“No,” answered Paul, and for a few moments they were silent. To both of them this revelation that they were of the same race was no longer so much of a surprise as a portent. They were like travellers not quite sure that their feet were on their due appointed road, who come upon a sign post and know that they have made no mistake. These two had no doubt that they were upon their road of destiny, that this swift, unexpected friendship would lead them together into new countries where their lives would be fulfilled.
“Just to imagine if I had never come to the Villa Iris!” Paul exclaimed with a gasp of fear; so near he had been to not coming. But Marguerite’s eyelids drooped over her eyes and a look of doubt and sadness shadowed her face. Exaltations and hopes—here were bright things she dared hardly look upon, for if she once looked and took them to her heart, and found them false, what was merely grievous would no longer be endurable.
“It is a long way from Devonshire to Casablanca,” cried Paul, and Marguerite smiled.
“There’s a question very prettily put,” said she.
Her story was ordinary enough in its essentials. “Some families go up,” she said simply. “Others seem doomed to go right down and bring every member of them down too. Most English villages have an example, I think. Once and not so long ago they were well off and lived in their farm house. Now every descendant is a labourer in a cottage, except one or two perhaps who have emigrated and fared no better abroad. The Lamberts were like that.”
Marguerite had been born when the family were more than half way down the hill, although outwardly it still showed prosperous. Her father, a widower, spent more of his time upon race-courses than upon his farm and made it a point of pride to educate his children in the fashionable and expensive schools.
“He was the most happy-go-lucky man that ever lived,” said Marguerite. “We knew nothing of the debts or the mortgages. He was all for being a gentleman and to be a gentleman in his definition was to spend money. He came down to breakfast one morning—there were the four of us at home, my brother, my two sisters and myself, and said cheerily, ‘Well, girls, all the money’s gone and the farm, too.’ Then he ate his breakfast cheerily, went upstairs and blew out his brains with his shot-gun, I suppose quite cheerily, too.”
The catastrophe had happened a little more than two years before, when Marguerite was between seventeen and eighteen. Misfortune scatters a family as a wind autumn leaves. The brother, a small replica of his father, departed for the Argentine, cheerily confident of rebuilding by an opportune speculation the Lambert fortune; the eldest of the sisters married an unsuccessful farmer in the neighbourhood with whom she was in love; the second became a private secretary, lost her job within the week, and discovered her proper sphere of work, as a pretty waitress in a tea-shop. Marguerite herself secured an engagement in the chorus of a Musical Comedy company which was touring the provinces.
“We were just ordinary girls,” Marguerite continued, “rather fecklessly brought up, fairly good-looking, decent manners, but nothing outstanding. There wasn’t any Edna May amongst us. We just did what we could, not very well.” Marguerite suddenly broke into a delicious laugh. “You heard me sing, didn’t you? Pathetic, wasn’t it? At least it would have been if I hadn’t felt the humour of it all the while. Well, we got stranded in Wigan—I am speaking of my Musical Comedy company. I pawned a few things and travelled to London. Three of the chorus girls and I clubbed together and got lodgings in Bloomsbury. But it was October when the most of the touring companies had already gone out and fresh engagements were only probable for the Christmas pantomime. One after another of my companions dropped away. Finally I was offered an opening in a concert party which was to tour the music halls in France. I was to dance between the songs.”
“A concert party!” said Paul. “That sounds doubtful.”