Despair's Last Journey

by David Christie Murray

She shook her head with a weary lifting of the fine arched brows as if to say she could find no answer, and then withdrew without word or sign, leaving him to quit the house unattended.

He fumbled half blindly until he found his hat and cane, and then he had to fumble for the door, for the whole place was heavily shadowed from the blazing sun outside, and his eyesight and his hands were each less serviceable to him than usual. At first the broad sunshine fell upon his eyes like a sudden vivid heat upon a wound, and in his agitation and half-blindness he found himself walking away from the quarter of the city to which he had meant to direct his steps. Correcting this error in a minute or two, he turned and made for his hotel with a mind so shaken and vacant that he seemed to have no thoughts at all. A man who has been passionately in love three times before he has begun to verge upon middle age may easily be thought too inflammable a subject to be deserving of much pity, but a man may be keenly in sympathy with himself without enlisting the sympathy of other people, and Paul was here as always heroically and tragically in earnest. Without seeking apologies for him too far afield, there is a kind of nature which burns intensely within itself, and will break out into violence of smoke and flame with the intrusion of any new emotional material, just as there is a nature not more intense which will burn equably and clearly whatever new supply of fuel may be heaped upon it.

There is no need to dwell upon the time of waiting, the miserable loiterings in bedroom, corridor and entrance-hall, the aimless perusal of newspapers which conveyed no meaning to the mind, the taking up and laying down of petty occupations, and all the other signs and tokens of suspense. Time and the hour wear out the roughest day, and as Paul lingered over the dessert of a barely tasted dinner, a note reached him in Madge’s handwriting. It contained these words only:

‘There is no change. I dare not hope, and I dare not despair. I may have news for you to-morrow, but what it may be I must not guess.

‘M.’

This was cold comfort, but he had not expected more, and he strolled away in sheer vacuity of heart and thought to the principal theatre of the city, where just then a bright comic opera was running. The lights, the gay music, the brilliantly-dressed crowd upon the stage, made no impression on his mind, and his saturnine and gloomy face was in such contrast to the loud hilarity of the audience that he felt himself a blot upon the house, and at the first fall of the curtain withdrew into the streets, where he wandered listlessly until midnight He was fatigued, and slept heavily for some hours, but he was awake again long before the household was astir, and suffered all the weariness and chagrin which assailed the unoccupied mind in hours of suspense and doubt. Another brief note reached him by the first post.

‘Mother has spoken a great deal to-night of my brother George, who, as you know, is already in London. I do not know what to think of this, and I can scarcely dare to fancy what I should so much like to believe. I shall not write again until I have something definite to tell you, but whether we ever meet again or no, you shall see my whole heart for once. I love you, and I know that I shall always love you. Is it unwomanly—is it too bold to tell you this so soon? Will you think that I am too easily persuaded about myself? I hope not. But whatever happens, even if I never see you or hear your voice again, I shall not change or forget anything that has happened in all this beautiful and dreadful time.

‘All yours, and always yours,

‘Madge.’

This had been brought to him as he sat dressed in his bedroom, wondering if any message would reach him, and he had locked his door to be alone with Fate before he had broken the seal of the wax, which bore a dove with an olive-branch, and the motto Esperez. He read the tender message with its proclamation of unshakable fidelity thrice over, and then rising, began to pace up and down the room. A cry of self-accusation rose to his lips.