Despair's Last Journey

by David Christie Murray

‘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.