Chapter XXIII: Poor Paul

It is eleven o'clock in the morning on the first day of Paul's return to work, and business in the Principal Registrar's room at H.M. Stannaries is in full swing.

Mr. Courtney has just arrived, and is seated before the brightly-burning fire--the old gentleman used to harass the souls of the messengers in reference to this fire--reading _The Morning Post_. He looks much better for his holiday, and is wigged, and curled, and buckled, and girthed, and generally got up as much as ever.

George Wainwright is seated at his desk, with several sheets of manuscript before him, which he is scoring through with a pencil, and annotating marginally; from time to time uttering contemptuous grunts of "Pshaw!" and "Stuff!" and "No nominative case," greatly to the disgust of Mr. Billy Dunlop, who is the author of the work in course of supervision.

Mr. Dunlop, whose commencement of his official duties consists hitherto in his having made one large blot on a sheet of foolscap, and newly nibbed a quill pen, whistles softly to himself as he regards the work of demolition going on, and mutters in an undertone, "Ursa Major is going it this morning. I shall have all that infernal _précis_ to write over again."

And Paul Derinzy is seated at his desk, but he has not even attempted the pretext of doing any work.

His chin is resting on his hands, and he is gazing straight before him, looking across at George, but not seeing him in the least, for his thoughts are busily engaged elsewhere. George Wainwright is the first to speak.

"I can't compliment you on your effort, my dear Billy," said he laughing, and looking across to Mr. Dunlop. "I don't think I have come across a production in which there was such an entire absence of sense, grammar, and cohesion as this _précis_ of yours, which you have made of the Falmouth collector's report."

"All right, sir," said Mr. Dunlop. "Cut away by all means, don't mind me; sharpen your great wit, and make me the block. What says the poet? 'Great wit to madness often is allied;' and as that is all in your line, fire away."

"What is that you are saying, my dear George?" said Mr. Courtney, looking up from his newspaper. "Our good friend Dunlop been unsuccessful in his praiseworthy attempt?"

"So far as I can see, sir, from the manner in which my dear George's pencil has been at work, our good friend Dunlop seems to have gone a regular mucker with his praiseworthy attempt," said Mr. Dunlop; "and had I any doubt upon the subject, my dear George is good enough to express his opinion of my humble endeavours with a frankness and outspoken candour which do him credit."

"Here, catch hold!" cried George, grinning as he twisted the sheets together, and throwing them across to Billy. "Copy my corrections exactly, and we shall be able to drag you into the first class, and get you your promotion as the reward of merit before you are seventy years old. Fire away, Billy; get on with it at once."

Mr. Dunlop took the papers, placed them before him, and dipped his pen in the ink; but before writing, he looked up with a serio-comic air, and said, "May I be permitted to ask, sir, why the work in this room is to be entirely confined to one of the junior clerks; and why the other, a gentleman who has the advantage of having just returned from the country, where he has enjoyed fresh air, and no doubt exercise, and freedom from that official labour which is the curse of fallen man--why this gentleman is permitted to sit staring vacantly before him, folding his hands like the celebrated slothful person immortalised by Dr. Watts?"

This remark was unheard by Paul; but when Mr. Courtney addressed him, he started and looked up.

"Yes, by-the-way, my dear boy," said the old gentleman, "I, as well as our friend Dunlop, have remarked that you seem scarcely to have benefited by your holiday; there is a kind of want of tone about you, I notice. Your people's place is in Dorsetshire, is it not? Relaxing, eh, and that kind of thing? House full of company, no doubt; shooting all day; billiards, private theatricals, flirtations, and that kind of thing. Doesn't do, my dear boy! doesn't do for men like us, who are all the rest of the year engaged in official drudgery; doesn't do, depend upon it."

And here Mr. Courtney laid down _The Morning Post_, and proceeded to commence his private correspondence.

"Oh, I'm all right, Chief," said Paul; "a little tired after my journey, perhaps--that's all; a little too smoke-dried by old George over there, for we got a carriage to ourselves, and I think his pipe was blazing all the way to town." Then turning to Dunlop, "I'll walk into the work presently, Billy, and you'll be able to take some leave, if you want any."

"No, thank you, old man," said Billy Dunlop; "I don't want to be away till just after Christmas. Within the month following that festive day, the number of persons engaged in trade who have a small amount to make up by a given period is extraordinary; and I feel it my duty to go into the country about that time, in order that no one may indulge any delusive hopes of pecuniary assistance from me."

