CHAPTER XXXI
But the months went by without healing Paul's grief. Time only coated itwith a dull, callous crust. He had got into a hard way of taking everythingas it came. He did not fly from society, or ape the manners of themisanthrope; he went to London, and stayed about and played the game. Butall with a stony, bald indifference which made people wonder.
No faintest inkling of his story had ever leaked out. And it seemed anincomprehensible attitude towards life for a young and fortunate man.Those who had looked for great things from his birthday speech shook theirheads sadly at the unfulfilment.
So time passed on, until one day at the beginning of February, nearly fiveyears after the light had gone out of his life, a circumstance happenedwhich proved a turning-point of great magnitude.
It was quite a small thing--just the brutalised hardness in a gipsy woman'sface!
The sun was setting that late afternoon when he strode home across the moorwith Pike, and they came upon some gipsy vans. Paul looked up--it was nounaccustomed sight, only they happened to be in exactly the same spot wherethe like had stood that morning long ago, when in his exuberant happinessat the news of his little son's birth he had tossed the young woman thesovereign.
The door of the last van was open, and there, sitting on the steps in anattitude of dull sullen idleness, was the same swarthy lass, only now shewas altered sadly! No more the proud young mother met his view, but a hard,gaunt, evil-looking woman.
She knew him instantly, and her black eyes fiercened; as he came up closeto her she said without any greeting:
"I lost him, your honour--him and my Bill in the same blasted year, and Iain't never had no other."
Paul stopped and peered into her brown face in the fading light.
"So we have been both through hell since then, my poor girl?" he said.
The gipsy woman laughed with bitter harshness as she echoed back the oneword "Hell!"--and afterwards she added with a wail: "Yes, they're dead! andthere won't be never no meeting."
And Paul went on--but her face haunted him.
Was there the same hard change in himself, he wondered? Was he, too,brutalised and branded with the five years of hell? Surely if so he hadgone on a lower road than his darling would have had him travel.
Then out of the mist of the dying day came the memory of her noble face asit had been in that happy hour when they had floated out to the lagoon, andshe had told him--her eyes alight with the _feu sacre_--her wishes for hisfuture.
But what had he done to carry them out--those lofty wishes? Surelynothing. For, obsessed with his own selfish anguish, he had lived on withno single worthy aim, with no aim at all except to forget and deaden hissuffering.
Forget! Ah God! that could never be. For had she not said there was aneternal marriage of their souls--in life or in death they could never beparted?
And he had tried to break this sacred tender bond, when he should havecherished every memory to comfort his deep pain with its sweetness. Whathad he done? Let sorrow sink him to the level of the poor gipsy girl,instead of trying to do some fine thing as a tribute to his lady's nobleteaching.
He strode on in the dusk towards his home, his thoughts lashing him withshame and remorse.
And that night, when he and Pike were alone in his own panelled room, hebroke the seal of those beautiful letters which, with directions for themto be buried with his body at his death, had lain in a packet hidden awayfrom sight all these years, freighted with agonised memory.
He read them over carefully, from the first brief note to the last long cryof love which Dmitry had brought him to Paris. Then he lay back in hischair, while his strong frame shook with sobs, and his eyes were blinded byscorching, bitter tears.
But suddenly it seemed as if his lady's spirit stood beside him in thefirelight's flickering gleam, whispering words of hope, pleading to comeback from the cold grave to his heart, there to abide and comfort him.
He heard her golden voice once more, and it fell like soft, healing rain,so that he stretched out his arms, and cried aloud:
"My darling, beloved one, forgive me for these five wastedyears--sweetheart, come back to me never to part again. Come back to myheart, and dwell there, Angel Queen!"
* * * * *
Then, as the days went on, all the world altered for him. Instead of theterrible bitterness against fate which had ruled his heart, a newtenderness grew there. It seemed now as though he were never alone, butlived in her ever-present memory. And with this golden change came thoughtsof his child--that little life neglected for so long. What had he done?What cruel, terrible thing had he done in his selfish pain?
Each year Dmitry had sent him a letter of news, and each year that day hadheld ghastly hours for him in the reopening of old anguish--the missive tobe read and quickly thrust out of sight, the thought of it to be strangledand forgotten.
And now the little one would soon be five years old, and his father'sliving eyes had never seen him! But this should no more be so, and he wroteat once to Dmitry.
By return of post came the answer. The Excellency indeed would bewelcome. The Regent--the Grand Duke Peter--had bidden him say that if theExcellency should be travelling for pleasure, as the nobility of hiscountry often did, he would gladly be received by the Regent, who washimself a great _chasseur_ and _voyageur_. The Excellency would then seethe never-to-be-sufficiently-beloved baby King. Of this glorious childhe--Dmitry--found it difficult to write. It was as if the _Imperatorskoye_breathed again in his spirit, while he was the portrait of his illustriousfather, proving how deeply and well the _Imperatorskoye_ must have lovedthat father. If the Excellency could arrive in time for the Majesty's fifthbirthday, on the 19th of February, there was to be a special ceremony inthe great church which the Regent thought might be of interest to theExcellency.
Paul wired back he would travel night and day to be in time, and heinstructed Dmitry to have the necessary arrangements made that he might gostraight to the church, in case unforeseen delay should not permit him toarrive until that morning.
It was in a shaft of sunlight from the great altar window that Paul firstsaw his son. The tiny upright figure in its blue velvet suit, heavilytrimmed with sable, standing there proudly. A fair, rosy-cheeked,golden-haired English child--the living reality of that miniature paintedon ivory and framed in fine pearls, which made the holy of holies on LadyHenrietta's writing-table.
And as he gazed at his little son, while the organ pealed out a Te Deum andthe sweet choir sang, a great rush of tenderness filled Paul's heart, andmelted forever the icebergs of grief and pain.
And as he knelt there, watching their child, it seemed as if his darlingstood beside him, telling him that he must look up and thank God, too--forin her spirit's constant love, and this glory of their son, he would oneday find rest and consolation.
THE END.
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