By far the greater part of the theoretical wisdom of the world comes to us in the shape of legacies bequeathed by fools. A fool is not a person without knowledge or understanding—that is an ignoramus. The true fool—the only fool worthy of a wise man’s contemplation—is the man who knows and understands, and habitually refrains from acting according to knowledge and understanding. It is the record of the follies of such people which has built up the world’s wisdom. From that record we have learned amongst many other things that the fool of understanding has one eternal refuge from himself which he seeks with a full knowledge of the fact that the shelter it affords is illusory, and that the path by which it leads him can only conduct him to greater dangers than those from which he is striving to escape. It is too late to go back now, quoth the fool; the business must be gone through to the end. Thus if this brief diagnosis be of any value, the root of folly is to be found in the decay of will. Few men had reason to hold this belief more firmly than Paul Armstrong, and yet even now, when whatever was best in his own nature was more seriously engaged than it had ever been before, he went on to the consummation of a most undoubted and most cruel wrong, on the poor pretence that every stage he passed towards it made the passage of the next stage inevitable.

If ever it had seemed clear to him that it was too late to retire it seemed clearer now, and indeed he had so involved himself that it became to him alike and equally criminal to retreat or to advance. But by-and-by a solace for his miseries brought a solution of perplexity. Since he had taken so tremendous a responsibility upon himself, since there was now no escape from it without an act of brutality at the mere thought of which his heart revolted, there grew up within him such a resolve and such a sense of protective tenderness as had been hitherto impossible for him. Poor little Madge was to be victimized, but the via dolorosa which she would tread unendingly should at least be strewn with flowers, and the victim herself should be beautifully garlanded. His life should be one act of worship in return for her self-sacrifice. His devotion should offer such a challenge to the censure of the world that all reproach should shrink away ashamed. There never had been so complete an atonement as he would offer.

The nauseous pill of self-reproach was so thickly sugared and gilded by this inspiration that in a while he was not only able to take it without making wry faces, but with an actual sense of relish and self-approval. This was naturally a good deal dashed by the coming interview with Madge’s mother, about whose unknown personality there began to cluster some self-contradictory ideas. That lady would be a most unnatural mother if she rejected the proposal he had to lay before her, and a most unnatural mother if she accepted it. In his reflections, according to his mood, he saw either horn of this dilemma so clearly that the other vanished from his mind, but it always assumed its proper reality again, and made its companion altogether visionary.

When at last the fatal hour for the interview arrived, he went to the rendezvous in a pitiable state of hope and fear. He had always his whole life through carried all his eggs in one basket, and had been incapable of undertaking more than one emotional enterprise at a time. To lose Madge now would be to lose everything, and his former experiences of the healing powers of time—which were possibly numerous and striking enough—were of no value to him. Obeying the directions he had received, he chartered a cab, and after a half-hour’s tumultuous journey found himself alighting before a pretty villa in Prahran, with a well-ordered garden in front of it full of English shrubs and flowers, amidst which were interspersed a number of sub-tropic plants and trees. He was shown with no delay into a shaded room, where he had some difficulty in making out the figure of a gray-haired lady who sat in an arm-chair to receive him, and who did not rise at his entrance. Madge was standing near her, and as the dazzling effect of the bright sunshine of the streets passed from his eyes he saw the sign of many tears in the two faces before him.

There was an embarrassing silence, which lasted for a full half-minute, and Paul stood there conscious of the mother’s scrutiny, and feeling like a criminal in the dock. The girl herself was the first who found courage and self-control to speak.

‘Mother dear,’ she said in an uncertain voice, ‘this is Mr. Armstrong.’

The elder lady nodded, and with a slight gesture of the hand motioned the visitor to a chair. Paul obeyed the gesture, and waited in silence.

‘You will understand,’ the lady of the house began, ‘how wretchedly sorry I am to see you.’ Paul bowed an assent to this, and could but acknowledge that the unpromising exordium was natural. ‘My daughter has never had a secret from me in her life until within the last few months. She has written of you in her letters from time to time, but never led me to fancy that you were making love to her. I believe you are a married man, Mr. Armstrong?’