After a few minutes George Wainwright stepped across to Paul's desk, and leaning over it, said in a low voice, "What's the matter? Nothing fresh since your arrival?"

"No, nothing at all," said Paul, in the same tone. "I found a note from her at the club, saying that she would meet me this afternoon, and expressed surprise at my having imagined that there had been any decrease in the warmth of her feelings for me, that's all."

"And what makes you so horribly downcast?"

"I cannot tell; I have a sense of oppression over me which I find it impossible to shake off. I had an idea that the mere fact of my return to London, the knowledge that I was so much nearer to her, would have dispersed it; but this morning it seems worse than ever. I think some of it is due to a certain feeling of remorse which I felt on parting with my mother yesterday; she seemed so horribly grieved about the failure of that other business, you know."

"I think you may acquit yourself entirely on that score," said George, looking earnestly at his friend, "as I shall probably be able to prove to you before long."

"What do you mean?" said Paul, in astonishment; "how can you know anything about it?"

"Impossible for me to say just now," replied George; "control your curiosity for yet a short time longer, and you shall know. Meanwhile you may depend on what I have said to you. I only wish you were as well out of this other affair."

No more was said on the subject, and Paul worked on as best he might, impervious to the sarcasms which his occasional fits of musing evoked from Mr. Dunlop.

Soon after two o'clock he closed his blotting-book, and asked the Chief's leave to go away; alleging with a laugh that he had scarcely got acclimatised to the place, and that he must slide into his work by degrees.

Good-natured Mr. Courtney of course assented, and after the performance of a rapid toilet, Paul hurried away.

The depression under which he laboured still continued in its fullest force, and he could not help contrasting his present feelings with those which animated him in the first days of his acquaintance with Daisy. Then all was bright and roseate; now all was dull and dark. His ideas as to the future were indeed no more definite then than they were now; but the haze which hung over it then and shrouded it from his view was a light summer mist; not so now--a dense gloomy fog. And she was changed; he feared there could be no doubt of that. In a few minutes he should be able to ascertain whether there was any foundation for his suspicions; in the meantime he indulged them to the fullest extent. The tone of her letters had certainly altered. The letters themselves were written as though she were preoccupied at the time, and read like mere perfunctory performances, executed under a sense of duty, and finished with a sigh of relief.

What should have changed her? Most men would have supposed at once, on finding an alteration in the tone and manner of the woman they love, that she had been receiving attentions in some other quarter. Paul hesitated to do this; not that he was not aware of the power of Daisy's beauty and attractiveness, nor entirely because of his faith in her, but principally because they had gone on for a certain number of months together, during all which time she must have had innumerable chances of throwing him over and behaving falsely to him had she been so disposed; while all the time she had kept true to him.

_Les absents ont toujours tort_, says the proverb. Could that have been the reason? What woman was to be trusted? How mad it was of him to leave her for so long! It was only in order to satisfy his mother, and to show her how impossible it was for him to comply with this project which she had so long cherished for his future, that he had consented to go down to Devonshire. By-the-way, what was that that George had hinted at? "There need be no remorse on his part," George had said about the refusal to fulfil his mother's wishes in regard to marrying Annette. What could he have meant? Was it possible that his friend had really been taken with the girl? He had some notion of the kind down at Beachborough, but had dismissed it from his mind as unworthy serious consideration. Now there really seemed to be some foundation for the notion, and Annette certainly cared for him. Fancy them married! How jolly it would be! What a capital husband George would make, and what a pleasant house it would be to go to! Fancy "old George" tremendously rich, with a lot of money, going in to give swell parties, and all that kind of thing! No, he could not fancy that; whatever income he had, George would always remain the same glorious, simple-minded, honest, splendid fellow that he was now.

Poor old _mater!_ how awfully she seemed to take his decision to heart! She said this had been her pet project for so many years, and it was hard to see it overthrown at last. George wouldn't do as well, you suppose? No; it was for her own boy, her own darling, the _spes gregis_, that she wanted the wealth and the position; as though that would be the least value, if there were not happiness. His mother didn't seem to understand that, and how could he have any happiness without Daisy? Oh, confound it! there, he had run off that track of thought for a few minutes, and had a small respite; and now he was on it again, and as miserable as ever.

