Paul knew that Madge and he were to have a travelling companion on the
voyage, and that the companion was to be Madge’s sister, but he did not
meet her until he stepped aboard the steamer bound for Tilbury Docks
from Adelaide. Her name was Phyllis, but for some reason or no reason
her own small world had elected to call her Bill, and to that name only
she gave willing answer, unless she were flattered from the memory of
short frocks by being addressed as Miss Hampton. She was a child of
astonishing beauty, with eyes like stars and the face of a young angel,
and people who did not know her received an impression of sanctity and
innocence when they beheld her. A complete knowledge of her character
revealed her as an incorrigible imp, utterly without a sense of danger
under any circumstances her experience had so far led her to encounter,
and, apart from that, a compound--a furious compound on either side--of
jealousy and affection. It would, perhaps, be more just to say affection
and jealousy, for Bill’s heart was hot with love for those for whom
she cared at all, and her jealousy was but the natural product of
her affection. It was not until the boat reached Colombo that Bill
condescended to accept a solitary advance from Paul. Until then she
resented every minute he spent in her sister’s society and every word
he addressed to her, but once enlisted she became a sort of
lovers’ watch-dog, and held all intruders at bay.
The steamer was lying for four-and-twenty hours in the harbour at
Colombo, and everybody who was at liberty was delighted to snatch a day
ashore. Paul and Madge and Bill made the customary globe-trotter’s round
They lunched at the hotel at Point de Galles, saw the usual conjurers
and snake-charmers, drove to the usual Buddhist temple, dined in town,
and went aboard again. Bill, who had hitherto proved an unmitigated
nuisance, behaved with a fine discretion throughout the day, and it was
only half an hour after her appointed bedtime that she pointedly made
Paul aware of her existence. He was lounging in a deck-chair and smoking
a cigar when the young lady took a place at his side.
‘Look here,’ she said, with the boyish off-handedness which belonged to
her. ‘I want you and me to be friends.’
‘Why not?’ said Paul. ‘I’m agreeable if you are.’
‘Have I been good to-day?’ the imp asked, laying her head upon his
shoulder, and turning up those starlike, unfathomable eyes of hers.
‘You have behaved like an angel for temper,’ Paul responded, ‘and like
an elderly diplomatist for discretion.’
‘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 gratitude.’
‘Don’t you begin to chaff me,’ said Bill. ‘If you do, I shan’t make the
bargain I was going to.’
‘I assure 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 astonishing
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 shores 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
fashion. 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, embarrassed 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 passed 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 embarrassed 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 friendships 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 title, 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
passion of delight in possession had softened into friendship, and
the calm love of happily wedded people, and the delicious intimate
camaraderie which springs of the unbroken companionship 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 passed 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 sunshine 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 passionately 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 flashing, 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 God!’ 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 assert 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, flashing 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.
‘Come here, Madge,’ she cried, opening her arms wide, and speaking with
a sobbing voice; ‘come here.’
She hugged her sister fiercely, and cried over her.
‘I can understand,’ she said--‘I can understand.’ She repeated the words
again and again. ‘It isn’t a pretty thing to have to face; but it’s your
trouble, darling, and we must stick together. As for me,’ she added,
with a new outbreak of tears, which a laugh made half hysteric, ‘I shall
stick like wax.’
Annette’s threat was no _brutum fulmen_, as the society newspapers soon
began to show. Paragraphs appeared here and there indicating that the
unprosperous matrimonial affairs of a popular playwright would shortly
excite the interest of the public; and one day Paul, driving along
the Strand, and finding his cab momentarily arrested by a block in the
traffic, was frozen to the marrow by the sight of a newspaper placard
which by way of sole contents bore the words, ‘Who is the real Mrs.
Armstrong? Divorce proceedings instituted against a famous playwright.’
At first his thought was: ‘Some enemy has done this;’ but he knew the
journal and most of the influential members of its staff, and he could
not guess that he counted an enemy among them. He had dined with the
editor a week before at the same club-table, and had found him not less
cordial than he had ever been before.
‘I suppose the man is justified,’ Paul thought when the power of
reflection returned to him. ‘The whole story is on its way to the public
ears, and neither he nor any other man can stop it It’s his business to
be first in the field with it if he can.’
He turned his cab homeward, for he had no heart to face the people he
had meant to meet, and on his way, just to gratify the natural instinct
of self-torture, he bought a copy of the journal, and read there that
Messrs. Berry and Smythe, the well-known firm of solicitors in Lincoln’s
Inn, had that day filed a petition for divorce against Mr. Paul
Armstrong, the well-known dramatist, and that remarkable revelations
were expected.
