Part 21 (1/2)

”Oh, but I wish you had not altered so entirely!” Pauline sighed.

”At least, you haven't,” he declared. ”Of course, I would be compelled to say so, anyhow. But in this happy instance courtesy and veracity come skipping arm-in-arm from my elated lips.” And, indeed, it seemed to him that Pauline was marvelously little altered. ”I wonder now,” he said, and c.o.c.ked his head, ”I wonder now whose wife I am talking to?”

”No, Jack, I never married,” she said quietly.

”It is selfish of me,” he said, in the same tone, ”but I am glad of that.”

And so they sat a while, each thinking.

”I wonder,” said Pauline, with that small plaintive voice which Charteris so poignantly remembered, ”whether it is always like this?

Oh, do the Overlords of Life and Death ALWAYS provide some obstacle to prevent what all of us have known in youth was possible from ever coming true?”

And again there was a pause which a delectable and lazy conference of leaves made eloquent.

”I suppose it is because they know that if it ever did come true, we would be G.o.ds like them.” The ordinary a.s.sociates of John Charteris, most certainly, would not have suspected him to be the speaker. ”So they contrive the obstacle, or else they send false dreams--out of the gates of horn--and make the path smooth, very smooth, so that two dreamers may not be hindered on their way to the divorce-courts.”

”Yes, they are jealous G.o.ds! oh, and ironical G.o.ds also! They grant the Dream, and chuckle while they grant it, I think, because they know that later they will be bringing their playthings face to face--each married, fat, inclined to optimism, very careful of decorum, and perfectly indifferent to each other. And then they get their fore-planned mirth, these Overlords of Life and Death. 'We gave you,'

they chuckle, 'the loveliest and greatest thing infinity contains. And you bartered it because of a clerks.h.i.+p or a lying maxim or perhaps a finger-ring.' I suppose that they must laugh a great deal.”

”Eh, what? But then you never married?” For masculinity in argument starts with the word it has found distasteful.

”Why, no.”

”Nor I.” And his tone implied that the two facts conjoined proved much.

”Miss Willoughby----?” she inquired.

Now, how in heaven's name, could a cloistered Fairhaven have surmised his intention of proposing on the first convenient opportunity to handsome, well-to-do Anne Willoughby? He shrugged his wonder off.

”Oh, people will talk, you know. Let any man once find a woman has a tongue in her head, and the stage-direction is always 'Enter Rumor, painted full of tongues.'”

Pauline did not appear to have remarked his protest. ”Yes,--in the end you will marry her. And her money will help, just as you have contrived to make everything else help, toward making John Charteris comfortable. She is not very clever, but she will always wors.h.i.+p you, and so you two will not prove uncongenial. That is your real tragedy, if I could make you comprehend.”

”So I am going to develop into a pig,” he said, with relish,--”a lovable, contented, unambitious porcine, who is alike indifferent to the Tariff, the importance of Equal Suffrage and the market-price of hams, for all that he really cares about is to have his sty as comfortable as may be possible. That is exactly what I am going to develop into,--now, isn't it?” And John Charteris, sitting, as was his habitual fas.h.i.+on, with one foot tucked under him, laughed cheerily.

Oh, just to be alive (he thought) was ample cause for rejoicing! and how deliciously her eyes, alert with slumbering fires, were peering through the moon-made shadows of her brows!

”Well----! something of the sort.” Pauline was smiling, but restrainedly, and much as a woman does in condoning the naughtiness of her child. ”And, oh, if only----”

”Why, precisely. 'If only!' quotha. Why, there you word the key-note, you touch the cornerstone, you ruthlessly illuminate the mainspring, of an intractable unfeeling universe. For instance, if only

You were the Empress of Ayre and Skye, And I were Ahkond of Kong, We could dine every day on apple-pie, And peddle potatoes, and sleep in a sty, And people would say when we came to die, 'They _never_ did anything wrong.'

But, as it is, our epitaphs will probably be nothing of the sort. So that there lurks, you see, much virtue in this 'if only.'”

Impervious to nonsense, she asked, ”And have I not earned the right to lament that you are changed?”

”I haven't robbed more than six churches up to date,” he grumbled.

”What would you have?”

The answer came, downright, and, as he knew, entirely truthful: ”I would have had you do all that you might have done.”

But he must needs refine. ”Why, no--you would have made me do it, wrung out the last drop. You would have bullied me and shamed me into being all that I might have been. I see that now.” He spoke as if in wonder, with quickening speech. ”Pauline, I haven't been entirely not worth while. Oh, yes, I know! I know I haven't written five-act tragedies which would be immortal, as you probably expected me to do.