Despairs Last Journey | Page 9

earth, smiling and
yearning there with pity and rest in your bosom! we are but creatures of
a day--my day the briefer. And that would matter little if I had been
worthy of my day. But I have played the fool with life, and have earned
my own contempt and creep into my hiding-place with shame.'
He strolled back to the tent, and whether he would have it or no, and
whether he would believe it or no, the inward voice spoke now and
then. Twice in the wide daylight he stood still, and his hair crisped and
his blood tingled. The voice was there, and yet he could not guess what
it had to say to him. It was as though it spoke in a language to which he

had no key.
As he sat musing his eye fell upon the axe, and he started up and seized
it as if suddenly reminded of some forgotten urgent duty. He fell to
work at the big tree again, and laboured doggedly till nightfall.
Inexperienced as he was, he brought observation and intelligence to the
task, and knew already the kind of stroke which told most with the least
expenditure of effort. When he could see no longer, he leaned gasping
on the axe, and gave a grim nod of the head. 'I shall have you down.'
He was at it again next morning light and early. He toiled all day. The
great pine leaned somewhat over the cliff, and though the angle was
slight, it told as the gash deepened, and when the sun dipped over the
top of the western mountain the huge doomed thing gave its first groan
and hung a little towards its grave. At this sign the tired worker fell to
with a freshened vigour. He was still striking when the royal head
bowed, and then swept downward with a rush. He sprang to one side
just in time to avoid the backward kick and the enormous flying
splinters. Ten feet from its base and a hundred from its lowest branch
the trunk caught the edge of the rock. The leverage and the weight of
the fall snapped the two or three square feet of stanch fibre the axe had
spared. That last strong anchorage broke, and the tree flashed into the
rapids. The churning, shooting waters made a plaything of it.
The next day he fell into deep ennui, and to beguile himself he
rummaged out of the canvas bag an old note-book and a pencil, and
began a clumsy and uninstructed effort to sketch the scene before him.
The effort proving quite abortive, he began to scrawl beneath it, 'Paul
Armstrong.' 'Yours very truly, Paul Armstrong.' 'Disrespectfully yours,
Paul Armstrong.' 'Sacred to the memory of Paul Armstrong, who died
of boredom in the Rocky Mountains.' 'Paul Armstrong: the
Autobiography of an Ass.'
He was in the very act of throwing the book away from him when he
felt suddenly arrested. Why not 'Paul Armstrong: an Autobiography? It
would fill the time. But the idea was no sooner formed than it began to
pain. What sort of a record would it have to be if it were honest? What
a confession of folly, of failure!

But as he sat his thoughts shaped themselves--
Thus.

THE STORY OF PAUL ARMSTRONG'S LIFE AND OF DESPAIR'S
LAST JOURNEY
CHAPTER I
The first hint of memory showed a hearth, a fire, and a woman sitting
in a chair with an outstretched finger. An invisible hand bunched his
petticoats behind, and at his feet was a rug made of looped fragments of
cloth of various colours. He lurched across the rug and caught the
finger with a sense of adventure and triumph. Somebody clapped hands
and laughed. Memory gave no more.
Then there was a long, narrow, brick-paved yard, a kind of oblong well,
with one of the narrower sides broken down. The bricks of the
pavement were of many colours--browns, purples, reds. They were full
of breakages and hollows, and in rainy weather small pools gathered in
the petty valleys. The loftiest boundary wall had once been
whitewashed, but was now streaked green and yellow with old rains. A
pump with a worn trough of stone stood half-way up the yard, and near
it was a boy--a very little boy, in petticoats, and a yellow straw hat with
ribbons. The frock he wore was of some tartan pattern, with red and
green in it He had white thread socks, and shoes with straps across the
instep. The straps were fastened with round glass buttons, and the child,
with his feet planted close together, was looking down at the buttons
with a flush of pride. He was conscious of being prettily attired, and
this was his first remembered touch of personal