Turning over these thoughts in his mind, Paul Derinzy hurried through the streets and across the Park, and speedily reached the well-known place of meeting. It was a sharp bright day in the early winter. The leaves were off the trees now, and there was an uninterrupted view for many hundred yards. Paul gazed eagerly about him, but could see nothing of Daisy. Usually, to the discredit of his gallantry, she had been first to arrive; now she was not there, although the time for meeting was past; and Paul took it as a bad omen, and his heart sank within him.

He took two or three turns up and down the dreary avenue, and at length Daisy appeared in sight. He hurried to meet her, and as she approached him he could not help being struck with her marvellous beauty.

Paul would have sworn, had he been asked--but her face was ever present to him during the time of his absence--that he felt that he must have forgotten it, or she must have wonderfully improved, so astonished was he at her appearance. She had been walking fast, and a splendid colour glowed in her cheeks. Her eyes were unusually bright too; her dress, which was always neat and in excellent taste, seemed to Paul to be made of some richer and softer material than she was in the habit of wearing. She smiled pleasantly at him as he neared her, and all his gloom for a time melted away.

"My own, my darling!" that was all he said, as he took both her hands in his, and looked down lovingly into her eyes.

"I am a little late, Paul, I am afraid," said Daisy; "but Madame had something particular to be done, and as she has been very good in giving me holidays lately, I did not like to pass the work which she wished me to do to anyone else."

"Never mind, pet; you are here at last, and I am in heaven," said Paul. "How splendidly handsome you look, Daisy! What have you been doing?"

"Nothing, that I know of, in particular," said the girl, "beyond having a little less work and a little more fresh air. Rest and exercise have been my sole cosmetics."

"Holidays and fresh air, eh, miss?" said Paul, smiling rather grimly; "and you never could get an hour to come out with me, Daisy!"

"Because it was in the height of the season, when our work was incessant from morning till night, that you were good enough to ask me, Mr. Douglas," said Daisy, making a little _moue_.

"And when I am away you find time to go out."

"Exactly," said Daisy. "There, isn't this delicious? You were away on a holiday yourself, and I believe you are actually annoyed because during your highness's absence I managed to enjoy myself."

"No, no, Daisy; you mustn't accuse me of that," said Paul; "I am not so selfish as all that! However, never mind. Tell me now all you have been doing."

"No; do you first tell me how you have been enjoying yourself. Were 'your people,' as you call them, very glad to see you; and did they make much of you, as in duty bound?"

There was, whether intentionally or not, a slight inflection of sarcasm in her tone which jarred upon Paul's nerves.

"They were very glad to see me, and made much of me in the only way parents can do," said he quietly. "I often think how foolishly, worse than foolishly, we behave while we have them with us, and only recognise our proper duty to them when it is too late."

"Ye-es," said Daisy, struggling to repress a yawn. She was thinking of something else very different from filial duty, and was beginning to be bored.

"You do not seem to enter into those sentiments," said Paul; "but that is because you have no parents."

"Perhaps so," said the girl; "but even if I had, I scarcely think I should be tempted to gush; gushing is very much out of my line."

Paul looked at her strangely. He had never heard her so hard, so cold, so sardonic before.

"No," he said, after a moment's pause; "you generally manage to have a wonderful control of your feelings; it only needed one to look through your recent letters to prove that."

"What was the matter with my letters?" said Daisy, looking up at him so bewitchingly at that moment that all Paul's anger vanished.

"The matter with them! Nothing, my darling, except that I thought they were a little cold; but perhaps that was my fault."

"How do you mean your fault?"

"Perhaps I ought not to have gone away, to have left you for so long."

"My dear Paul, what are you thinking of? What possible claim have I on you, that you should deprive yourself of a holiday and give up visiting your friends on my account?"

"What claim have you! The claim of being dearer to me than any person in the world; the claim of being the one creature for whom I care beyond all others. Can there be a greater claim than this?"

She looked at him quietly and almost pityingly as she said:

"I thought you would have given up all this romantic nonsense, Paul; I thought you would have come back infinitely more rational and practical than you were when you left."

"I suppose that is what you pride yourself on having become," said Paul, with a dash of bitterness in his tone; "'rational' and 'practical,' and 'romantic nonsense!' You didn't call it by that name when we used to walk in this place but a very few weeks ago."

"It was different then," said Daisy, looking round with a shudder.

"It was, indeed," said Paul. "There is something gone besides leaves from the trees."