For these past few years home had seemed Paradise. He had never for any
fraction of an instant wavered in his love, and use and wont had helped
to set a seal of sanctity upon it With the passage of the months and
years, with the growth of many intimate acquaintanceships, and not a few
closer and dearer ties about him, home had grown to be as sacred to
him as if the union on which it was founded had been blessed by all
the priests of all the churches. No purer and more tranquil spirit of
affectionate loyalty had breathed in any home in England, and now the
balm of his soul was vitriol, and that which had been the bread of life
to him was steeped in gall and wormwood. The very honest purpose of his
life, his constant and sober pursuit of a worthy fame, recoiled upon him
here as if it had been in itself a crime. Not to have striven, to have
been content with a dull obscurity of fortune, to have wasted his days
in idleness and his nights in foolish revel, would have seemed a happier
course to him. And as it was the better part of life which chastised
him most cruelly, so it was the best and worthiest affection he had ever
known which turned upon him with a cup of poison in its hand and bade
him drink it to the dregs. Life and the world are so made that only
the most desolate can suffer by themselves. If by any trick of magic he
could have borne his chastisement alone, he would have accepted it with
something like a scorn of fate.
He had discharged his cab within a hundred yards of home, and had read
the stinging paragraph beneath a lamp-post almost at his own doorstep.
He entered the house noiselessly, and from Madge’s music-room there
floated down to him the sound of Chopin’s great Funeral March. She
played this and some other favourites of her own as few musicians play
them, for music had been the one delight of her life, and but for the
fleeting theatrical ambition, and for Paul, she might have become famous
as an executant He stood in the hall to listen as the alternate wail and
triumph filled and thrilled the air, and thinking that she was alone, he
strolled silently to his dressing-room, and then in smoking-jacket and
slippers went to join her. Except for the glow of the fire the room was
in darkness, and a voice which came out of the darkness startled him.
‘I had prepared myself to wait for hours,’ said the voice; and Ralston
emerged from a shadowed corner with an outstretched hand--Ralston, with
his big sagacious head, all unexpectedly silver-white, and moustache
and beard of snow, but with the same old hand-grip, and the same
half-dictatorial, half-affectionate tone. Madge struck a resolving
chord, rose, and with a kiss and a whispered ‘I know the news,’ slipped
from the room before he could make an effort to detain her.
‘Can we have a light on things?’ said Ralston, in that hoarsely musical
growl of his. He struck a match as he spoke, and lit the gas, and then
marched sturdily to the door and closed it. ‘You know me--you, Paul
Armstrong,’ he said, turning to face the master of the house. ‘I have
spent a fighting life, but I have never known a downright murderous fit
till now. Have you seen this?’
‘Yes,’ said Paul,’ I’ve seen it.’
The journal Ralston haled from his pocket and held towards him was a
fellow to that he had just thrown away in the street.
‘The carrion-hunting hound!’ cried Ralston; ‘I read this, and I came
straight here. I knew there was no hiding it from your wife. I say “your
wife,” and I hold by the word until faith and friendship are as dead as
last year’s leaves. She had to see it, Armstrong, and it was better that
a friend should bring it to her. Now, mind you, we who know her rally
round. We may be only two or three, but we are a fighting colony. I am
by way of being a cleric, but I don’t always cut my linguistic coat
to suit my cloth, and my word at this hour is, Damn the bestial
ecclesiastical bigotry which seeks to tie the bodies of men and women
together when their souls are sundered! Here is a man reported within
this last fortnight as having been arrested the day after his marriage
at a registrar’s office, and as having been since then condemned to
penal servitude for life. Is that fact a relief to the woman who was
his victim? Not a bit of it Let her contract a new marriage, and the law
will indict her for bigamy. She must live in loneliness, or be classed
with harlots. Here is a man I know, an outlying parishioner of mine,
whose wife is hopelessly and incurably insane. Is there any release
from the marriage-bond for him? Not a chance of it. There are a hundred
thousand people of this country, men and women, so saturated and
demoralized with drink that only an overwhelming Christian pity could
bear to touch ‘em with a barge-pole--husbands intolerable to wives,
wives intolerable to husbands, live corpses with corruption distilling
at each pore--and this filthy marriage law, which is the last relic
of Christianity’s worst barbarism, binds quick and wholesome flesh to
stinking death, and bids them fester together in the legal pit. I set
one honest man’s curse upon that shameless and abominable creed, and I
would not take my hand away from my seal though I went to the stake for
setting it there.’
He broke into a stormy laugh, and clapped Paul boisterously upon the
shoulder.
‘And now,’ he said, with a sudden change of voice and manner, ‘that we
have got rid of the froth of passion, let me offer you one cup of the
sound wine of reason. Fight this business through, Paul Armstrong. Don’t
give way by half a barleycorn. The story, as it tells against you, will
be made known. The truth, as your friends know it, must come out as
well. If I had time to read up for the bar, and pass my examinations,
I would ask nothing better than to be your counsel. Face the music,
Armstrong, and you may help the cause of justice. It is time that this
union of quick and dead were done with, and that the ecclesiastic fetish
rag which makes its wickedness respectable were burned.’