‘I am married,’ Paul responded in a voice so strangled and unlike his own that it positively startled him.

‘I cannot help knowing,’ said Mrs. Hampton, ‘that I have made a very serious mistake in giving way to my daughter’s desire to go upon the stage. But I trusted her so completely that I had no fear at all of what has happened. You must know, Mr. Armstrong, that you have misbehaved yourself most cruelly.’

‘I have said so to myself a thousand times,’ said Paul, ‘and I have no defence to offer now.’

‘You have done a wicked and a cruel thing,’ pursued the mother. ‘You have brought my daughter into opposition with me for the first time in her life, and you have filled her head with ideas which can only lead to suffering and disgrace.’

‘Forgive me, Mrs. Hampton,’ Paul said. ‘I have acted precipitously and wrongly, and I am much to blame; but I have never striven for an instant to confuse Miss Hampton’s mind. If I have won her love, I have done it half unconsciously, and it began in friendship and esteem. I ought, I know now, to have told her of that miserable tie which binds me; but at first I did not think it necessary to speak a word about that. A man would have to be a rare coxcomb,’ he went on, ‘to think it needful that he should make public proclamation of a fact like that. My life has been ruined for years past, and I did not care to talk about it I did not dream of harm until harm was done.’

‘I can only say, Mr. Armstrong,’ the mother answered, ‘that there can be no discussion about this matter, and that I rely upon my daughter to do justice to herself. She will learn in a little while to know that you have done her a very serious wrong, and that will help her to live her trouble down.’

‘Madam,’ cried Paul, rising to his feet, and speaking with an impassioned swiftness, ‘I beseech you to listen to me for one minute only; if I try to justify myself in some small degree, you will understand my purpose. At an age when life is opening for most men I had tied myself to a hopeless burden. I found myself shut out from every chance of happiness; such a thing as home I dared not even dream of. The law can afford me no relief from the snare into which I have fallen; I am excluded from everything that makes life bright to other men. My experiences of woman’s friendship have not been happy, and I had come to the belief that I was condemned to go through life without companionship. I met your daughter; we found that our minds came together in whatever was best in both of us. I declare that I never spoke one word of love to her until the night on which she made me promise to write the letter which she sent to you. I must not—dare not—speak of scruples on your side. They are no scruples; they are stern and cruel facts which can only be surmounted by great courage. But they have been surmounted by others, and we believe—Madge and I both believe—that we have the courage and the constancy to face them. Madge tells me that without your consent our case is hopeless. I know how unlikely it is that it should be given; but if it should be given—if by any chance you should be brought to change your present mind—I promise you by everything that men hold sacred that I will honour and treasure her and cherish her as my true wife in the sight of God and men, and that the tie on my side will be not less binding, but beyond measure more sacred because her claim appeals only to honour and manhood, and is not enforced by law. I plead for myself, Mrs. Hampton, and you will tell me with perfect justice that you are not called upon in the remotest degree to consult my wishes or to sympathize with any grief I may have brought upon myself. But there is another side to the question, and your daughter will tell you if I am right in thinking it a million times stronger than my own. You have known her and have loved her tenderly all her life. I have known her for little more than half a year; but I am sure of this: her affections are not lightly engaged or easily cast away.’

She had raised her hand against him more than once as if to interrupt him, but he had not checked the impetuous torrent of his speech until he had poured out all he had to say. Now, with a forlorn outward gesture of the hands, and a lax dropping of them to either side, he stood awaiting judgment.

Madge broke silence for the second time.

‘There is no need for Mr. Armstrong to stay longer now. You and I must talk together, mother; and I will write to him to-night.’

Her face was of a striking pallor, except where the salt of tears had scalded it; but she spoke with an entire possession of herself, and Paul wondered at her steadfastness and courage.

‘There is one thing more,’ he said: ‘if you can be brought to sanction this union, sanctify it by coming with us both to Europe. Live with us, and help me to secure Madge’s happiness. Your presence there would silence every wicked tongue, and if we made no secret of the truth, but dared the world together, we should find, I know, that it would deal kindly with us.’