"And what is that?" asked Daisy, provokingly.

"Love from you and hope from me," said Paul. Then, with a sudden access of passion: "Oh, my darling!" he cried, "my own love, Daisy, why are you behaving thus to me? For the last few days I have felt certain that something was impending. I have had a dull, dead weight on my spirits. I attributed it to the difference in the tone of your letters, but I thought that would all be dispelled when we met. I had no idea it would be as bad as this."

The girl looked up at him steadily, but seemed to be rather angered than touched at this sudden outburst.

"My dear Paul," said she, "I am again compelled to ask you to be at least rational. What could you have expected would have been the end of our acquaintance?"

"The end!" cried Paul. "I--I never thought about that; I never thought that there would be an end."

"Exactly," said Daisy; "and yet you wonder at my accusing you of want of practicality. Let us go through this matter quietly. You seek and make my acquaintance; you appear to admire me very much, and ask for opportunities of meeting me; these opportunities you have, and you then profess to be deeply in love with me. All this is very nice; we walk and talk like young people in the old story-books. But there is a strong spice of worldliness mixed up with the simplicity of both of us: all the time that you are talking and saying your sweetest things you are in a desperate fright lest any of your acquaintances shall see you. I am perfectly keen enough to notice this; and when I tax you with it, you confess it sheepishly, and as good as tell me that it would be impossible for you, on account of your family, to enter into any lasting alliance with a milliner's assistant. Now, what on earth do you propose to yourself, my dear Paul, or did you propose, when you came here to meet me just now? You have had plenty of time to think over this affair down in the country, and have, I suppose, arrived at some intention; or did you possibly suppose that we could go on mooning away our lives as we have done during the past six months?"

She stopped; and Paul, finding she expected some reply, said hesitatingly:

"I--I thought it would go on just the same."

"You are a very child, my dear Paul," said Daisy, "not to see that such a thing is impossible. If, before you left town, you had spoken at all distinctly as regards the future, if you had asked me to marry you--not now, I don't say immediately, but in the course of a certain given time--matters would have stood very differently."

"You say if I _had_ asked you," said Paul, with an appealing glance at her. "Suppose I were to ask you now?"

"It would be too late," said Daisy, with a short laugh. Then, suddenly changing her tone, she cried, "Do you imagine that, in what I have just said, I was spelling for you to make me an offer? Do you imagine that I would so demean myself? Do you think that I have no pride? I can tell you, I should feel I was doing quite as great an honour to your family by coming into it as they could possibly do to me by receiving me into it. Do you imagine that I was not merely going calmly to wait until it pleased your highness to throw the handkerchief in my direction, but that I was actually making signs to attract your attention to my eager desire for preferment?"

"Daisy, Daisy," interrupted Paul, "what are you saying?"

"Simply the truth; I am speaking out what we both of us know to be true. There is no good shilly-shallying any longer this way, Paul Douglas; we are neither of us so very childlike, we are both of us out of our teens, and we live in a world where Strephon and Daphne will find themselves horribly out of place."

There was a pause for a few moments, and then Paul said in a low voice:

"You must pardon me, Daisy, if I don't answer you straight at once and to the purpose. It is rather a facer for a fellow who has gone away and left a girl, as he imagines, very much attached to him, and certainly most loving and affectionate in her words and manner, to find her, on his return, perfectly changed, and talking about being practical and rational, and that kind of thing. I daresay I was a fool; I daresay you thought I was giving myself airs when I talked about my family, and kept in this secluded part of the Park in order that we might not run the risk of meeting anybody I knew. God knows I didn't intend so, child; God knows I would have done nothing that I thought could have wounded your feelings in the very slightest degree. You say that if I had spoken to you before I left town about marrying you, matters would have stood differently. The truth is, until I went out of town, until I was far away from you and knew I was beyond your reach, until I felt that never-ceasing want of your society and companionship, that ever-present desire to hear your voice and take your hand and look into your darling eyes, I did not know how much I was in love with you. I know it now, Daisy, I feel it all now, and the idea of having to pass the remainder of my life without you drives me mad. You won't let it come to this, Daisy--oh, my own darling one, you won't let it come to this!"

