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 Japan. He
took lunch with the proprietors and officers of this boat, and, almost
before he knew it, had booked his passage 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 shores 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 assemblage 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 assisted, 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 Saturday, 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!’
It was at this instant that a singular and yet accustomed pang assailed
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 assailed 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 sex 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 sex after the manner of his conception; and now the cynic
feeling into which he had conspired with circumstance 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 circumstances 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 _tête-à-tête_ 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 embarrassed 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.