He stood for a moment, and, receiving no reply, bowed and walked blindly towards a door which communicated with another room. Madge called to him, ‘This way,’ and went out into the hall before him.

‘Is this to be our last parting, I wonder?’ he asked hoarsely.

She shook her head with a weary lifting of the fine arched brows as if to say she could find no answer, and then withdrew without word or sign, leaving him to quit the house unattended.

He fumbled half blindly until he found his hat and cane, and then he had to fumble for the door, for the whole place was heavily shadowed from the blazing sun outside, and his eyesight and his hands were each less serviceable to him than usual. At first the broad sunshine fell upon his eyes like a sudden vivid heat upon a wound, and in his agitation and half-blindness he found himself walking away from the quarter of the city to which he had meant to direct his steps. Correcting this error in a minute or two, he turned and made for his hotel with a mind so shaken and vacant that he seemed to have no thoughts at all. A man who has been passionately in love three times before he has begun to verge upon middle age may easily be thought too inflammable a subject to be deserving of much pity, but a man may be keenly in sympathy with himself without enlisting the sympathy of other people, and Paul was here as always heroically and tragically in earnest. Without seeking apologies for him too far afield, there is a kind of nature which burns intensely within itself, and will break out into violence of smoke and flame with the intrusion of any new emotional material, just as there is a nature not more intense which will burn equably and clearly whatever new supply of fuel may be heaped upon it.

There is no need to dwell upon the time of waiting, the miserable loiterings in bedroom, corridor and entrance-hall, the aimless perusal of newspapers which conveyed no meaning to the mind, the taking up and laying down of petty occupations, and all the other signs and tokens of suspense. Time and the hour wear out the roughest day, and as Paul lingered over the dessert of a barely tasted dinner, a note reached him in Madge’s handwriting. It contained these words only:

‘There is no change. I dare not hope, and I dare not despair. I may have news for you to-morrow, but what it may be I must not guess.

‘M.’

This was cold comfort, but he had not expected more, and he strolled away in sheer vacuity of heart and thought to the principal theatre of the city, where just then a bright comic opera was running. The lights, the gay music, the brilliantly-dressed crowd upon the stage, made no impression on his mind, and his saturnine and gloomy face was in such contrast to the loud hilarity of the audience that he felt himself a blot upon the house, and at the first fall of the curtain withdrew into the streets, where he wandered listlessly until midnight He was fatigued, and slept heavily for some hours, but he was awake again long before the household was astir, and suffered all the weariness and chagrin which assailed the unoccupied mind in hours of suspense and doubt. Another brief note reached him by the first post.

‘Mother has spoken a great deal to-night of my brother George, who, as you know, is already in London. I do not know what to think of this, and I can scarcely dare to fancy what I should so much like to believe. I shall not write again until I have something definite to tell you, but whether we ever meet again or no, you shall see my whole heart for once. I love you, and I know that I shall always love you. Is it unwomanly—is it too bold to tell you this so soon? Will you think that I am too easily persuaded about myself? I hope not. But whatever happens, even if I never see you or hear your voice again, I shall not change or forget anything that has happened in all this beautiful and dreadful time.

‘All yours, and always yours,

‘Madge.’

This had been brought to him as he sat dressed in his bedroom, wondering if any message would reach him, and he had locked his door to be alone with Fate before he had broken the seal of the wax, which bore a dove with an olive-branch, and the motto Esperez. He read the tender message with its proclamation of unshakable fidelity thrice over, and then rising, began to pace up and down the room. A cry of self-accusation rose to his lips.

‘My God!’ he asked himself, ‘what have I done? What have I done?’

