‘I had rather get the wrench over,’ she said, ‘and have done with it. It will seem quite natural that I should go home and join my family in London, and I shall explain nothing beyond that.’ She rose and opened the door and called her daughter by name. ‘It is all over,’ she said, when Madge returned. ‘I have but one hope, and that is that you may never live to blame your mother’s weakness. I should have done for your father what you are doing if there had been any need for it, and I should have done it in the face of all the world. And now I want to be alone a little to—to’—her voice faltered suddenly, and her eyes brimmed with tears—‘to say my prayers, and, if I have done wrong, to beg God’s forgiveness. Go out into the garden, children, and leave me here.’
So into the wide garden, cooled with the shade of English fruit-trees—peach and pear and plum and apple—the two wandered, far too disturbed by happiness as yet to be content But in Paul’s heart a new well of tenderness began to open—a spring of tenderness and yearning which seemed to overflow every cranny of his nature. To pay for this, to scrape up from the bankrupt remnants of life something by way of thanks-offering, to devote himself heart and soul and mind and body to that one aim, to discipline himself to a lofty and unresting ambition for that one aim’s sake, to win a fortune, to win a solid renown in which his love should shine reflected and sit enshrined—all this was with him in one confused conglomerate of gratitude and hope and love.
‘No woman,’ he said, ‘ever showed a greater trust I shall never be worthy of it, but it shall be the one endless study of my life to be less unworthy.’
He took her, unresisting, to his arms. Their lips met for the first time, and two souls seemed to tremble into one.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Paul knew that Madge and he were to have a travelling companion on the voyage, and that the companion was to be Madge’s sister, but he did not meet her until he stepped aboard the steamer bound for Tilbury Docks from Adelaide. Her name was Phyllis, but for some reason or no reason her own small world had elected to call her Bill, and to that name only she gave willing answer, unless she were flattered from the memory of short frocks by being addressed as Miss Hampton. She was a child of astonishing beauty, with eyes like stars and the face of a young angel, and people who did not know her received an impression of sanctity and innocence when they beheld her. A complete knowledge of her character revealed her as an incorrigible imp, utterly without a sense of danger under any circumstances her experience had so far led her to encounter, and, apart from that, a compound—a furious compound on either side—of jealousy and affection. It would, perhaps, be more just to say affection and jealousy, for Bill’s heart was hot with love for those for whom she cared at all, and her jealousy was but the natural product of her affection. It was not until the boat reached Colombo that Bill condescended to accept a solitary advance from Paul. Until then she resented every minute he spent in her sister’s society and every word he addressed to her, but once enlisted she became a sort of lovers’ watch-dog, and held all intruders at bay.
The steamer was lying for four-and-twenty hours in the harbour at Colombo, and everybody who was at liberty was delighted to snatch a day ashore. Paul and Madge and Bill made the customary globe-trotter’s round They lunched at the hotel at Point de Galles, saw the usual conjurers and snake-charmers, drove to the usual Buddhist temple, dined in town, and went aboard again. Bill, who had hitherto proved an unmitigated nuisance, behaved with a fine discretion throughout the day, and it was only half an hour after her appointed bedtime that she pointedly made Paul aware of her existence. He was lounging in a deck-chair and smoking a cigar when the young lady took a place at his side.
‘Look here,’ she said, with the boyish off-handedness which belonged to her. ‘I want you and me to be friends.’
‘Why not?’ said Paul. ‘I’m agreeable if you are.’