedy, and he restrained himself, wondering a little why such an impulse should have a.s.sailed him. Yet from that time forward he began to watch and to listen for the monitions of his own heart, which of itself is a dangerous thing for any susceptible young man to do, and he began to find charms in Miss Hampton which were quite separate from the exceptional delicacy of her English speech. He knew very well that he had no right to fall in love with any woman; he was bound to Annette; he was tied to her so long as she should live. But being newly awakened to a sense of the weakness which had pursued him through his life so far, he became afraid, and watched his own emotions with a jealous care.

The man who is born to fall in love will do it, whatever happens; but there are, of course, ways and ways of doing it, and this particular way of keeping guard over the emotions is perhaps as swift as any.

He held the figure at arm's length, as it were, and critically surveyed it. Why, he asked himself repeatedly, should this simple little personality appeal to him so strongly? To say the most and the least of it, it was feminine, and he had made up his mind about the s.e.x when he had quitted Gertrude. He had honestly despaired of finding a woman who was not either a coquette or a fool, and he had taught himself to use the whole s.e.x after the manner of his conception; and now the cynic feeling into which he had conspired with circ.u.mstance to school himself was breaking up again, and, with all his knowledge of the world, he felt himself helpless.

There never was a tale of this sort which came to a definite end without the aid of circ.u.mstances which were not planned by either party to the coming contract. It befell that the only married woman of the corps, who travelled with a child of seven, took cold, and had to be left behind.

The child, playing, neglected, about the hotel, sustained some injury in the lift which plied between the upper and the lower stories. The company was only twenty miles away, and Paul, learning the news, bought grapes and jellies for the younger invalid and wines for the elder, and chartered a carriage to the town where they were staying. Half a mile before him was a hooded vehicle, which kept its relative place, more or less, throughout the journey. It was full in sight until the outlying streets of the town were reached, and it came into view again when he arrived at his destination--drawn up before the hotel door, and empty.

A moment's interview with the manageress gave him the right to mount the stairs, and, when he tapped at the door of the room in which the invalids reposed, a voice he had not expected to hear bade him come in.

There was Miss Hampton, of whom he had been thinking a good deal too much of late, sitting with the child upon her knees, and holding a grape above his lips. The child pouted for it, and he and the mother and the visitor were all laughing together.

'I beg your pardon,' said the intruder clumsily; 'I had expected to find you alone. I have driven over with these little odds and ends in the way of medical comforts for the boy.'

He stood confused, and laid his burden on the table which stood in the centre of the room.

'Didn't you guess,' laughed the little mother from the couch on which she lay, 'that Miss Hampton would be here before you?'

'No,' said Paul. 'If I had guessed, I should not have intruded. You'll take these things for the little fellow, won't you?'

'You're not going yet, Mr. Armstrong?' said the lady on the couch. 'You and Miss Hampton will have a nice little ride back together.'

'I should not dream,' said Paul, 'of intruding on Miss Hampton, and I must go back at once.'

He had no business in front of him, but he dreaded himself, and he was afraid of a _tete-a-tete_ with the plain little woman with the brown eyes.

'But,' said mamma, lifting her head from the arm of the sofa, and casting upon him the look of _ingenue_ archness which was almost her sole fortune on the boards, 'Miss Hampton's horse has cast a shoe, and the shoeing-smith is miles away. Did you ride or drive, Mr. Armstrong?

I'm sure you couldn't have ridden with all those nice things you've been so kind to bring me. You must have driven, and you must drive Miss Hampton home again. Isn't it kind of her to have come over to see me from such a distance 'Just look and see: I'm actually smothered in wine and grapes and jelly and flowers. And wasn't it kind of you, too, Mr.

Armstrong, to think of me just at the same moment! And wasn't it kind of Miss Hampton's horse to cast a shoe so that you would be obliged to go back together, whether you meant it or no?'

Miss Hampton was bending over the boy, and her face was hidden; but one blushing cheek gave warranty for the rest, and it was evident to Paul that she was as embarra.s.sed as himself. She spoke icily: 'Mr. Armstrong was not aware that I was coming here. I must go at once. I have no doubt the landlord will be able to find me another driver.'

'Now, why on earth,'asked the little actress from her sofa, 'should two people who know each other as well as you do take two carriages to drive along the self-same road? Now, when you come to think of it, isn't that absurd! And such a chance for a spoon, too, all along that quiet road!'

'Good-afternoon, dear,' said Miss Hampton, setting down the child, and offering an Arctic kiss to the reclining lady; 'I must go.'

With that she swept from the room with an air of dignity and confusion, and Paul shook hands with the invalid and followed her.