There was no room for doubt in all his mind. There are some truths which manifest themselves so clearly to the heart that they are not to be resisted. He had found fidelity at last after all his foolish researches. It had seemed to him the priceless jewel of the world, and he had been willing to barter all his life for it. It was here at last, and he was so far beggared that he had no price to offer in payment for it which was worth a thousandth part its value. He was bankrupt and had sought to buy this treasure, and must now needs go through life as a swindler. Even if his hopes were granted, what had he to pay? He knew at this moment as clearly as if he had even then been enlightened by the events of later years that there were scores of women who would draw their skirts away in a real disdain of an association of which they were not worthy. And he knew also that if his own hopes failed him he had spoiled the one life in the whole world he would fain have done his best to gladden.

The next pause lasted long. Day after day went by and no message came. It is not more than justice to chronicle the fact that Paul Armstrong did grow for once in his life to feel more for another than for himself, and if he suffered anguish, as he did, it was on Madge’s account much rather than his own. The cry her confession had wrung from him was always in his mind: ‘What have I done? My God, what have I done?’

These days were a stern discipline, but they came to an end at last. A note reached him at the end of a week in which Mrs. Hampton presented her compliments to Mr. Armstrong, with a request that he would call that afternoon at five o’clock. This, of course, conveyed no certainty to him in either one direction or another, but it awoke an extraordinary tumult in his mind, and he found himself in the neighbourhood of the Prahran villa a full hour before the time appointed. He sauntered in the broiling heat and blinding light until he lost himself repeatedly in strange places and rang at the doors of strange houses to inquire his way back again, quite frenzied by the fear of missing his appointment In effect, he arrived at the instant, and was ushered into the room he had already visited. Mrs. Hampton sat there, looking very pale and stern, he thought, and she rose upon his entrance and offered him her hand. It seemed to him that this cost her a considerable effort, and she resumed her seat without a word. Madge was there also, but she exchanged no greeting with Paul, and did not even meet his glance. The hostess touched a bell upon the table which stood near her, and after a silent pause a trim parlourmaid brought in a tray upon which was set out the materials for afternoon tea. Mrs. Hampton began to busy herself about the tray, and Madge handed a cup of tea to Paul.

‘I may tell you, Mr. Armstrong,’ said Madge’s mother, ‘that, if you think it worth while to call it winning, you have won. You have very nearly broken an old woman’s heart in doing it, and you may break a girl’s heart into the bargain before you have done. But my son George is in London, and I have made up my mind to let Madge go home and join him there. Her sister will go with her and will be her companion on the voyage, and I shall follow so soon as I can dispose of my interests in this country. I am uprooting my household and leaving all my friends; and I am doing it, Mr. Armstrong, for a man of whom I know next to nothing. I am almost certain that I am not acting wisely, and I am not quite sure that I am not acting wickedly. I know out of my own experience of the world that marriage can make a woman miserable if it were blessed by all the parsons living, but you are taking a responsibility a great deal bigger than that of any husband, and I am taking such a responsibility as no mother ought to take. And now, Madge,’ she said, ‘I want to speak to Mr. Armstrong in private for one minute. Come back when I call you.’

Madge stole obediently away, and when the door had closed behind her, Mrs. Hampton leaned forward and spoke in a half-whisper, with her hand stretched out before the listener like a hovering bird.

‘I have my child’s promise,’ she said, ‘and I know that I can trust to it But I must have your undertaking that you will place her safely in her brother’s hands, and that you will treat her with as much respect as if she were engaged to be married to you.’

‘Madam,’ Paul broke out, ‘I pledge myself absolutely. I could hold no pledge so sacred.’

‘I shall follow,’ said Mrs. Hampton, ‘within two or three months. My child will have had another half-year in which to know you and to understand your intentions towards her. I have no fear of her; but if you violate your promise in the slightest, you will act like a scoundrel, and I have Madge’s undertaking that she will be candid with me. There is no more to be said now until we meet in England. I may tell you just this, Mr. Armstrong: we two have spent every night since I first saw you in each other’s arms in tears. I am giving you a proof that I think well of you on very slender grounds. If you are in the least worthy my good opinion, you will think sometimes of what I have just told you.’

He stooped and kissed her hand, and when she drew it away there was a single tear upon it.

‘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.