Chapter LV. 'Comes the Goal More Nigh?'

'I think I will go to town,' said Edgar Paget, when between him and his long-suffered trouble lay six days and a few feet of damp earth.

'I think it would be wise,' said Philiberta, to whom he had spoken.

'The house seems so strange, so empty,' he continued, half in soliloquy. 'It is curious how one misses even a sorrow, and how much of pain and regret come even with the sense of relief.'

There was a long pause, broken only by the continuous chirrup of locusts in the hot, still trees outside.

'All this week, Tempest, I have been haunted by the memory of sins of omission. I never did her any actual unkindness, but I might have been kinder to her; and if I had, she might have been different.'

'I think everyone has something to regret in connection with the dead,' said Philiberta; 'so many things occur to one after a friend is for ever gone, that one wishes done or undone. Self-reproach is as inevitable as death itself—to anyone capable of feeling. But if ever anyone had little cause for self-reproach concerning one that is gone, it is you, Mr. Paget.'

'Do you think that really, Tempest?'—'Yes, I do.'

'I told you how near I was to leaving her?'

'Yes, I know, No man escapes temptation. Your temptation was strong. When all had failed and was over, you came back here and did your best.'

'Tempest,' he said, looking at her keenly, 'was that piece of irony intentional?'

'Irony!'

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'When all had failed I came back here and did my best!'

'Ah, I see!' said Philiberta, flushing hotly. 'It was my maladroit way of putting it. What I meant was that you did not, as many men would, let despair and failure turn you altogether from good. There was only one bra[gap — reason: invisiable]e thing left you to do, and you did it. It was all the braver in that it was a thing requiring continuous effort, and in that the aspect of it and its surroundings was very hopeless when you came back to face and strive with it.'

'Every word you say is a sort of comfort to me, Tempest, even though the reasoning is sophistic. Not on your part, you know. As you say and think it, it is genuine enough. But I —knowing my own heart, and having some true judgment left in me yet—I know how much of blame and how little of all else is due to me. When I think of the blighting wrong I did that woman—the woman who was drowned through me——'

'Wherever she is,' said Philiberta, in a voice grown strangely tremulous, 'wherever she is she forgives and forgets that wrong, be sure.'

'But, Tempest, she is dead!'

'Even so, can death make a soul less forgiving and forgetting?'

He tried to see her face; a strange look of perplexity came over his; it was as if his mind sought to grasp a dim memory and make it tangible reality; but she leaned back into the shadows that were filling the room, and her moment passed.

'Do you believe in spiritualism, Tempest?'

'Why do you ask?'

'What an unfair way of answering a man! But I will tell you. I asked because just now, when you were speaking, I had a strange sense of another presence. If ever a spirit came back to earth, one came to me a moment ago. I think it is time for Janet to light up. Where are you, Tempest?'

Philiberta had left the room. When they met again an hour or so later, Paget was quite cheerful.

'I have told Janet to pack for me,' he said, 'and the mere anticipation of the journey to-morrow has dispelled my blues.'

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He stretched his limbs; he rose and thrust out his hands as if thrusting away something he was determined to see and feel no more.

'If one thing that I am thinking of now turns out as I desire, Tempest, I shall sell out of Yoanderruk and go away.'

'And that one thing,' she said breathlessly.

'Ah, not yet I will not speak of it yet,' he answered, pacing the room restlessly.

Presently he turned to her somewhat abruptly. 'Do the Tarragut people know about—about this?' he asked.

'Yes, they know. Mr. Wilks sent over twice to make inquiries, Janet told me. I thought she had told you, too.'

'Oh, but it does not matter. I think I'll call at Tarragut on my way to town. By-the-bye, Tempest, will you mind being left to look after things alone again like this?'

'Mind! Why, no; of course I shall not mind.'

'But I feel that it is selfish of me, you know. You need a holiday badly enough.'

'Do I look so badly, then?' asked Philiberta sharply.

He laughed. 'I thought it was only women who ever made inquiries about their looks,' he said. 'Now, don't be vexed!' for she had turned hastily away. 'You're a leetle over-sensitive, you know, Tempest. I didn't mean to say anything annoying; and your looks are all right, as far as I can judge. What I meant was that you must, physically and mentally, need a holiday from Yoanderruk, after the long, troublous time you have had here. You must take a good spell after I come back.'

'Do you want me to go away, Mr. Paget?'

'Great Heaven, no! Don't misunderstand me so, Tempest. Because I am not demonstratively grateful you think perhaps I don't feel all that you have done for me.'

'I was not thinking that at all, I was not thinking of anything I had done.'