CHAPTER XXVI

There are just as many different ways of falling in love as there are characters and temperaments, and even the same man--unless he be a fellow of no originality--will not fall in love twice in the same fashion. As to the wisdom or righteousness or the mere everyday question of plain honour involved in the permission which Paul Armstrong gave himself to fall in love at all, under the conditions in which he stood, there seemed room for no illusion. He should by this time have been something of a man of the world, and might reasonably be supposed to be acting with his eyes open to consequences. He had his compunctions by the hundred, his hoverings by the way, and turnings back from it. But many delicate signs which would have been invisible to him had he been less interested persuaded him that love lay ready for him, and after all the follies of his slaveries here and there, he persuaded himself that if he could but accept it, it was of a kind to atone for all that had gone before. And why, he asked himself, if this were true, should he stand for ever in loneliness? It was in him to be constant if only truth were met with truth. He could have been faithful to Claudia. He could have been faithful to Annette. He could have been faithful to Gertrude.

And though no man whose sense of the humour of life does not leave him wholly blind to the comedy of his own existence could fail to see the bitter jest that lay here against himself, he urged the point seriously.

He _had_ been true in each case until faith had grown into blind folly, and bare respect for an old idol had become impossible. The one crime of his life had been acted against himself. He had believed Annette, and in the mere feebleness of acquiescence he had hung a weight about his neck which he was doomed to carry as long as her life should last.

And now, had he the right to redress the wrong he had inflicted upon himself? Feeble always, always a drifter, a good deal of a coward in his way of shrinking from avoidable pain, but never deliberately cruel or selfish. And now, was he to do a deliberately cruel and selfish thing?

Or was as much mischief as might well be done wrought already?

For months had gone by, and the drifting policy had brought him plainly to the question, Was this quiet, sweet little girl in love with him?

No blame to her if it were so. He had signalled her from the first for attention and companionship, and she knew nothing of his history. She had no guess as to the fatal bond which held him. Every day he knew her better. Her mind and heart opened out before him like twin flowers, full of purity and sweet odour.

She was courage incarnate, and her hatred of cruelty was a pa.s.sion. A hulking blackguard of a teamster was cruelly flogging an overladen horse one day, and Madge, at the risk of her life, was in amongst the traffic of the street in a flash, and stood between the beast and his dumb victim voiceless and pale with rage, her little figure at its height and her eyes blazing. Paul's chance presence and the neighbourhood of a policeman were probably answerable for the peaceful solution of this episode, for the girl had s.n.a.t.c.hed the whip from the bully's hand, and he was in an att.i.tude which threatened violence when Paul intervened.

'My dear child!' said Paul in a tone of remonstrance as he conducted her from the scene.

'Oh,' she broke in, with her little teeth clenched, 'I couldn't bear it!'

He saw the folly of reproof and held his tongue, and when they came in sight of the theatre she ran indoors and escaped him.

He had fallen into a habit of walking home with her when the night's work was over, and saying good-bye to her at the door of her lodgings.

This fact made her mightily unpopular with the ladies of the company, who saw no reason why she should be thus distinguished, and the snubs she took disposed him to be more attentive to her.

They drifted closer, but no confidences were exchanged between them.

The company made for Australia, and there were six days of travel aboard a well-found steamer, and this gave more than ample time for the position to solidify. There were long promenades on deck by moonlight and starlight, and the two found a perch in the bows out of the way of all observation and regard, and there exchanged all manner of confidences. The girl's simple life unrolled itself--its hopes, its ambitions! its home affections. She talked of her reading, of her music, of all the little intimacies of home-life. Before the brief voyage was over he seemed, to his own apprehension, to know his companion more completely than he had ever known man or woman, and he was hourly more and more in love with her. He was feather-headed and irresponsible enough to be happy in the circ.u.mstances for hours at a time, but when he was alone, and his heart was no longer flattered by the worship she so innocently offered, the skeleton he carried about with him came out of its cupboard and seemed to mop and mow before him in derision. He was bound hand and foot to his fate, and the bonds were not to be severed There was Annette in far-away London and Paris dragging out a miserable and ignominious life, which was likely to last as long as his own, and he could see no hope of freedom. With every pa.s.sing day he felt more clearly that he was bent upon an inexcusable wrong, and yet, so strangely fashioned is the conscience of a man who is without the power of will, all his self-reproaches did but add to the tenderness and fervour of his desire.

The steamer reached its destination late upon a Sat.u.r.day, and Sunday was a holiday. Paul and Madge spent the day together, wandering on a long stretch of sandy coast which lay between the port and the bright green waters of the sea; and all the time there was a growing sense of inevitability in his mind. He knew that he was going to ask for happiness, and that he was prepared to pay his self-respect and manhood for it. The talk was of trifles in the morning until they strolled home to luncheon; it was of trifles again in the afternoon until they strolled home to dinner, and it was of trifles still when they set out in the yellow sunset to saunter once more in a scene which had already grown strangely memorable and familiar. There were no sunset clouds, but the pageant of the dying day had a sort of sullen and pathetic beauty.

