Despair's Last Journey

by David Christie Murray

He saw the folly of reproof and held his tongue, and when they came in sight of the theatre she ran indoors and escaped him.

He had fallen into a habit of walking home with her when the night’s work was over, and saying good-bye to her at the door of her lodgings. This fact made her mightily unpopular with the ladies of the company, who saw no reason why she should be thus distinguished, and the snubs she took disposed him to be more attentive to her.

They drifted closer, but no confidences were exchanged between them.

The company made for Australia, and there were six days of travel aboard a well-found steamer, and this gave more than ample time for the position to solidify. There were long promenades on deck by moonlight and starlight, and the two found a perch in the bows out of the way of all observation and regard, and there exchanged all manner of confidences. The girl’s simple life unrolled itself—its hopes, its ambitions! its home affections. She talked of her reading, of her music, of all the little intimacies of home-life. Before the brief voyage was over he seemed, to his own apprehension, to know his companion more completely than he had ever known man or woman, and he was hourly more and more in love with her. He was feather-headed and irresponsible enough to be happy in the circumstances for hours at a time, but when he was alone, and his heart was no longer flattered by the worship she so innocently offered, the skeleton he carried about with him came out of its cupboard and seemed to mop and mow before him in derision. He was bound hand and foot to his fate, and the bonds were not to be severed There was Annette in far-away London and Paris dragging out a miserable and ignominious life, which was likely to last as long as his own, and he could see no hope of freedom. With every passing day he felt more clearly that he was bent upon an inexcusable wrong, and yet, so strangely fashioned is the conscience of a man who is without the power of will, all his self-reproaches did but add to the tenderness and fervour of his desire.

The steamer reached its destination late upon a Saturday, and Sunday was a holiday. Paul and Madge spent the day together, wandering on a long stretch of sandy coast which lay between the port and the bright green waters of the sea; and all the time there was a growing sense of inevitability in his mind. He knew that he was going to ask for happiness, and that he was prepared to pay his self-respect and manhood for it. The talk was of trifles in the morning until they strolled home to luncheon; it was of trifles again in the afternoon until they strolled home to dinner, and it was of trifles still when they set out in the yellow sunset to saunter once more in a scene which had already grown strangely memorable and familiar. There were no sunset clouds, but the pageant of the dying day had a sort of sullen and pathetic beauty. The blazing sun dropped behind the far-off sea-line, and a great band of saffron rimmed the whole horizon, fading into palest green as it spread upward, and this in turn melted into a blue which at the zenith looked unfathomable. A full moon, which had until now been invisible, looked down from the very centre of the sky. There was none of the lingering twilight of more temperate climates. The change from broad daylight, in which every outline and detail of the landscape was accented strongly, to the dim, mystic and diffused radiance of the moon and stars was like an episode in a transformation-scene at the theatre. A mere ten minutes had sufficed to change the whole character and sentiment of the scene. It was like walking out of one world into another, and a rude chorus of voices, accompanied by the sounds of a banjo and a concertina, came from some body of merrymakers beyond a distant island in the bay. It moved away farther and farther into the distance until the harshness was softened to an almost spiritual melody, and after awhile it reached the ear only at uncertain intervals.

They came to a place at which they had rested in the afternoon. Some high tide of long ago had deposited here a great wreath of wrack, a hundred yards inland, and piled up in places to a height of some twelve feet. There were scores of cushiony resting-places here like great luxurious arm-chairs, and the wrack when disturbed by a touch gave out dry and stinging odours of sea-salt and iodine.

Paul, with a mere motion of the hand to his companion, threw himself into one of the hollows, and she took a seat at a little distance from him. He lay, the brim of his hat sheltering his eyes from the moonlight, and stared at the spangled vault above him, where the stars seemed to hang from threads of gold and silver as if they were upheld by an actual tangible roof. He knew that his hour had come, but he obeyed the impulse which controlled him with an infinite self-accusation.

‘Madge,’ he said, rolling over where he lay and stretching out his hand towards her. It fell upon her own, and she made no motion to evade him. It was the first caress he had ever offered her, and her tacit acceptance of it hurried him into passion. ‘Madge,’ he said again; ‘dear little Madge!’

She glanced at him for an instant only, and in the moonlight her eyes glinted with sudden tears.

‘I have no right,’ he said, ‘to speak to you like this. I have had no right to claim your companionship as I have done since we first began to know each other.’