His voice trembled as he spoke these last words, and he was strangely agitated. There was real pity, and perhaps a little look of love, in Daisy's eyes, but she only said:

"My dear Paul, sooner or later it must come to this. Even were there no other reasons, it would be impossible for me to accept an offer of marriage which it might be truly said I have literally wrung from you. If you love me very much--there, you need not protest; we will allow that to pass, and take it for granted that you do--you are desperately spooney upon me, as the phrase is, Paul; but how long will you continue in that state? and when the first force of your passion is spent and past, you will find yourself tied to a wife who, as you will not fail to say to yourself--you don't think so now, but there is no doubt about it--insisted on your marrying her."

"I should not have been cad enough to think any such thing!" cried Paul.

"You would always be too much of a gentleman to say it, I know," said Daisy, "but you could not help thinking it; and the mere knowledge that you thought it would distress me beyond measure. No, Paul, it would not do; depend upon it, it would not do."

"Do you mean to tell me, then," said Paul, in a trembling voice, "that you have finally decided in this matter?"

"I have."

"And your decision is----"

"That it will be better for us to say goodbye, and part as friends."

"And you--you will not marry me, Daisy?"

"Under the circumstances I cannot, Paul. What I might have done, had the proposal been made at a different time and in a different way, I cannot tell; but coming as it has, it is impossible."

"And do you think I am weak enough not to see through all this?" cried Paul furiously. "Do you think I am so slow of hearing or so uninterested in what you say that I did not catch the words, 'even if there were not other reasons,' when you first began to explain why you could not accept my offer; and do you think it is not palpable to me at once what those 'other reasons' are? You have been playing the false during my absence; your woman's vanity is so great that, knowing me as you do, being fully aware of the love, passion, call it what you will, that I had for you, you couldn't even remain content with that during the few weeks I was away, but must get some fresh admirer to minister to it!"

"Paul--Mr. Douglas!" cried Daisy.

"I will speak--I will be heard! This is the last chance I shall have, and I will avail myself of it. You have wrecked my life and destroyed all my hopes, and yet you think that I am to make no protest against all that you have done! All the time that I was away I was wearing you in my heart, checking off with delight the death of each day which brought nearer the hour of my return to you; and now I have returned to find you sneer at those relations between us which made me so happy, and bidding me be practical, rational; bidding me, in point of fact, though not in words, abjure all my love and give you up contentedly, see you go to someone else. It is too hard, it is too hard, Daisy! You cannot force this upon me."

He seized her hand and looked imploringly into her eyes.

The girl made no attempt to withdraw her hand, it remained passively within his; but his passionate manner met no response in her glance, and the tones of her voice were calm and unbroken as she said:

"I see now, more than ever, how right I was in my determination. I accused you of being childish, and you have proved yourself so, far more thoroughly than I had anticipated. Seeing the chance of your toy being taken away from you, you consent to do what before you would never have thought of, in order to secure it. You scold, and abuse, and beg, and implore in the same breath: almost in the same sentence you declare your love for me and insult me; a continuance of such a state of things would be impossible. We had better shake hands and part."

During this speech she had withdrawn her hand, but at the close she offered it to him again.

Paul Derinzy, however, drew himself up; for an instant he seemed as though about to speak to her, but it was evident he doubted his power of self-command, his eyes filled with tears, and his under-lip trembled visibly. Then with a strong effort he recovered himself, took off his hat, and making a formal bow, hurried away.

"It would never have done," said Daisy, looking after him. Then, as she started on her homeward walk, she said, "It would have been neither one thing nor the other; a kind of genteel poverty. Unrecognised by his relations, he would soon have sickened of that kind of life, and I should have been left to my own devices, to mope and pine at home or amuse myself abroad; in either case, a very undesirable mode of life. My vanity Paul talked about, that could not live without another admirer! Poor fellow, he wasn't right there. It wasn't vanity; it was a craving for luxury and position that first led me to listen to this man. I have to give him my answer by the end of the week. I don't think there is much doubt as to what it will be."

A loud cry interrupted her thoughts just at this moment, and looking up, she saw a carriage, drawn by a pair of splendid horses, turning into the street that she was about to cross. The coachman and footman sitting on the box called out to warn her of her danger, and as she sprang back, they looked at her and laughed insolently. A woman, handsome and young, and splendidly dressed in sables, lay back in the barouche, and looked at the girl, who was covered with a mud-shower whirling from the wheels, with a glance half of pity, half of contempt.

Daisy's face was ablaze in an instant.

"I have been a poverty-stricken drudge long enough," she said. "Now I will ride in my own carriage, and stop all chance of insults such as these."