The blazing sun dropped behind the far-off sea-line, and a great band of saffron rimmed the whole horizon, fading into palest green as it spread upward, and this in turn melted into a blue which at the zenith looked unfathomable. A full moon, which had until now been invisible, looked down from the very centre of the sky. There was none of the lingering twilight of more temperate climates. The change from broad daylight, in which every outline and detail of the landscape was accented strongly, to the dim, mystic and diffused radiance of the moon and stars was like an episode in a transformation-scene at the theatre. A mere ten minutes had sufficed to change the whole character and sentiment of the scene.

It was like walking out of one world into another, and a rude chorus of voices, accompanied by the sounds of a banjo and a concertina, came from some body of merrymakers beyond a distant island in the bay. It moved away farther and farther into the distance until the harshness was softened to an almost spiritual melody, and after awhile it reached the ear only at uncertain intervals.

They came to a place at which they had rested in the afternoon. Some high tide of long ago had deposited here a great wreath of wrack, a hundred yards inland, and piled up in places to a height of some twelve feet. There were scores of cushiony resting-places here like great luxurious arm-chairs, and the wrack when disturbed by a touch gave out dry and stinging odours of sea-salt and iodine.

Paul, with a mere motion of the hand to his companion, threw himself into one of the hollows, and she took a seat at a little distance from him. He lay, the brim of his hat sheltering his eyes from the moonlight, and stared at the spangled vault above him, where the stars seemed to hang from threads of gold and silver as if they were upheld by an actual tangible roof. He knew that his hour had come, but he obeyed the impulse which controlled him with an infinite self-accusation.

'Madge,' he said, rolling over where he lay and stretching out his hand towards her. It fell upon her own, and she made no motion to evade him. It was the first caress he had ever offered her, and her tacit acceptance of it hurried him into pa.s.sion. 'Madge,' he said again; 'dear little Madge!'

She glanced at him for an instant only, and in the moonlight her eyes glinted with sudden tears.

'I have no right,' he said, 'to speak to you like this. I have had no right to claim your companionship as I have done since we first began to know each other.'

She was quite silent; but under his light caress he felt her hand tremble, and she glanced at him once more and looked away again.

'I have not had a happy life,' he went on, 'but that ought to dispose me to do what I can to keep unhappiness out of the lives of other people.

If I tell you that I am very conscious of having deceived you, of having left you in the dark about myself in respect to things you have a right to know, what shall you say to me? What will you think of me?'

Again she turned to look at him, and this time her glance rested on him, but still she made no answer.

Paul withdrew his hand, sat upright, and began mechanically to charge his pipe and to smoke.

'I met an utterly worthless woman many years ago,' he began, after a long pause, 'and I threw my life away upon her. We were married, and she is still alive. She is likely to live for many years to come; and, indeed, there is no probability of escape from her. It is not likely that she and I will ever see each other any more; but I am legally bound to her so long as she shall live. I ought to have told you this months ago.'

He rose and began to pace up and down the sands before her. He looked up at her from time to time, and her eyes followed him as he moved. Not a sound escaped her lips, but her fast-flowing tears glittered on her cheeks like rain.

'I should have told you,' he cried, writhing between self-accusation and self-excuse, 'but I had not the courage to put an end to a time which has been so lull of sweetness, so full of a mad kind of hope which I should never have admitted to my heart I know,' he went on, pausing desperately before her, 'what must be in your mind. I know that you are asking how I dared to draw you on to such a friendship as ours has been through an acted lie, and how I have dared at last to tell the truth I have postponed so long. You have a right to be wounded; you have a right to be angry. You will do yourself the merest justice if you teach yourself to despise and hate me; and if you tell me to go away at once and darken your life no further, I will do it But let me say just this one thing: whatever my cowardly silence may seem to prove, I have never had a thought of you that has not been full of the profoundest respect and reverence. You know now the truth about me, and you know that in spite of it I have made love to you for months past. I can't tell what a high-minded and pure-hearted woman may feel in such a case. I can't guess if such a woman could find it in her nature to accept the lifelong worship and affection of a man who is circ.u.mstanced as I am, if she could find the courage and self-sacrifice to join her destinies with a broken life like mine. Oh, if it were possible!' he cried, 'and oh, if it were possible that I could nourish such a hope in fancy, and not know in my inmost heart that only a scoundrel could be guilty of it! There, Madge, it is all said now. It had to be said, but I shall never forgive myself for having said it.'

The accusations he brought against himself were just as real as the pa.s.sion and despair which urged him on.

The Solitary, in his smoke-clouded mountain eyrie, surveyed all this, as he had surveyed the varied experiences of life which had pa.s.sed before it in clear vision through his mind, and still the pa.s.sion and despair and the self-accusing, self-excusing thoughts were as real to him as they had been at the moment he recalled. He accepted that reality as a proof, scarcely needed, of the already established shallowness of his own nature--a brawling stream always ready to rave round any little impediment in its path; a mere miniature of the torrent, with no resolute strength or purpose in it, but full of a fussy vivacity and self-importance which he could most heartily and bitterly despise.