‘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 sex, 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 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.