Despair's Last Journey

by David Christie Murray

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.