'Don't quarrel, Tempest. And don't—don't dream of leaving Yoanderruk while I am here.'

He spoke very earnestly, his face and voice full of friendly kindness. She was too nearly crying to hear anything or say page 358anything. She had not felt sure of herself for several days. The death had unstrung her nerves—her very womanly nerves that no effort at masculine strength and control could alter. And day and night her heart and brain were excited, almost tortured, by one thought that seemed to beat and throb within her in a rhythmical monotonous refrain. 'Free at last; we are free at last!' All the joy went out of it in its ceaseless repetition, and there was moreover the sin of being glad. Was it any less sinful than that sin of a past winter's night, when she had almost compassed a woman's death? Time and again in that six days after the burial she had hardly restrained herself from a passionate outburst of confession at Edgar Paget's feet.

'It is well he is going away,' she said. 'I shall have time to think.'

Then, when he was gone, she found reasonable thought as impossible as when he was with her. She must needs sit down in weak womanliness before her mirror and wonder whether, if only her hair were grown long and her figure draped in womanly raiment, he would recognise Philiberta. She longed to ask some one's opinion of her appearance. She wanted to know if in other people's eyes she looked as old and weatherbeaten as she looked in her own. Was it the plain, stiff collar-band that made her face seem so worn and harsh? Would those wrinkles about the eyes, and that droop of the corners of the mouth, go away ever again when she would be happy—quite happy once more?

Then the soft wind coming in at the open window would seem like a sigh from the grave yonder, and she would bury her face in her hands and cry in sorrowfullest pity for the woman who had been given so much and had gained so little from her gifts.

Meantime Edgar Paget had gone to town and called on his way at Tarragut, and discovered that Miss Fitzroy was gone.

'Gone! Whither?"

'Oh, to town. Oh, you didn't know, you don't know all that has happened. Of course you couldn't, you were so busy with your own troubles. Oh, Mr. Paget, we were so sorry for you, you know, although we didn't come over and make a fuss.'

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'But about Miss Fitzroy, Mrs. Wilks; what of her?'

'Oh, snake bite, you know; and we all gave her up for dead, and then it wasn't a snake after all—at least, not a poisonous one. Budgeree Tommy ate it just as we would eat an eel, only I never could eat eels. They make me sick even to look at— horrid, slimy things! So Madge got all right; it was only the brandy that nearly killed her, just as ft would have saved her if the snake had been real, I mean venomous. It was real enough—nasty little wriggling beast Oh, the fright it gave us! And then came Mr. and Mrs.—but no—not a word. She shall tell you herself when, she comes back, and oh, won't you be surprised? Not that I was—much—you know.'

'Then she is coming back?' said Edgar Paget, grasping this one tangible fact out Of the chaos of Mrs. Wife's oration.

'Oh yes; I made her promise that it should be here. She will be back in a fortnight. I didn't want her to go away, only of course she was obliged to go for some clothes. The only thing I am afraid of is that Miss Wilks will be coming home. We have been rid of her for so long now that I don't feel as if I could stand her again. She has been visiting for the last three months, and oh, I do hope she'll keep it up till she dies[gap — reason: invisiable] Oh, Madge was so sorry about your trouble, Mr. Paget; and you'd have been so sorry for her, poor thing; she was so awfully sick after the emetics, and Budgeree Tommy was so comical. I'm going to write a book about it all, one of these days, though John says the effort will cost me my life, but men never think women can do anything. Pray, wait five minutes longer, Mr. Paget, do, and then John will be in.'

But no! Mr. Paget must go, he said; and he did go, with a feeling of intense pity for John Wilks.

'Madge will be here again this day fortnight exactly,' cried Mrs. Wilks after him; 'she gave me her solemn promise she would.'

'I shall see her before that,' said Edgar Paget to himself, as he drove away.

But in this he was disappointed. He went to the old place in Carlton; other occupants had been long in possession—they page 360did not even know Miss Fitzroy's name. He went to the Royal day and night; she was not forgotten there, but none knew aught of her probable whereabouts. He walked up and down Bourke and Collins Streets the whole day long, and he never once saw her. At the end of a fortnight he went back to Tarragut.

'And only to think,' bubbled effluent Mrs. Wilks; 'she has gone over to your place this very day; Tom drove her in the tilbury to tell you—and to ask you.'

'To ask me what, Mrs. Wilks?

'Oh—um—um,' said the lady, putting her finger on her lips and making a tantalizing moue, 'I'd give the world to tell—I would indeed, but I won't be let; you wait here till Madge comes back; she will be on the road here now.'

'Then I will take my chance of meeting her,' said Edgar Paget 'Good-bye, Mrs. Wilks.'